I have had four major cities in which I want to run a half marathon. \u00a0Two have already been crossed off my list: New York City and Vancouver. \u00a0You can read about my race experiences in those cities here<\/a> and here<\/a>. \u00a0Both were cities I had never been to\u00a0before and both proved well worth the visit.<\/p>\n This summer I managed to get to\u00a0a city that wasn’t on my list, but that I also thoroughly enjoyed and that was Philadelphia. \u00a0Click here<\/a> for details about that race. \u00a0I have also run in Toronto<\/a> and Hamilton<\/a>, but I admit I don’t count either as real “trips away”. \u00a0I grew up outside of Toronto, so it is a city I am fairly familiar with. \u00a0As for Hamilton, well it is Hamilton… no offence to Hamiltonians and really, I did love my race experience there.<\/p>\n So the two cities left on my list at this moment (and trust me, I could easily expand the list in seconds), are actually 2 cities I have been to before, albeit a long time ago. \u00a0One is London, England and the other is Prague in the Czech Republic. \u00a0Today’s race registration was for… Prague!!! \u00a0In March of 2015, if all goes to plan, I will be running the streets of one of Europe’s most gorgeous cities.<\/p>\n Prague is a city near and dear to my heart. \u00a0For about 5 months it was my home when I taught high school English right off Wenceslas Square in the heart of the city. \u00a0I spent more hours than I can count wandering its cobbled and paved streets enjoying the beauty of a city left relatively undamaged by war. \u00a0Of course years of communism had made its mark, but by the time I went there to teach it was a country entering the western world. \u00a0I had actually first visited the city two year before while backpacking through Europe. \u00a0In those two years between visits it was remarkable to see how many changes had occurred since the fall of communism, I can only imagine the changes in the last two decades. \u00a0If you want to know exactly how long it has been since I have been to Prague, let’s just say that it was still part of Czechoslovakia when I arrived there to teach!<\/p>\n It has been a dream of mine to return to Prague with my family, to have them see the city I chose to live in for a short period of my life. \u00a0I won’t pretend living there was perfect. \u00a0There were many times I was lonely and missing home. \u00a0I never did learn to speak the language well, but I do remember times when I realized that some simple thoughts would come to me in Czech before English. \u00a0I certainly wasn’t saving money. \u00a0At that point I think I was being paid the equivalent of a couple of dollars a day. \u00a0At the end of my stay the rules were you could\u00a0not leave the country with Czech currency, so what little I saved was spent or given away. \u00a0But it was all such an adventure and to this day I still have dreams that take place in the old parts of the city. \u00a0I can’t wait to return.<\/p>\n I’ll finish this with a couple of\u00a0pictures of what I consider to be one of the most beautiful\u00a0cities in Europe:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.all-free-photos.com\/<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.all-free-photos.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" … and it is an exciting one!!! I have had four major cities in which I want to run a half marathon. \u00a0Two have already been crossed off my list: New York City and Vancouver. \u00a0You can read about my race experiences in those cities here and here. \u00a0Both were cities I had never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3amQ2-iU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1179,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions\/1179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.all-free-photos.com\/images\/prague\/PI2794-hr.jpg\")
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