Rock n Roll Montreal Marathon 2013

Friday
I took a late night flight out of LAX with Air Canada. It was my first time flying with this airline. It cost more but it was a direct flight and I didn't want to fly with Continental. I was pretty excited as this was going to be my first international marathon! I was able to finally catch the movie, Skyfall.

Watching Skyfall on AirCanada

Saturday
I landed in the Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport early in the morning. In the airport, I bought a 3 day pass which gave me unlimited usage of the bus or the Metro rail. I went outside to catch the 747 express bus which took me into downtown Montréal. At first the machine to purchase a pass/fare was not accepting my credit card. The US is a little behind on credit card technology. Most machines outside of the US read cards with a smart chip. After about the 10th try, it finally took my credit card. I almost had to use my emergency cash. Riding on the bus was a bit stressful as all of the stops were announced in French. Everybody spoke French all the time. I knew zero French. Luckily I did enough thorough research beforehand and was able to get off at the correct stop (René-Lévesque / Union). I then walked a few blocks over to the Place Bonaventure for the expo. We all had to queue up in a long line since the expo did not open until 9am.

Everything is in French

After the expo, I walked over to the McGill station to take the green line over to my hotel. I got off at the Berri-UQAM station. I stayed at the Auberge Le Pomerol located on Boulevard de Maisonneuve Rue Saint-Hubert which was just a short walk from the station which was extremely convenient. My room wasn't ready for me to check-in yet, so I went out back out to eat lunch. I took the green line over to the Guy-Concordia station and walked over to Ramen Misoya to check out their ramen. I ordered the Kome miso ramen and added an egg. I also had their gyoza. The meal came with a daikon salad. The daikon salad was a nice appetizer and the gyoza was also pretty good. Now for the ramen. The broth wasn't overpowering or too greasy. The flavor was good and the chashu was also not bad, probably the best part of the bowl. The noodles were also not bad. It was a pretty decent bowl. I'd come back here.

Daikon salad

Kome miso ramen add egg

Gyoza

After finishing lunch, I went back to my hotel and got checked-in. It was a nice room and the one thing that sort of stood out was that the toilet seat was squarish.

Square toilet seat

I stayed in my room and relaxed until it was time to eat an early dinner. I walked around the Quartier Latin a bit to check out my options and ended up eating at Pèlerin-Magellan. I had their filet mignon with gambas and a glass of Syrah. However they brought out the steak with brie instead. It was somewhat a fortunate mistake because I love brie and it went very well with the steak. They were apologetic about the mistake and brought out the gambas later. The steak was delicious. The meal came with a nice salad and some fries. They were friendly and able to speak to me in English. If the weather is nice, they will most likely seat you in the outdoor patio area in the back which was really nice. Inside the lighting was a bit on the dimmer romantic side.

Syrah

Filet mignon with brie

Gambas

Before heading back to my hotel, I stopped by the convenient store across the street from my hotel to pick up some drinks for the race. After I got back to my room, I went through the expo haul and got my race gear together. This was one of my favorite race shirts, definitely a keeper. I originally planned on wearing a cap since they were predicting some precipitation. It would turn out to drizzle a bit at the beginning of the race, but we were never caught in any downpour.

Shirt and bib

Race gear

Sunday
Every morning they hung a breakfast basket on a hook just outside of your room. It was such a nice convenient amenity. I never had such thing at an US hotel.

Breakfast basket

Breakfast basket inside

Per the race instructions, I took the Metro over to the Papineau station where we waited for the security sweep before we were allowed on the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. I checked my gear bag in one of the yellow school buses before heading to my corral. Everything was well organized. You have the left lane to get to your corral and inside the corrals there were a couple of portapotties to take care of last minute necessities.

Waiting to head to gear check and corrals

Gear check in school buses

Starting line

They released us one corral at a time. The course started on the downhill of the bridge, so the first mile was pretty fast. It was a beautiful rolling course for the most part. We had overcast the whole time so the weather was cool for the duration of the race. It was my first time in Montréal and I found it to be such a nice place to run through for a marathon. I liked that the course had a lot of out and back portions where you could see those in front as well as those behind you. I was dealing with leg cramps as well as arm cramps in the later miles. The race ended in the beautiful La Fontaine Park. It was located close enough to my hotel that I had a nice walk back to my hotel room.

