Ran a half-marathon

So, I successfully completed the Canadian Derby Half-Marathon, with a gun time of 1:53:07 (chip time was 1:52:45). I'm really thrilled to have done so well - I completed a Runkeeper FitnessClass with a target finish time of 2:30, so I'm pretty stoked to have finished in well under 2 hours!

Now I'm not sure what the next goal should be. I picked up a FitBit, so I might set a goal using that tool as a metric.

Finished the 5k!

My wife and I ran the 5k, and I made it a point of running side-by-side with her the whole way, even though I probably could have raced ahead quite a bit. She seemed to enjoy herself, and the kids loved the pancake breakfast!

Oddly enough the race was held at the same time and location as Edmonton's Toy & Collectible show, so my little guy got to have his picture taken with Darth Vader!

Next race

Ok, this blog has been dormant for a long time. I guess I'll resurrect it by pointing out that I'm signed up for the St. Patrick's day run on March 20th. It'll probably be slower than anything I've ever ran, mostly because I'm going to run side-by-side with my beautiful wife. It's her first race, and I'm incredibly proud of her for taking up running, so I want to be right with her the whole way to keep her encouraged and motivated.

Having shared activities really is wonderful, and it's rare that we get to run together.

Finished the race in great time!

I finished the Little Big Run in 51:47, far better than my original goal of 60 minutes. It was a huge rush actually completing a race, and it feels even better to do so with a good time.

Registered for a race!

I'm now registered for the 10k "Little Big Run" due to be held on May 30, 2010. I've never run a race before, but I'm confident I'll meet my objectives:

1. Finish the race in under an hour.
   
2. Do so upright, and with a smile.

Simple goals, but those are the best ones to work toward. Wish me luck!

Pedestrian transportation

I went for a run this evening. Including warm-up and cool-down, I covered 7 kilometres. That's a bit longer than my usual running loop (6.2k) but nothing too extreme. What made this run different, though, was that it was done for transport instead of pure exercise.

Instead of just running for running's sake, which is fun enough, I had a few errands to run. I needed to pick up a cheque, then to go to the bank to deposit it, and then I had to return home. In a past life I would have driven to run that errand. It would have taken about 25 minutes, and I wouldn't have got any physical benefit in the process. By running to get everything done, I managed to move my body to where it needed to be (transport) and get some solid exercise at the same time.

A few months back I was working in Regina for a few days. At the end of my trip I needed to get to the airport for a flight home. Realizing that I had a few hours to kill before the flight left, I walked from downtown to the airport. Total walking distance: about 4.25k. Total time: about an hour at a leisurely pace. When I got home I mentioned this to my coworkers, who promptly decided I was insane. What kind of a world do we live in where going for a walk for an hour is insanity?

Much of North America is wrapped up in a very rigid mindset regarding transportation. Rather than blindly following the herd, why not walk, run, or bike to your destinations instead of taking a car? You'll feel better about it, and as long as the distance isn't huge, it probably won't take a lot longer. It'll save you the time in the gym, and having a few people think you're insane probably isn't a bad thing.

A goal for 2010

I'm not sure if it was a wise or foolish move or not, but I just committed to a couple of colleagues that I'd log 1000km running in 2010. That's about a 5-6k run every two days. My runs will get logged to Runkeeper and will be accessible at my public user page and in my Twitter stream.

Wish me luck!

Still around, still working out...

Santa was very kind to our family this year, giving us a Nintendo Wii! As part of the package, I bought a 'game' called My Fitness Coach, which is basically an interactive workout DVD. Until it gets warm enough to run outdoors, that'll be my workout routine. I considered getting Wii Fit, but it was $100 (versus $20 for My Fitness Coach) and it struck me as more of a toy than a real workout.

On a side note, I've ditched Nike+ for tracking my runs. Runkeeper does everything Nike+ did, only better - especially now that it allows easy tracking of indoor runs on a treadmill!

Need to find a treadmill...

The city I live in has recently spiraled into a winter deep freeze, making it pretty much impossible to go for a winter run without slipping on the ice or losing a limb to frostbite. Running in the evenings came naturally to me over the summer, but I've got to find a way to fit running into my schedule for the winter months. Any suggestions?

I have been keeping up on the lifetime fitness ladder daily and am now up to rung 37, so it's not like I've been a total sloth through the winter months.

Cooler weather running

It's getting colder around here, but I'm committed to keep running outside as long as I can. I've switched from shorts to sweatpants, and my super-technical (read: $10 cotton) running T-shirt has been supplemented by a fleece jacket. Light gloves have been added to my repertoire as well.

I'm really not sure what I'll do once the snow hits the ground - running on slippery sidewalks doesn't strike me as a really good idea. That said, the city does a pretty good job of keeping the sidewalks and pathways clear, so it might actually be a doable proposition. As an added plus, running in cold weather burns extra calories - on top of the running itself, my body will have to burn off some fat just to keep warm!

Another day, another run...

Back home and I headed out for an afternoon on this chilly Sunday afternoon. It felt great to enjoy the crisp fall air fill my lungs while I listened to the repetitive thump-thump-thump of my runners on the concrete.

It constantly amazes me that I can go out and run for over 45 minutes and over 7k (with about 1k devoted to warm-up and cool-down), when it seemed challenging to just go for 20 minutes straight a few months ago.

You can check out the run on Runkeeper here.

Working in Calgary this week, still running!

