A year ago...

So, last year on Thanksgiving weekend, I was in Kelowna for the Okanagan Marathon. Our family drove up with my friend Cindy's family. It was a fantastic weekend. We had spent the entire summer training for the race, and finally the big event was here. My son did his race (he had spent the summer accumulating kilometers so that for the kids race, he was doing the last kilometer of 42km, to complete the marathon distance, at 3 years old). Sebastian totally rocked, even if he needed a little encouragement at times!!

My race was amazing. I was hoping to finish around 2:15:00 or so. I figured I'd put in all the work needed for that. I'd run a 10km just under an hour, twice. So finishing in 2:15:00 seemed very possible. In the end it took me 2:04:44. I was shocked. This meant I'd run the whole race averaging just over 10km/hr for my pace. Since only the month before had I ever had a race at that speed, and that was for a 10km, I never imagined in a million years that I could maintain that pace for 21km. Yet, there I was, finishing at that pace. I was so proud and amazed at what I had accomplished. Of course it was right after this race that I was stopped in my tracks with an injury. It was very hard to go from training to nothing. On that weekend though, I experienced such a high. It was so awesome to know that I had become more competitive in my running. We celebrated that night with a turkey dinner, made at the hotel. It was so much fun!!

So, now, I'm looking back at last year, and also looking forward to next year. I officially weigh less now, than I did last year (only by a pound or two, but still!!). So, I look back knowing I had potential to improve, and I look forward, wondering just what that improvement will be. Is it possible to break an hour again in a 10km? Could I ever break 2 hours in a half marathon? And what might a future marathon look like? And then there is triathlon... and all the potential goals associated with it... all the way up to an ironman...

The cross training has been a huge part of my fitness regime. I am mixing all kinds of exercise in, because I don't want to deal with an injury like that again. That pattern of exercise has been huge. I have yet to get sick of it and I'm now onto 58 days in a row. Most recently it was the stair stepper and some weights. My dog ran into my leg yesterday and my calf muscle is sore, so I didn't want to aggravate that. I've been doing some icing and compression in a hope to get it repaired rather quickly. We'll see what tomorrow feels like. I'm thinking maybe tomorrow is a swimming sort of day...