Why I run

I wish I could say I run because I love it. That it makes me feel free and gives me a rush of exhilaration, but that's not true. Simply, I run because it's an easy way to exercise. You don't have to go to a gym to run, you just need a pair of shoes, and it gives you a chance to spend some time outside. I do feel better after a run, largely because I then believe myself justified to eat desert if I want to. Plus, I generally feel exhausted, especially after a Saturday morning run. I also run (at increasingly longer distances) because it's something that most of the rest of my family wouldn't do.

Today, Andrew and I are driving down to Calgary. We're going to visit Michelle while we're there, but on Sunday morning we're going to participate in the Calgary Half Marathon. That's 21.2 km of running, which will probably take us slightly less than 2 hours (we expect to run at approximately 10.75 km/hour). I'm hoping to finish in about the middle of the pack of the half marathon participants. According to the Calgary Marathon website they expect approximately 8,000 people to compete in the event tomorrow morning, although I don't know how many are running the same distance we are. This will be our second official road race. Last summer we ran in the Edmonton Canada Day Fun Race, which was a 15 km route. We completed the course, including 2 enormous hills, in 1 hour 29 minutes.

We hope that one day we might be able to run the Boston Marathon; however, you have to meet a qualifying time to participate. The current standard is 3 hours 40 minutes for woman and 3 hours 10 minutes for men of our age group. The winning time this year for the men's division was 2 hours 8 minutes. After this weekend our plans are to continue to run our training course (of approximately 20 km) throughout the summer and work on getting our speed up. On the flat track at Butterdome I can run over 11 km/hour, but only for about 20 minutes before I burn out. This is going to take some work, especially for me since I'm not really a natural runner (Andrew could run a much faster time if he ran on his own); however I've already seen a huge increase in my speed and endurance from when I started running 3 years ago.

I will report on our experience after we get home, and possible have a picture to put up.

Ciao,

Andrea