SUFFERfest 2013

There was a pretty good amount of suffering that went on during this year's SUFFERfest.  After a beautiful summer and September, the weather turned ugly on Saturday.  I was busy all week with pre-registration which basically meant getting the bags prepared for each athlete to pick up.  I had a great team of workers for the bag packing and we got everything arranged alphabetically.  The other big job was to get the bags distributed and we had pre-arranged pickup times.  All of my workers at these sessions were great and I don't think we had any major screwups.  A couple of people didn't get their pre-ordered t-shirt, but otherwise, things went smoothly.  With the poor weather, quite a few athletes didn't show up but on Sunday morning, the other worker and I had a steady flow of people coming in to pick up their bag for the 10 km run and the 25 km run.  For me, the hardest task was to "balance the books" at the end of the day and I'm always nervous working with money.  Because of the weather, we didn't get a ton of walk in registrations or event changes so it was good year to find out what it's all about.  It was fun talking with the athletes and on Sunday, when the weather cleared up a bit it was good to see the SUFFER fever in town!  Andrea participated in the 45 km bike ride and the 10 km run.  Congratulations to Janis for another successful year as Race Director for SUFFERfest.

Blue Heron Run

Sunday, Sept. 22, I participated in the Blue Heron Run (10 km or half-marathon) in Creston, B.C.  The run takes place at the Wildlife Centre outside of Creston and I had anticipated that at least half of it would be on trails.  It isn't - the entire run is on pavement.  My goal early in the season had been to do the half-marathon, but a cranky knee has kept me from running as much as I would have liked so I opted for the 10 km.  It's a pretty enough place to run and it's mostly flat.  I surprised myself right at the start by finding myself at the back of the first third of the runners, rather than at the front of the last third of the runners.  This wasn't a very elite group, but it still felt good to be seeing the leaders up ahead.  At the turn around point, I could actually see most of the runners other than the first 3 who were way ahead of the rest of us.  I was able to maintain a steady pace and felt good throughout.  I was very pleased to have a finish time of 62 minutes when my goal had been 65 minutes.  Cool, cloudy weather helped too.