Friends & Family

Last Updated on Friday, 26 March 2010 08:01 Written by The Virtual Runner Friday, 26 March 2010 08:01

Won’t be long now (scary) and I’ll be in Canada visiting family and attempting my very first marathon.

Besides being excited (and scared) about the marathon, I’m also excited to see my family.  We tend to only visit Canada about once a year and we never got to go to Canada last year because we got married.  So, it’s been two years since I’ve seen everyone!

I’m also looking forward to seeing my best friend Robby.  I’ve mentioned him before on here and if you google him my site comes up (lol).  We met when we were younger and we’ve been the best of friends ever since.  Even though we’ve both moved all over the place and been almost on opposite sides of the world we’ve always stayed in contact.  Also, it’s been much longer since I’ve seen Rob so I can’t wait to just hang out and have him meet my son for the first time!

I always tell my son about his family in Canada and I also tell him that he’s going to see “Uncle” Rob because he’s like my brother and is a part of my family.

I’m looking forward to hanging out with my nieces and nephews, talking to my sisters and my parents.  We are also hoping to rent a car for a few days and head down to another part of New Brunswick and into Nova Scotia to see more family too.

So, not long now and we’ll be bringing in the house sitter (Tony!) and shipping ourselves to Canada to visit family.

You know what else I’m looking forward to in Canada?!  Food!  There is loads of food that I grew up with that you can’t get in the UK.  In no particular order, some things I’m looking forward to eating:-

• Bologna
• Kraft Dinner
• Kool-Aid
• Tim Hortons Coffee and Donuts
• Pizza Delight Pizza (with the works)
• Donair
• Dill Pickle Crisps (or Chips as they’re called in Canada)
• My mum’s potato salad

That’s just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.  Don’t worry, I won’t be sitting down to a large meal consisting of all of those items in one go… although that might be good.  I’ll be spreading out the joy!

Chunky Virtual Runner dot com?

Last Updated on Sunday, 14 March 2010 09:41 Written by The Virtual Runner Sunday, 14 March 2010 09:40

Okay, I admit that I haven’t been following my training plan very well.  In fact, I’m not really following a plan but I am trying to make sure my long runs increase gradually each week.

I’m trying to do two quality runs during the week (tempo and intervals) with a long run each Sunday.  Unfortunately this week I didn’t even run during the week but still managed to do 10 miles today.

I think my biggest problem is food!  Oh how I love the food… any type of food and lots of it.  Okay, not shellfish… but most food!

I’m going to have to make a conscious effort to reduce the intake of crap over the next few weeks because I’m carrying a few (I’m playing it down) extra pounds at the moment and I’m not going to do my knees or legs any favours by making them lug this heavy frame around a marathon.

The Reading Half Marathon is a week from today, and I’m very glad that I don’t have a personal goal for this one.  My only plan is to run the whole thing at the slow-ish pace I’m going to run the marathon at.  That’s about an average pace of 06:30 to 06:40 min per km.  Yeah, it’s slow but I want to take it easy as much as possible.

8 weeks until the Fredericton Marathon!  I’m thinking I will need to sort out some new running shoes before then.  I don’t think the current Asics Kayano running shoes are going to make it to then.

I’m also going to need to up my game on the long runs after Reading Half Marathon.  I’m planning on increasing my runs as follows:-

28 March – 22.5km (13.98 miles)

04 April – 23.40km (14.54 miles)

11 April – 26.00km (16.15 miles)

18 April – 28.90km (17.95 miles)

25 April – 32.18km (20.00 miles)

02 May – 16.09km (10.00 miles)

09 May – 42.19km (26.20 miles) – MARATHON DAY

Any runners out there think this is realistic?  It’s only a 10% increase each week to take me where I need to be.  I’m trying to keep it as gradual as I can and I thought 20 miles is the most I’ll need to train for in order to do the marathon.  Well, I hope it is, because it’s too late now!

Here is a summary of my runs recently:-

As for non-running related matters are concerned.  It’s Mothers Day here in the UK so my son got his mummy some lovely flowers (he chose them all by himself) and a card which he scribbled in and all over.  Terrible handwriting…

At work, things are still stressful and everyone wondering what is going to happen.  I won’t go on about it and I’ll let you know what happens on that front in a few weeks time when I actually know.

Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers out there and take care!