Gunner Shaw 10K/Bear Mountain at the Westin Hotel in Victoria

A quick and small getaway is always good. I needed it so bad because it has been very stressful at work these last few weeks. Ray and I went to Victoria for his trail race called Gunner Shaw 10K at Thetis Lake Regional Park. At the same time, we treated it as a mini vacation at the Bear Mountain Westin Hotel Golf Resort. I never knew that this place existed before and apparently it's a new development in this area. The Westin Hotel was built just within the last 3 years. It is fairly new and as usual the room is always nice.
The race, with about 450 participants, was a tough and challenging 10K trail running race. There were about 15 Lions Gate Road Runners (LGRR) that ran this race. Though it was hilly, muddy and wet, they all tackled the course real well and came in with awesome times. Ray finished in 58th/420 overall and 20th/78 for his age group with a time of 45:26mins as recorded here.
Other than the race, we did a little exploration of the city of Victoria. It was about 8 to 10 years ago since I was in Victoria and for Ray, it must have been ages since he was there. We had some high tea at the Empress Hotel and we really enjoyed it a lot. The hotel didn't change a lot since I was there the last time for afternoon tea with my mom and aunt. We also did some hiking at Mount Finlayson (419m) which was just located behind our hotel at Bear Mountain. It was a tough one to hike because of the wetness on the rocks. It reminds me of Mount Kinabalu (4,093m,) where it was slippery and quite dangerous. Obviously, Mt. Finlayson is not as tall and hard as Mt. Kinabalu but it can be treacherous if you are not wearing the proper shoes and outfit in a wet condition. I wished I was told about it before I hiked it...^o^