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Phew, she said, as she swiped away the beads of sweat lining her brow and breathed out a gust of relief. It was 4 p.m., seven hours after the registration for the Levi Leipheimer Gran Fondo first opened, six and a half hours after the registration process timed out mid register, six hours after the spinny wheel of death first began spinning, five and a half hours after the website crashed, and five hours after she sent a frantic email to organizers followed up by a frantic phone call. He was registered! This morning at 9 a.m. was the start of registration for the Levi Leipheimer Gran Fondo, a registration of which I had promised Mario for his birthday. I set up two calendars with alerts on my iPhone days before, I sent emails to both my work and home accounts, and I got Mario to send me an email […]

When I woke up this morning to the rain pelting off my bedroom window, I smothered the pillow over my head and prayed for it to stop. I never used to fear rain, in fact I actually quite enjoyed running in it. Sure it would take me awhile to muster up the courage to get out, but once I did, it was often a nice, refreshing run. But now, when I hear that rain and see those grey/black skies, I shudder. I blame Portland. This morning though, I refused to let it get to me. I refused to be a rain sissy. Big mistake. TODAY’S RUN 11:30 a.m. BG before: 6.9 (granola bar, no bolus) Temp basal: -50 per cent Distance: 9 km Time: 57:47 Average pace: 6:40 min/km 1 p.m. BG after: 6.4 You know that old adage, “When it rains, it pours” well, while the rain did so

Have you ever read an email and got so excited about the contents you felt like jumping up and down, or shaking your fists and grinning from ear to ear, or doing the Ferris Bueller in the middle of a crowded street singing Twist and Shout at the top of your lungs? I have. Today. I got an email from an old Running Room clinic leader asking if I’d be interested in talking to one of her runners who also has type 1 diabetes. Now, I’ve never considered myself an expert with this disease, not by a long shot, but when I got the email I felt honoured that I was the one thought of to pass on my “wisdom.” And let’s be honest, I got super excited too. Finally – finally! – a like-minded runner! Of course I responded in the affirmative and right away fired off an email to

Snow: 10 to 15 cm in New West, 28 cm in Chilliwack. This morning I woke up to a Winter wonderland – on steroids! Needless to say, I was home bound today. While the snow in New West quickly melted away, the highway cams and news reports for Chilliwack showed treacherous driving conditions due to the mounds of snow – some drifts were as high as 34 cm! – which was accentuated later in the day by freezing rain. It was the most amount of snow the community had seen in 12 years. And given that we on the West Coast don’t see snow like this too often, most of us don’t employ winter tires. So yeah, I wasn’t driving. New West snow: While I may not have physically been at work, I was in fact working … the sharp, sheering pains in my back from sitting on a wood chair all day

Planning a training schedule is like doing a math exam – both of which I did NOT enjoy. For previous trainings, I’ve relied on the Running Room or my Running Guru to plan my schedule. I’ve never had to do it on my own, until now. Because I won’t be joining the Running Room clinic this time around, as it conflicted with my pilates, and because my guru retired, I was forced to plan my own schedule. And because I wanted to change my training a bit from the Running Room’s I couldn’t just pull out a generic training template. So, today at lunch, I hunkered down with four months worth of calendar and a pencil and started scribbling and erasing away: LSD Run. Pilates. Trainer. Skipping. Tempo Run. Pilates. Skipping. Recovery Run. Trainer. Etc. Etc. My head was spinning by the end of it. But I came out with a