Saturday, January 3, 2015

Why bother doing a resolution run anyways?

On January 1st I completed the Brita/Running Room Resolution 5k in support of the YMCA in Kingston, ON. You may be thinking "what was she thinking?" This is a question I asked myself many times but I always came back to my original reasons.

You see normally when one thinks of new years resolutions they think: Get fit starting January 1st. Get a gym membership, eat better, be a better person, you know, eat, pray, love and all that crap. But what if instead your resolution was to be a healthy person starting in January? Make January the goal and spend the time before hand working up to being that healthy person?

I get a free jacket, yay!!!! I'm not bananas about the colours and I got a size too large but it feels so fuzzy on the inside :)
You can't see it here but the yellow looking parts are actually lime green. There's reflective dots in a line on the back and the Running Room lettering on the front is reflective. I saw lots of people wearing this for the run but it's more of a sweatshirt than a wind breaking layer for the top.... 

Also, normally the most unhealthy part of my year is Christmas. I have attended or hosted 6 or more family events over the past few weeks that have involved first good food (yay because I didn't have to cook it) but also drinks and dessert and sedentary activities that all involved sitting on my doughnut. We can't completely evade family events and sitting around with the folks and we certainly can't outrun our forks but maybe we can do a little less damage over the holidays by being conscious of an upcoming race?

So here's to resolving to be healthy for the new year, getting a new jacket and reducing the damage we do to ourselves throughout the holiday season :D

Now to the actual run.

The weather sucked.

That's the view from my front window....

So my boyfriend says "it's gonna be cancelled." To which I fake bravely replied "it's just a little snow!" meanwhile I was thinking "jeeze at least it's only -4C." I couldn't let him see that I was doubting to want to do the run because then he'd easily convince me to skip it, this was in the back of my mind. He also informed me of the snow squall warnings which made me felt more excited to run (what does sarcasm font look like?)

But I got into my duds and warmed the truck to get going. I tested my gear out a couple days prior when it had been -10C and it looked like this:

Bottom layer: sports bra and underoos! Kidding, it was an underarmor wicking t-shirt I got when we finished tough mudder last summer. Capris I picked up at Costco in their sporting goods section like a decade ago! (These same capris survived Tough Mudder, if that isn't a vote for Costco geat I dunno what is) Lastly I wore my drop dead sexy compression socks:
Picked these up on Amazon about 6 months ago for around 45$. I break into a bit of a sweat getting the buggers on but they do wonders for my calves :) 

Next layer: This was pretty simple, zip up Costco jacket with ventilation mesh under the arms and a pair of dollar store gloves with the zip up sleeves tucked into the gloves.  I also wore my inov 8's that I picked up last September. They're so comfy :D 
They aren't much to look at and not as pretty as my last pair of lo pros (mauve merrells, they don't sell them anymore) but they do the job!

Last layer: I wore my dollar store toque I stole from my boyfriend, black. Ultra fabulous. And lastly I wore my mauve running jacket for the win!


I felt good all race long wearing this but around halfway through the gloves came off and in my pocket they went. The only thing I didn't insulate enough was my butt (go figure!). Next time I'd wear shorts over top my capris I think...

The race was good, it was a rectangular path over mostly flat road. The only things that slowed me down were my brain and the wind, I literally did the running man where I ran and got nowhere for a bit and turned my back to the wind and walked a little to catch my breath :) So here's the moment of truth, my time was 39:50. Not great but better than I was hoping after Christmas! 

Did you make a resolution to be healthy this New Years?