This past weekend was Ottawa Race Weekend and the streets of downtown Ottawa filled with runners and spectators. Our friend Will was among the thousands who competed during Sunday's marathon. Accompanied by his wife Laura-Lee, Will travelled to Ottawa looking to improve on his personal best. Laura-Lee and myself decided to take Sunday morning off and watch the race. We had a good time cheering on the runners from the sidelines, walking along the marathon course and getting mid-morning beavertails! It definitely made me want to make the leap from half-marathons to attempting to complete a full :). Will did great, with a final finish time of 04:49:00. Below are a few photos from the day. Enjoy!

Last Saturday was a busy and eventful day for me. On top of completing a newborn photo shoot for a friend, my husband and I made plans to attend another great Ottawa Barcraft event. To culminate months of Starcraft II tournament play, Ottawa Barcraft teamed up with Shopify, a leading e-commerce business, to display the finals for each of the Bronze/Silver/Gold, Platinum/Diamond and and Masters/Grand Masters leagues. An open bracket pool play tournament also ran the duration of the event. The tournament was held at Shopify's headquarters in Ottawa, a large loft space located in the heart of the Byward Market. As always, my husband and I had an amazing time. We even had the pleasure of having one of my old university friends come down and partake in the fun!

When we entered the venue, we were greeted by friendly Ottawa Barcraft staff and a room filled with excited Starcraft enthusiasts. Even though tournaments were being played out, the event's vibe was very laid back. Shopify's office space was also a pleasant surprise. It was an amazing adult playground - I wish my office was more like this one! It was like a mini Dave and Busters, but you didn't need to pay to play any of the games! :D

The finals from each of the brackets were being casted by Abortion (Alex Lyon) and Quad (Michael Szasz) and played on a projector in the back. As the finals were playing out, 40 players had entered the BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) open bracket tournament. Play was being completed over the span of the event in the middle of the room.

The games were entertaining and filled with some aggressive strikes and well-countered moves. Even though I'm a newbie Starcraft player and don't always understand the game completely, the crowd's excitement made up for my lack of knowledge. I definitely knew when brilliant or game-breaking moves were being made as the crowd responded through hoots and sighs. At the end of the night, champions from each of the leagues were crowned. The following were the winners and runner-ups from each of their respective pools:

Bronze/Silver/Gold League

GUP (Quoc Diep, right), beat out MYiFAZE (Shayne Parmalee, left) for first place.

Platinum/Diamond League

Samonsite (Sam Charron, middle) taking the stage after winning the Platinum/Diamond bracket by beating TheUnderKing (Ryan Poulter, right). Bill Klunder (left) presents the winner and runner-up.

Master/Grand Master

Drunkenboi (Henry Luu, left) inched out Tarfire (Colin Grey, right) for the ultimate prize!

2v2 Match

Unfortunately, I wasn't present to get the photos of the winners, but it was Samsonite (Sam Charron) and fSgJeremy (Jeremy Lalonde) who ended up beating WRJonnybop (Jonathan Lafleche) and WRHeronkill (Francis Carriere) for the title.

Open Bracket

After 12 hours of play, Katu (Kevin Albert) was crowned the winner over gleefulpixie (John Sullivan) as the open tournament challenge winner.

There definitely wasn't a lack of things to do as an attendee. Not being completely immersed in Starcraft II, I was quite relieved to learn that there were plenty of other activities going on. If watching tournament play wasn't your thing, people mingled over pizza, beer and snacks or surfed on their own personal laptops in the comfortable lounge. From the snippets of conversation around me, this Ottawa Barcraft event was a popular destination to bring dates. ;)

My husband Ryan and friend Kevin had discovered the Xbox set up at the top of the loft early on. We decided to insight an impromptu Street Fighter challenge. Those brought back memories! As you can see, we get very excited over our video game victories. ;)

There were also a bank of pinball machines that we played when our fingers got too tired from doing Ryu's fireballs and uppercuts. :P I'd have to say that my hand-eye coordination could use some work. :P

Along with a pizza voucher, your admission ticket went towards door prize draws. Ottawa Barcraft reached out to the community to provide attendees with an opportunity to win some pretty awesome swag.

Some pretty cool graphic apparel by Carbot Animations. So cool! The winners look pretty stoked!

Free massages from Byward Chiropractic WOO!! :D Quite fitting since we're in a room full of gamers.

And gift certificates from Clocktower Brew Pub. BAM!

Gamer headset and mouse were donated by ShopRBC.com along with money for prize pools! Cool!

Overall, this event was quite the success. I'd like to extend a big thank you to the Ottawa Barcraft staff and volunteers for putting on another awesome event! We can't wait until next time! Until next time, happy gaming!