Heavenly Bed

Vancouver/Seattle trip was great. Slow half-marathon time but I'm learning to deal with that. This was my first time to Canada. It's probably not fair to judge an entire country by one city, but then again, I was judging it before I left, too. As far as I can tell, it's like the Lite version of America.

But the main reason we were there was for JFJ's 26.2 mile triumph! He set a PR at Vancouver with a fabulous 3:54 finish. The nice thing about the two of us running different events is that there is clearly one person who is hurting and one person who is helping. So after my race I was able to go back to the hotel, shower, pack a bag of post-race essentials, get the rental car, drive to the finish area, park, and still be there to cheer him on at the last half-mile. He was really a broken man after the race and after we got back to the hotel we put him in the shower and then I ordered room service while he got cleaned up. I wrapped him in one of the fluffy robes and then the food arrived. We ate it just like you see here, lying in bed and eating off the tray. He looked like this for about 20 seconds and then he fell into a dead sleep. We were both really happy that we had all the food and the fluffy towels, and we appreciated it because we came very close to having to share the bathroom with strangers.

You can see from this photo how important it is to stay somewhere nice when you are in town for an endurance event. JFJ had originally suggested we stay at "the Y." Now, don't be confused and think that I mean "the W," the swank urban hipster hotel chain. No, the letter stands for "YWCA" which I actually thought was a halfway house, but apparently is (also?) a budget hotel. With shared bathrooms. Uh huh. Needless to say, I balked and booked us a room at the Westin, home of the Heavenly Bed, double-head showers, room service, and of course fluffy robes. So I guess that's what I like about this photo. It shows me being right, and I'm not even in it.