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5km…But Not Really

9 Oct

I participated in the Run For the Cure this past Sunday. It is a 5km run/1km walk to raise money for breast cancer research.

Here is a link to the site:

http://www.runforthecure.com/site/PageServer?pagename=run_homepage_13

$27 million was raised nationally at this year’s Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure, how amazing is that?! 😀

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCz–fWSGl8

There are runs all over the country and while I can’t speak for the runs in other locations I can tell you the one I went to is fun! fun! fun! 😀

It’s only a 5km run so nothing impressive to brag about, especially since so many of the blogs I read that are by people who are also working to get into better shape show they are training and running full marathons – that’s 42 km! (26.2 miles) How is that even possible?! *shakes head in wonder*

While at this run I saw:

– multiple dogs wearing pink tutus

– lots of pink feather boas, pink wigs, basically pink everything lol

– a cheerleading squad along the route chanting we are “G-R-E-A-T…Grrrreat!”

– men, women and children all coming together to support a totally worthy cause

I would have liked to attempt running the entire route but I was with a friend and we ended up alternating between jogging and walking…mostly walking. Ah well. I used my Runtastic App to track us so we’d know exactly how long we took and realized that not only would it track our speed but it would map the route we took so I can go back another day and run the route again, see if I can do it. Yay!

When we were done I took a look to see our time and discovered that the route was actually only 3.49km, I feel jipped. 😦 I’m not sure how a route that is officially supposed to be 5km measured out at only 3.49km, not like we missed a turn somewhere…The shorter distance makes me want to redo the route even more so I can measure it again, see if it was a glitch with my App that time, I can’t think of what else it would be…

I know this run doesn’t have the seriousness of a full marathon, it is meant to be a stress free enjoyable experience. There is no pressure to be first (that I was aware of anyways), there isn’t even a big clock at the end to tell you how long you were (there was two years ago when I participated, but not this year). I can’t say for sure how this run compares to a full marathon since I have never been in one of those but I know if you are looking for an event that involves getting out, having fun, raising money for a good cause and being active this is a good one to start with.

Participating in this has made me think that maybe I could train to do a longer run, not a full marathon, lets not go crazy or anything, but maybe a half marathon? Or a quarter marathon, is there such a thing? I feel that if there isn’t there should be! 😉 lol

And in a move that is sure to go down in blogging history (dramatic much? lol) I, for the first time ev-ah!  am putting a pic of me in a post…well, of a side of my face anyways lol to show you the face painting I had done before the run started. I enjoyed having it but I had to go to work after the run and lemme tell ya, gold glitter does not like to come off my face with ease! I was glittery the whole rest of the day *rolls eyes* lol

Yes it is my face, horrendously close up, eek! But how else can I show off the face painting?

Yes it is my face, horrendously close up, eek! But how else can I show off the face painting?

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Almost Within Our Grasp

12 Jul

I put off writing this because I didn’t want it to turn in to a rant, or a post with a lot of swearing lol Last weekend my dragon boat team raced in Nanaimo, BC. It was my first time racing in that particular festival, also my first time visiting Nanaimo. The festival was great (for the most part), and while I didn’t see much of the city the area I was in seemed to be filled with the nicest people ever! Seriously. Ever! 🙂

the boats all tied up waiting for race day

the boats all tied up waiting for race day

Since Nanaimo is on Vancouver Island we all went over at varying times Friday. I had the day off, as did some others, so we went on the mid day ferry and had lots of time to explore the race set up, bits of the city, and take the littlest boat ever to Protection Island where we ate at a floating pub called The Dinghy Dock Pub…oh, and drank, there was definite drinking involved lol 😉

Saturday our first race was early, ugh, we had a great race! Came in second place, with a time of 2:09 (I can’t remember the milliseconds, oops!). The water conditions were nothing like what I am used to. There were water planes landing alongside the race lanes plus a high level of wind plus in general just choppier waters so the waters were nowhere near as calm as what I practice and usually race in. Despite being in the outside lane (which means being farthest away from the race master and unable to hear what he was saying, and closest to the landing planes) we rocked it! 😀 It was definitely a race to be proud of, and we were!

The wind picked up so much by lunchtime that the second set of races for the day had to be cancelled due to safety concerns, sucky! I mean, we all understood but at the same time we reeeeeally wanted to race, we had such great momentum built up from that first race ya know?

We ended up hanging by the pool at the hotel then almost all of us went to Protection Island for visit number 2 at The Dinghy Dock Pub…to be fair, for most of them this was their first visit there lol. After dinner we went back to the hotel where we took part in a Jell-o shooter contest, oh and played Battleshots (think of the game Battleship, only the boats are large enough to hold shot glasses…wait for the awesomeness of this game to fully sink in to your head, yup, there ya go, *nods* 😉 ). Basically, general partying ensued.

