Beach Volleyball Tournament-June 17th

We are running a beach volleyball tournament on June 17th at Coquitlam Town Center's Beach Volleyball Courts. The format is 4 on 4 mixed and there will be an 'A' 'B' & 'C' playoff pools so all teams are welcome. Again all proceeds will go to our fundraising efforts. For more info and to sign up just email us.

Only slightly unrelated

Drexoll Games is having a trade in event for your used games. Since they've been so supportive to us for our boardgaming fundraiser (see below a few posts) I will pimp it for them.

Drexoll Games Trade in Event!!!

Training update

Well training is going along slowly but surely. We recieved our training schedule from the CDA and the program to complete a marathon starts April 23 and we need to have a base run of 10k for then. We're a bit behind on that but we'll be ok. Waleah's found a pair of shoes that seem to work for her so that is a plus. Sunday was a tough run, we did intervals of running 5 minutes & walking 1 minute 8 times and that totaled about 5k plus our warmup and cooldown brought us to 7k, Still a long way from 42! What made it tough was the fact that we didn't run at all for 8 days, we just let life get in the way of training. My legs won't let that happen again! Today's run was ok, a bit tired once we started but as the run went on they loosened up and felt ok. Thursday's run will be interesting it's 3 & 1 intervals 10 times, still a little less than sunday's though, but still a good run considering we've only been training seriously for a month or so.

Curlers Rock!

A quick update for those of you following our progress.
Last night at Curling at the RCCC in New West one of our fellow curlers got up and made an announcement on our behalf. Thank you Violet!! Last night alone we managed to collect another $326 towards our goal. We have just hit the $5000+ mark. Yay! And we also had many fellow curlers asking if they could bring their pledge forms back to us next week or donate on line. Of course we said yes! We really appreciate everyone's support!! Just under $7000 more to raise before mid July. We curl with a great group of people on Friday nights in a mixed league. Some of you may recall the earlier blog entry at the end of January refrencing my broken wrist....ah yes.. But that will only keep me away for the remainder of this season (2 weeks) and next year I'll be back as good as new. And I think that both Mike and I intend to join a men's and women's team respectively as well as keep playing on our Friday Night Mixed League. Last night we also managed to find that there are a couple of gamers in our midst at Curling too and have recruited more people to attend our Gaming Fundraiser in May. Stay tuned for more details on the Golf Fundraiser in May in Chilliwack. A couple of Golfers in the midst said they would like to attend that one too!

Next....Just returned my new shoes for a different pair. My first ones just weren't working for me. The helpful staff at the Coquitlam Running Room have set me up with another pair and I'll give these a try. Wish me luck that these are the ones that will be staying! And helping me work towards my goal. It's amazing how important a good pair of running shoes are to your training. You don't need a lot of equipment to run, but you sure do need a pair of shoes that fit your feet properly and give you the support you need. It's amazing how different we all are and how many different pair of running shoes are out there. Thank goodness for such well trained staff at stores like the running room.

Well that's all for today; I must get back to tidying up the apartment. We have some friends coming by for dinner and games tonight. Should be a fun evening. Won't be too late though; as tomorrow up early to get out for a run. Only 4 1/2 more months till the Marathon. Yikes! :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Last night's training was a challenge for me; I was only able to do part of our intervals. Tried to run through it; but listened to my body and I continued to walk while Mike contined to run his intervals (I'm trying to prevent re-injury and be able to go the long haul, even if it means walking the marathon). Hopefully Sunday's run will be a better one.

The donations are starting to trickle in now. In the past 3 days we have received $830 towards our goal. The thermometer is slowly creeping up. We are one quarter of the way to the fundraising finish line. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far!!!

Enjoy a Guiness for us today!

Cheers!

$how u$ the Money!$!

Fundraising: Yesterday I sent out a mass email to my friends and colleagues at the Firm I work for. I hit up everyone I work with in my office, people I know in other offices as well as contacts in our head office. I also asked those people to pass on the request to their friends and family. Yesterday alone, our request went out to over 124 people in one hour. I got at least 5 favourable responses back right away of people telling me they would definitely donate; as of today I have physically received 4 monetary donations. (3 did theirs on-line) and one gave me a cheque in the office. That's $335 towards our goal in just a few hours. Lots more to go, but I'm hopeful that most of the people who received yesterday's message will be sending me their donations over the next few weeks.

I would like to send out a very special thank you to Richard Rand (buddy and colleague from our Richmond office). Today he very generously donated $250!! He also promised to forward on my email to others. I also received a donation of $15 today from one of my head office contacts. Just goes to show you that it really doesn't matter how much you donate as long as you donate. Every dollar helps and I'm thrilled with every donation we receive.

