I’m coming up to my first race of the season on Sunday. I am running the Easter Seals 10k here in Newmarket. This is the 36th year the race has been running. It now goes along the Tom Taylor Trail which is my usual run trail. On Wednesday my friend Karen from my run group emailed to see if I wanted to run with her. I was really glad she contacted me. I’m not sure I would have gone our otherwise. We had a great fun run and I realize how much fun it is to have someone to run with once in a while.
The weather has been a bit weird around here. Torrential rains on Tuesday, hot and humid on Wednesday and this morning near freezing and reports of snow not that far north of us. Hoping for good weather for the race Sunday.
Tag Archives: running
Happy Mother’s Day
Well hey there everyone, it has been a long time since I have posted. A bunch of life stuff going on and just wasn’t feeling right to blog I guess. Also my laptop hard drive took a dirt nap and it took me a while to get it replaced. Well I am back and figured Mother’s Day was a good day to get back into it.
My son’s gave me some nice bubble bath from Bath and Body Works and chocolate from Laura Secord. Since my birthday was on Friday I get more of a present then.
I was on my own after the gifts this morning. My younger son had to go to North York for a baseball game so I stayed home and went for a run. Got in 10k which is the longest run I’ve had for a while. Not a bad pace I averaged 7:51 per kilometre which again is better than I’ve been running lately. With race season and half marathon training approaching I had better get my mileage up a bit.
Did some nice yoga stretches when I got home and made a nice berry smoothie. Now just relaxing and once my boys return from ball I will head to the mall to treat myself to a Maxi skirt.
Later heading to my inlaws for a birthday / mother’s day dinner. Have a great day to all the Mom’s out there and I will promise to blog again soon.
Starting slow….
I am back from my cold….yippee!!! I went to Bodyflow yoga class at the my GoodLife gym this morning. I just came back from a 5k run at the indoor track. Wasn’t a great run, I did 1k intervals but at least I am back!! I have to remember to start slow and not put too many miles on too quickly like I did last year when I went whole hog running then got I.T band pain. My running group starts up in a week so I have to be ready for them too. I am really looking forward to it! Now time for a hot bath……
Oh Crap,I forgot about you guys……
Hey there…..January the 9th…….how many of you have given up on your resolutions??? I haven’t been too bad….I didn’t really make any specific ones. Ideally I want to lose 10 pounds, which hopefully will help my running speed and endurance and I am also trying to inject more holistic, natural type foods and other healthy practices into my life. I have a manage a few runs, and made it to the gym last night for some weigh work. I’ve also been hit with a bit of a sinus cold. I’ve had a scratch throat for a few days but yesterday I could fee the sinuses getting a bit full and sore. Then last night and today it has hit full on . I feel puffy and sluggish. I left work and hour early and picked up some broth based soups for dinner. I will try to avoid any over the counter pain relief and keep trying the variety of teas I picked up from our local Nature’s Emporium health store the other day.
As far as the weight loss goes I have only lost about a pound and a half all due to my incredible weakness for sweets. I need to find snacks I can always have around that will cure my cravings. I need to be better at planning my meals too. I am doing Weight Watchers again and find it to be great for allowing and encouraging very balanced eating.
I also want to try blogging more often and I haven’t been great keeping up with that one either…hehehe. My laptop died so I have to try to get time on the family computer…….tough with 2 teenage boys in the house.
My other fitness fun add on has been planking. On Twitter I “joined” the #plankaday and the #planksalot groups which have me trying to get a plank in every day and hopefully improving as I go. I’ve done pretty well keeping up and right now average around a minute. My abs with thank me later I hope!!
If you have tailed off from your resolutions, just pause, step back and maybe go at things at a different angle. We tend to make these dramatic life altering resolutions usually without much planning and thought, then wonder why we tend to fail. There will always be bad days , but probably there will always be good days too…..I hope you can stick with whatever you planned.
365 Days of fitness
A year ago this is where it all started. I wanted to blog mostly about my crafting (which will come in the new year) but I ended up mostly blogging about my fitness events. My massage therapist friend Scott got me inspired to try 365 days of fitness and now that the year is closing I thought I would reflect back on how I did. The idea was that every day to do some kind of physical activity. In the begining I was pretty consistent, always trying to do some kind of workout every day whether it was running, cardio, yoga, Wii fit…just something to keep me going. Around March I started getting some running related pain and had to slow down a bit but once I got the pain looked at and worked on by my massage therapist and Chiropractor, I was back on track.
