The Stylish Blogger Award…
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Award 10 or 15 (depends on who sent you the rules) recently discovered great bloggers.
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them they’ve won!
The first rule is complete so here are 7 random facts about myself*:
1. Colin and I have been together since 1999. That’s over 1/3 of my life.
2. I threw javelin in high school. I was neither the best nor the worst member of the team. It was fun and I got to “travel” to Washington and Oregon!
3. After watching the Golden Globes last night I still think Colin Firth is good looking. I’m sure it has something to do with the whole BBC Pride and Prejudice Mr. Darcy thing, but I don’t care. I should really watch that again!
4. I killed my self laughing over Colin’s high school “fashion sense” yesterday. We were dubbing tapes off the VCR to dvd (yup, we still have cassette tapes kicking around. We borrowed the VCR, though) and there were some awesome selections. Stüssy, Mossimo and No Fear tees – all way to big, Adidas soccer shorts (he’s NEVER played on a team), an unfortunate meeting between his hair and a bottle of peroxide, etc. I think the best was that he totally owned wearing his black jeans.
Me: Are you wearing black jeans?
Colin: Oh yeah! Orange tab!
5. I’ve been going to the same place for summer vacation since I was 12. I ♥ Tofino, British Columbia. I think I only missed one year due to school or work. We still go with my parents so it’s a real family vacation.
6. I love pop. The beverage not the music category. I’d be happy if I could replace water with black cherry Coke. I am currently drinking the last can of Pepsi in the house and know that it’s in my best interest not to replace it anytime soon. I will, however, still drink pop at my parents’ house since they always have some in their downstairs fridge.
7. Here is one of my favourite pictures of myself. It was taken back when Colin and I had time to go hiking. It’s one thing to carry a pack full of gear for 8+ hours. I don’t think I could carry a pack full of kid for more than a couple. It’s car camping for us for the foreseeable future.
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| Elfin Lakes, Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia Photo by Colin Aldous |
Three Things Thursday
1. This is my 100th post!
2. Nerd that I am I’ve been checking my stats to see how many people have looked at my blog! It’s amazing what a little publicity on a bigger blog can get you:
Mostly Wordless Wednesday
To begin let me say that you can see me on skinnyrunner.com today as her Cat Lady Blogger! Again, a big hip, hip, hooray for self-promotion. It’ll get you everywhere in the blogosphere! It’s so much easier to be extroverted on the internet… if you knew me you’d know that I’m pretty introverted in real life.
If you like my blog, please become a follower! I’d love to have 100 followers for my 100th post tomorrow! Lurkers, that means you… time to let me know you’re here.
Now to the photos:
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| It’s snowing! Turn off flash… |
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| Colin post-1 hour/10km run. It wasn’t snowing when he left. So not impressed that I took his picture. |
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| That’s what it looked like after he came home! |
I’m A (Virtual) Race Bandit
But before I get to that there’s great news! After groveling begging and pleading inquiring nicely Courtney at Run, Courtney, Run has featured me as her “Runner Of The Week”! Yay Me!
Now, back to my first experience being a race bandit.* Adam, over at I am Boring/The Boring Runner, hosted the Freeze Your Thorns Off 5K Virtual Race this weekend. The goal was to run 5 kilometres. That was pretty much it. If I had been living in Arizona I could have gone for a run with a group of people, but I don’t, so I didn’t… I meant to sign up (really I did), but I usually work on Saturdays and figured that it wouldn’t work out. I found out that I was scheduled to work on Sunday instead yet I still didn’t sign up. My excuse is that I was too lazy to let Adam know it must have sold out.
The Report (such as it is):
Where: Suburban boonies.
Route: The figure-8 up the river, past the rec centre, up the big hill (Colin pushed the stroller, I walked – much needed hill repeats start in 4 weeks!), along some busy roads, back to the river and home.
Virtual Distance/Time: 5km in 40:46. That’s taking the first 5km since it’s a better result that the last 5.
Actual Distance/Time: 13km in 1:53:24.
