ugh.

Been a really tough couple of days here. Tuesday's run was pretty tough, it was only 6k but at a quicker pace. In the end with my longer than normal walking break I finished with a pace of 7:30/km and that is about what I run with my 10/1 intervals. A big problem was I was still sore from softball the previous 2 days, Softball and Running are not the same muscle groups for sure. It only gets better from there. Wednesday night I went to bed feeling a little sick, a couple hours later I was throwing up and couldn't stop, finally at about 5am on thursday I had Waleah take me to emergency. They hooked an IV up and ran a few bags of saline through me and was finally let out about 4pm. It was a long day for me, even longer for Waleah as she had to try to sleep in a not so comfortable chair. Yesterday was a lot of sleeping and drinking water. So thursdays run was a no go and today's won't happen either. I am still feeling nauseous and crappy but it appears Waleah has been able to fight the bug off. Since wednesday night I have had to eat 5 pieces of toast a small cup of chicken noodle soup and 2 scrambled eggs. We'll see what tomorrow brings and what kind of energy we have (supposed to be 13km but we'll see).

We Completed the Sunny Vancouver Sun Run!!!

What a beautiful day to live and walk/run in Beautiful Sunny Vancouver!!
We got up early this morning and got ourselves ready and hopped on the sky train to downtown to wait at the start line, for what seemed like a really long time. Oh wait, it was a long time-- just checked what time it was when I hit start on the GPS -- we started at 9:55am. We waited for 55 minutes to cross the start line. All I can say is thank goodness it was a sunny day and not raining out! Mike and I walked the event together. We started out by jogging for only about 3 minutes just to get away from the congestion of the crowd. We then kept up a really good walking pace throughout the entire 10km (our average pace for the entire race was 8:49min/km). In fact at the eigth and ninth Km we even managed to pick up our pace. We finished up with about a 3 minute jog to the finish line (mostly because I wanted to cross the finish line under 1:30:00 (1 Hour; 30 Minutes). And guess what.....WE DID!!! 1:29:42 was our time! I'm pretty pleased with that considering 98% was walked. We even noticed that we passed some people a couple of different times who were walk/running the event. I calculated that at today's average pace I would finish the Marathon in August in just under 6 hours!! Hopefully I continue to get stronger over the next 4 months and will be able in fact to finish walking the marathon in under 6 hours. That would be awesome. This week we will train Tues & Thur. Starting next Sunday our training goes from 3 days a week up to 5 days a week. And the mileage weekly will start to increase. Looking forward to it now that the nice weather has started. Stay tuned for more updates........

Just Ask and You Shall Receive.......

Right now I'm learning that fundraising is really a lot about asking people. And about sharing your story of what you have set out to accomplish. Today we have officially reached $7188 in funds raised. I have another $1100 or so coming from a source that will be matching a portion of the funds I raise. Adding that money to what we have already collected will bring us up over the $8,000 mark....2/3 of the way there and pushing us towards the 3/4 marker. (I won't be adding the "partial matching funds" till we receive the money--as the tally increases every couple of days). I'm learning that there are a lot of very generous people out there and they are happy to donate to such a worthy cause and a lot of people have thanked us for sharing our story with them and allowing them to be part of our accomplishement. We have received a lot of donations, big and small and lots of prize donations too for our fundraisers. We are regularly amazed at people's generosity and very thankful to them. Each one of you who has donated thus far has made our experience that much more enjoyable as the stress of raising the funds gets less and the stress of working on the distances increases! We hope that you enjoy reading our blog entries and hearing about our progress and updates as much as we enjoy sharing our experience.

Sun Run here we come

Well 6 more days till the Vancouver Sun Run. We have entered; and Mike and I will be walking the event. We decided that we wanted to do it together so Mike will walk instead of run. It will be our training run/walk for Sunday. I think the experience will be good for Mike as he has never participated in a big race like that (when I say big... I am referring to the number of participants--usually over 40,000 some odd people). I have participated in the Sun Run 3 yrs in a row from 1999-2001 and always ran it; so it will be a different experience to go out and walk the course instead. We are contemplating whether we should try the Vancouver International Half Marathon or not in a couple of weeks. We are sure we could walk it but not sure about keeping up the steady pace for that long and consistently. We'll see what we decide. If we do it; it will be a walked event. One of my good friends Donni is planning on walking it and we may just join her.

