YYC > YVR

Well, marathon #5 is in the bag. On one hand, I finished strong (meaning, it felt OK); no serious consideration of puking, walking, cheating, or DNF'ing, all of which crossed my mind three weeks ago. On the other hand, I had really been hoping for a sub-4h time and I clocked in at 4:03:59. So, didn't quite make it, but that's OK.

I stand by my updated opinion about Calgary. It's lovely. The course was 90% on residential streets and was dead flat except for a few underpasses with small hills. The temperature was delightfully cool; the cheerers were enthusiastic and everywhere, and it all seemed supremely well organized.

Besides the usual Strava-related signs, there was a bit of a "finishing" theme, in the sexual sense; my favorite was "my boyfriend is going to finish twice today!", hopefully for them, that was true ;)

--

Last night I went out with Federico and Carolina, my Argentina friends. I was happy to hear that they are overall still 100% bullish on Canada. Returning to AR, despite the apparent success of its new president, is just not on the table. If, heaven forbid, Canada didn't work out, they'd pivot to Europe.

Federico is studying French because it ups his score and ability to get citizenship (I am very fuzzy on how all this works, but, that tracks). He likes French but commented that it does seem a bit silly a) in a province like Alberta and b) that he seems to need a french level far higher than the typical native born Canadian. But, as he said repeatedly, "we got on this train", which I think is a slight mistranslation of "this was our choice, nobody put a gun to our head" type thing.

They do have some bitterness, however, towards Latinos who claim refugee status in Canada. They feel that with the possible exception of Venezuela, it's a scam way of not going through the proper steps as they have - at great cost in both $$ and time. I sort of agree that, while Chilean or Argentinian refugees might have made sense in the 1970's. I am not sure why they do now.

Carolina wants to move to Vancouver, she likes Calgary but loves Vancouver. They are obviously held back by the housing situation.

Also, they have an enormous but sweet as can be dog named Amber.

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