Battleshots! Girls vs Guys, and oh yah! Girls won! wOOt! :)

Battleshots! Girls vs Guys, and oh yah! Girls won! wOOt! 🙂

Hey what can I say, dragon boaters practice hard, race hard, and party hard! lol

Sunday…hmm…Sunday is where the not so great part of the festival happened…

Our first race on Sunday was amazing! So great! We shaved off a second from our race time, we came in at 2:08, second place, this meant dun-dun-dunnnn we qualified for the medal races in Diamond Division! Oh yah babeeeee! 😀

Now, two of our paddlers had to leave early so we found two subs to take their places. This, for anybody who doesn’t know dragon boating, is normal practice. I have known boats at race festivals who had so many paddlers missing that over half the boat was filled with subs from higher ranking teams and they won medals because they basically stacked their boat. We were not looking to stack the boat, we were just two short, and are used to being in festivals where you can borrow paddlers. Our captain got two paddlers from a lower ranking team and voila we were covered!

Welllll, not so much, sigh. A person who I will do my best to not call a mean name decided to file an official complaint against our team for having people in our boat who were not on the roster. We didn’t know this till after we raced tho so picture this…We race our final race of the day, this is for the medal, everything counts! We gave it everything we had, we paddled hard, we came in third place, bronze! We won bronze! We were neck and neck with the boat that came in second place, we were apart by mere milliseconds! Milliseconds! Epic! We knew we won the bronze medal so we are cheering, full of adrenaline, totally stoked as we pull in to the dock, and that is where it ended…an official wouldn’t let us out of our boat, came over, explained about the complaint, blathered on about people in our boat who weren’t on the roster, and for me anyways, just kept talking while I sat stunned, soaking in what he was saying, wanting to shake my head and yell no and stomp my feet and cry, I knew the medal was gone, all that work, all those practices, putting everything we had in to that final race, and none of it mattered because one person was able to yank it away.

We were allowed to argue our side, our captain and our caller went and spoke with some of the officials while the rest of us stood in a group discussing, worrying, plotting revenge…in the end it didn’t matter. Turns out there was a rule for this festival about who can sub in for teams and we accidentally got subs who were not allowed. If the complaint hadn’t been lodged the officials would not have punished us, people had been getting subs for their teams all festival, it is one of those technicalities that is over looked by officials buuuuut if someone complains then the officials have to investigate and enforce the rules. They took our medal and get this, it got given to the team that had the lady on it that filed the complaint!…no bias there huh? What makes it worse is they were ridiculously slow in that race,  6 seconds behind us! Fyi, 6 seconds in a dragon boat race is huuuuge! It’d be one thing if it had been a close race, but we were so obviously better than them and yet, they got our medal! Grr!

The officials didn’t completely disqualify us, even though we didn’t get our medal we didn’t lose our placement within the festival, we ranked 11th out of 80 teams which is awesome! We just don’t have the medal to show off to people…I’m trying to not let this bother me overly much…

What gets me is, how can they be proud of their bronze medal? They didn’t earn it, they don’t have a race time that is deserving of it, they got it by complaining…I wouldn’t want a medal gotten that way. If I had gotten a medal that way I wouldn’t be telling anybody about it because I wouldn’t have earned it, why would anybody want a medal they didn’t earn?? *confused face*

After all that happened, not gonna lie, put a bit of a downer on the rest of the day, we went out to a pub (not the floating one) for dinner as a team, played some pool, basically we were trying to force ourselves to start putting the whole thing behind us, which I think was a good way to handle it. If we had all just gone our separate ways we’d all of individually stewed about it, this way, we talked about it a bit, decided how we would get revenge, and then helped distract each other from what happened. Team work! lol

Something kinda awesome happened on the ferry ride back to the mainland…a lady from a team I’ve never heard of, a lady who didn’t know us, had heard what happened, she came over to the group of us that were travelling back on that particular ferry together and she said she was impressed with how well we were handling things, she said it is was unfortunate that some people feel the need to be like “that lady who complained”, and said some other stuff about her being a poor sport an stuff. It felt good knowing that people who don’t even know our team, but who heard the story, think what happened was crap.

We almost had a medal, we were so close we could taste it, I swear I could already feel it hanging around my neck, but then, in a blink of an eye, it was gone. 😦 Even though it was taken away, I still feel as if we earned it. We had a race time that shows we earned it, and despite the disgrace of being stripped of our medal I am proud.

