Thank you!
Wow. I am still in shock, oscillating between the nonchalance of disbelief and a crazy flutter of butterflies.
I had some positively stellar competition from Round 2’s Vicky & Grant, Terry McGillivray, Dana Menard and Tyler Chase, plus Dennis Crawford, Laura Hood, Jo Harding, Rhonda-Marie Avery and Laurie Sorensen from Round 1. I am grateful that you shared your unique style and perspective with the iRun Nation, and my hat is off to all of you – I understand how much time, effort and creativity you’ve put in! I could relate to each of you, and would love to kick back with you over a bagel after a long run!
Many thanks, of course, to iRun for offering this opportunity! I was very excited to read about this contest; I was even more excited to have been selected to participate. I was ecstatic when I made it to Round 2, and now, well, I am beside myself!
To all of you out there reading, a million thanks! Without you I quite literally would not have made it. Your support, encouragement and mouse clicks over the last 3 months are greatly appreciated. I have come a long way, but I will tell you more about that some other time.
For now I will just say, to everyone, for everything, thanks. I am not sure yet where I am going, but I am so truly grateful that you’ve chosen to join me on this journey!
The End is Only the Beginning
VICKY and GRANT:
Will Rogers once said:”We can’t all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” Dear runners, let us all gather at the curb and clap as our new Running Blog Idol, Karen Karnis, goes by and crosses the finish line! Congratulations Karen!
Also, congratulations to all the contestants. All of you were wonderful bloggers and brought your own unique perspective on the sport of running to the iRun blog family. We wish you all the best in your future adventures!
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all our guests on the Vicky and Grant blog. Your humour and sometimes bizarre answers have allowed many of our readers to find motivation, inspiration and humour in your words. Thanks again to all our interviewees whom we’ve listed below in order of blog posts:
-Simon Whitfield
-Lauren Groves
-Alexandra Kosteniuk
-Terry McKinty
-Geordie McConnell
-Evélia Manac’h
-Julianne Chai
-Laura Hood
-Heather Beauchesne
-Yuen Yee Ho
-Tim Scapillato
Thank you to iRun Magazine and the whole iRun family for allowing us the creative freedom to truly show our blogging and running personality. We had tons of fun coming up with blog ideas and even more fun writing and photoshopping for our readers’ pleasure. Although we will truly miss blogging for iRun, we will be leaving with many lessons and new ambitions as we each pursue the craft of writing on our own path.
Finally, thank you to our friends and our family and to those of you who visited. It’s been our pleasure to try to entertain and enlighten you. We really appreciate that you took the time. It’s a wonderful feeling to feel supported when you go out on a limb and try to do something creative. Thanks for the feedback and the good wishes. It means a lot.
Have a safe journey everyone and remember…keep on running!
Oh Yeah, You Just Watch Me Have fun
There are some words when you hear they make you cringe. Other words make you dig in your heels and say, “Oh yeah, you just watch me!”
The Gazelle asked me how I did at the Ancaster Old Mill race on Tuesday. I was torn about how to answer. I didn’t run a PB. The hill made sure about that. On the other hand, I witnessed a fresh group of runners become seasoned pro’s.
My dad’s advice, go out and have a good run was still in my head. And I did. Wasn’t my best, but I had a good time. And the ice cream was incredible!
Then came the words that made me cringe. “I told you you should have trained on hills.”
Then “You better start training on hills now, cuz we are going to be doing Benchbury in the summer.”
After running tonight, I stuck around the Den talking to the other runners. We talked about how they felt they did on Tuesday. They all had smiles on their faces, they have been bitten by the running bug for good.
I was talking to Jim and Dave. Dave is back after having surgery, it was nice seeing him again.
I told Jim what the Gazelle said about training more on hills. Jim said those dreaded words, “The Gazelle is right you know. You should have trained more on the hills.”
He told me how he had really trained one year doing all kinds of hill work. When he did the Old Mill, he knocked a good three to four minutes off his time from the year before.
Oh yeah, you just watch me! I will run another race and I will have fun.
The Hundred Push Ups Program
GRANT:
Hey Vicky have you ever heard about this hundred pushup program?
VICKY:
No what’s that?
GRANT:
It’s this website. It’s also a book now. They take you from wherever you are at up to 100 push ups.
VICKY:
Cool. How many can you do?
GRANT:
Count ’em out!
VICKY:
Okay go! One… two… three… hmmm struggling a bit… four [….] nineteen. Good job!
GRANT:
Ug. What a girly-man.
VICKY:
Now according to the website based on how you did on the test it shows you where to start on the program. You can even log your progress. Good luck! Oh I see they also have a two hundred sit up program. Maybe I can find my six pack abs again.
GRANT:
Recapturing form is a great inspiration, but my inspiration is Terry Fox. Want to know why he looks so awesome and ripped in the photos? Before he took off for any run he got down on the pavement and knocked off some pushups. Studly eh! He’s my hero.
What sets us apart?
Chatting with runners and non-runners alike, a debate that comes up from time to time is the so-called “runner personality”. Is there a particular personality that sets runners apart from non-runners? Do you have to be a “certain type of person”?