4:15 pace group

Almost to the finish line

1: 7:39
2: 9:00
3: 7:47
4: 9:22
5: 8:53
6: 9:27
7: 9:30
8: 9:53
9: 9:22
10-11: 19:10 (9:35)
12: 9:22
13: 9:36
14: 10:46
15: 10:44
16: 11:35
17: 11:45
18: 13:14
19: 12:28
20: 11:23
21: 12:00
22: 12:02
23: 12:43
24: 12:58
25: 12:30
26: 11:22
26.2: 1:58
Finish: 4:36:29

Well, what a nice marathon for my 99th! This race alone made the Tour Pass worth it. The organization was superb and the course itself was very nice. This race was my 10th Rock n' Roll race for the year so it qualified me for the coveted Rock Idol medal. Unfortunately they were not passing out heavy medals at this race and was informed that they would mail it to me. I can't believe that I had waited until my 99th marathon before going international. With my upcoming trip to Berlin for my 100th, I had to save some money... so instead of going out to eat, I ate the beef jerky that I had brought with me and whatever was left in the breakfast basket.

Medal

Monday
After eating my breakfast basket, it was time to pack up my stuff and check out of the hotel. Before heading to the airport, I ate lunch at Imadake. I had their jellyfish salad and the beef tataki ramen with original broth. The broth was just right, full of flavor but not too salty or greasy. I also love rare beef, so this was the ramen tailor made for me! The soft boiled egg was also excellent and made correctly. The ramen also came with a regular salad. I loved the jellyfish. From looking at the menu, it would seem like this would be a great place for dinner or late night Japanese pub food. I will have to come here if I'm ever in Montréal again. Their wait staff were very nice and friendly here. I got to the restaurant a bit early and they let me wait inside for the restaurant to open. The waitress even setup her own mobile hotspot for me to use as the restaurant's wi-fi was not working. The restaurant was very easy to get to via subway. It was just across the street from the Station Atwater.

Beer and menu

Jellyfish salad

Beef tataki ramen with original broth

After lunch I took the Metro and caught the 747 bus to the airport at the René-Lévesque / Bishop stop. Thus ended a short but surprisingly pleasant trip to Montréal, Canada for my first international marathon. It really made me want to run more races outside of the United States.

Rock n Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon 2013

Friday
This was one of those quick trips where I decided not to take a day off from work. I can only do that when I run a half marathon. Currently I'm just not fast enough to do that with a full marathon. So after work I caught a red-eye flight out of LAX with US Airways out to Philadelphia. I hardly ever fly with this airline, but it was the one with the cheapest airfare.

Saturday
I arrived at the Philadelphia airport at around 9am. I then made my way over to the train stop to take the regional rail into downtown Philly. You could purchase tickets ahead of time ($6.50), but you could just pay the conductor onboard for a little more ($8.00). I found it somewhat amusing that he was punching the tickets the old school way with a handheld hole puncher. I got off the train at the Market East station.

Took the train from the airport into Downtown (Market East)

What I found convenient was that you could walk from the train station to the Convention Center without even having to go outside. I suppose they built it that way to help people move about when there's bad weather outside. The expo was your standard Rock n' Roll expo. You first pick up your bib, then your shirt, and a drawstring bag to carry your stuff. Then you walk through the official merchandise before you go through the exhibition area. I picked up my friend's bib and shirt as well. I also picked up a luggage tag for another friend that collected them. Going through the exhibitors, it was great that there was a booth promoting beef where they were giving out beef sticks. It was also nice to pick up a bag of King's Hawaiian hamburger buns. That pretty much took care of my pre-race breakfast. As per the usual, they were offering a special discounted price ($70) for next year's race. I did not sign up.

They were giving out beef sticks!

