Half Marathon - May 27

This is a great video about Terry Fox, a true Canadian hero. He set a goal to run accross Canada, despite having a prosthetic leg and cancer. His "marathon of hope" ended prematurely after 143 days as his cancer had spread to his lungs. Amazingly, he made it to Thunder Bay, Ontario, 3,339 miles from his starting point, averaging 23.3 miles per day. In other words, he essentially ran a marathon 143 days in a row on a prosthetic leg! Unbelievable.

Speaking of marathons, this morning I registered for the Ottawa Half Marathon on May 27th. I've never done anything like this before, and now that I have actually paid the registration fee it feels pretty crazy, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. It's a beautiful course which runs along the Ridau Canal, in front of Parliament, into Quebec by our apt and back to Ottawa's city hill, including running by the Terry Fox statue downtown. I've been inspired by my friend Amy who ran the half-marathon last year, and my step-father Kent who did the Los Angeles Marathon last weekend, his third (he's also done the Providence, Rhode Island and the Philadelphia, PA full marathons). I'm going to use a training schedule I found online, though slightly modified so I don't run on Sundays. The basic idea is that every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday I have a smaller run, only 3-4 km for the first month, and then Saturday is my big run for the week. It's when I push my threshold, usually 2km at a time. It's not too bad, I don't start running 10km until March 10th. After that, my saturday runs go from 10 to 12, 14, 16, back down to 12 for a rest, up to 18 for three weeks and peaking at 20, before running only 6km the week before the race. The first time I run the full 21.1 km (just over 13 miles) will be the day of the race. I am very excited and glad to start training. I ran 4km yesterday, though with a wind chill of -24celcius, I've decided to do my winter training on the University of Ottawa's treadmills. I'll keep you posted on my progress