Whirlwind Weekend

Ben and I headed to Calgary this weekend for 2 main reasons: 1) to find a place to live and 2) for Ben to run the Calgary marathon for a 5th time in a row! and both of those were a sucess but boy was it ever busy. We were up early saterday and hit the ground running and didn't stop until our heads hit our pillows at 11pm that evening. We went to the gym, and by the time we got home we were already running behing schedule as it was 10:15 and we had an appointment to meet a landlord at 11 (and we were in cochrane at my mom's house). So we had a quick shower, shoved some breakfast in our mouths and hit the road. We were late meeting the first landlord, which then had a ripple effect and we were late meeting every one after that. But in the end, we found a place! Actually the place that I wished for!.. well kinda. It turns out the exact one we were supposed to see was rented out but they had another one that would be available on June 15th (when we need it), and it is AWESOME! There is a dishwasher AND laundry in the suite! ALso a huge balcony for our bbq! We are so excited! We grabbed some pho for lunch (mmmm jsut like I hoped) and then drove across town to get our race packages for Sunday morning. It was super busy, but we got our race bibs, then remembered that my goggles are broken and I have the oliver half ironman next weekend! To top it off we only had an hour to get back across the city to get a new pair, so back in the car we went. I found some great ones, so hopefully there won't be any issues next weekend. By this point we had been driving around with a car pack to the roof with stuff so we then had to head to my dad's house who is graciously letting us store some stuff there until we move in to our new place in a couple of weeks. After unloading the car we headed to the jewlery store to purchase our wedding bands. We had picked them out the weekend before in Kelowna, but decided to wait till we were in calgary to buy them because of the difference in taxes, which saved us a pile of money. We then had an hour to get downtown and meet my dad, sammy, angie, jenny and baby jack for some pre race pasta.. mm.. But Ben and I decided that after 8 hours of running around looked like bums so we stopped in at winners on the way and walked out with some new clothes to wear for dinner! We had a great dinner with my family, then headed back to cochrane for a good night sleep, although short!

Sunday morning we woke up to frost on the windshield and 0 degree weather!It was chilly! Ben's race started at 7, so we left the house around 6am and had to be up at 5! It was early, and we were tired and cold. We met up with Jacque and wished Ben good luck and he was off. We started a half hour later. It was a good race, we had fun and got across that line without stopping. Infact, I have not been able to run 10 kms since I got pneumonia a month ago, so it was a good confidence booster for my race next weekend. When we crossed the finish line my dad was there with my little nephew Jack. We had a couple hours to kill until Ben would be coming by, so we let jack run around the park. Ben hadn't trained specifically for this marathon, and thought he would take maybe 4 hours. But we went up to wait for him around 3 hours 20 minutes and thank goodness we did because he came by 9 minutes later with a time of 3 hours 29 minutes! We passed Jack off to Ben, and Ben carried Jack across the finish line, it was pretty cool. Infact, the Calgary herald snapped this picture and they got on their website!

Ben's Mom and Bill even made just in time! We then went to my mom's for a birthday lunch since my birthday is in a week, had a nap, then hit the road! It was a crazy weekend, but all in all a sucess!