Not to bore you with play by play in the end I think I did pretty good. As pure improvement over previous years , I am proud of what I accomplished this year. I took some kickboxing classes (they rocked) with an amazing trainer named Nichelle Laus @Nichellelaus. I joined a running group at Running Free @Running_free. I did an awesome 8 week bootcamp with Jenny B’s bootcamp (she rocked) @JennyBBootcamp ,and joined a gym.
My big accomplishment was my running. In January I could kind of comfortably run 5k. Then my friend Becky thought it would be fun to sign up for a half marathon. Knowing that we thought it would be a good idea to do other races leading up to it as well to keep us going. I did 2 5ks and 2 10ks then ran the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon Half in October to wrap up my running season. Now I may not have done the whole 365Days of Fitness but I think I did pretty good. I work in retail and easily walk 10000 steps a day in my job. I also managed to lose some weight and hope that I can kill the last 10 pounds in the coming months.
……..so what’s next………..
My goals are to continue with improving my fitness , both on a strength and endurance level. I am running 2 half marathons this year and I want to improve on my result. I want to get to the gym days a week and do some home workouts on the other days mixed in with my running.
My other goals are to progress with my home craft business and get it rolling and get learning more about web development and WordPress.
Looking forward to it………………what are your goals/plans for the year??
It’s been a while
Here I am again. I’ve taken a bit of a blogging break. No real reason other than life stuff and I didn’t really want to blog negative thoughts.
Last week I signed up for my first race of 2013, the Marden Half Marathon in Guelph. A friend of mine signed us up due to the fact that for a few days the registration fee was only $15 which for a half is unheard of. Guelph is a couple of hours away so we will have to get a hotel but it will be a nice reason to get away for a day or so.
I haven’t been running all that much lately, one once a week so signing up for the race will definitely be my motivation to get back out there. I have enough cold weather gear that should be ok for our Canadian winter and I can always do some treadmill work at the gym too. I have really fallen off the work out track as well only making it to the gym once a week to so that will have to change. I am going to write up a schedule that I can see everyday and that should help kick my ass into gear.
I will be sure to keep you posted……..
Half Marathon Race Recap
I woke up at 4:30am and realized…this is it …… marathon day…I was really running in the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon. Had my banana, Kashi Cereal bar and a bottle of water then headed downstairs of the hotel to check on the weather. It was warm but raining which narrowed down my clothing options. I ended up opting for a short sleeve shirt and no jacket as I was worried I would over heat in the jacket even in the rain.
I headed up to the race site around 7am and the entire walk it rained. I took refuge in the Toronto City Hall along with lots of other people and waited indoors till around 8. Then I went outside and warmed up with light jogging and at 8:15 I headed over to the start. It was raining pretty heavily and really wasn’t sure how I would manage to run 21.1k in the rain. It was absolute chaos getting to the start as I’m sure most people waited till the last minute to head over. I managed to run into my run buddies on the way and we eventually got to our start corral. Then all of a sudden a couple of minutes before the start the rain stopped. Hallelujah!!! …………and off we went!!
Start Line
I started out steady, trying to stay within my pace of 7-7:15 per kilometre. I was feeling very strong running and just absorbing the view and the energy of the run was incredible. I got pretty emotional seeing all the people lining the streets to cheer us on. I was running and running realizing I hadn’t taken a walk break yet, I didn’t want to till I really needed it. My first walk interval came at the 34 minutue mark which was great, I felt soooo strong , then the bladder got my attention. I must have gone pee 10 times before the race and really wanted to make it through without needing a stop. At the 3rd water station I headed to the porta potties but there was a huge line and it wasn’t moving, I waited a couple of minutes but thought that’s it waiting till the next one. By the 10k mark I couldn’t go any more and had to use the pee stop. I ended waiting almost 10 minutes and was ticked as I knew how that would affect my time.