I told Colin to remind me to bring the camera so I had proof of running, but that didn’t pan out. I barely got out the door due to my cold, we left later than we should have, and well, we have a 3 year old. The camera was on the bottom of my list and I’m pretty sure Colin had forgotten altogether. Here is my feeble artist’s rendering of our run.
*I have to state here that I don’t think I’d ever actually bandit a race (not pay, but run anyways). It would seem far too much like stealing to me and I’d feel guilty if I had to look at a medal knowing that I didn’t really earn it.
Three Things Thursday
1. Technically my 18-week training began on 26 December 2010, but it didn’t really feel like it started until I’d had my first clinic night last Thursday. So, as of today, I’m one week in. Sunday’s long run (only 10km) was great. Good weather, met some new people, and ran at a pace I didn’t know I could sustain. The calendar I printed out with my run and core/strength/stretch schedule is up on the bulletin board. I’m proud to say that I’ve ticked off “yes” on everything I’ve had planned. We’ll see how that goes this weekend since I’m working on Sunday (long run day) and now need to move a couple of things around to get my 13kms in.
2. I signed up for Tall Mom’s 1000+++ challenge this year. That’s running over 1000 miles in 365 days. Do-able, yes. Especially since I’m aiming for 1250 (2011kms). It will be nice to have some accountability. Click the picture if you want to see what it’s all about or if you want to join!
3. Core/strength/stretch is kicking my butt. I know I need it, but wow. I have it on my schedule 4 times/week and am hoping that if I can’t do all 4 days I’ll at least get in 2-3. Thankfully after 3 sessions I’m not hurting as badly as before. Deciding to start at 10:30pm the night before a long run = bad idea. I could barely walk on Monday. Colin, as he did the day after my first bootcamp, thought it would be funny (harhar) to tickle, poke and generally torment me.
Jogging Stroller Recommendations Needed
Now, this isn’t a request for myself. I’ll stick with my BOB Revolution, thankyouverymuch… However, the son and daughter-in-law of my Mum’s friend (got that?) are having a baby soon and will need to get a jogger. They both run halfs and fulls and, like most of us with kids, would rather cart the baby along in a heavy contraption rather than give up running! I know that joggers are a personal preference, but I’d love to help them out and pass along some good advice.
Like I mentioned above, I have the BOB Revolution. Here are a few reasons I love it:
- Swivel or locked wheel. I keep it on swivel 99% of the time. Really, I’m just horrible at turning with it when it’s locked. Colin’s noticed that it starts to vibrate on swivel if he’s going too fast, but I’ve never had that problem!
- Fits in our trunk without taking the wheels off. That sounds funny, but it’s true! There’s nothing worse than buying something and finding out that you’ve made more work for yourself, especially with an infant.
- Car seat adapter. It makes it a little top heavy with the infant seat – I didn’t start running until after Spud was out it – so I can imagine that you’d need to have pretty good focus not to tip it over if you were rounding a corner too fast.
- Great on trails.
- Awesome rain cover. I don’t think Spud’s ever gotten wet through it. Doesn’t work with the infant seat though.
- Small basket that isn’t easily accessible if child is in seat. We used to have to put the diaper bag into the basket before putting Spud in the seat or it wouldn’t go in.
- Accessories are expensive, but I think this is true of all brands. Of all the ones we bought the most essential (for us) were the rain cover and the “console”, which is a cup holder.
- Not cheap. We bought ours on Craigslist, but still paid through the nose for it. This was on top of the Graco system that we’d already bought and decided wasn’t best for our lifestyle. Parenting “life lesson” there!
- BOB (fixed wheel).
- Baby Jogger.
- Chariot.
- Mountain Buggy.
- Phil & Ted’s.
- Valco.
- Zooper.
Post your recommendations, opinions (good and bad please), and links to reviews if you’ve done one in the comments section.
And, if you’d be so kind, mention this in a post and send people my way to comment! Thanks!
Resolutions, Smesolutions… I Have GOALS!
WORD FOR THE YEAR: FOCUS
I will not call these resolutions. Resolutions tend to be less than permanent. It’s easy to give them up. It’s almost as if they are there to be broken.