Proud of my team for racing so well that entire weekend.

Proud of my team for having race times that qualified us to race for medals.

Proud of my team for winning the Bronze medal in the Diamond Division (that is the second highest division in that festival).

Proud of how well we handled the drama of the medal being stripped.

Most of all, I am proud that since that festival we have had strong, solid practices, we have worked hard, we will work even harder next week, and then we will race in our next festival and we will be awesome! We will have fun! We will race hard! We will race smart! We will be a team to be reckoned with! (insert warrior cry here!) 😀

And that lady? She will be nothing to us but a story, a person to mock and pity because she is so unhappy in her life she has to go out of her way to try to ruin things for others. But ya know what? She didn’t ruin things. We are even more united as a team now, we are stronger, we have each others backs and what does she have? A medal that she can’t even feel proud of.

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New Gear!

26 Jun

I am a girl, this means I love to shop! Don’t go saying I am being sexist, it’s practically written in to my DNA, just like my love of chocolate and ice cream. 😛

Here’s where I veer a bit off the so called “normal” girl path. Sure, I get happy buying fun things to wear but I get waaaaay psyched when buying new workout gear! I think because work out gear is usually fairly pricey, I can’t afford to buy it all that often, and really, how often do you neeeeed to buy it? No point in buying a new pair of runners when the ones you have are still in good shape. No point in buying more work out clothes when you have enough to get you through the week and they still fit. No point in buying more work out equipment when you have nowhere to put it and again, no money to be able to afford it lol.

Which means buying new gear, any type of new gear is a major treat in my world, and something I really look forward to!

Today I got to buy shoes, *happy girly sigh* and yes, that is pluralized. Shoooooooes! 😀

The first pair look like…

New Dragon Boat shoes!

New Dragon Boat shoes!

They are strictly for dragon boating, suuuuuper strictly! I get to break em in tomorrow at practice and am so looking forward to it!

I have been wanting new shoes for dragon boating all season but couldn’t justify the expense. In the cold months I wear an old pair of converse sneakers that take forever to dry but are old so I sacrifice them to the nasty water and in the warmer months I wear flip flops from WalMart that cost a whopping $3. I figure if I lose them to the water no big loss money wise. The flip flops aren’t great to wear during warm up but I’ve been able to make em work. That all ended yesterday!

We have upped the intensity of our warm ups (in addition to some other changes) in an effort to shave a couple seconds off our race times. (We came in fourth in our division at the big dragon boat festival this past weekend…sooooooo close! arg!) so now part of our warm up is running. That’s right. Running. ugh. Like I don’t do that enough as is I now have to run in a pack before hopping on to the boat. *rolls eyes* Could be worse though, right? And hey, I’m totally all in when it comes to doing my part for helping our team get a better time…even if I do bitch a bit lol

Thing is, I have tried running in my flip flops, it doesn’t go well which means I need an actual shoe. I took my normal work out runners yesterday but between finishing warm up and going to the boat there isn’t enough time to put my runners in to a locker and no way do I want them exposed to the nasty water that splashes over the side of the boat (although they did come in the boat yesterday) which led me to shoe shopping! Gotta love the wind-ey logic that got me in to the store don’t ya? 😉

The shoes are made by Skechers, are all mesh which means quick dry, wOOt! and the bottoms have a nice good grip which hopefully will do its job when I am running…tomorrow will tell! 🙂

The second pair were not an intended purchase, I swear I only meant to look, maaaaaybe try on but not buy! Buuuut, I am weak, and I bought, eek! *hangs head in shame*

The second pair look like…

My new running shoes! Treadmill here I come!

My new running shoes! Treadmill here I come!

These shoes are made by Adidas, and are meant for running, indoor treadmill running to be specific. To be fair, I am sure they would be perfectly fine running on a smooth trail but the most outside wear they will get will be when I am walking/running to the gym and back lol. They have these holes on the side of the tread that allow for ventilation that will apparently help my feet stay cool, I’ll reserve judgement on that till I actually use them lol.

I have needed new running shoes for a while, mine have had stress lines on the tread for ages which means they are dead but going back to the whole money thing, I couldn’t afford a new pair so I’ve been making do with my old ones. These were on sale and honestly, once I tried them on I was screwed, I was bouncing around the store in them and abso fell in love with them. I forgot how great new runners feel!

I really wanted to take them directly to the gym to give em a go on the treadmill but my knee has been killing me all day and since it was hurting just to walk running was not in the cards today, sigh. But hey, there is always tomorrow! 🙂

So there we have it, my new shoes, both lovely pairs, I can’t wait to put them to the test! 😀

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What’s In My Head

21 Jun

Don’t wait for tomorrow to reach farther, run faster, fight harder.