We picked up a second GPS gadget on the weekend and it really helped me in my training session on Sunday morning. With Mike off running I have not been able to keep track of how fast I'm walking during my solo walk workout. I discovered I can keep a pretty good steady pace going. It takes me on average 9-9:48min per km. And that's with rolling terrain. On the flatter stretches I can speed up to about 8 min per km. When Mike joins me after his run and we continue to walk together we tend to slow a bit more to about 10 - 10:50 min per km pace. Which is still good as it's more about our cool down at that point. My pace seems to be on track for the training guidlines set out for walking. I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish the marathon in under 6hrs for being a walker. (I'm still hopeful to be able to run a few km here and there though come August---so maybe a little quicker??). But the Most important goals are (a) raising the funds and awareness for Diabetes and (b) completing the event and completing it healthy. The competitive side in my is setting the side goals for myself :) I'm also really looking forward to going to Iceland, seeing a different country and sharing the experience and adventure with Mike.

stay tuned.....

Gaming Fundraiser

I have stared a 2nd blog that is dedicated to our boardgaming fundraiser.

Gaming Fundraiser

2 weeks to go

Only 2 weeks to go before the "official" marathon training program begins. The base run to start is 10k and I'll be ready to run that that Sunday morning. This week we have done about 35k of walking/running, for me 17.8k of running was done over 3 sessions. That's a lot when I think back to when I started it was work just running 2 or 3 minutes at a time. Tomorrow is the first time I'll run a 10 & 1 interval and I'll repeat 6 times. I haven't calculated the number of intervals for the actual marathon yet. I'll do that much later so I don't scare myself.
I made an actual running mix on my iPod for yesterday's run and it worked well, the first part of the run was really hard it being early morning and no breakfast but by 20 minutes in I felt great and was suprised when I caught back up with Waleah and was done, I felt I could have kept going forever.

Bawitidaba - Kid Rock
All Jacked Up - Gretchen Wilson
Around the World - Daft Punk
Dance, Dance - Fallout Boy
You're Pretty When I'm Drunk - Bloodhound Gang
Short Skirt/Long Jacket - Cake
Sk8ter Boi - Avril Lavigne
Let's Get Retarted - Black Eyed Peas
Spiderwebs - No Doubt
More Than Fine - Switchfoot
Virtual Insanity - Jamiroquai
How Do You Like Me Now - Toby Keith
Love Shack - B-52's
Beautiful People - Marilyn Manson
Cowboy - Kid Rock
Beer for My Horses - Toby Keith/Willie Nelson
Seven Nation Army - White Stripes
Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
Give it Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Tainted Love - Marilyn Manson

OK, varied list but when I got to How Do You Like Me Now I was feeling good and started singing along.
Have a Happy Easter, we'll be up bright and early for our run tomorrow so I make an Easter Brunch for Waleah, Kari and I.

Walk, Run, Walk, Walk, Walk..

