A New Adventure!

It was a year ago that I launched my Team Diabetes campaign for the Edinburgh Marathon.  With your help, I was able to raise over $13,000 for the Canadian Diabetes Association.

November is Diabetes Awareness Month and I am kicking off another Team Diabetes Campaign. This time, we are making it a family affair!  I will run in the Kauai Marathon in August 2014 while my wife Amanda and daughter Sarah complete a 17km hike on the island.  We have set an ambitious fundraising goal of $25,000, with all of our fundraising going to the Canadian Diabetes Association's D-Camps for kids with Type 1 Diabetes.  Sarah has attended their Camp Huronda for the last 2 summers, and the experience makes an incredible difference in the lives of families dealing with diabetes, such as ours.  More info can be found on their website at http://www.dcamps.ca.  Our family was recently featured in the D-Camps newsletter.  Here's a great video that shows how important these camps are to families dealing with Type 1 Diabetes.

Would you be willing to sponsor us for the marathon and hike?  Our pledge site is up and running and can be found here:  https://ocp.diabetes.ca/pledge/csPersonalPage.asp?prId=td&tId=20886&oId=15555744.

Like last year's campaign, we had Mariachristina Designs created an amazing poster for us.  We are hoping to have 42 sponsors representing each kilometre of the marathon donate to the campaign to have their name and/or logo featured. Please contact me at jaminacs@rogers.com if you're interested!

Stay tuned as we keep you updated on our fundraising and training progress towards August 2014!

Jack, Amanda and Sarah

Mission Accomplished!

Here I sit with both the fundraising and Edinburgh Marathon behind me and it's hard to believe it is over after all these months and weeks of anticipation!  I couldn't be more pleased with how both turned out!  I just reached $13,200 after receiving 2 more generous donations yesterday.  And last Sunday, May 26, I completed the Edinburgh Marathon in 3 hours and 44 minutes, a nearly 7 minute improvement from my first and most recent marathon over 10 years ago.  After suffering multiple running injuries since mid February, I didn't know how the race would turn out.  I had a great time. The event was fantastic with tons of spectator support and a great route with perfect weather.

I can't say enough good things about Team Diabetes Canada and being part of this event.  Our group of 80 runners and walkers from across Canada at the Edinburgh events raised nearly $600,000 for the Canadian Diabetes Assocation.  I definitely want to be part of another event next year!

Thank you for all your support to help families like ours who deal with diabetes everyday.  Sarah is all Signed up for D-Camps (camps run by CDA for kids with Type I diabetes supported by generous donors like you).  It is such an important part of dealing with this disease.

Jack

Another Injury!

Hi Everyone,

Well here we are in mid-March with about 11 weeks to go until the Edinburgh Marathon.  After achieving my fundraising goals at the end of 2012, I began my final 18 week training plan with the goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon in 2014.  At my age, that would be a 3 hour & 15 minute finishing time, which is pretty aggressive for me.  10 years ago, I ran a marathon in 3 hours & 50 minutes.  I felt as if I could have run it alot faster, so I felt the 3:15 was do-able.  Consulting some reputable marathon training books, I created a plan and started my final 18 weeks.

The first 4 weeks went well, although moving from 5 days to 6 days of running was tough.  I always enjoyed the Mondays and Fridays as rest days, and would do yoga on those days to recover.  But the new plan called for more mileage and more intensity.  Having run a half-marathon in October and continuing the half-marathon distances up to 28km by the end of December, I felt ready.  When I experienced an achilles tendon injury in January, I should have known to modify my plan.  But I was so focused on the Boston qualifying time, I pushed ahead after the achilles injury settled down.

Now, I have developed tendonitis in my right knee.  I should have slowed down my progression but I kept pushing ahead, and now it has become difficult to recover from.  I took some time off, have had treatments, but it still continues to be painful.  I am now about 3 weeks behind my plan after doing so well!  Here I am getting a treatment.

Well, the good news is that I just had a week in Florida for March Break and was able to run 5 times outside in shorts and a t-shirt!  It was an amazing feeling after a long, cold winter.  I'm looking forward to spring more than ever!  One of the things that I have been told about my knee is to listen to my body - don't run if my knee is telling me it's too sore.  After running 17km on Sunday (60% of my long run goal), I have decided to take the week off running and do some cross training until next Sunday so the tendonitis will settle down and I can move up to 80% of my long run goal and hopefully get back on track the week after.  I haven't been giving my knee long enough to recover, so the tendonitis keeps coming back.  I'm ready for it to go away!  The hardest part about listening to my body is shutting out the voices in my head that are telling me to run and making me feel guilty about missing my planned runs!

I've also received my tickets and itinerary for the Edinburgh trip, so that has kept me positive and makes this all more real.  It's kind of scary, too, as May 26 is not that far away!

Thanks as always for reading, and if you would be willing to support my campaign, please click here:  http://bit.ly/SfQ9A0.http://http://bit.ly/SfQ9A0.  I'm at $12,470, and would love to get to $13,000 by the marathon!

I also received an updated poster from my designer, Chrissy, and have posted it here.  Doesn't it look great?!

Jack

Winter Running - Continued!

I'm sorry the posts have been so few and far between lately! After the fundraising goal was achieved and surpassed, the holiday season began and fundraising started to fade out.  I received some more donations in the last few days of 2013 taking the total raised so far to $12,450 with more to come in the coming weeks.  I'm hoping to pass $13,000 next month.

I've been out seeing most of my sponsors for the poster campaign and delivering copies of the poster.  Everyone's been very enthusiastic about how they turned out.

In the meantime, my training has continued to progress well.  I am proud to report that I maintained my training schedule over the Christmas and New Year's holidays without interruption!  There have been many difficult days to run - cold, wind, rain, snow, ice - you name it!  This month, I've run in temperatures ranging from a high of 15 degrees Celsius (January 12) to a low of -17 degrees Celsius (today), in winds gusting to 90km/h (this past Sunday) and driving rain (January 13).  I ran a total of 236km in the month of December.  My longest run has been 28km which I've done twice.  Most marathon training plans peak at 32km with the concept that race adrenaline and strength and speed training will take you the last 10km.  However, I plan to do a few practice runs in the 40-42km range to ensure I am ready.

Luckily, I've been injury-free - until recently!  Last week, I developed pain in my right achilles tendon on a short 7km run after a day of rest.  Worried, I did some research, and decided to take a few days off to prevent it from getting worse.  I switched to spinning for a few days, and iced my ankle at night.  A recommended method was sticking my foot in a bucket of ice water!  It was not comfortable, but it seemed to work.  I went back to running and the pain is gone.  Doesn't this look like fun???

Thanks, as always for following along!  If you would like to support me by donating to the Canadian Diabetes Association on my behalf, I would be grateful. Here is a link to my pledge page:  Team Diabetes Site.

Jack