Bravo Marie-Josée!

1:03:06. An hour three minutes and 6 seconds. Here is her official time based on the chip. It's an excellent result with a knee injury. That's 4 seconds faster than the 10 km in Ottawa in May. She is proud of herself and I am proud of her. She told me that this race brought her more satisfaction than Ottawa because her motivation was different. This time she ran for me. Also the finish line is inside the Olympic Stadium, it's quite a feeling. Especially as MCs were naming as many people as possible upon their arrival and we heard the name "Marie-Josee Lafrance" echo in the stadium. Of the women who ran the 10K, my Love finished 475 (of 829) and 53rd in her age category (of 96 women aged 40-44). In mentioning these stats, I feel like talking about the world of running for a second. The logistics behind these events is incredible. It is a sport that demonstrates that they are used to organize events with thousands of participants. The company Sportstats is present almost everywhere, even in small events as the race in St- Therese in the spring. It provides chips that you attach to your running shoes. These chips are detected (read) at the start and finish lines. That's how they get the running time for each runner, accurate and fast. 10 minutes after the race all the times are displayed on sheets at the site of the race and simultaneously on the website of the company (sportstats.ca). Go take a look, you can search by athlete or race. Search for Marie-Josee Lafrance or for any member of Yves family (Michelle, Stéphane, Patrick, Julie, Christine or Danielle). You'll find the list of races for everyone with the rest of their individual statistics (time, placement by category or general). It blows me away. If judo was 10% as effective as this during competitions, the sport would be transformed logistics wise.
Back to Marie-Josee's race, I would like to send a thank you to one of her coworker: Maja. This woman is extraordinarily generous. Already in May, she had demonstrated it by running with Josee in Ottawa. She is a runner, yes, but she had not plan to run in Ottawa. She did it because Josée was doing it and it was her first race. This weekend she was already committed to participate in another race, the Terry Fox event on Mont-Royal. But she still made the effort to support Josée, she was standing between kilometer 6 and 7 of the course. A place that Josée had indicated as strategic for her because of a tiring "faux plat" and for a psychological boost at three-quarters of the race done. There were very few spectators but Maja was there and Josée saw her and heard her shouting "looking good MJ". Meanwhile Maja and I were communicating through MJ's blackberry by messenger. She wrote: I saw her, she looks good. That reassured me and confirmed that I had to waste no time if I wanted to be present at the finish line at the right time.

Thank you Maja !
Bravo Marie-Josée!