Siulon's Road to Ironman: My First Marathon, EVER..... Victoria

My first full distance marathon... ever - Victoria full.

After IM Whistler
it's been about 6 weeks after Whistler IM, of course I have managed to lose fitness, gain weight, and eat tons of ice cream. For the past 2 years, it's always been the same, I would jump start my fat-gaining process right after my A-race of the season. To be honest, the best I could do is damage control, try to shorten my rest/recovery period after the A-race, start my training as early as possible, work out as much as I can and eat the least amount of junk.

Mini Victoria getaway
Besides running the full marathon myself, Mabel is also running her fourth half marathon on her birthday! I am very proud of her, most people party and pig out on their birthday, who would run on their birthday, let along a half marathon! That was the main reason she signed up for the Victoria run. The other reason is because they have nice runner shirt! take a look below.

However, I just want to ask, how come the women's colors are always better? Men colors are so boring!

On the drive to Canada, of course we stopped by the Nike outlet and saw this bright neon green/yellow shows, for $35. Too bad it's not comfortable at all, NOT AT ALL. I would've just bought every single last pair of them if they are just borderline comfortable.

This is the before picture, I look terrible. We woke up early in the morning, had breakfast and got ready for the run. The nice thing about staying at a hotel right next to the starting line. I walked Mabel to the start line, waited for couple minutes and off she go!

I watched a couple more minutes and decided to go back to the room, I turned around and realized that the runners running on the other side. So, I decided to watch and cheer for a little bit and 'hope' that I would see Mabel. Before I realized she's right there and waved at me. I yelled 加油 to encourage her.

Food, food, food, food, and food.... and food

After the run, we went back to the hotel and showered, took a break and started to look online for food. We found this place there seems to be a lot of good brunch places around victoria.

This is the corn beef harsh that Mabel ordered, a side order and it's HUGE. I think she ate it all, lol.

And waffle

And I ordered the 222 Special (I think that's the name), two eggs, sausage and two HUGE pancakes. that's way too much food that I could even imagine, I think I ate 1/4 of one pancage, lol...

This is the before picture, we were too full after eating and wasn't able to take a picture after that cause we were holding our tummy.

Did I mention that it was Mabel's big day? And we ran a full and half marathon that morning? yeah, i think I did, so we were too sore and painful to walk or even drive anywhere, we ended up eating at the hotel
I would want to say this is our best meal while in Victoria.

Mabel ordered Foie Gras for appetizer and I got the oysters. The oysters were just ok, nothing special. However, Mabel's Foie Gras was super delicious.

The duck breast was very good too. On the other hand, my lamb rack was just so so, it's still good, but it's just average good.

The best part of dinner is the dessert. They have this chocolate ball with some berry (i forgot if it was strawberry or raspberry) chocolate inside. When it came, it was whole ball and you didn't know what's i there. The server poured chocolate syrup on top of it, and 10~15 seconds later, the top part opened up and you see inside, pretty fancy! one of the most beautiful dessert i have had.

The server was nice, but forgetful, haha..... When we made reservation, I told them that it's my wife birthday but nothing different special happened during dinner. Only after we got back to our room, somebody knocked on the door and there you go the birthday cake/dessert.

The next morning is about more eating. We had breakfast at the hotel. My Benedict is fancy, they use cream puff for the bread and there's crab cake for the usual ham, pretty good.

Before we head back to Seattle, we booked massage at the hotel that morning. I would it's average given the price, but I love how I got the whole place to myself! Mabel and I used the mineral pool, sauna and steam room, not bad... not bad...

When we were looking for dinner on Saturday night, we randomly found this place. It was so packed and people were lining up outside the restaurant. Later we found out that they don't take reservation and we were just trying our luck on Monday before driving back to Seattle. Luckily, the wait wasn't bad at all and we got to try this place.