Goals, on the other hand, are something to strive toward. If I have goals they are always there. I might meet them this year – that’s the hope, after all – but if I don’t it’s not the end of the world. I won’t feel too let down (I hope!). Since I met the “Run a marathon when I’m 30” goal in 2010 I’ve had to come up with a few good ones for this year.
My Goals for 2011, in no particular order:
- PR in the marathon! If I work as hard as I think I will it shouldn’t be too hard. I will be happy with one second faster than last time, but the most important thing to me is that my finish time reads 4:xx:xx. Not sure what the “x”s stand for yet – I’ll have a more concrete time goal in mind once training’s in full swing.
- Run another half marathon. I’d love to run the Historic Half again in February, but money would have to come through for that to happen. If I don’t do that one it’ll most likely be after the full.
- Volunteer at races. I’m already signed up to help out at the First Half Half Marathon in February. Ideally I’d like to help out at a couple more during the year. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the volunteers in the races I’ve run and would love to make someone else’s race great too!
- Maybe run a fall marathon. I have mixed feelings about training through the summer – how many times was it too hot to run? Definitely a decision to be made in a few months.
- Eat better. Self explanatory. Work harder at planning meals and having healthy choices (for all of us) in the house on a consistent basis.
- Drink water. Not my first choice of beverage, but it really needs to be. This should be the easiest goal to achieve… hopefully. I need to stop having “alternatives” (
cough*pop*cough) in the house. - Work on Core/Strength/Stretch 2-3x/week. My hip flexors will love me, I’ll be stronger, I’ll look better (goodbye muffin-top), I’ll feel better about myself, etc. Again, shouldn’t be hard to do – I’ll just need to get my act together and keep it up.
- Run 1250 miles. Now that might seem like a kind of random number. However, I’m Canadian and I run in kilometres (see blog name). So 1250 miles x 1.609344 = 2011.68km. Given that the year is 2011 I think that it’s a pretty darn good goal. It also means that I’ll have to run 38.some-odd kilometres/24 miles per week. Obviously some will be shorter and some will be longer, but I really do think that it will be attainable. Especially if I keep going back to that big, bold word at the top of this post… FOCUS!
A Running Year In Review – 2010
Had you asked me in April when I started blogging if I thought that I’d have enough to write about at year end I’m not sure that my answer would have been yes. I probably would have told you that I ran a couple of races and that was about it. But last night I was drafting this post and found that a lot more happened to me than I realized.
- I completed my first half marathon, the Historic Half Marathon in Langley, BC, on 21 February. It was cold, but clear. Hilly, but not too much of a challenge – if you can pre-run the route, do it! What a huge difference it makes. I finished in 2:16:58.6. Considering I went into it wanting to finish and hoping for a 2:30:00 I was thrilled!
- I completed my second half marathon, the Scotiabank Vancouver Half Marathon on 27 June. Hip Hip Hooray I got a PR! 2:11:38. And that was despite some dire TMI circumstances. I probably could have broken 2:10:00, but it wasn’t to be that day. Maybe in 2011.
- I trained for and completed my first marathon! I finished the Goodlife Fitness Victoria Marathon on 10 October after training for the whole summer. Ups and downs in the training and the race, but wouldn’t trade that first experience for anything. Finish time of 5:07:18 for an automatic PR.
- I just started my training for my next marathon this week. First clinic session was held last night. I surprised myself by running just over 6km in just over 40 minutes. It was probably a little faster than I should have run, but was a lot faster than I thought I could run. This bodes well for my training!
- I started blogging in April. Has it kept me more accountable (my original reasoning)? Probably not. But I have gotten far more out of it than I ever expected. I get to use my SAHM brain! I’ve found so much inspiration from other bloggers and have even made a few “friends” (Colin, you can roll your eyes here) even though we’ve never met in person.
An International Audience
Being somewhat new to the blogging world I am excited about small things. I know that family and friends are forced to have a look once in a while, but the fact that people even read my blog (and continue to come back) constantly surprises me. Don’t even get me started on tracking the number of followers. I’m pathetically grateful for all 71 of you!!!