By this point we were running along the Lakeshore and I was still feeling good, my 10k split was 1:13. I had tried to pick up the pace to make up some of my lost time. I caught back up to my 2:45 pace bunny but it was bit of the mental shot as I know before my pottie stop I was a good 5 minutes ahead of her. Once the 14k marker came up my body was starting to slow and I was feeling it. At the 17k mark I hit a mental wall and wasn’t sure I could do it. Then I remembered all the encouraging words from my brother and that snapped me out of it. I was running 10 and 1 intervals by this point and had fallen behind my pace bunny. Just before the 20k mark we turned off of the Lakeshore and back up though Downtown Toronto. I could feel I was struggling to keep it together. All the people on the race route cheering , and encouraging all of us really gave me that push the last kilometre. I looked up to see the Old City Hall clock tower and it gave me the push to the end. At the 100m left point I picked it up and sprinted through the finish and screamed….Holy Crap….I just ran a freakin half marathon!!!!! Emotions hit me and I was feeling the tears….especially getting my medal.
Scotiabank Half Marathon Finish medal
I got my thermal blanket, grabbed and devoured my banana and apple and bagel and tried to not think how much my legs and feet were hurting. Wow what an amazing experience!! My official finish time was 2:45 which was right in line with my goals. My Nike+ band had me at 2:36 which didn’t include my pee breaks. I am really happy with how I ran my race and I cannot wait to sign up again for next year!!!! I want to thank a few people. First my friend Becky who got me into this in the first place. I never would have signed up on my own. Also thanks to my friend and massage therapist Scott who helped to get me through my I.T bands issues this spring. Thanks to my ipod for keeping me going even at the tough spots. Of course thanks to my family for all the encouragement.
Running season is done, wow, now what? Right now I am on the couch relaxing , I took the day off of work. Thank goodness. My left Achilles is very sore and my quads are killing…..nothing a bit of ice and rest won’t fix. In recovery mode………
Toes…………
Today was supposed to be my last long run before my half next Sunday ( should have been a 13k run) but about 3k in I could feel one of my toenails digging in to the adjacent toe causing some pain so I turned around and headed home. Managed 6k at a 7:13 pace.
Been pretty happy with may pace the last couple of weeks and hope I can hold it during the race next week.
Officially in my taper now and plan a 5-6k run on Tuesday night and perhaps a short treadmill run on Thursday. Will hit the gym for some weight machines and stretching and perhaps a yoga class. I have a Chiropractor appointment and Massage booked Thursday afternoon and after that I will rest my body till Sunday.
I ran today in what I thought I might wear for the race and may adjust according to the weather. Will end up taking 2 or 3 outfits to the hotel so I am prepared for all climate possibilities.
Yesterday my son and I went down to Toronto to check out the starting area for the race. I walked down University Avenue to get a sense of the elevation for the first couple of kilometres. The start of the race is my toughest as I tend to go out too fast and hills will do me in. Thankfully the elevation is pretty flat and I think I can go out strong and stay steady. Mentally I needed to see where it is all going to start and I feel pretty good about how my race plan is going to go……….
Holy crap I’m talking like a runner……hehehe
7 days from today I am running my first half marathon!!!!!! I cannot wait….will keep you updated!! Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving everyone
For my Mom………
6 years ago today, my Mom lost her battle with cancer. My brother started a tradition that he runs 10.5 k to honour her memory and this year was the first year I did the run too. The one thing I miss the most is the fact that she isn’t around to see her grandsons grow into amazing creative funny young men.
It was a beautiful night to run. Went out about 6pm and enjoyed to view of the wonderful fall colours. I felt really good running tonight, made great time , did 10.5 k in 1:15. I hope all my Canadian mates enjoy a great Thanksgiving weekend. I am having my Dad , my brother , my niece and nephew over on Monday and spending Sunday at my inlaws for turkey. Then it will be 1 week till my half marathon…….going to be an interesting week. Cheers everyone!!!!!!
Damn bugs!
Went out for my run tonight , barely got 1k into it and I was attacked by a swarm of angry bees!!!!! …………..well ok , it wasn’t bees but some stupid bugs and I got a couple in my eye and I couldn’t keep running. I was ticked!! oh well , I did walk a couple of kilometres to get home so some of my distance was covered….maybe I should be wearing glasses to run…….lol
