Rubber Ducky 5K

This past week was a hard week, I still have the head cold from he!! and it's been hard to get out and get moving with very little energy.  However, I had the Rubber Ducky 5K that I was doing with a friend and although my original goal had been to run the whole course, I knew by Wednesday that probably wasn't going to happen.

I was volunteering on Saturday morning so my wonderful husband drove into town to pick up our Run Kits for us.  I was very excited when I got home to see this waiting for me!

The t-shirt is a technical t-shirt that wicks moisture which I think is great!  I'm looking forward to wearing it on my walks when in the spring I can go back to wearing just a t-shirt!

On Sunday morning my husband dropped me off at my friends house, at 715am.  I love doing races, but I do hate the fact that they all start so early and because we normally have to drive an hour or more to get to them it means an extra early Sunday morning for us :)

When we arrived at Burnaby Lake the parking lot was already getting full, after using the restrooms we headed over to the starting area where all the tents were set up.  It was a damp foggy morning, and the mist from the fog was already getting us wet, so we were very grateful that the race organizers TRY EVENTS had a warm zone set up for the runners to wait in.  There was a 20x10 tents with walls on three sides with two propane heaters running.  It was so nice!

Before we knew it it was time to go outside and get ready for the warm up.  This is when I realized that I had left my ipod in the car and it was too late to go back for it.  I usually walk/run with music and I know that I move faster with it but oh well.

My friend "L" and I getting ready for warm up.

The Rubber Ducky is a 1/2 Marathon, 1/2 Relay Marathon, 7 miler and 5K run, with a mass start after warm up.   We had tried to stay towards what we thought was the back of the line up but after the warm up was done, I looked around and realized that we were more in the centre of the pack.  I felt bad as I know how important it is to get out of the gate as smoothly as possible and I usually do stay to the back to keep out of the way.  There were quite a few hands on my back as people went around  me but oh well, after a few minutes the crowd thinned out and I felt a little bit better.

The 5K route was around the outer edges of a field and onto a trail.  It was a beautiful trail with the leaves changing color and hard packed gravel which was great, however I did have to stop a couple of times to take stones out of my shoe!  My friend is a faster walker than I am, my running is about the speed of her walking, and I eventually just told her to go on, don't wait for me.  I was able to keep her in sight for most of the way, but I came around a curve in the trail and discovered everyone was far ahead of me.  There was no-one there!

The perks of being slow, you get the whole trail to yourself!

It wasn't long before I started seeing people coming back at me, the 5K route is an out and back.  I found "L" waiting for me at the turn around and we started back together, again after a while I told her to go ahead,  I'd meet her back at the tents.  I was walking and running but I wasn't running very far as I kept coughing so hard.  Eventually I made it back to the end of the trail along the field and I could see the Finish line and the tents, and hear the announcer as he was welcoming people back.

The finish line is in sight! Sort of.

I was very touched when I made it back to the part of the trail that led down to the finishers chute.  "L" was standing there waiting for me!  She didn't want to finish without me and I was very touched that she waited for me.  We walked for a minute and then we ran it in!  I was so happy to have someone to finish with me!  We crossed the line together as we had started and that was a great feeling!

My Garmin time was 55:59, the chip time was 55:22

"L" and I with our finishers medals!

Although I couldn't run the whole distance, I was happy with my time, shaved 3 minutes off of my last TRY Events race.  I have another one in two weeks, so hopefully this head cold will finally be gone and I'll be able to do a lot more running for that one.

It was great to have a friend along for the race today.  It was great to have that support along the trail and to have someone to enjoy it with.  I think I'm going to try to get a bunch of us together for the Santa Shuffle/ Elf Walk in December.  That should be a hoot and a half!

Thankful for so much.

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope that everyone has enjoyed their weekend.

Friday was weigh in day, I was really apprehensive about going to weigh in as I was fairly certain I would be dealing with a gain.  I went to weigh in and was pleasantly surprised to learn that I actually had a loss.  A good loss, I was down 1.9 pounds this week!  Wahoo!  My leader asked me if I had a weight in mind as my goal weight.  I told her I didn't, and she asked me to start thinking about it.

After weigh in, I had a doctors appointment.  It was a follow up appointment to a medication change a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to talk to my doctor about setting a goal weight.  Thankfully he wasn't busy and we had a chance to talk about all manner of things.  We talked about my weight loss to date, and potentially setting a goal weight.  He would like to see where I am weight wise in January when I will have been on WW for a year, before setting a goal weight.  We talked about my blood sugars, which have been great, between 4-6 every day and because they are doing so well, he took me to 1/2 a tablet instead of a full tablet of one of my medications. Yeah!   He also told me I could come off two of my other medications as well!  He told me he was impressed with how I was doing and if I kept it up I would be off of everything before much longer.  

I was so happy with this visit that I had a permanent smile all day long!

I decided on Saturday I had to try to do some intervals, head cold or not as I have the Rubber Ducky 5K next Sunday.  I haven't done any intervals in over a week so after all our usual Saturday morning running around was done off I headed.  I started out strong with my intervals, running for god lengths of time.  I had planned an out and back route, and had mapped it out so I knew where to turn around.

Where I started from across from where I turned around

 I was feeling pretty good up to that point.  I was breathing hard because of my cold but I was feeling pretty good  Until I turned around.  I then had a head wind that was just strong enough to keep stealing my breath away.  I finally decided I had to stop running.   I just couldn't get my breath and had to keep covering my mouth and nose with my hands to get a breath in, I started coughing and was a little worried about triggering an asthma attack, I didn't have my inhaler with me.  Not to self, put inhaler in pocket when leaving the house for intervals!  I was still really happy when I looked at my splits at home.  I actually remembered to push the lap button on my watch when I started and stopped running!  http://connect.garmin.com/activity/389386227

Finally gave up running and walked back!