I switched over to the “new Blogger” a couple of weeks ago – I guess it’s made my online life easier (?) – and found out that I can track some very basic stats. My favourite is finding out where people who have been reading my blog live. I know for a fact that most of my followers are from Canada and the United States so it’s surprised me to see where others are coming from.
Here’s the current list:
- Australia
- Austria
- Canada
- Denmark
- France
- Germany
- India
- Netherlands
- Philippines
- Poland
- Russia
- Singapore
- Slovenia
- South Korea
- United Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom
- United States
So please, if you are so inclined, tell me where you’re from! Even better (for me) become a follower! The more the merrier!
Merry Christmas!
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| Jesus is the reason for the season |
Three Things Thursday
1. THE GOOD: ran with two friends today. Wasn’t the speediest run – covered 8.43km in roughly an hour – but had Spud in the stroller. I got a break for a little while when Jenn offered to take over. It was very much appreciated!
2. THE BAD: my hip flexor still hurts. And, really, I’m not surprised since I’ve done nothing to help myself. I really need to get off my ass start stretch and strength exercises. I need to work on my core too. I know my posture is atrocious if I’m pushing Spud. Good thing New Year’s resolutions are coming up!
3. THE UGLY: I have to go to work tonight. Night crew. 10:30pm – 7am. I work for a large sporting goods retailer as sales support. That means I get to help with Boxing Day ad prep and set up (I get to work Boxing Day too).
Almost Wordless Wednesday: Holiday Stress Edition
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| How’s your run-up to the holidays going? |
I Am A Runner – Video
Can’t for the life of me figure out how to get this to embed from Facebook… I liked the tri video, but as a marathoner I can appreciate this one more!
“How far did you run?”
“Just 15 miles today. My long run is not until Saturday.”
Canyon Lights At Capilano Suspension Bridge
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| The bridge – it’s covered in LED lights. |
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| Fish pond – the lanterns changed colour. |
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| Raindrops. |
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| I’d call it artistic, but really I just can’t keep my camera still on a moving platform. |
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| Nothing says “Christmas in CANADA” like dressing the Mountie bear like Santa. |
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| Colin and I laughed ourselves stupid over this one – I refuse to make any comments, but you’re welcome to. |
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| Proof we were there. |
You Deal With Cold, I Deal With Rain
I am very fortunate that I do not have to deal with winter very often. Here in Vancouver the season usually looks like this:
rain
rain
rain
rain
snow – everybody freak out that winter has arrived/city shut down! We’re kind of a pathetic mess…
rain – oh, got snow tires for nothing…
rain
rain
rain
So, while I don’t have to deal with feet of snow (try a skiff) and extremely cold temperatures (maybe 0 C), I do have to deal with RAIN! And there was plenty of it today. I had scheduled a run with my friend Lindsay and she came over at noon. She didn’t have her little guy with her, but I had Spud so he was bundled up ready to go. When I looked out the window it was only drizzling. By the time we got outside to meet up it was pouring. On went the rain cover and then we were off. I had thought that we were maybe in a pocket of rain, but no. It poured the whole time. I’m not sure when Spud fell asleep, but he was out for about half the run. At about 4km I stopped caring about the wheel spray and puddles and just let my shoes get wet. They’re now stuffed with newspaper in the hopes that they’ll be dry tomorrow… In total we ran 11.38km in 1:28. Not fast by any means, but I was pushing 60+lbs and we walked up a decent hill close to the end. Despite the weather it was actually a really good run. We haven’t been running together for very long so we’re still in a getting-to-know-you stage and we had lots to talk about. It was great to have the commitment as I don’t really think that I’d get out the door (especially with a 3 year old) if I didn’t have someone depending on me!
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| Soaking wet once we got home – you can kind of see the difference in colours on my jacket. |
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| Nice hair! You can see from my two-tone shirt that my jacket lost all of its DWR/water resistant capabilities on this run! |
TMB Is A Genius!
