Valdir's races

Back to the index Last year the organizers of the FADOQ Games in Montreal messed up a lot of things on the rapid walk event, so this year I was hopeful that the problems would have been ironed out, specially because this time they paired up with the Laval region. The event happened in the Park Bernard Landry, in the south of Laval. I went there cycling, it was quite a long journey. Even though there were two regions competing, the number of ahtletes was quite small, we were a dozen or so. There were three events: 1K, 3K, 5K. The 5K went first, there were only three people on that group. I was in the 3K, with another four walkers. I left the others behind quite early and was alone all of the time. When I crossed the finish line they told me I was done, but I showed them that according to my Garmin I had only done 1.5K. After some discussion with the organizers, they told me to do another lap. They had not measured the distance that the athletes were supposed to cover? How can they not

Back to the index The day before the race My wife and I left Montreal on Saturday morning, we travelled to our contry's capital for the Ottawa race weekend. Arriving at the hotel we got our room right away, which was a nice surprise. We left our things in our room and went out, each one in a different direction. My wife went to a museum, I went to the Expo to get my bib. This year they changed the venue of the Expo. Every year it was at the Shaw Centre, which is very central, easily accessible. This year they moved it to the Landsowne Park, a few kilometers to the south. The organizers provided a shuttle bus service connecting the city centre to the Expo area, but when I got to the starting point of the shuttle, there was a long line of people waiting for the bus. I got in line and had to wait for more than twenty minutes to get into the bus, because the first one left and I had to wait for the next one to come in. At the Expo everything was quite fast, there where no delays. I m