 Sunday was a beautiful day!  My husband and I packed Angus into the car and headed out to Burnaby Lake so that I could scope out where the Rubber Ducky 5K is being held next week  I was really glad we did, so I could get the lay of the land.   There is a lot of parking and it's free (Bonus!) the route looks to be fairly flat (thank goodness) and it was really easy to get to.  We really enjoyed our leisurely walk around the trail with Angus.  It was such a nice morning.

Today we will be heading over to my parents for thanksgiving dinner.  It will be great to see everyone, have dinner together and laugh around the kitchen table.  When it come time to say what we're thankful for I have a whole list.  My family, my friends, my health, my running and my weight loss.  I couldn't have said those last three things this time last year.  I truly am thankful for all that I have.

Being out of town...not making the best decisions

I haven't been feeling well this week and I'm a little worried about my weigh in tomorrow.  I haven't had a lot of activity as I've been fighting a head cold and I'm simply exhausted.  I took the dog for a walk this morning, just around the big block and it seemed to take me forever, my pace was 15:30 a kilometer and I was so hot, sweaty  and exhausted when I got home I just wanted to lay down. 

This is not good after being out of town last weekend.  My husband and I went up to Kamloops on Saturday to volunteer at the CBCF booth at the Run for the Cure.  We picked up the rental car around 11am and hit the road after dropping Angus off at my parents.  Shortly after hitting the road we were hungry so we stopped for lunch, McDonalds a wrap, some fruit that I picked up and rice cakes.  Not too bad, but I knew that we would be having dinner with friends and I wouldn't have any control over the points.  We ended up having Lasagna with Caesar salad and garlic toast.  Although I was conscious of my points, I was still over for the day.

I had a rough night sleeping, the hotel room next to us seemed to be having a party going on and off until almost 3am, I had to be up at 630 to be ready to head to the Run site.  I wasn't feeling good, my throat was sore and I had a stuffy nose so I didn't eat breakfast before heading to the field.

It was a true pleasure to be at the Kamloops Run site on Run day.  The Run committee and directors did an excellent job of putting the run together, everything seemed to run so smoothly for them!  It was great.  When we wrapped up around noon, I was starving so we went to Tim Horton's for lunch.  I chose a paninni and soup, the WW app on Gary's phone wasn't loading so I didn't know how many points I was spending on lunch.  By the time we drove home, dropped off the rental car and picked up Angus it was past dinner time.  We decided to cheat and order in dinner.  Big mistake for me.  I was hungry when I ordered so instead of just ordering my personalized pizza, I also ordered the restaurants marinara sauce and bread sticks.    Yep...not the best decision considering I had very little activity over the weekend.  I spent all of my daily points and half of my weekly points just on my meals on Saturday and Sunday. 

I woke up feeling sick on Monday and I just haven't had any energy to do anything more than take Angus around the block.  No long distance walks, no intervals, no nothing.  Which is so not good for me.  I have  the Rubber Ducky 5K in 8 days and the way I'm feeling I don't know if I'll be able to walk the full 5K let alone run it, which is what I had originally planned!

Needless to say, I used a lot of weekly points this week, didn't get in hardly any activity, I've only earned 12 activity points, I usually earn between 50-70 so I don't have much hope for weigh in tomorrow morning.  Part of me wants to just skip weigh in, call it a draw and work really hard next week but I'm not going to do that.  I'm going to suck it up and go to weigh in and let the chips lay where they fall.

I've lost a ten year old!

Not literally but physically!   The amount of weight I have lost as of today equals the average weight of a ten year old in North America.   I was so happy at weigh in this morning to get on the scale in my winter weigh in gear (no more summer sun dress for weigh in, pants and a shirt from here on out) and see a loss of 1.6 pounds to bring my total weight loss to 70.9 pounds.

This boggles my mind.  I've lost weight before, but not this much, I'm not sure how much further I want to go. I've been setting little goals for myself through my journey this far and I just have to decide if I want to continue setting the 10 pound goals for myself or if I want to select the ultimate goal and wrap my mind around a much bigger number.  The one thing with defining a final number at this point is my insecurity about it.  It's one thing to say after the fact I've lost 70 pounds, but if I had been thinking back in January when I started this journey, I have to lose 70 pounds I would have found it overwhelming.   Do I really want to say to myself I need to lose another 50, 60 or 70 pounds before I'm done and feel like it's an insurmountable task to take on, or do I keep doing this 10 pounds at a time.  I'm not sure yet.  It's something I have to think on and probably talk to my doctor about.  I weighed over 200 pounds when I was in grade 8 so I really can't picture myself at a weight lower than that although, that's still not what some would consider to be a healthy weight.  I have a while to go before I have to worry about setting a WW goal weight but it is something I have to wrap my head around.

I'm traveling up to Kamloops this weekend, where my husband and I will visit some friends on Saturday and then I'm volunteering for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure on Sunday October 6th.  This is a cause that is very near and dear to my heart.  I'm honoured to have been asked by the Foundation to go up to Kamloops to represent the Foundation at the tent giving out breast health information and talking to people about their breast health.  If you're interested in joining in visit www.runforthecure.com  and click on a city near you. The participation fee is only $40, which is pretty good for a 5k race with t-shirt, entertainment and healthy for you food!  If you're in the Kamloops area stop by the Pink CBCF tent and ask for Katie.  I should be there!