[5 km]
I participated in the Run for the Cure run this past weekend. It was a gorgeous day for a run, and running with colleagues made the time go by quickly and the run seemed pretty easy. I hope to keep my running momentum going. Taking Wing Chun lessons twice a week has made it tricky to find time to run, but it's also helped to get me back into shape a bit.

As I ease into jogging more regularly again, I've also resumed my weight training routine. I workout on a 2-day cycle that was developed for me years ago by an exercise-guru friend of mine. I find the simplicity of this system works for me - I don't have to have a sheet of paper to record all the muscles I need to work out, nor do I need to master every single machine at the gym. The key to this plan is remembering the muscle groups I need to work and I often change of the exercise to keep it interesting. So, for day 1, I do shoulders, back and biceps. Day 2 takes care of chest, legs and triceps. I think because there is a little rhyme there, I'm able to remember it. I always do sit-ups and I always stretch with this routine. Try it - it's fun.

It's almost a year later...and here I go again trying to get back into blogging my running activity. I still haven't given up on the idea of running another marathon and maybe this Fall will be the time to do that. My running has been very sporadic and normally consisting of short 2-3 km runs. I just purchased a new gym membership, so this will help in my strength training. I had a rather restless night trying to adjust to new warm temperatures and birds chirping outside, so today I only ran for 15 min at 5.0 mph.

[9.9 km]

This is the furthest distance that I've run with my running partner. We felt great. The weather was perfect - no wind, no sun, and slightly cooler (around 8 degrees). I am having a bit of knee pain - but maybe that is par for the course...I will stretch stretch stretch and maybe that will help. I'm anxiously awaiting a report from a friend who just ran the Mississauga Marathon. This will be extra motivation.

[4.1 km]

This was our first tempo run. It felt good to up the pace a bit, but it might set us back with knee injuries...We'll only really know until we assess how we feel after Sunday's longer run.

[9.1 km]

For this "long run" we did not do ten and ones (run 10 minutes, walk 1). We will probably do this once we get beyond 10 k. It was a nice day for a run and we took it very slowly - I was holding Dan back most of the way and feel a bit badly about that - except that he had absolutely no complaints about knee pain - and that is a good thing. So, we'll try for regular runs here on in. I'm hoping to get 4 runs in per week, but I will be happy with 3 as long as we continue to increase our mileage and remain pain free.

[5 km]
We survived two back-to-back runs. Knees seem to be okay. My legs were really heavy for most of the run but I've decided this is because I was not hydrated enough. I'm going to try and run with my water for every run, even the short distances. It's a good way to get used to carrying the camel back, and it will also help on days that I haven't had enough water (or had too many beers the night before).