Mike and I continue on our quest to send out our message and request to everyone one we know. We continue to ask people to keep forwarding our message on to their friends and family and anyone else they can think of. We even had a cheque arrive in the mail for $50 from a client of a client that Mike deals with. This is exactly the kind of thing we are hoping for.

Thank you again everyone for your support and encouragement so far.

Keep checking back. We'll keep you updated on our running progress, our dollars raised....(I even figured out how to update the thermometer on my own today!!)...and important details about our fundraisers.

Let it rain, let it rain.....

Well okay, I really only mean that figuratively. (more like Donations and Prizes for our Fundraisers---I'd like to see those keep raining on in!).

Training is going fairly well. We've even had some rain free sessions. Mike's back is holding up really well. We are both really happy about that and to Mike's surprise the other day he turns to me while we are working on a 3 min run and 1 min walk interval, and says "you know, I'm actually really starting to enjoy this!" I was thrilled to hear him say it! He's a big sports guy who has always run for a purpose...you know...to reach someone to tackle them, get ball to the goal line, round the bases to score a run; or out the back field to catch a pop fly and get someone out....not to run for distance and a good cause. In my experience most sports athletes tend to only like running if it's on a field chasing a ball! I think the fact that we are doing this together is helping Mike to enjoy it. I'm certainly enjoying having him by my side while we train and work our way up. Some days it's more of a challenge for me than others (physically), depending on how my body is doing adapting to the pounding of running again. I'm still struggling with the foot apparel, but pressing on. This week we decided to skip the "easy recovery" week on our program and press forward to the following week (to try to catch up a bit). It is the same running time but our walk(rest) time is getting shorter. We were both pleased with how well we did on Monday nights training. We did 9 intervals of 3 min/1 min (run/walk). The first 3 intervals seemed to be a challenge but then as we got going the last 6 went well and I think we both felt we could do a couple more. This is good progress. Running together helps us keep that good easy pace that we can keep talking. Nice way to catch up on the day's activities

Next week we jumpt to 5/1 splits, and hopefully that will go the same as this week...get easier as we go along. Sunday I had a bit of a set back and we had to postpone our training to Monday...my legs and feet were a little cranky. Monday I felt more up to the training. I appreciated Mike's ability to roll with it and be so open to us just switching the days we trained this week. I get frustrated when I can't do what I set out to do. By the end of Monday evening's training I was feeling stronger and my recovery time for the muscles was good.

Tomorrow night we train after work and then home to eat, and then as a reward we are off to Boone County to watch our friend Marco sing in a country singing contest....Country Idol, here he comes.

Boardgaming For Diabetes weekend May 13th & 14th

Drexoll Games has graciously donated a copy of The 10th Anniversary Settlers of Catan 3-D Special Edition Treasure Chest Set (yes it's a long name but, what a beautiful looking game). Some lucky gamer will be walking away with this the weekend of May 13 & 14th. Yes, there will be other prizes for the not so lucky :)

What:
Settlers of Catan Tournament.
Ticket to Ride Tournament.
Ingenious Tournament.
Open Gaming all weekend, try a new game!
Scheduled times for games available (never have enough players and time for your favourite 7-8 player game, now you do!)
Tournament and Door Prizes.
50/50 Draw.

When: Saturday May 13th 10am to Midnight
Sunday May 14th 10am to 6:00pm

Where: Marpole Curling Club
8730 Heather Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada
V6P 3S8

How Much? Pre-Register by April 30th
$25 for the weekend
$40 Couples

After May 1
$30 Weekend
$50 Couples
$15 Single Day

We hope to see you there, if you've never played or even heard of these games come on out, they are easy to learn and great fun! If you are from out of town (or want a weekend away from home), you can stay at the Coast Vancouver Airport Hotel Rate: $69 per night (plus taxes) for up to four in a room, the Hotel is a 5 minute walk from the curling club.

To Register e-mail
mjblais@gmail.com

Lesson Learned

It gets even harder to keep your balance while curling after you've done a run a couple hours earlier.
'nuff said

New Shoes...

I consider myself pretty lucky. I haven't ever really run and I was able to pick out a pair of shoes that fit me pretty well and that I am happy with off the bat. Waleah didn't have so much luck this time. Her new shoes were causing a lot of pain last night so training was cut short during our warm up. It didn't click in to either of us that she should have brought her old shoes in case. So we brought our gear tonight for an afterwork run with her old shoes.
We also picked up a new toy this week, we purchased the Forerunner GPS from the running room, it's pretty cool since it gives us our interval times automatically and tracks our distance for the run. I can't wait to play around with it some more and see what else it can do.

I'm a little worried, the on-line training begins April 28th and we need to have a base run of 10k by that time. I trust Waleah when she says that won't be a problem by then, our first test will be the Vancouver Sun Run in 8 weeks, it makes it easier to train for something only a couple months away, August is still a loooong ways away.