King's Hawaiian Bread

Nice deal, but I pass

To pass some time before lunch, I sat at the stage area with about 2 other runners to listen to Khalid Khannouchi. I suppose that a lot of runners do not know who he was. He was the first male to break 2:06 in the marathon. At one point, the Penguin asked him what he thought about runners that run a marathon or two every weekend. He said that was stupid... a no brainer, don't do it! He pretty much said that you will never run your best if you did that and you will for sure get injured. I agree 100%. :)

Khalid Khannouchi, first male to break 2:06

For lunch I made my way over to Nom Nom Ramen to eat my customary pre-race bowl of ramen. Before my trip I had scouted on Yelp for ramen shops and found that there wasn't much of a choice. I came here because it was conveniently located close to the expo and my hotel. I ordered the large shio tonkotsu ramen and added an egg. It was pretty decent, but a bit on the greasy side. I wasn't expecting too much since Philly wasn't known for ramen. It was good enough that when I come back to town for the marathon, I'll probably come here to eat my ramen.

Large shio tonkotsu ramen with egg

After lunch, I walked over a block to check into my hotel room. I used one of my free nights to book this nicer hotel and it happened to be the host hotel for the race. There was a bathrobe waiting for me on the bed and everything was pretty dang fancy. I guess I had gotten used to staying at cheaper hotels or motels. :)

No cheap hotel this time

Fancy soap shaped like a leaf

For dinner, I thought that I would check out Pat's King of Steaks and Geno's Steaks since my friend back home wanted to know which one I thought was better. So I took the Broad Street subway from the City Hall station down to the Ellsworth Federal station. I thought it was a bit strange that the turnstiles still took tokens. It was $2.25 for cash or 1 token. Each token cost $1.80, so it was cheaper to use tokens. I walked about 6 blocks east on Federal St to the restaurants. The two restaurants were located diagonally across from each other. I first got in line for a sandwich at Pat's. The ordering instructions were on the wall and pretty easy to follow. I got a steak sandwich wit Whiz. The beef was actually pretty tender and the bread was soft. After finishing the sandwich, I walked across the street to order one from Geno's. The ordering procedure was pretty much the same. So I got my sandwich and was ready for the comparison. The beef from Geno's was tougher and so was the bread. For me, both weren't very good. But if I had to pick, I'd rather eat one from Pat's. The lines were pretty long for both places and both felt like tourist traps.

They still use tokens here

Pat's wit Whiz

Geno's Whiz with onions

After getting back to my room, I laid out my race gear and watched the race course preview on the TV. I guess that's one of the perks of staying at the host hotel.

Race gear

Course preview in my room

Sunday
After I ate, showered, and got dressed, I met my friend down in the lobby so she could get her bib and race stuff. The race started at 8am and the starting area was several blocks away. So we started making our way over to the starting area. There was a little bit of chill in the air so we sat down on a curb and waited for a while before checking our clothes at gear check.

Spandex!

The race
I ran with my friend for the first 3 miles or so before she took off. She went on to finish sub 1:40. I just wanted to finish under 2 hrs. I thought this was a very nice and fast course with lots of nice greenery. The majority of the time we were running along the Schuylkill River. I started having trouble around 10k. The left lower leg felt a little sore, so I slowed down the pace a little bit until it felt better. I picked up the pace for mile 12 to try and make sure I had enough time to reach my goal. The left leg wasn't feeling too good, so I had to slow it back down a bit for the final mile. I thought that it was pretty cool that the finish line was right next to the Rocky steps.

Starting corral

1: 8:17
2: 8:06
3: 8:10
4: 8:45
5: 8:51
6: 9:18
7: 9:58
8: 9:50
9: 9:27
10: 9:11
11: 9:29
12: 8:48
13: 9:20
13.1: 0:54
Finish: 1:58:25

Post race
"Yo Adrian, I did it!" After a couple of bad half marathons at Pasadena and Chicago, it felt good to finish under 2 hrs. I had the help of a flat fast course and much nicer cooler weather. My friend had to catch a bus after the race, but waited around for me to finish. We traded race stories as we started heading over to the bus stop. It was sort of along the way back to my hotel.

