May flies...

May flies by as it usually does. Too many things to do all crammed into a 31 day month… Someone official should add more days to May, but I don’t suspect that’s going to happen. This year was supposed to be an easy year for me with regards to "Race Weekend" planning. The courses were identical to last year. Apart from a couple of minor tweaks to improve on last year’s version of the races… just print out last years plan and I’m done! Alas, this was not to be as we are all aware. In the 7 weeks after Boston we had a host of additional planning meetings, upgraded our emergency plans, “exercised” our command and control program, added to our security contingent, and gained some new language to our vocabulary. Amongst other things, “curious” will no longer refer to a funny monkey for me.
Marathoners passing the US Embassay Still, with all the extra planning, we had a great weekend and of course there was very little expectation of any incidents (of which there were none). The weather was perfect for a running event - cool and overcast - and by all accounts all the 44,000 participants had a great time. I usually don’t get a lot of sleep over the weekend and this year was no exception. From Thursday to Sunday night I logged about 6 hrs of shut eye – par for the course. Still the event tends to carry me through so no plans of changing my May plans for now.
Runners streaming back from Gatineau An added event to the weekend this year was a “Marathon” relay. In conjunction with the Greek Embassy we had the flame from Marathon(Greece) come across the ocean to Marathon, Ontario (just outside of Carp, population 12). From there we had a relay to carry the flame in to City Hall to kick off the weekend. Ironically the route was 42.2 km! Well, in truth it actually proved a little more as a construction detour around Bronson added about 1 km of distance… but it wouldn’t be summer in Ottawa without some construction to contend with. Not sure if the torch relay will continue next year or not, but it was a fun day out so we’ll see how that goes forward. There's a few photos from the relay here.
The starting line in Marathon! The flame rolls through the construction The weekend before the races I went down to work on the Mt. Adams firetower. It proved a good chance to clear my head before the races began. This was the first “work trip” of the season and so a small group assembled to clear blowdown on the trail and get it ready for the summers visitors. It was a fun group to work with and we cleared a lot of big trees. Someone had loaned us a big 2-man “double buck" saw. It was a bit of a beast but once we got the hang of it, it tore through some pretty serious wood. With the trail now open there is really only one major job left to do on the tower. The floor of the cab is in pretty rough shape so we’ll be replacing the floor boards next weekend. Apart from that and a few other small jobs the restoration is more or less done. Time for a ribbon cutting I suppose. A set of photos from trail clearing day here.
Time for the big saw? Time for the big saw