Look and see the distance in my eyes

Thanks to everyone who made donations to Run Canada Month (April), especially Millard,Rouse & Rosebrugh LLD and Longboat Runners club for their very generous donations. All donations, which were matched by Athletics Canada, are going to help training costs for Eric Gillis, Dylan Wykes and myself as well as programs to promote running.

The second fundraiser project that I have the good fortune of being a part of is a music video.  The song is “All For the Run” by Shawn Brady and the video was produced, filmed and edited by Mike DelMonte.  Shawn came up with the idea to help raise some money for my training while getting the running themed song out to listeners.  Mike decided to film the Yonge Street 10km and then some other running close ups as well as some footage of the band rocking out.  The video turned out really well and the song rocks.  It was a good thing I won the race otherwise it wouldn’t of had that feel good ending for the video, haha.  Definitely check out the video http://www.indiegogo.com/allfortherun?c=home and you can hear Boston marathon champ Wesley Korir cheering from the lead car before the song breaks in.

On Thursday evening we’re going to the launch party of the NB Canada 890 in Toronto.  This version of the 890 v2 (my ‘go to’ trainer) will be offered exclusively in Canada at your local running store in June.  A portion of the sale will go to Speed River and help out the club with expenses, mainly physical therapy.  So ya, if you buy a pair you should feel very good about yourself!

Can you see the distance in my eyes?

Eric and I just finished up our first official marathon workout towards the Olympics.  Our marathon build-up starts 14 weeks out.  For the first 2 weeks we’ll mainly be getting used to the volume of the workouts and not killing ourselves to hit race pace or anything.  Once we feel comfortable with the volume we start to chip away towards our race pace.  This morning we did a 50 minute tempo run and it went better than I thought it was going to.  It always takes me a few weeks to start feeling good and while today wasn’t blazing by any means the last 15 minutes was pretty honest and it left me really pumped for the next few months.

This is the stretch where we really have to be focused and that means turning down some appearances.  This week we had the opportunity to appear on CTV and CBC but it would have got in the way of a workout and we had to pass it up.  If I start doing all these extra things then my running/recovery/energy would take a hit and then all of a sudden I wouldn’t be running good times and then no one would ask to appear or speak or whatever.  Running fast always has to be the main priority and now more than ever as we prepare for the biggest stage.