I'm working in Calgary this week, but that hasn't stopped me from running! I headed out last night for a sunset run along the Bow River - the run can be found on Runkeeper here. At 7.15k, this is my longest run yet... the GPS in my iPhone was a little screwy around the downtown towers, though, so I'm not sure if that's totally accurate. Should be pretty close, though.

Today is a scheduled rest day, but I might be joining some colleagues for a volleyball game tonight. I haven't played since junior high, so I'm fairly certain I'll embarrass myself!

Back to 100%

Wow, I went for a run last night and it feels like I'm totally up to my previous level of running fitness. I was worried that my fitness level would have dropped after being sick for a few weeks, but apparently the human body is pretty good at bouncing back from illness.

My run last night, which you can see in Runkeeper here was for 6.45k (including warmup/cooldown), so about 5.5k of actual running. My eventual goal is to compete in a 5k race, but there aren't really a whole lot of them until the spring. I suppose I could just work on my endurance a bit and aim for a 10k instead!

Mostly healthy, back running

After a few weeks of fighting off some sort of virus-based cold/flu thing, I finally managed to get back to running last night. My run, viewable via Runkeeper here wasn't that long - only about 25 minutes running, and about 5.3km total (including warmup/cooldown), but it felt like a huge accomplishment to get back "in the saddle" after being on my butt for a few weeks.

I'm going to do my best to get back into a schedule of running every other day. It's getting colder now so it's getting harder to run outdoors, and I'm not a huge fan of running on the treadmill. Time to get some winter running clothing, I think.

Downtime... stupid colds...

I really love my kids, but this time of year they morph into festering germ-pods, ready to infect me (the noble parent) with whatever variety of illness the kids are playing with nowadays.

One of my children gave me a nasty cold, and I've been down for the count for a few days now. It's not so much the stuffed nose and coughing - I can deal with that - it's the fatigue! I've never felt so drained. Hopefully within a few more days I'll be able to get healthy again.

I've still kept up with the Hacker's Diet exercises each morning, even though they've felt a lot more challenging lately because of the cold. My goal for the next few weeks is to establish a routine of running on the treadmill at the gym, and hopefully I'll still squeeze in some outdoor runs before it gets too cold out.

The perils of Thanksgiving

This past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada, and we went to visit the inlaws in Saskatoon. Despite being out of town and having plenty of other people around the house, I managed to fit in a couple of runs while there, upping my distance to 6.48k and 6.72k respectively (links are to the Runkeeper activity pages for those runs.

I'm quite pleased to see some of the updates to Runkeeper - it now allows selective map sharing for activities, which is a feature that I requested a while ago. It allows me to share my runs via the web, but lets me limit which maps are viewable. I'd rather not share my exact address with the world, and sharing a GPS map of my runs would do just that - as with most runners, the start and end points of my runs are at my house.

Runkeeper now has a publicly-viewable dashboard for each user, which is a pretty useful feature.

The bad news is that the combination of turkey, wine, and desserts added four pounds to my waistline in three days. I know that only some of that weight gain is 'real' - a lot of it is just the normal day-to-day variation in weight - but I need to cut down for the next week to bring my weight back to target. Nothing dramatic, just a few calories cut here and there.

I have some commitments that prevent me from running today, but I'll definitely hit the pavement tomorrow.

Blog neglect

At the same time that I've neglected running for the past week, I've neglected this blog.

I'm still alive, and I'm still doing rung 36 of the lifetime fitness ladder every morning (545 steps running in place, 70 jumping jacks, 49 forward bends, 39 sit-ups, 56 prone lifts, and 30 pushups) along with around 60 reps of some bicep curls.

I'll be hitting the pavement for a run today, and am hoping that I haven't lost any cardiovascular ability in the week I haven't ran... Now that I've completed the C25k program, I'm looking for a new challenge to work toward. Perhaps a 5k-to-10k transition. I'd love to run a 5k race, but I've missed the boat for this fall season - I'll definitely be entering one in the spring!

Back running, completed C25k

My last C25k run (week 9, day 3 - 30min of non-stop running) was completed yesterday, and I had the privilege of running with public service blogger and colleague Nick Charney. Nick's an inspiration for me professionally as he is amazingly nimble at navigating the bureaucracy where we work, but he's also an inspiration on the fitness side of things - he recently completed a half-marathon and has only been running for four months or so!

The run itself consisted of a few laps around a nearby urban lake, totalling 5.29k. At about 4.2k, my phone rang and I had to take the call. I forgot that Runkeeper pauses its recording if a phone call is answered, and forgot to restart it afterward, so the last seven minutes or so of the run didn't get mapped.

After about 10 days of not running at all, it felt great to get outdoors again. Summer's gone and winter is upon us... I'll have to get some better running clothes for cold weather - the sweat pants and hoodie worked well enough yesterday, but they won't be that helpful once the snow flies.

Downtime

I'm currently resting and recovering for a few days, so I won't be blogging much about my fitness progress. For the time being I'm going to be a couch potato and enjoy it for a little bit.

I should be back up and running by the first week of October.

The final week!

It really doesn't feel like it's been 9 weeks since I started this whole running thing, but I'm already on the last week of C25k. Of course, there had to be a hurdle in the way - I'm going to have to take a break from exercise starting in a few days (medical reasons) but I'm hoping to be back up and running (literally) within about 10 days or so.

In the meantime my exercise will consist of sitting on the couch, watching movies, reading books, and playing video games. Given the choice, I actually would prefer heading outside and running!