I'm a Fool

A fool in training at least! After much thought and planning I have signed up to run my second half-marathon next spring, The Sunshine Coast April Fool’s Run.

The planning part comes from the fact that this race is on the other side of the country on April 2nd 2017. Starting in Gibsons BC (home of the Beachcombers) it finishes in Sechelt (home of my in-laws). Not only do I need to train throughout the winter, I also have to travel to BC and deal with a 4 hour time zone difference. Of course the race does not coincide with our March break. While I’m sure Liam would love to miss an extra week of school, we decided that he and Hilary would be staying home. I asked my Mom if she would like to travel with me, heading to BC the weekend before the race. We are going to spend several days touring Victoria and Nanaimo while we acclimatize to the change in time and then head to Sechelt a few days before the race.

This looks like an absolutely beautiful course to run. Most of it is along small highways through the forest, with the water not too far off in the distance. It also has a net drop in elevation, but a couple of very steep looking hills thrown in. I have a lot of hill training in my future.

This will be my second half marathon. My training plan is very similar to what I did last year, with more focus on hills and speed training. I have a nice easy plan of 24 weeks to allow myself to build up a really good base of running before I start adding a lot of distance. My main concern is going to be the weather for January-March. Worst case scenario I end up at the indoor track or on a treadmill at the gym a few times a week.

While my Mom was visiting recently and we were talking about the race, she made the comment “I could probably walk 21k”. So I said “Why don’t you?” and within days she had made up her mind and registered to walk her first half marathon! She currently walks nearly 5k every day, so she has her own training plan and is going to start building up her mileage too.

Week 1 of training was technically last week and I blew it. Mom was here visiting, we went away for the weekend and life just happened.  That is another reason I planned on 24 weeks of training, so that if I do lose 1 or 2, it's not going to hurt me in the long run (pun intended).

Now I am officially a F.I.T. - a Fool in Training!