A eventful weekend!

Wow am I exhausted! A very eventful weekend. Friday night we went and booked the hall for our wedding, the date has been set to January 13th at the Firefighters hall in Burnaby. Wow, hard to believe that Waleah and I haven't even been together a year.
Right after that we headed out to Drexoll games in Poco where they had their annual 24 hour game night. 6:30 Friday until 6ish on Saturday was filled with lots of sleep deprived gaming goodness. Waleah was not feeling great so she dropped me off Friday night and headed home for a nap. She came back (slightly) refreshed around 11:00pm and joined in the all night and day fun. After that it was head right home for a shower, dinner and some sleep. Hit the sack at 8:00pm and woke up around 9:30 to the sound of rain.
The thought of running 32k in the heavy rain wasn't thrilling and I know Waleah's back wasn't feeling great so I came up with the plan. Waleah would drive to Mom's and use the treadmill and I would follow our route from last week. What a run, the rain cleared for me, yay!, but it was a long hard run, I almost made the phone call a couple times to be picked up around the 20-25km mark but I was able to finish the run in just over 4 hours. A couple things happened that made the run easier, first was Mom waiting at the Tim Horton's in Poco for me as I ran past, that was a great and welcome surprise and gave me a good burst of energy for the next 45 minutes or so. Once I hit the last 6km it was really hard, as I hit downtown Maple Ridge I visualized it being the end of the Marathon in Reykjavik and finally being able to complete our goal and was able to find another burst of energy. As I turned down the last kilometer towards Mom's Waleah was coming up to meet me. We turned around and finished the run to Mom's together. Wow, what a weekend and what a long run. I definitely feel that I am ready for the marathon that is just 19 days away. A little bit bagged this morning, thankfully I was able to get Dave to go to Starbucks for me and pick me up a double shot white mocha, I feel a little more alert now, but I think an early bedtime is in store for me again tonight.
Up for the week is trying to fit ball and training in on Tuesday & Wednesday and catching up on sleep.

PS: the sappy pic of Waleah and I is from a BBQ last Saturday night taken by our friend Bill.

30km for 30 years!!

Sunday, July 23rd was Mike's 30th birthday. We started off our day with Mike opening a present & card from me then promptly got ready to hit the road. We left home at 7am! to head from Burnaby (Lougheed Mall area) to Maple Ridge (New Dewdney & 227th). Why you may ask? Well we needed to get in a 29km workout and we thought instead of going around Burnaby Lake 3 times (our usual Sunday morning workout venue) we decided we would do a road trip to get us ready for the big Marathon coming up. It's a different mental preparation for doing laps around a park and for going the distance on a long stretch of road, especially in the HEAT!! Have I mentioned yet that it was smokin hot out yesterday? It took us just over 5 hours to complete the 30.36km it took us door to door. We felt pretty good (tired but good) and we worked hard to stay hydrated along the way and protected from the sun. I also managed to run a bit yesterday (we did about 14 intervals of running 500 metre and walking 500 metres.) -- so out of the 30km I managed to run a total of 7km. I have been walking most of my training so this was a big accomplishment for me. My body is sore today and I do feel the effects of the run portion but it was awesome being able to run, even if only for a bit here and there. I'm hoping to do the same thing the day of the marathon. Walk/run the whole way. After cooling off under the hose in the driveway and having a bath to soak the muscles and a cold shower to cool off we continued to celebrate Mike's birthday with the arrival of many of our freinds and some family. Had a great BBQ at Sue & Graham's place (Mike's mom & stepdad). Sue put on a great spread and was busy at the BBQ -- what a trooper manning the grill in that heat! Especially while the rest of us "kids" were hanging out in the back yard occupying whatever shade we could find. Eventually the shade disappeared as the sun made its way arounnd and those of us left had to head back in doors. It was a GREAT day and a fun way to celebrate Mike's birthday. Great turnout and we thank everyone who came out to celebrate!

Stay tuned....we have only 24 days will we leave for Iceland and we are up just over $18,200 now. I wonder if we'll hit $20,000 before we go?????.....you never know.

$17,921 and 38 more days till marathon!

Time is flying by fast and we are still receiving some donations. Received another $100 in the mail today. So close to $18,000. Not sure how much more we'll get....but this is great. I can't believe how much we exceeded the assigned goal by. How awesome is this. We are looking forward to being finished training. It's been hard juggling Mike's ball season, our social life (we are both very social people and love seeing our family and friends--thankfully they have been very understanding), and just day to day life. It will be great to be able to say we completed the marathon and we successfuly fund raised what we needed and then some. We are looking forward to our post race days in Iceland and exploring. We are very happy that Mike's Mom, Sue and step-dad, Graham are coming with us. Will be great fun to hang out with them and travel around together. When we get back normal life will resume, although with planning a wedding and all the fall activities starting up, I'm not sure if we will be less busy....but maybe just different busy and hopefully more time with friends and family.

