Penguin World Conference IV
Toronto, Canada
May 24 to 27, 2002The first international Penguin encounter and the first encounter outside of the United States
PWC IV Report from Daniel Wellner of New York City...
Date: Tues Jun 4, 2002
Subject: PWC4 and a PR!
Hi everybody, This PWC was just the greatest! Thanks to ALL the Penguins who were there and who made it so much fun, and especially thanks to Glenn and the other Toronto Penguins for doing such a super job of organizing everything.
I drove from NYC to Toronto, taking 3 days to get there. On Wednesday, I went to Hillsdale with Vaira. She decided to stay there and spend the weekend planting flowers. On Thursday, I went to Syracuse to visit my brother and sister-in-law. On Friday, I drove the rest of the way to Toronto. While driving through Buffalo, I stopped at the airport to pick up Beth and her son Joe who had flown in from Atlanta. It was nice to have their company for the rest of the trip. When we arrived at the hotel, we had just enough time to freshen up and go to the registration. At the opening ceremony, everybody stood up and said a few words about him/herself. That was very nice because there were many Penguins I had never met before. I made many new friends and it was nice to see so many old friends. Unfortunately, 3 days was not enough time to meet everybody. For dinner, I went with a bunch of Penguins to Korea Town. The food was good, except for the red bean sherbet (just like a snowball and not sweet at all.) I finished a whole big bowl of it anyway.
At 7:00 Saturday morning, we were supposed to meet in the lobby for a "short" run with John and Karen. I arrived at 7:05 and found that everybody had left. I knew they were going to the Running Room, so I looked it up in the phone book and on a map and ran there by myself. There, I found everybody having a party in the nice running store. We all went on a fun sightseeing run and returned to the store where the owner provided us with breakfast. I didn't feel like running another mile or two back to the hotel so I took the subway back. I barely had a chance to take a shower and change when it was time to walk over to the Y for the workshops. Before the talks began, however, we all had another big breakfast. Here, I enjoyed Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the first time in my life. All I can say is mmmm mmmm! I attended John's entertaining presentation and I was one of only 3 men at the women's forum, where I gained a better appreciation of some of the running problems faced by the opposite sex.
In the afternoon some of us took the subway to the Skydome to attend a confrontation between Blue Jays and Indians. We had seats in the sun, which was nice on this cool day, but before the game started they closed the roof. (Big difference from Yankee Stadium, which has no roof but has real grass!) The Star-Spangled Banner and O Canada were sung (in that order). It was 0-0 until late in the game when the only scoring hit was a 3-run homer by the Indians.
After the game there was some time for sightseeing. I picked up Cathy and Marcella (I had never met them before) and we decided to visit the CN Tower, the tallest building in the world. We soon became good friends. It took less than a minute for the glass-walled elevator to get up to the observation deck. The 360 degree view of the city and the lake is just amazing. It was also very exciting to stand on the glass floor and look straight down. The cars on the
highway looked smaller than ants.Now, it was time for the carboloading pasta dinner at the famous Joe Badali restaurant, just a short walk from the tower. I will not go into detail here but I'll just say that the ambiance and
the food were OTW. Then, the subway back to the hotel. It was raining very hard. The continuous honking of cars to celebrate the victory of the Leafs did not keep me awake for long.Now comes the Big Day. The bus was leaving at 6:00 and John kept telling me: "Don't be late this time." I was on the bus at 5:30. No time for breakfast. We arrived in Burlington and had a 10 minute walk to the start. The weather was perfect. Cool and overcast. I was wearing my Penguin singlet and shorts. My last half marathon was CMM, just a month earlier, where my time was 2:35. My goal for this race was 2:30. My previous PR was 2:12 at Applefest, many years ago. I had no HRM, no food, no salt, no water, no gels, I had made no calculations of what my pace should be. I decided to just run as I felt like. I started in the middle of the pack and it took me about 35 sec to cross the starting line. My singlet had the Penguin credo on the back and lots of people who passed me told me they liked my shirt. Somebody said "It's really true, isn't it?" I started at an easy pace, watching for the Km markers. It was confusing at first because there were 2 markers at each Km, about 100 yds apart. The first was for the full and the second for the half. The nice thing about Km markers is that they appear so quickly. You hardly pass one and the next one appears. It's very encouraging. You can feel your progress all the time. I didn't take any walk breaks. I only drank water 3 or 4 times. When Ken passed me at Km 12, I was very worried about him. I couldn't understand how he could be so far back. I had forgotten that unlike CMM, the marathoners and the halfers didn't start together. Later, I saw him finish and qualify for Boston with about a minute to spare. What a great run he had!
At Km 18, I heard Glenn calling my name. I saw him pointing the way. The rest of the Penguin support team was just a blur. I didn't stop. I just wanted to finish. I saw the finish line. John and Karen were there. The clock read 2:10:xx. My chip time was 2:09:50. A PR! I cut 25 minutes from my last half marathon. I couldn't believe it. I still don't understand it. It must be the kilometers. Or maybe it was the weather.
Back to the bus, back to the hotel. Take a shower and dress in black and white. Take a subway to the pier. Take an early boat to Algonquin Island and the Queen City Yacht Club. What a great setting for the award banquet. Thank you Kathryn for arranging this. I was early so I was put to work blowing up black and white balloons. The rest of the Penguins arrived and we had a very emotional dinner with lots of speeches, gifts, door prizes, and awards. I won a little fluffy penguin on skis. He will join my big fluffy penguin on a snowboard.
Monday morning, the goodbye breakfast and then drive home in the company of Beth and Joe. It was nice to be with a lawyer who knew all the ins and outs of getting a tax refund from the Canadian government. With the refund of my hotel taxes and a $2.00 gift certificate I had almost enough for the large bottle of Grand Marnier I bought at the duty-free shop at the border. This was to celebrate with Vaira when I got home.
In three days, I gained back the three pounds it took me three months to lose.
Sorry this was so long!
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