Birthday wishes and more on the run...

First off, it's my son Patrick's birthday today - Happy Birthday Patrick!

I can't believe I have a nine year old... holy schmokes time has flown by. I know people said it would when we started our family but wow, I have days that I feel like I'm still seventeen! So Patrick wants a gameboy game for his birthday and I guess I'm good with that. Marie (since she's at home with them more than me) is good at limiting their time with video games. She's also good at makin' sure that they aren't playing games that promote stuff we don't want to them to experience (blood and guts, agressive behaviour). He also wants pizza from the new pizza place in town, Free Topping Pizza. It's really good pizza considering it's mass produced. I spoke to one of the owners on a recent visit and he said it all came down to the sauce. This was something I already knew after makin' a whole lot of pizzas with GeWilli a few years ago. GeWilli gave me his secret recipe for a fantastic sauce and let me tell you, when I made it for family, they were raving about it. I think I'll have to do another pizza night soon 'cause now I'm craving that pizza. I need to get a good recipe for whole wheat pizza crust though since I want to try that.

Okay, I wanted to write more about my first run experience but I was out of the office all day and by the time I got the kids into bed last night, I was wiped out.

So, a couple of observations... it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be, not that it was too easy, just not as hard as I expected. I see this as a good sign. Second, I kept in mind my buddy GeWilli's observation about joggers he sees and how they don't pay attention to form. I managed to keep my form right up to the end. I see why it's important - bad form could make it *harder* to reach the end as you may end up working against your momentum. Muscle ache... my shin muscles hurt yesterday afternoon and this morning. My quads feel it a bit but I mark this up to the fact that I was working my quads more recently in the gym. I should say that the ache is that good ache knowing that you've exercised a muscle that needed it.

My training program called for repeating the run 1 minute, walk 2 minutes thing six times. I ended up doing it eight times because my route was a little longer than it should have been. Hey, I was guessing at how far I needed to go before I turned back towards home. I ended up doing a circuit of Newcastle which was really nice, especially at 05:15 when the town is still sleeping for the most part. I was going to go out this morning despite the program calling for running every other day but decided against it until I get the muscles conditioned a little more. My reasoning for this was that I need to be ready to run 21.1km on September 9th and the program I'm following is eight weeks to get to 5km. I'll see how this week goes and if I'm feelin' good on the weekend, I may try an extra day or two next week. I have to mindful to allow my body to rest and repair the muscles but I think doing five days a week shouldn't be too bad.

My son Patrick wants to run with me. I will prolly do a run on Saturday mornings so that he can join me since I'm anticipating my weekday runs to start at 04:30 so I can keep my workday at 06:30-15:00. He is a *very* active child so I'm not worried about him needing more physical activity, if anything, I'm worried I won't be able to keep up with him!

Well, after spending yesterday volunteering at an event for school kids (RCMP Racing Against Drugs), I've got a whole lot of work to do. I've also been very unmotivated lately and find that I've slipped into a bad place here at work. I've gotta shift gears and get focused on my deliverable and get some good quality work done so that I can have a few work from home days over the summer.

Have a good day everyone!

g.