Inspiration

Last Sunday Waleah did the Vancouver Marathon (see her post below) and my parents and I were waiting at the finish line for our friend Kari to cheer her across the line. At the same time as this the full marathoners were also starting to finish. These were the people who are natural runners who are running a full marathon in less than 3.5 hours which is pretty amazing. We came back a couple of hours later to wait for Waleah and had a chance to watch the "regular" people finish, though many of these people were far from regular. Anybody who can commit to the training and completion of the marathon has my respect but some people just wowed me.

A 75 year old man was completing his 403rd marathon (this sentence is NOT a typo).

Tsutomu Shimabukuro, a japanese man with 2 prosthetic legs finished in 8:03:49

A man with a white shirt with BRAIN TUMOUR SURVIVOR written across the front

A 15! year old kid (who also did it last year)

and many more.
Watching these people do something that challenges even the most fit person in truly inspiring. I would recommend if you want to see amazing people do an amazing thing, show up at a marathon finish line at the 4:30 hour mark, listen to the announcer and cheer these people on, because they deserve it.

Completed 2nd Full Marathon - VIM

Hello....it's been a while since I've written a post. Life has been very busy.

The past few months I've been leading a walking clinic for the Poco Running Room. It has been a great experience and I had a great group of people out. I led 2 clinics simultaneously--the Half Marathon clinic and the Full Marathon clinic. I started out with 11 people (lost 2 to injuries early on and a 3rd to physical limitations in the later half). I had 8 people in total who walked either the Half or the Full on Sunday besides myself. Awesome!! 6 of my participants successfully completed the Half Marathon. All did so in under 4 hours and all were happy with their time and their achievement. I had 2 participants successfully complete the Full Marathon. I know one would have liked to finish quicker, but I think was still happy with her success. Way to go you guys. I finished in 7:05:13. I have some pretty bad blisters happening with all the rain...and some sore muscles still...but feeling pretty good. Happy about the accomplishment and enjoyed the experience. It was great to have people to walk with on this marathon and I had some supporters come out as well at different points along the route, as did my 2 gals. So it helped pass our time. My loving husband saw us twice on the route and gave me a kiss and encouragement to us 3 ladies at about 7km and 19km. A friend from work, Tracy and her daughter, came out and walked with me for a few minutes around the 35km mark and my good friend Christy & her boyfriend, Darwin came and walked with me for a bit at about 37km. It was so great to see everyone and they were an awesome pick me up. Mike came and met me about 300 metres out before the finish line and walked with me in. It was so awesome to see him at that point. I was sore and tired and my feet were done. I even had a pebble in my shoe at the end, and I had no energy to remove it, so it stayed till after I crossed the finish line.

My friend Kari did the Half that day and I'm so proud of her. She did a great job and this was her first event. She had so much fun, she's willing to do another one. Yeah!! Mike's mom & step dad came out to cheer Kari on to the finish line and to also cheer me on to the finish line. It was good. Mike and myself met up with Sue & Graham and Grandpa for dinner that night at our favourite burger joint in New West....Burger Heaven!! It was an awesome victory dinner and I enjoyed absolutely every bite of it!!!

Well I'll take a few weeks off of the distance walking till my blisters heal and I recoup. Mid June I will be leading my second walking clinic for the Poco Running Room. I'm looking forward to that. I hope to have some of my participants back out to join me again. This clinic will not only allow me the opportunity of helping other people achieve their goal again, but also help me train for my next big event....Dublin, Ireland --- Full Marathon on October 29, 2007. This is our next Team Diabetes event. After that it will be walking just for fun and fitness for a while. We are enjoying being part of Team Diabetes, but fundraising and training is hard work and takes a lot of time and commitment and we have so many other things we'd like to accomplish in life...so 2008 will hopefully bring some other new exciting things our way.

I'm going to enjoy the break before the next clinic, reconnect with some friends I haven't seen much of, and also get ready to re-write my exam in the next month or so. Studying recently was tough. I plan to take a bit more time to prep for my next exam but still want to get it out of the way before we get into the full swing of summer.

I think this month or next, Mike & I will get away for a weekend for some R & R. Mike has been so great about my ignoring him between my clinic and my studying that I need to reconnect with my sweetie and let him know how awesome he is and how much I appreciate his support and encouragement. We are thinking maybe a weekend escape the Victoria and play tourist for a weekend.

Well, got to go for now. We'll try to update this more regularly. Next accomplishment on our list is for Mike to do the Scotia Half in June and me to pass my darn course!! We'll keep you posted on our challenges and our victories.

Cheers,
Waleah

Vancouver Internation Marathon Weekend!!!!

Again a long delay between updates. Waleah will be participation in the Vancouver International Marathon on Sunday. Since January she has been the group leader at the Running Room in Poco for both the Full and Half-Marathon walking groups. Finally the end is here (until June when we start training for Dublin), and it is likely that she will be the group leader again. I know she has had a good time with it and it's so much easier to walk with a group as opposed to alone (like last year).

I will be cheering Waleah and the rest of the Poco groups on, I have had a hell of a time getting into a routine, I am aiming to do the Scotia Half Marathon but I am having a rough time motivating myself right now, I am supposed to do 16k this Sunday but so far my longest run has been only 10 (I've missed a couple of weeks of running). We'll see how it goes since Sunday I'll be seeing Waleah off at 6:30 for the Full Marathon and then Kari and the rest for the Half @ 7:00am. I'll do my best to get a run in and be back in time to cheer them on at the finish line.


We also had our 2nd Annual Boardgaming for Diabetes last weekend and it was another success! We raised approx $1200 dollars and even though there we about 10 people less than last year we still had a blast. Thank you to all who came and we will be doing it again next year even though we will not be doing another Team D marathon (we need to take a break :) )

That's it for now, I promise Waleah will post how the Marathon went.

Mike