Here we go again

Since I was little, I have loved the idea of having a diary.  When I was young I would start one with the idea that my diary would be my new best friend, my new pen pal.  I called her D.  I would start each entry 'Dear D'.  It was a wonderful, warm feeling for about two weeks but afterwards I would get lazy and my pen pal letters to Dear D would just quietly peter out (Sorry, anyone named Peter).

This time is DIFFERENT!  True, I started a blog as a diary about two years ago (http://mytime-running.blogspot.ca/) but the only reason I did not continue was a) it felt strange putting my thoughts down in cyber space b) no one cared except me (no really, it's true), and c) I forgot my Google password and could not re-activate it.  This time will be DIFFERENT!  OK, who knows, but here we go again, anyways...

Dear B,
First a bit about who I am today.  I am 44, happily married Mom who is educated as a social worker and loves to run.  That is me in a sentence.  I have been running for 14+ years but more seriously in the past 6.  I have an amazing husband whom I've been married to for 15 years, 3 kids (14, 12, 8 yrs), and a large drooly dog who is my running partner on the shorter runs.

How I got into this hobby:
I was exercising in various classes (Ball, Flow, Boxercise...) and started to have some pain in my wrist.  I was also nursing and carrying around a young one at the same time.  The physiotherapist suggested I stop lifting free weights (after all, wasn't I already lifting Sam?) and doing plank-like exercises and run on the treadmill for a while so that I would give my wrist a break (I mean a rest).  I found running on the treadmill easy and wanted a goal to work towards.  Even though I had only run at maximum 10 km at one time  (Terry Fox run, Compugen 10 km), I decided I would run a marathon!  I wanted a goal that I could not even envision. After all, starting with a Half seemed too easy because really, it was only 2x 10km (ha, ha, too easy...ha ha).

When I started the journey of training, I was not even able to start on the How To Run A Marathon training chart.  I had to create my own training chart to get on the training chart!  Long story short, I accomplished my goal on Oct 14, 2007 in 4 hours 19 min.



I wrote about the experience of training and how it is similar to begin pregnant and having your first child. It was published in Today's Parent Magazine March 2008.  I broke it up into the 3 trimesters 1) not telling anyone until it was for sure, 2) how your body changes and your eating habits change, wanting to learn all you can and signing up for weekly emails and 3) wanting the waiting to just be over and being tired of hearing of everyone's experienced tales!  The funny thing is that you truly forget the pain and just remember the accomplishment as time goes on.

The experience of setting one's mind to do something outrageous and accomplishing it, has stayed with me in all aspects that I do.  And yes, I would love to run another full marathon.  I have run 6 half marathons since.

Why I call this blog My Time (and my twitter name mytime0101):
As mentioned before, I am a wife, a mom to 3 kids and a dog, educated as a social worker (not currently employed as one), and a homemaker.  Running is my thing.  It is my time that I use for me.  I listen to my music, think my thoughts, and exercise to improve my body and my mood.

I find I get rather slap happy when I run and I see this as a fun forum to document some of those silly thoughts, experiences and photos.

Hopefully, this time, I will keep this going.

Until next time,
Jenn