Vancouver Sun Run was Sunny and Fun

Fantastic to run on the Burrard Street Bridge

Today we had really good conditions for the Vancouver Sun Run -- 11 degrees Celsius and blue skies, and the temperature rose as high as 15 degrees.

For the past month or so I trained on the treadmill, running 5K and then 7K and 10K three times. The treadmill wouldn't allow me to run more than 60 mins at a time, so I had to run 60K then stop and start again and run another 3K.

A relaxed, fun atmosphere on Georgia Street

In any event I felt pretty confident I would finish in about 80 minutes, considering the last time I ran 10K was at the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon in 2019.

Near the Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street there was a sea of purple -- over 57,000 runners most of them wearing the issued purple T-shirts and meeting up with friends or heading to the starting line.

The runners were allowed to go in waves according to their coloured bibs, but unless you were an elite runner no one was really checking. If it was Hong Kong, they would definitely make sure participants were in the correct heat.

So we ended up with the group that planned to run the 10K race in an hour and five minutes! I started off fine down Georgia Street, as it was downhill, and then we turned left onto Beach Avenue and it was already 2K and there was the first water station. There would be three more along the route.

It was also helpful to have music blaring, either live or pre-programmed pop music to keep us motivated, and residents, or employees of companies like Lululemon came out to cheer the runners with lots of signs, ringing cow bells or clapping.

A handful of people dressed up -- one ran in a T-Rex costume, while my cousin wore a hotdog outfit, and his friends were bottles of ketchup and mustard, a pickle and Heineken beer.

A sea of people in purple T-shirts at the start

I walked a few times on the uphill sections, a bit winded, but motivated to keep going. At 55 minutes I saw I already ran 8.24K and that was a big motivator to keep going to the finish. 

However, the end did not seem within sight! We ran along Quebec Street and passed Science World (I thought the finish was near or just past it), but no, we had to keep running and veer to the left towards BC Place, where I finally saw the finish line in sight.

Many people were walking at this point but I powered to the finish at 1:10:43, 10 minutes faster than I had expected!!!