As Waleah mentioned earlier she has taken a break from running but is continuing to train by walking. Since this is a joint effort we want to work together as much as possible. What we have been doing is the warm up walk to the lake together (approx 2k) and then I will run my intervals and meet back with her for the walk home and cool down. A great idea but we didn't plan it so well last night. I had a shorter run of 3k last night but once we miscalculated how far around the lake we went and we ended up doing a total of 12k! We need to figure things out a little better so our "resting" days are what they are supposed to be, short and rewarding.
Things I have noticed now that I am getting into my training:
1) I look forward to my runs. I never thought this would happen. After running 7k on Sunday (the furthest I have ever run at once) I felt I could keep going indefinitely. Last night was a little harder but it still felt good.
2) Music is great to run with, I took Waleah's iPod on Sunday and listened to some Switchfoot and it made the run go by so much quicker and I found myself looking less at how much time do I have left on a particular interval. Last night I loaded some Daft Punk on my new shiny black iPod. That was great for setting a pace but very hard to judge my interval time and the run seemed very long, I probably will not be putting too much of that type of music on my playlist.
3) Our GPS is a great tool, it helps me keep my pacing to a level I am comfortable at without letting me slow down too much. It's also great for tracking exactly how far we went without having to figure it out on a map. I just set the training intervals and reps and run. We'll pick up a second one this week for Waleah so she has a better idea of her pace and distance on her walks.
4) Now that we've started running around Burnaby Lake I can't believe we spent so long running around a track. I guess for the shorter runs it was ok, but the track is pretty boring compared to the trails around the lake. Sunday's training will be another step up, I'll have finally hit 10 & 1 intervals (10 minutes running and 1 walking) and this is what I will be doing for right up until and part of the marathon. It's part of the Running Room's training schedule and since Team Diabetes is being trained by the Running Room I'll stick to their plan since they know far more about running than I do.
5) I still haven't figured out how running affects my blood sugar on a consistent basis. At first it seemed to drop 2 points for every 20 minutes of training. On Sunday and last night it only dropped 1 point and that was over 2 hours of training. The only thing I had to eat was a banana before we started. I think that now that my body is getting used to running my sugars are lasting longer. Then again I am probably talking out of my ass. :) I hope to figure it out eventually so I don't have to worry about a low blood sugar during a long run and abort it. That would suck and throw a kink in plans.

That's it for now, have a happy Easter weekend if we don't check in sooner.

Words of Encouragement

A note I received today along with a generous donation today......

"Waleah
You are going to fly along this course,
Boundless energy being your source.

All the work and miles and vision,
When the rest of us sat watching television.

When the going gets tough and it will,
Be grateful that Iceland does not have hills.

It's people like you that make the world a better place to be.
Way to go!"

These words and the donation I received with them mean a lot to me and its this kind of support that makes the hard work worthwhile and easier to tackle.

Thanks buddy!! You are a great motivator and a very supportive and encouraging friend.

uP and UP the Numbers go!!!

Our fundraising total just keeps on climbing up....a few dollars here and there each day and they just keep adding up!! It's very exciting to see the Thermometer climb. We received another $147 from our generous fellow Curlers from the Mixed Friday Night league over at Royal City Curling Club in New Westminster. Thanks everyone! Today a colleague of mine gave me a great poem and a cheque for $251 dollars (not to be outdone by a fellow colleague in another office!) Thank you Brian!! You are awesome and very generous!! We are now at $6593 raised to date!!

Our mileage is also increasing.....We did our long steady run/walk yesterday (I walked and Mike did his run/walk intervals). Mike ran 7km (not including the rest of our walk) -- the most he's run so far in a row....I'm so proud of him and I know he was thrilled too with his accomplishments. I managed to walk 13km (which is my longest to date as well) and Mike did a total of 15km yesterday between his run and walking with me before and after. So only 27 more Km's for Mike and 29 more Km's for me!! It was a great workout yesterday at Burnaby Lake....even with the rain.

Only 2 more weeks till the Sun Run which we will both walk together. My body is still not ready for running so I will continue my training with walking and hope that over the next few months I may be able to run more. If not, I will be walking the full marathon.....I'd rather complete the event healthy and injury free than not be able to complete it after all of our hard work.

HALF WAY THERE!!

Monday, April 3, 2006 We have officially passed the halfway mark in our fundraising efforts!!! Yippee!!! We so far have collected $6,005 in cash donations and have been busily getting Prize donations for our upcoming fundraisers. When I came in to work this morning there was an email adivsing me of an on-line donation of $30 that pushed us over the $6000 mark. I'm so excited. We have 4 1/2 months till Iceland and our 3 Fundraisers to go. Mike & I still have friends and family to hit up for donations so hopefully with all of that combined we'll reach our goal no problem. (We hope!) :)

Thank you to everyone who have been so generous so far. We appreciate every single donation (everything from $5 to $1000 to date--it all really does add up!) We appreciate you passing on our request for donations to your friends and family and contacts. And we also very much appreciate all of the prize support we have been getting from local and not so local Game stores and friends and contacts too! A special thank you to Mike's friend, Liane for her generous Starbucks prize donation. Stay tuned for more details and our continuing progress........