Well, we haven’t done it yet but it makes a great headline.

All being well, we’ll run with lots of other people on Sunday, May 2nd. What will be different from practically all of the other competitors is that we are a group of eight siblings. Pat, Aileen and Richard got the idea after running the Royal Victoria Half Marathon in October 2009. We had so much fun we wanted to share the experience with all the others in the family. So we decided to get all of us together – a difficult task at the best of times – and run the half marathon in our native city - Vancouver.

Happily we’re all healthy and keep reasonably fit, each in our own way. Cara runs quite a lot, but that’s because she has three small children. Gail does too, but they’re a bit older so she’s started a training program already now. Brian is the outdoorsman. He hikes, kayaks and canoes to the good fly fishing spots and he does a lot of cross country skiing in the winter. Aileen runs regularly with a running group and often invites siblings to come on 6:15 am runs (very few acceptances). Mike and John, both former lifeguards, regularly take part in the Vancouver Sun Run and like to compare their times afterwards. Pat is the real athlete though. She is a veteran of many a marathon and last year completed the Kneeknacker. Appropriately named, this merry jaunt covers 50 km of rough terrain on the Trans Canada and Baden Powell trails between Horseshoe Bay and Deep Cove. The rest of us think Pat is a bit of a glutton for punishment. And finally there is Richard, who has a couple of marathons under his belt and likes to keep up with his younger siblings.

Now just because Vancouver is our native city doesn’t mean we all still live here. Richard is here now but he lives in Denmark. Brian will have to come in from Calgary and Gail will make the trip up from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah. That doesn’t mean it going to be easy to get everyone together though. As Mum has witnessed several times when she tries to get everyone together for family pictures, there are often problems. Someone would forget, someone would be late and at the last minute someone wouldn’t be able to come.

So the run together project begins to take form. Aileen has a line in t-shirts. A flurry of e-mails with suggestions for a logo finally settled in favour of ‘8 in the ½ ‘ – illustrating that we are eight siblings, doing a half marathon and playing on the popular series ‘Two and a Half Men’. John suggested putting a ‘No passing for the next 20km’ sign on the back of the t-shirts so we’d all be sure to get a good placement. Now the next problem is going to be how to make sure we all cross the finish line at the same time. Mike and John will be faster than some of the slower runners. Richard will run slowly until he gets tired but then will want to speed up to get it over with faster. Pat will want to keep on running because she is so used to long distances.

One thing is sure though. We’ll have a great time together – we always do. And the story of our experience will become one more chapter in the verbal record of Warrington Lore.

In this picture (clockwise): Pat (in the red dress), Gail, John, Mike, Cara, Aileen and Brian.  Richard in the middle.