Push and reach those goals today so tomorrow you can do even better.

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Rest Time Is Over!

4 Jun

Last Wednesday I managed to hurt my foot, this meant I now had a sore left knee and a very sore right foot. Least my injuries were on opposite sites of the body, so I wasn’t unbalanced! lol

I gave myself a bit of a resting period after I finished my 30 Day Challenges so my knee could recover, and also so my foot could recover from the heavy stuff that fell on it *rolls eyes at myself*

Today was the official end of the resting period! 😀

I didn’t really think about it when I was getting my gym gear together last night, at most I thought, get the bag packed now so I have no excuse to not take my gym stuff to work and if you feel like going to the gym after work then you can go. See, I have this defect, it is called laziness, I have another defect called “my cat is in charge” so if I go home after work with the idea I will change and head out to the gym, well, it never happens because (1) I end up sitting down and then I am comfy and no way in hell are you dragging my lazy ass out of my comfy living room chair after a day at work and (2) the cat gives me sad eyes because he’s been alone all day and I feel bad so I end up cuddling him then he is comfy and sleeping on my lap and in my world you don’t disturb a sleeping cat. The cat has me well trained lol. 😛

If I have any intention at all of exercising after work I can NOT go home! Sad but true.

I have been known to take my gym gear then say “screw it, I’m too tired” at the end of the day and just go home but generally that is when I am running on 3 hours or less of sleep so I don’t feel so bad when that happens lol

Today however, when I was at work, I made a decision. Not an exercising decision, a food decision. See, at work, whoever does the morning shift (sundays and mondays that is yours truly) does the baking for the breakfast that gets laid out buffet style. It is little muffins, pastries, croissants. They are killer. They are all empty carbs, full of refined sugar, no redeeming nutritional value to any of them, but they taste so freakin good! lol The croissants are my weak point. They are small croissants so you don’t feel as guilty eating them, but just cause they are small doesn’t mean they aren’t wicked bad for you right? Right!

Normally I nibble. That’s right, I nibble! So sue me! If I accidentally decapitate a muffin when taking it out of the tray I eat it so it doesn’t get thrown out and wasted (like how I can justify it? lol), when I’m plating the croissants I “accidentally” put one on a plate for me…then, if there are croissants left over at the end of breakfast I more often than not swipe one, or two…so in case you aren’t doing the math, that is a potential 3 mini croissants in one morning! That is on top of the toast I make myself…which great, right? even more freakin useless carbs, *groan* Not a good way to start the day!

Today, for some reason I decided to not eat any of the breakfast baking. I still had the toast cause it was either eat toast or have no breakfast at all and I figured the toast was better then starvation lol but the pastries? the mini muffins? the mini croissants? Nope, I’m good thanks. 🙂

Oddly enough, what I kept leaning on when I was tempted to grab something was that I had completed the 30 Day Challenges. Those sucked at time but I finished them, didn’t cheat, didn’t skimp out on anything, I got all the way through and if I could handle all those squats and all that ab work for 30 days surely I could manage one day of not eating the bakery items?

I found myself walking towards them a couple times out of habit but when I realized where I was aimed I turned and went somewhere else, luckily there is a lot to do at work so I could always find something to distract me.

And guess what? I made it through the day without touching a single item from that breakfast display and when the day was over I felt a little bit stronger for that. Not so much for holding out but for making the healthier choice. For putting my goal of eating healthy and getting in shape ahead of the instant satisfaction of something tasty. By not caving in with the breakfast goodies it made it that much easier to choose to go to the gym after work. I was tired, kinda didn’t want to go, was coming up with all kinds of reasons to skip it but lo and behold I ended up at they gym and well hey, once you’re there you can’t turn around and leave, you’d just look stupid if you did that lol 😛

The gym however almost killed me. lol. Not the working out part, although I did push myself on the cardio, but the gym itself was an oven, the air conditioning is broken so as soon as you step in to the gym you are hit with a blast of heat that doesn’t let up the entire time you are there. Oy! You could easily have started to sweat just from being in there, wouldn’t even have to do anything to work up the sweat!

