Another Diamond of a Day!

Wow, what a great weekend.

Today the marathon group was running 16K LSD.

With the day bright and sunny it brought out many runners to the Running Room this morning, great to see so many faces . . . old friends and new runners, everyone pumped and positive.

Our Marathon Group is very large in numbers so we head outdoors first. We went across the parking lot to assemble and get our predetermined run route for the day. The various pace groups get together with their pace runner and off they go . . . I’m in the 5-hour pace group, so we are the second last group to head out.


This gave me some time to take a quick picture of the 10K group getting their instructions.


The 5-hour group this week was small, and there were four of us. The great part of the 16 week training is that you can try different pace groups . . . several jumped over to the 4:30 group while a couple of others went back into the "to finish" group.

Off we went. Today’s run was like a treasure hunt, a brand new run route that none of us was familiar with . . . it took us through a very affluent subdivision and in close proximity to a private golf course. There were some amazing homes and properties tucked away in these private courts . . . with quite a bit of ooohing and ahhhing from us needless to say as we looked at another spectacular home.

As we were running, it turned into more of a quest for a pit stop run than anything else, go figure, four women, cold day . . . need I say more? After several thwarted efforts we had to totally give up on the run route to detour to find a public washroom, thank you Tim Horton’s!!! The coffee did smell great, but we had to settle for our sports drinks and gel’s.

By now we were really off our "supposed"route so we put our collective heads together along with the Garmin’s and headed off again.

What a beautiful day.

The sun was out and really quite strong for this time of year, wonderful! The wind was starting to pick up as we headed back toward the Running Room. Some of the sidewalks were slippery and icy but we managed without any damage done to anyone. I’m not all that cognisant of times nor splits right now, so I just go by what feels right, however the other women had their Garmin's and even though our pace was a little fast, we were all comfortable with it so we just continued on . . . even with the detour and pit stop we came into the Running Room four minutes ahead of what we were suppose to be at 2:04:00. It was an awesome run, comfortable pace and wonderful company.

When we were just about to cross the road to finish up our run,
we came across some of the ladies doing their practising for their walk,

60K for the Weekend to End Breast Cancer . . . You Go Girls!

As a side note:



















With our detour today, we ended up crossing over Valour Bridge, a bridge that I find an honour to run over. It is dedicated to the all the men and women who have fought to keep Canada free. All along the bridge there are plaques commemorating the various wars throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries, however, this plaque is the one that sums it all up for me .

Thank YOU!

Thank you for allowing me the feedom to run, the freedom to have a voice in this country and the freedom to be me!

Life's fun if you don't weaken, enjoy your journey one step at a time...

thank you,
Lily