Finish back under 2 hrs

After getting back to my room and getting cleaned up, I grabbed my stuff and checked out of the hotel. Then I made my way up to the famous Rocky statue and the steps. There was a lot of fountains and other statues along the way. The weather actually got a little bit on the warm side. It was cool to finally cross those things off of the bucket list. Pretty neat since I'm a big time Rocky fan having seen each movie millions of times.

"Don't give the man a statue! Give him guts!"

The famous Rocky steps!

After finally getting that out of the way, I made my way over to the Good Dog Bar to eat something and drink some beers before heading to the airport for my flight home. I stopped in here because of the name. They had some drinks with some interesting names, but I stuck with a couple of the local Yards Philly Pale Ale. It was a pretty decent tasting beer. For food I got the duck quesadilla. It was okay, but I wouldn't order it again. I'm not even sure that the meat was duck. It sure didn't taste like duck. As it got closer to my flight, I made my way over to the Suburban Station to catch the train to the airport. I'm quite envious of other cities with good public transportation system. Los Angeles is taking a long time catching up to the other major US metropolitan cities.

Good Dog Bar

Interesting selection

Yards Philly Pale Ale x 3

No thank you

Duck Quesadilla

Dumbo Double Dare 2013

Friday
I left work during lunch time to drive over to Disneyland to pick up my race packet. It was one big clustersmurf just to park your car or to find out that there were no parking spots available at the usual Downtown Disney parking lot. They eventually diverted us off to an offsite parking lot which I believe was for $10. I just turned around before entering that parking structure. Eventually I drove around and found a curb next to Denny's that did not have any tow-away signs. I even stopped inside to ask if I could park there. The employees actually didn't know. But I figured that there were no signs and that it was far away enough from Disneyland that I should be okay. It was also blazing hot, so I was pretty sweaty by the time I made my way over to the expo. Then there was a very long line for the expo. After snaking my way through the line and down the ramp into the bib pickup area, it was pretty easy from there. One thing I'll give Disney is that they're good at controlling crowds and lines. I picked up my bib and the commemorative pin that I had bought before heading back up to the exhibition floor to pick up my race shirts.

Pin and race bib

There was a line getting into the expo with the shirt pickup in the very back. They had separate lines for different sizes for each of the race categories. The line for medium happened to be the longest for those running the Dumbo Double Dare. The expo was pretty crowded and I needed to get back to work so I just stopped by Lasting Commemoratives to pick up a free Disney artwork that you had to preregister for with your email. I then walked back to my car hoping that it was still there and not towed away. Thank goodness it wasn't! I gave away the Alice in Wonderland 10k shirt to one of my coworkers who collected anything Alice. If you ever want any of my race shirts, just let me know. Chances are I'll give it to you. I donate quite a few to Goodwill or my younger brother.

10k shirt

Dumbo Double Dare shirt

Half Marathon shirt

After work, my coworker took me out for my birthday dinner at the Mastro's Ocean Club in Newport Beach. I think Mastro's has the best steaks that I've eaten, but it's probably not the best food to eat the night before a race. The steak was huge and I sure as heck was not going to put it away with a race the next day! We both thought that the snap peas were pretty darn good. I probably should have stopped drinking after the two bottles of wine. The next day I definitely regretted having that last martini. But heck we were celebrating my birthday. I normally don't eat anything sweet, but I make an exception when it's for my birthday and it's a dessert from Mastro's.

Justin Cabernet

Sautéed shrimp

Salmon Tartare

Jack London Cabernet

Tomahawk rib eye steak

Dirty martini

Birthday cake!

Saturday
I woke up feeling pretty crappy and dehydrated. I thought to myself, "glad it's only a 10k today instead of a half marathon!"

I got ready and made my way down to Disneyland and parked before 4am. For some reason they let me through with free parking. It looked like I got there early enough that they assumed that I was a volunteer.

Saturday free parking

The 10k race started at 6:15am, so I took a nap in my car for a little bit. After using the parking garage restroom, I went to the staging area to check out the place. They had the usual Disney entertainment and pre-race warm up. As it got closer to the starting time, I made my way over to the starting corrals.