I have been trying for a while to come up with a coherent post about my fear of getting faster. It’s not really that I’m scared – I’m just very reluctant to remove the “slow” and “back of the pack” labels from myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m nowhere near being considered fast. I still run a 6 minute kilometre (10ish min/mile) on my steady runs. However, I am faster than I used to be. So when I saw TMB’s post today over at Racing With Babes I thought, “She totally nailed it on the head.”
Three Things Thursday
1. I have jumped on another social media bandwagon. No, not Twitter. I think I’ll stay far, far away from that one…
I have to say that the power of suggestion is strong in the blogosphere. Quite a few of the blogs I read have been promoting the Endurance Athlete Project. Essentially it’s Facebook for the physically fit! I’m actually kind of excited about it. I don’t follow a lot of blogs on their fb profiles simply because it made my regular fb too much. However, this makes it a little easier. My only problem is that starting out I’ll have to be the cyber-stalker making all the friend requests… We’ll see how it goes.
2. I went for one cold, rainy run today. Nothing like being committed to a run with a running partner. We seemed to hit the worst rain of the day – total downpour and windy. My DWR jacket had nothing on the rain. I think the only part of me that was dry was my stomach – it was shielded a bit by the stroller. Of course it’s beautiful sunny breaks now…
3. My hip flexor is dumb. I had severe hip flexor pain during my marathon (not that I knew what it was then, just that I couldn’t lift my legs) and it’s started to act up again. I don’t know if it’s from pushing the stroller and being out of alignment or from running faster. I haven’t really upped my distance lately – the longest I’ve run is about 15km. All I know is that I have to start doing Colin’s physio strength and stretch exercises. ERGH!!! I’m so bad with doing workouts at home… obviously I’ll have to add them onto the core work I’m also supposed to be doing. Hello, New Year’s resolution!
Nothing To Do With Running (This Is Where I Live…)
Here are a couple of videos of Vancouver so you can see what it’s like where I live. Enjoy!
The first is a time-lapse of the Winter Olympics this past February. It’s not that busy here all the time!
The second is by the same people and I just think it’s pretty cool. The fog was a totally random weather occurrence – at least it was beautiful from up above… We were all living in pea soup at ground level!
What does it look like where you live?
Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner…
Sorry for the announcement late in the day – I just got home from work and remembered that I had intended to select the winner this morning. After inputing all the entries into a spreadsheet (necessitated by the two ballots for being a follower) I punched the grand total of entries into random.org. Here’s the winning number:
Congratulations to:
Three Things Thursday
1. I just had my first Christmas orange. By this I mean a mandarin orange. And I must specify that it was a Japanese mandarin. Stores might try to entice you to buy the Chinese mandarins – they’re usually cheaper – but they just don’t compare! This is a big thing in my household – once we’ve started getting oranges (by the boxful, of course) we know Christmas is just around the corner. Spud was excited to try it with me, but once it was in the bowl he turned up his nose, which I was fully expecting. He deigned to suck some juice out of a piece, but that was it… I love these oranges since it’s a tradition that Santa leaves one in the bottom of our stockings. On Colin’s request Santa leaves his to cool in the fridge.
Why Would Anyone NOT Want To Enter A Contest?
Because they don’t know about it.
Money For Christmas Presents! *Contest*
It’s Black Friday! Time to start (or finish) your Christmas shopping! To help you out I’m hosting a contest from CSN Stores! They’re letting me give away a $35 gift certificate redeemable at ANY of their sites.* Whether you’re looking for coffee tables or something to put on them they have what you’re looking for. They even guarantee delivery to the US by Christmas Eve for any item that’s marked with a snowflake!
To enter:
Mandatory: Browse around CSN, then come back and tell me what you’d buy – it can be a Christmas present to yourself or, if you’re feeling generous, for someone else. (+1)
Extras:
Be or become a follower of my blog and comment to let me know. (+2)
Leave me a comment telling me that you’ve linked this giveaway to your blog. (+1)
Contest will end Friday 3 December at 11:59pm PST. Entries will be put into a spreadsheet and the winner will be chosen by random.org. I will announce the winner’s name on Saturday 4 December.
*Shipping costs are NOT included.
Love My Runners 