Keep checking in....the count down has really begun....we hope to take lots of photos in Iceland and post a bunch when we return. Anyone who still hasn't donated, but would still like to, please do!! you can donate on line at the link to the right; or email us at waleah@gmail.com or mjblais@gmail.com and we'll give you our address to mail in a donation if you prefer. Help us try to reach $20,000.

cheers,
Waleah

5 weeks to go and now at $17,821

Wow!! We came home this evening to a $2000 donation!! We were both so thrilled and surprised to see the amount of the cheque. Only 5 more weeks till we leave for Iceland and we have well exceeded our oringal target of $12,200 (and by over $5000+).

At the onset of signing up for this event, the fundraising task seemed very daunting, not to mention the task of training for a full marathon. It warms our hearts to see how generous so many people have been and truly every dollar does add up. Our largest single donations to date have been $2500, $2000 and 2 x $1000. Lots of donations ranging from $5 to $251 have all added up as well to help us reach our current amazing total collected. A couple of weeks ago when we hit the $15,000+ mark, we were hoping to hit $16,000 before leaving on our trip.....and now that we are almost at $18,000 it would be great if we could hit $18,000 before we leave. We'll see what happens. 5 more weeks and $179 more dollars to raise to hit $18,000.
Our training is going pretty good even though we've had a few interuptions and had to modify a couple of times due to different things. Like this past weekend for my birthday we set out to do 32km on Stuart Island (a washington state park) but the island was so hilly and the elevation was high and the grade of the hills were quite steep so we ended up only doing 20km but with the extra workout involved I'm sure it was close to the equivalent of 32km!! My body sure feels like it was.

This whole process has brought Mike and I even closer together than when we started out. We've managed to plan a weekend long fundraising event without killing eachother or driving eachother too crazy! The event back in May was a great success and proved to me that we should be able to plan a wedding together without too much difficulty. Our ability to work so well together in all that we do has proven to us that we do make a great "team" in every sense of the word and it was after a training session recently that Mike proposed....how perfect that was. When he proposed he even told me that if it wasn't for me cheering him on, he wouldn't be succeeding at the rate he is. :) I think Mike & I do make a great team and I look forward to us being partners in every sense of the word and in being partners in marriage and parenthood. We are looking at getting Married January 2007 and we'll probably start trying to increase the size of our family on our honeymoon....hey, isn't that what honeymoons are for? So now that we know we can raise money for our favorite charity, train for a full marathon and cheer eachother on and successfully plan and execute a fundraising planning our wedding should be a piece of cake....right? :)

Well that's it for today....off to type up our most recent pledge list and send off the funds to CDA.
Thank you again to all of you generous souls out there who have donated your money or given us your support and encouragement. We appreciate it all.

and the winner is....

We held our beer draw this weekend and the winner is Philip Frances from RBC Dominion Securities. Congratulations to him and thank you to all who supported us by buying tickets, the beer draw raised another $200 or so towards our total.

The ball tournament in Armstrong was a lot of fun and HOT! Waleah and I arrived at 11:30 Friday night, set up camp and had a couple drinks and relaxed. I woke up around 7:00 and felt a little restless so I went for a short 30 minute run while Waleah slept in the nice hot tent. It was getting quite hot already but it felt nice to get a workout in. We then went to Kalamaka lake later that afternoon after our last round robin game and spent a whole lot of time in the water, it was very nice indeed. :)

We finished 4th in round robin play (out of 40 teams) but unfortunately lost our first playoff game. 8:00am games on Sundays are a little tough after partying all night long. I was a good boy and took the weekend off from partying since we had a long run that we wanted to do on Monday (29km) but of course the rest of the team didn't since we were there to have fun!

The run started ok but then around the 20km mark my blood sugar started to drop and after a power gel and a fruit bar is was still dropping (went down to 5.0), from there I slowed it down and walked more than I ran, the sugars eventually came back up after drinking a bottle of gatorade that we had stashed at the beginning of the run. So in the end I ended up doing just over 20k at 10& 1 intervals and ended up walking most of the last 9km.

All in all we had a good long weekend with the ball tournament and Monday's long run, I think spending then entire afternoon in the lake was the highlight for sure.

Last night's training was pretty good, since I've missed most the hill training I set out to do what I could, my scheduled training was 9 hill repeats, I cut it at 6 and feel ok this morning, we'll be packing tonight for our weekend away with Waleah's parents on their boat but Saturday (Waleah's Birthday) we'll find an island to do our 32k distance. 32km is the longest training run before the marathon which is coming up fast, amazing how time flies!!! 5 more weeks of long Sunday runs, 32 this week and then 23,29,32,23 and the Sunday before the marathon is only a 6k run. It's nice to finally see the goal in sight and knowing that we'll be able to complete the full 42.2km and accomplish our goal.

Have a great weekend and wish us luck for our 32km run!