Author: MRJ

Today after Violet’s Ballet and Jacob’s hockey the kids headed to a family birthday party with Nana. While they were off having fun, Papa and I got back to work putting together the ramp at their house.  It was a nice afternoon to be working out side, and we managed to get a lot of the work completed before we ran out of screws and day light and had to wrap up.

Continue reading “POD: Building a Ramp”

After school today I faced a challenge I haven’t faced yet this fall. Friday night is swimming night, usually Melissa meets me at the pool and the two of us handle changing them. Tonight Melissa was working so it was just Jacob, Violet and Me. At times it was a bit of a challenge but with the way there classes are setup it was manageable. The picture was taken on the bus ride home, I was trying to get them both in the picture but I think Jacob was pictured out after photo day at school today.

Tomorrow is picture day at Jacob’s school, so today we have a picture of Jacob in the chair at the local hair salon. I like the effect of the blurry hair dresser. It’s like she’s moving so fast I couldn’t capture her.

Today we have a picture of some of the Library books our family currently has out of the Toronto Public Library. To be fair most of them are my books, but the top two are for the kids. They headed to the library yesterday after school with their Nan and each picked out a book and took out on Jacob’s card.

Today we have a picture of my little girl snuggling up for the night with her favourite pillow.

Sunday I took to the streets to compete in my second Half Marathon. The weather was nice and cool, and thankfully the rain held off. Running through the downtown and along the waterfront gave the race a feel of familiarity that I didn’t have during the mm. though having not really looked at the route before I did have a few surprises along the way. Finishing in the heart of the Financial district
. It was also great to finish the race in the heart of the city.

going into the race I was confident that my training would propel me to a quicker finish then last time, unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. I finished on 2:12:55 more than two minutes slower than in Mississauga. It has me wondering if I didn’t do enough training leading up to the event or if that it was a ‘flat’ course cost me the time. Mississauga was a downhill course, and I think I didn’t appetite how much a help that was. Of course RunKeeper reported that I set a personal record for ‘Biggest elevation climb’ during the run makes me question how flat it really was.

I know it was probably a mixture of the two but considering how sore I still am today, 2 days after the run, I might have to put more blame on training. Usually after a long run I like to follow-up the next day with a short run, but last night I just wasn’t up to it. So I think regardless how sore I am I will have to get out to-night. Probably just for a slow 5 or 6 km. I need to continue with the focus I found when I sat down at the end of September and planned my training for the last two Weeks before the race. At the time I set out an ambitious schedule, one that I followed for the first week but pulled back from a bit the second week. But one I think that was good for me.  As I ran on Sunday I kept thinking I really needed to stay that focused on my training, not just on the races.

I really liked having my planned runs spelled out for me, being able and look back at what I had recently run and what I was about to run was good motivator. So I think once I figure out what I will be doing with my training I will continue that, though perhaps I should look at adding some automation to the process. It was a pain to manually update the list after each run.
Continue reading “Recovering… and Looking forward”

Today I had a trip to the dentist to fill a cavity, so it seemed like a picture of some of the tools the dentist would use on my mouth would make a great picture of the day.

Today I set out to compete in my second Half-Marathon. I finished in 2:12:55 a little slower than my first marathon back in may (POD: Half-Marathon Day (2:10:32)). The course for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon was a flatter course then the Mississauga Marathon, so I’ll blame that for slower speed.  In addition to running for the challenge of running, I was also running for my aunt-in-law Debbie who passed away in January. She walked the 5k last year, so this year Lynn, Dan and I participated in her memory. I’m working on a post about the future of my running, and more thoughts about today’s run. For now I wanted to share the pictures and my time. So stay tuned.

Continue reading “POD: Half-Marathon Day (2:12:55)”

Today was a full day, with Violet’s ballet and Jacob’s hockey, plus a birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. By the end of the days the kids were really tired, but wouldn’t admit it. So we headed to Violet’s room where Jacob read a bedtime store before they gathered there toys and curled up under their blankets and had a camp out. It was such a cute moment that I had to capture it.

Continue reading “POD: Camping out with Toys”

On Sunday I run my second Half Marathon and today I headed down to the Run Expo to pick up my Race Kit. The picture has a few extra’s that I picked up at the expo. Plus a new running  belt that Lynn and Dan picked up for me while they were picking up their own race kits. With the race just 2 sleeps away I’m getting really excited. I can’t wait to get out there and give my new running belt a try.