Staging area

This way to the corrals

Alice in Wonderland 10k
In the starting corral, I bumped into my friend who had just completed the 5k. See, there are crazier people than me! After the usual Disney pomp and circumstance, we were off! The first mile felt okay. Then during the second mile, I was already starting to taste last night's dinner and especially the martini. By mile 4, I started to feel nauseated. So I slowed it down a bit and just cruised it in. The course was pretty nice, but there was a big gap between the second and third aid stations. Good thing it was only a 10k. It was a pretty warm day and I just wanted some water to dump on my head.

Running for turkey legs

1: 7:57
2: 8:21
3: 8:40
4: 8:51
5: 9:23
6: 9:16
6.2: 1:33
Finish: 54:01

I was sweating up a storm as I collected my medal and grabbed a box of post-race snacks. I guess it was a good thing to sweat out all of the alcohol. I bumped into my friend at the finish area. I always love bumping into a fellow Disney fan. We took a bunch of pictures before parting for our separate ways. Of course we would all see each other again the following day.

10k medal

Saturday
I showed up pretty early since the half marathon started at 5:30am. But I was unable to score free parking this time. Parking cost $16. Again after taking a brief nap and using the restroom, I headed over to the staging area. Then I got into my corral and just found a spot to sit down. Since I knew that I wouldn't have any zip in my legs, I didn't bother to make me way closer to the front of the corral. I just wanted to finish somewhere under 2:10.

Starting line

Disneyland Half Marathon
I love this race and it is the one race that I look forward to each year. Also since I'm a legacy runner, I pretty much know the course forwards and backwards. In the past 7 years, the course has not changed much. This year's course was pretty much the same with a few tweaks. This year Rudy, the awesome race announcer, gave shout outs to legacy runners and people with birthdays. I guess it makes you feel a bit special to be in both categories. Again with the usual Disney send off, we were off!

The first couple of miles were pretty fast, dark, and had us outside of the park. The fun part came when we enter the park. First we ran through California Adventure then through Disneyland. I pulled over near the It's a Small World to take a picture with Cinderella and Snow White.

Cinderella

Snow White

After leaving the park, we ran through the streets of Anaheim heading towards the Honda Center. It was getting hot and I was a bit tired, so I kept the miles slow. After Chicago, I wouldn't want to cramp up again in a half marathon. After running along the Santa Ana River Trail, I noticed that we took a slightly different route into the Angel Stadium parking lot. I was able to pick up the pace a bit during my favorite part of the course, running along the warning track through Angel Stadium. After exiting the stadium, we headed back towards Disneyland. I made an effort to try and increase the pace with each mile to ensure that I would reach my goal.
1: 8:52
2: 8:45
3: 9:06
4: 10:49
5: 9:08
6: 10:06
7: 10:44
8: 10:14
9: 11:14
10: 8:38
11: 11:13
12: 10:03
13: 9:34
13.1: 0:44
Finish: 2:09:10

Again I bumped into a bunch of my friends at the finish area. After taking a few pictures together, Marathon Mitch and I went to Earl of Sandwich to eat lunch. I had a Stella and a pretty pathetic looking ham and swiss cheese sandwich. It didn't taste too bad but I'm not sure that I would eat here post race again.

DDD medal and post race ham & swiss cheese sandwich

Previous years:
2012: 1:59:22
2011: 1:58:03
2010: 1:52:28
2009: 1:54:40
2008: 1:55:07
2007: 2:06:38
2006: 2:02:37

From looking at my results for each year, I've been slowing down the past three years. I'll have to work on staying healthy so I can start getting faster instead of slower. I'll definitely be back each year for the half marathon to maintain my legacy status, but I'm not sure that I will continue to run the Dumbo Double Dare. It's just too expensive and too much trouble for an extra 10k. The expo was pretty chaotic because you had to attend the expo on Friday in order to run the 10k on Saturday. The expo in the years past haven't been as crazy since people could go on Saturday instead. Oh well, we'll see. I'm known from time to time to go against what I've said. Just two more years until the big 10th year anniversary! Can't wait to see what Disney will do to celebrate!