Well whatever right? I got changed and headed to the treadmill. I had such a (surprisingly) good run just a bit before I hurt my foot I was feeling super optimistic about todays run and almost decided to set it for 45 minutes. The only reason I didn’t was I was parked in a one hour only zone and wanted time after my run to stretch out soooooo 30 minutes it was! I am so grateful I set it for only 30 minutes! I was running at a decent pace (for me), but by the last ten minutes I was doing that deep, slightly louder breathing and it just kept getting louder the longer I ran. Also grateful no one was on the treadmill near me lol Part of my brain was saying “stop! for the love of all that is holy just stop! you don’t have to tell anyone, it’ll be ok, you can’t take anymore!” but this little voice in my head was whispering “you can do this, you have done this and more in the past, you ate well today, you have the fuel in you, just keep going, prove to yourself you can finish, don’t quit” the “don’t quit” voice was no where near as loud as the desperate wheezing pleading voice that wanted me to stop but I clung to it, repeated over and over “I can do this!” in my head and what do you know, I did it! I ran for 30 minutes, on a random hill program, at a speed of 5, level 4, with inclines ranging from 0-5 and not once did I stop. *puffs up with a bit of pride* I know I used to do way better before, was on a higher level, doing intervals, running at a base speed that was faster then the speed I did today, with higher inclines but instead of dwelling on how I did so much more and did it so much better last summer when I was more consistent with my running training I am going to be happy at what I accomplished today. Getting back to the shape I was in last summer doesn’t mean starting at the levels I left off at last summer, it means starting a little lower down and earning my way back to where I was.

I went and stretched then headed to the locker room where I shocked myself silly when I looked in the mirror! lol Imagine a sunburn, the worst face sunburn you have ever seen, the pinkest, the reddest, the brightest, now times that by 100 (cause I am a redhead and super pale and burn worse than other people) and that was my face! I kid you not! I was soooooooooo red! lol It was quite embarrassing actually, I made sure to keep my head down while I was walking out of the gym and to my suv. I go quite red when doing cardio anyways, but the combo of the cardio, plus the over heated gym, plus the treadmill was radiating heat (not even kidding! when I stopped I realized blasts of heat were coming from the lower part of the machine and hitting me full body) I guess my poor skin just couldn’t take it and it turned me in to a tomato! A highly unattractive tomato! lol I am so not attractive when I work out and going red really doesn’t make it any better, *sigh* No wonder when I was done running I was a bit unbalanced if I was that over heated!

Ah well, who cares if I get a red face right? Just means I worked hard, I earned that red face dammit! Well, partially earned it and partially got cooked in a room with no air conditioning lol 😛

tomato running on a treadmill, aka me at the gym today

tomato running on a treadmill, aka me at the gym today

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Thank You My Friend

29 May

I have been all kinds of lazy today, I did my volunteer work, bought take out when it was over, came home, ate way too much food, and then sat with the cat on my lap watching tv feeling gross. I felt gross in part because I ate too much, I ate take out, and I hadn’t done anything activity wise. Not shocking I didn’t feel well!

I still had to do my ab and squat work for my 30 Day Challenges but couldn’t work up the gumption for it. I needed help so I turned to facebook.

I posted a status saying “trying to work up the motivation to go to the gym instead of staying comfy curled up with the cat…could someone kindly come drag my lazy butt to the gym?”

My sister responded with a joke about cuddling burning calories, which while cute, did not help me at all! lol

However, a friend of mine, SL, posted a response encouraging me to go to the gym, reminding me there is still lots of time left in the evening so I can relax when I get home from the gym and I’ll feel so much better after I go and work out.

She was so Right!!

it's always good to have a friend that'll give you the push you need

it’s always good to have a friend that’ll give you the push you need

Thing is, I know that, you know that, we all know that. We know we’ll feel better after doing something active, we know we will still have time to relax after carving out time for a workout, we know working out is the right choice. Just because I know something though doesn’t mean I can always make the right decision on my own. Today, I needed help.

I don’t know why I had no motivation today, I just know I didn’t have any. I needed someone else to help me get to the gym, and thank goodness for SL. Thank You SL!! 🙂

I started with what I thought was going to be my lazy-day workout. I ran a 20 minute jog and while yes, I know I should have run for 30 minutes I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to make it to 20 minutes. Surprise to me when I not only ran the entire 20 minutes but felt good while running and knew I could for sure have done the 30 minutes if that was what I had programmed in to the treadmill. Next time I will run the 30 minutes. Then I went and did upper body weight work, something I always enjoy, oddly enough.

When I got home from the gym I did my squats and my ab exercises from the 30 Day Challenges then found I had enough energy that instead of going to bed or plopping down in front of the tv I did a whole bunch of stuff around the apartment. 🙂

I may have spent a good chunk of the day feeling lazy and blah but thanks to some motivation from a friend I ended the day feeling good about myself and all I had accomplished. Thank goodness for peeps who have your back!

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