This morning after breakfast, my Canadian friend Les(who has run 30 marathons) took Peggy (who has run one marathon) and I to the start of our half marathon walk on the Niagara Falls Marathon course. He measured 21.1kms from his home and dropped us off on the Parkway, a walkway across the road from the Niagara Falls River. Les and Peggy's home is 3.5kms past the finish of the marathon course.The temperature was 23 degrees and conditions were ideal.Peggy is looking so good and impressed with her fitness. Our start time was 8:03am. I felt we walked at a fast clip and after one hour we had done 5.8kms which was good as we talked non-stop and I stopped to take lots of photos. Some of the homes we passed were so huge and impressive. The next time I looked at my watch was after 2hrs and 10 mins and we had done 12.1kms according to my pedometer.
We soon came to the town of Chippawa and there is a monument to James Cameron, the film director (Titanic, Avatar) who came from this town. We reached here at 10.33am and headed to Tim Horton's (a fast food outlet that sells excellent coffee and hot chocolate) for a comfort stop and a hot drink. We stayed for 17 mins and only had 3.5kms to reach the finishing point at Niagara Falls remembering we had the additional kms to get to the house. It was neat walking towards the tall hotels andthe Skylon Tower. We could see the flume of mist coming from the Falls.
We reached the finishing point denoted by the letter "F" painted in a carpark. We did not wait to look at the Falls as we were keen to do a reasonable time. Peggy was really going for it as we weaved through dozens of tourists. It was nice to get home at 12:08pm meaning taking off our stop at Chaippawa we did a 3:48 time.Les is a member of the Niagara Falls Marathon committee and he gave Peggy a medal that was given to all the finishers in the 2010 Niagara Falls Marathon. Peggy ceremoniously placed it around my neck.