I don’t know if there is such a thing as a runner personality, but there are some traits that you could argue a lot of runners share. You might find runners to be goal-oriented, determined (stubborn?), competitive, self-critical while encouraging of others. But overall, I would have to say that runners are as diverse a bunch as the general population.
The only thing that all runners have in common, which also happens to be the thing to set them apart from non-runners is this:
One day, they didn’t say “I can’t.”
Some of them might have said “I wonder….”
All of them, at some point, said “I can,” and they did.
That’s it.
I Pick You to be on My Team
We’ve all had the awful sinking feeling. We are in gym class … er physical education class … and we are being picked for teams. We watch as the popular kids get picked first. And with any luck, we will have had a friend who is a cool sports kid, so we don’t have to wait to get picked. But we all have had that moment when the captain of the teams are fighting over who is gonna get stuck with you.
I was talking with a couple of run walkers this week. And they were telling me their motivation for running.
They were the last one picked for the baseball team, the volleyball team … the fill in the blank team. And when you are young and impressionable, you feel the horror, the embarassment of being picked last.
With any luck you outgrow that embarassment and you go on. You get into the career you dreamed of. And it is not work anymore. Sometimes though, people aren’t so lucky and they end up with a job that they hate.
And they still end up being the last kid picked for the baseball team.
Some folks are lucky enough to stumble onto this running thing. They find themselves with a place that they absolutely fit in. They look forward to the times when they can go and hang out with like minded people. They have a second family. They can laugh. They can cheer each other on.
They can also cry.
In the moment when they hear “their” name being called as they struggle to cross the finish line. And they know that someone is there, on the other side waiting. Waiting to make sure that they pick them first for their team.
Does Anyone Know Any Really, Really Good Jokes?
Like Julius Caesar said, “We came, we saw, we had lots of fun.”
Ok, he really didn’t say that. We could probably have said the last part about conquering. But to me that sounds negative. There isn’t any negativity attached to running a great race. Setting a goal to finish the race and then doing it.
We ran the Ancaster Old Mill tonight. It was great. Like a family reunion. I got to see old friends I haven’t seen in … three days. Not since the Moon in June.
More importantly, I got to see the newest bunch of runners coming up through the running ranks at the Runners Den run their very first race.
I had promised them a joke at the four kilometre mark. But as I always say, run your own race. And we had all decided that was what we were going to do.
At the top of the hill heading down we got separated.
So I owe them all a joke. Which I promise I will share with them on Thursday night at the Den.
What I won’t wait to tell them is how I proud I was of all of them. We chatted before the race and I asked them if they had a time in mind to do the race. They looked at me and laughed. Just finishing is a great start they said.
Doesn’t it feel great to be able to cross at least one thing off your to do list? Congrats on a great race! See you Thursday night!
Did I Mention the Food?
I am excited about the Old Mill Race in Ancaster tomorrow night. But with that excitement comes the inevitable worry.
What to wear? I had everything planned. I have been wearing my shorts lately. The first year I started running, I couldn’t understand why people were showing up to run in March in shorts. In shorts!!!! Now I know why. After having gone through an entire winter of being all bundled up the first sign of nice weather, off come the layers!
But the weather has taken a turn for the cold. Shorts aren’t an option anymore. Long pants? Nope. Capri’s? Potential. My old stand by long sleeved shirt Around the Bay. I love being able to proclaim that I am older than Boston!
If I have enough time, I think I will stop in at the Den to grab a new pair of socks. I should have done that today. Since I am not at all superstitious about running, I’ll wait until tomorrow.
Headgear? Maybe. I have a really nice pink running hat. The one I bought for the Around the Bay race. It managed to survive the downpour of rain. And it came out intact.
I told my mom I have to decide what to listen to. Maybe Madonna. Maybe Mobile. Maybe Audioslave.
But the most important thing to bring. A great attitude. My dad summed it all up tonight. Perfectly. “Just go out there and have fun Tess. Just do the best you can. You don’t have to compete with anyone.”
So off I go to have a whole lot of fun. Stay tuned!
It’s about time
“I don’t have enough time!”
Anecdotally, that’s got to be the number one reason people give me for not running. Well, here are some very good reasons why that one just doesn’t fly.
3. You’re not taking time away from your family by taking care of yourself. You are investing. You know how on an airplane, you’re supposed to put on your own oxygen mask before you help someone else with theirs? The idea is that you are better able to take care of others if you care for yourself first. If you have more energy, more ability to cope with stress, and are generally happier, the time spent with your family will be more enjoyable. Bonus: you are being a good role model for your children, both in caring for themselves, and engaging in an active lifestyle!
2. Running is less efficient than less-vigorous exercise. That’s a good thing! It means you don’t need to do it as long to burn the same number of calories!
According to Public Health:
“Scientists say accumulate 60 minutes of physical activity every day to stay healthy or improve your health. Time needed depends on effort – as you progress to moderate activities, you can cut down to 30 minutes, 4 days a week.”
1. It’s just not that much time.
You don’t have to commit to a gruelling training plan that will take several hours per week. You just need to commit about 30 minutes, most days of the week to getting healthy. Half an hour. For about the price of a cup of coffee a day you can save a child…hang on, let me try that again: for about the length of time it takes to watch an episode of The Simpsons, you can save your health.
Don’t waste another minute thinking up excuses! Just go do it! Go on! What are you waiting for?
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