Feeling it again

Last Updated on Monday, 24 August 2009 07:55 Written by The Virtual Runner Monday, 24 August 2009 07:50

I’ve tracked my virtual run to date (23 Aug 2009) using Google earth and since 29 Mar 2009 my route has taken me past Ottawa, Ontario and past North Bay and Sudbury.  I’m still on Route 17 and I’m now running along the shores of Lake Superior and the virtual views are lovely.

My distance covered so far on my meandering virtual run across Canada is 2352 kilometres (1462 miles) and I’m happy to say that my motivation and drive is returning.

I’m now running in parts of my home country that I’ve never been to in real life.  The first 27 years of my life were spent in Canada and the farthest west I have ever been is Oshawa and that’s because that is where I was born.  The farthest west I have been and can remember is Ottawa.

I will see the rest of my own country in time and I’ll see it as a tourist and I’ll bring my son and wife from the UK.  I don’t know when or how but those are things to plan for the future.

I do get asked by a lot of people over here in the UK if I plan on moving back to Canada and the truth is, no I don’t.  I’m happy here in the UK and I’ve got a lovely wife, son and daughter.  I’ve built a life for myself in the UK and I enjoy it here.

As for my motivation returning, it might be linked to changing my trainers to my next new pair and because I registered for a marathon.  I was losing my motivation and it was partly linked to sore feet and achilles after runs.  The other day I decided to move on to my next pair of trainers that have been sitting in the bottom of the closet waiting for me.  I had bought two pairs of Adidas Supernova Sequence trainers (for the price of one) and I think I’ve only got about 400 miles out of them.  That’s not too bad considering I’m a heavy runner at around 15.5 stone (217 lbs).  I still can’t believe I was more than 18 stone (252 lbs) at my heaviest.  And I’m sure I was even heavier than that because at my fattest I never weighed myself… the shock would’ve been too much!

I feel much better now with my new trainers and my marathon goal.  I’ve even slowed down on my easy and long runs in order to facilitate the longer distances I’ll be doing.  All of the training plans I’ve seen for marathon distance have the average pace (for me anyway) much slower than what I have been running.  I suppose it makes sense as I will need to slow down in order to cover the whole 26.2 miles without breaking down.

As for non-running related matters, my wife is still as lovely as always and supportive of everything I do.  My son is still the cutest and the most clever little boy in the world.  My daughter and her husband are doing great.  My best friend Rob is back in contact again (kind of) and travelling around Canada on his own little adventure.  My laser eye surgery is next week (02 Sept 2009) and I’m getting excited.  We’ve got a nice little weekend holiday coming up and when we return I’m getting lasered!

That’s it for now.  I’m still running and I’m feeling it again.  I think that many people go through ups and downs in their training and not just for running either.  I’m just glad I’m feeling it again.

Lasers, Moving, Friends, Excess & Stress

Last Updated on Thursday, 23 July 2009 07:44 Written by The Virtual Runner Thursday, 23 July 2009 07:44

Front of the cottage

I’m really sorry that I haven’t written in a while.  Juneathon was going so well for me as well!  Oh well, there is always next year.

I’ve had a lot of things going on lately an my focus just hasn’t been on writing.  I’ve managed to keep running though and if you look at my running log for my virtual run across Canada you’ll see all of my runs there.  Because it’s been so long and so many runs I won’t sit here and type them all out for you because it’s boring reading and boring to type all of it.

Moving

We have moved to our new place and it is one of four cottages owned by nearby farm.  Ours is semi-detached (to the another cottage of course) and that means we only have one neighbor.  The new house is near the motorway but we don’t really mind at all.  We’ve been there since 1st July and we’re loving it!  The outside of the cottage (grass, borders, trees, outbuildings etc) were/are pretty run down but we have done a lot to them already in the couple of weeks we’ve been living there. 

It took a couple of days to mow the whole lawn because the mower was cutting the grass so short the bag kept filling quickly (the mower wouldn’t go any higher – it was a gift from friends).  Unfortunately the mower broke before we could even finish the lawn so we decided to go and buy a new one which finished the lawn nicely.  Now it seems like the grass has all grown back already!  If it is nice this weekend I’ll be out mowing again…

Gate & back garden

It took two days to move into our new house and all of our stuff fit perfectly.  We had a clear-out over the few weeks before moving anyway because we went from a four bedroom detached house to a two bedroom semi-detached cottage.  Thankfully the new house has the outbuildings so we had a place to store all of our crap!  Usually that is what people use their garages for in this country.

We rented a nice big VW van for our move and I was looking forward to putting my little boy’s booster seat in the middle and letting him come with Daddy.  He loved driving in the van so high up. 

I’ve put some photos of our new home on Flickr and you can find them by clicking here or by clicking on one of the photos on this post.

Lasers

“You know, I have one simple request…and that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads. Now evidently, my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can’t be done. Ah, can you please remind me what I pay you people for? Honestly, throw me a bone here…what do we have?” – Dr Evil

Garden facing cottage

We recently got a bit of money and my wife has said that I should consider getting laser eye surgery.  So, I went and booked my “free” consultation for Wednesday, 12 August 2009 in Reading.  To tell you the truth, I’m both excited and scared.  I’m excited about begin able to do things without having to wear glasses all the time!  To wear sunglasses!  To be able to see when I come into a warm building from the cold outside!  To be able to run in the rain without feeling like a blind man!  Oh the joy of it all.  However, I’m scared that I won’t be suitable and I’ll have been excited for nothing.  I’m scared something might go wrong (even though statistically this is slim).

I am interested in hearing from people who have had laser eye surgery or know of those who have had it so please feel free to comment or send me an email [jamie (a) thevirtualrunner dot org].  I’m using Optimax so if you have any information or experiences with them in particular I’ll be even more interested to know.

Stress

With a death in the family, my dad going in and out of the hospital and moving house; I’ve been a bit stressed.  I think this (along with my generaly laziness) has contributed to…

Excess

I’ve been over-eating quite a bit lately.  I think it is mostly comfort eating but it’s certainly making me fat(ter).  I haven’t weighed myself in quite a while because I’m afraid it will just confirm what I already feel.

I mowed the lawn too short.

I’ve decided that I need to have a bit more focus when it comes to running/training because I’m just kind of plodding along on some sort of virtual plateau at the moment and I need to boost things.  I’m thinking that maybe I should register for a half marathon in October somewhere so it will give me something to aim for and will give me a bit more focus.  Training for general fitness just isn’t doing it.

I wish I had the common sense and willpower to stop eating so damn much but I just love food… yummy!

Friends

It has been a good few weeks now since my friend Robby (he’s like my brother) finished his trek across the arctic with a team of dogs and I haven’t really heard from him at all.  Thankfully I got to speak to him a couple of weeks ago when he was at my parents place in Canada and I managed to track him down and speak to him again last night.  I’ve really missed the guy and I’ve been stressing about how he is and why I haven’t heard from him.  Turns out it is a perfectly legitimate reason, however it would have been nice if he had kept me in the picture instead of letting me worry.

He’s talking about setting up a blog himself over the next couple of months and it that actually happens I’ll let you know.  For now, I’m just glad he’s safe and sound and taking care of himself.