To begin, let me start with a brief W5 for this blog.
The Who: This blog is not really about me, it's more about my journey in training for a full marathon (42.2km) and fundraising for my charity; The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada. My goal is to raise the minimum amount of $1750.
The What: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (www.lls.org) is the world's largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research, education and patient services. The Society's mission is to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and to improve the quality of life of patients and their families.
The When: My marathon date is September 27th, 2009
The Where: The Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon @ 7am. Information about the route click here.
The Why: I run because I have always wanted to be a part of team that is contributing to the betterment of society. And I think I am; just one km at a time, I hope that the money that I raise will one day result in victorious finding of a cure for blood cancer. Lend me your support to help me cross the finish line =) Online donation link: http://tinyurl.com/runwendyrun/. My thanks to all supporters in advance.
Now that I have given you the quick summary of the blog's purpose; the update on my training:
To date, I have run a total of 172 km in my training for the event. The Saturday that just passed, 7/11/2009, I did a 23km run =)
On the night before the long practice run, the weather forecast listed extreme thunderstorm warnings. I had hope though: what if I could finish my run in 3 hours, before the thunderstorming happened? Hope in place, I went to bed. 5am, I'm up the next day, eating my little breakfast and gearing myself up (watch, waterbelt, my crocs --heavenly footwear, etc.). I took a peek out through my bedroom blinds, and was pleasantly surprised to see not a dark cloud rolling in the horizon. My Wendy happy moment. Yes, the run could still be done. Out the door I went.
I arrived and met with my team -- which was now a much smaller group than it usually was; appearantly most people were not crazy like me who thought they could out-run the storm (but there were some, so I was not nuts alone! :P)
The run began, nice and easy. I was running with my coach at one point, and we were chatting about the weather, could we make it before the rainfall? There were no dark clouds, weather was still fairly nice ... was this like the calm before the storm? My coach then told me a story about her run last spring, where the weather was similar to this day, warning of some storm coming, but with no visible signs ... and out of the blue wind and hail (yes, you read correctly, hail - chunks of ice) started pittering and pattering downwards. She hoped this wouldn't be the case.
Not quite, but minus the hail, everything was as she said it was. deja vu!
I was 17km into my run when swoosh, the rain came down. We were fortunate to be near a washroom shelter (locked by the way due to the strike) nearby, and didn't completely get drenched. We chatted with some other runners/cyclists who took shelter there and waited until the lightning subsided. If there had not been lightning, we would have proceeded running through -- but since there was a whole lot of that going on, I did not want to be that exception to the case on the headlines - "runner struck by lightning in park". Besides, it didn't help that I read recently on the news a woman being struck by lightning in her home ( read story here: Boy Saves Mom After Lightning Strike).
Once the coast was clear (though still raining quite a bit), we continued to finish the last 6km =)
The sweet finish reward was a nice pina colada protein drink (tasty) to replenish lost nutrients in my system.
That was my training run story of the week. Next week... running 26km! As much as I enjoyed the 'adventure' this week with the running, I do hope next Saturday's run date is nice and sunny. Though really in the end, it doesn't matter, rain or shine -- the training must go on! :P Support me by making an onine donation at: http://tinyurl.com/runwendyrun/. Thanks everyone for taking the time to read my post!
~Wendy
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ReplyDeleteGreat job Wendy! I can't wait to hear how the rest of your training journey unfolds...
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