An adventure

I can't wait until tomorrow when my quads really tell me what they think of last night's workout.

It started innocently enough - Running Room's annual 20-minute challenge. How gruelling could it be? We show up at the Westview store in North Vancouver, get our free running hats, to the 20-minute run, and then continue on a bit longer. Right.

We showed up - about 12-15 Burnaby runners. We got our hats (great hats - thanks, Running Room!) We set off on the run, north on Westview, and then left. Only we soon peeled off onto a trail, somewhere around Bewicke...

I'm not sure entirely where we went, but it involved mostly going uphill along Mosquito Creek (at least, I think someone said that's what it was), and then segued into a zig-zag clamber up a ski-hill steep slope. (I discovered a mild fear of heights I hadn't known existed, and was convinced at one point that I was going to fall off what passed for the trail and tumble down the hill. This was while I was not-quite hauling myself up by tree roots and anything else I could find to cling to.) Then we ended up on the Skyline Trail, which led to the Grouse Grind parking lot. (Mercifully, nobody suggested throwing in the Grind to top things off.) On the way back, we branched off on a downhill trail - that was a good move, because the Skyline trail would have been an uphill on the return. This led us onto a road, and from there back onto our original trail. And then a screaming run down the hill - about 2k. (Hence the whining quads.)

What a blast! Total time from the start at Running Room: 1h.28mins. Distance logged by my GPS: 9.3 km, but I lost the signal a fair amount, so who knows how much distance we actually covered - we decided to round it up to 10 km.

Definitely earned those nice yellow hats...

An orphan Giro photo...

This refused to load into the Final preparations post...

Giro - race pictures (part 4)

Twenty-seven women started, and 17 finished. Burnaby Heights resident Gina Grain won the women's race!!!!!!!!!

Sixty-five men started, with 50 finishing. Hilton Clarke (an Aussie) won the men's race.

Here's a Ferrari leading the way

This is the only decent shot I got of any of the women - this is a post-race shot.

While the women's race was in progress, the men prepared.

Some of these shots look blurry - that's because they were going so fast (check out the spectators for comparison).

Here is the link to the race web site, where you can check out the times and get the names of the racers. http://www.girodiburnaby.com/

Giro - final preparations (Part 3)

At 5 p.m., the bulk of the volunteers started arriving, many with workgloves in hand and all wearing red bandanas to identify us on the course. We picked up safety vests as well. We'd anxiously been tracking intermittent showers during the day, and there was some dismay when one started pretty close to the women's race. Luckily the streets dried before it was over, and then the weather finally cleared.

Everyone assembled at the athletes' village, where we got to admire TWO red Ferraris!!! These were the pace cars during the race, and were driven by their owners, members of the Ferrari Club (I don't know about you guys, but I'm buying lottery tickets...)

Team C (for Champions!) had a photo op with one of the Ferraris.
At 5.50, we went for our fencing lesson (on guard!), and then Hastings closed and then we were doing our own race, putting up the Hastings fence. In the meantime, volunteers were also putting the finishing touches on the first aid/information/souvenir tables, and handing out race packages.

Giro - more photos (Part 2)

Once the tents were up, we'd hoped to start in with fencing from Swanguard, but it was late. So posters went up, radios were handed out and checked, and people hung out a bit, waiting for things to do. (On the radio front, I'm happy to report that John didn't do any Britney Spears imitations with his headset...)

Giro di Burnaby 2006 - start here

It's been so long since I used this blog, I'd forgotten how to manage it. Found some junk comments and (I think) deleted them, but accidentally deleted one of Dave's in the process. Sorry, Dave!

I took a bunch of pictures at yesterday's inaugural Giro di Burnaby. Not exactly a run, but so many Bushtits were involved, it counts as an honourary event. I'll post them in batches. And I will try to keep this a bit more up-to-date than I have been!

The Giro was really an amazing thing, both the event and the behind the scenes activities. At noon, people arrived at the Safeway parking lot at Willingdon and Hastings and started the set-up. Once the athletes' village was done, and some fencing had arrived, people fanned out into the surrounding streets to begin putting up fencing between the road and the sidewalks. And at 6 p.m. Hastings was closed to traffic and everyone sprang into action, fencing off Hastings between Rosser and McDonald, including the course dog-legs at either end of that stretch, and piling hay at potential wipe-out areas. We had an hour to do that, and we'd finished the fencing before the 7 p.m. start of the women's race. It was a wonderful feat of team-work, with everyone seeming to know what to do and when to do it without any fuss - you'd think we'd been putting up fences for years! We would have finished the hay in time as well, but it was a bit late arriving. Even so, the race started only about 15 minutes late.

Watching those cyclists screaming around the course was breathtaking at times. The men were going so fast that there was a wind after them. Incredibly, there were only a couple of crashes - one at the end of the women's race, and one during the men's race. Volunteers opened a section of fence and were on and off the course with mangled bikes and unmangled riders in a matter of seconds. What a crew!

I tried taking pictures of the women's race, but none of them turned out well, even with my reasonably fool-proof digital camera. Better luck next year. I also didn't get any of the take-down at the end of the race, which actually went faster than the set-up.

I'm posting the ones I got in batches.

The first group of pictures were taken at noon or so, as set-up of the athletes' village got underway....