Run for the Cure (no 2007)

Regardless of the reasons, I didn't participate this year. :(

RUN FOR THE CURE We Are Victorious I Mean Me i mean i

Update: I neglected to add some details about the chart. Basically, each point you see represents each time I trained (including the day when all I did was trot down the street for 3 minutes). I left in some times on the graph to show some sense of scale. You can tell when I extended the length of the runs, from around 1/2 km to a bit over 5 km, just before I started to plateau. You can also tell when I took vacations and forgot to bring my shoes, where the graph takes a long dip after a few empty x values.... Finally on October 1st, the date of the run, I pulled a new (but pretty mediocre) record of 31:43 for 5 km.

Those of you who sponsored me for the run, thank you so much. :) And those of you who have yet to sponsor (or choose not to due to insufficient funds or lack of interest), fundraising is always ON. Tell your friends! And I'd love to see that magic 150 reached...

I Ran for (Melted) You

I said I would post the overall progress and results, but since I have more recently lacked sleep and sanity, I took a 5 hour long nap after the run and it is now already the evening and I am still too tired to compile the data. The digital camera ceases to turn on, so I have no immediate photos to show you. (This is the reason I have not posted photos in a long time.)

But you can rest assured that despite the rain and the cold, and a certain Jorgh's epileptic chihuahua constitution, I completed the run and have photos of it. :)

The paper got wet, predictably, but the marker I used to fill in the bad printing quality of the letters ran like the makeup of a jilted prom queen. So the result is as you see below.



There weren't as many people as last year, as most of these missing participants may have wisely decided to hide at home with their hot cocoas and thick blankets rather than decide to stick it out to the cold and bitter end when all the participation prizes were handed out to everyone else but me. :( I got free food tho. :)

Fundraising is still ON though. Please help me raise the bar on the goal for next year!

RUN FOR THE C-uh oh...-#@$!ing PARANOIA

Now I don't want to alarm anyone by writing this, but I couldn't sleep at all last night. (Why would we be alarmed, Ms. C?, dear reader would ask, but I'd only shake my head disapprovingly and point to the subtitle of this blog.)

I had planned to go to bed at the more reasonable hour of just after midnight and I felt myself dozing off in my chair, so I schlepped myself to bed (a whole 5 feet away).

As I was laying there, I felt a panic attack... What's wrong with the lower half of my body? I suddenly bolted awake. It felt tingly, a bit like when someone sits too long in a chair, except kind of different. (No, it wasn't that time of month.) And then I tried to go to sleep, but I knew this would probably bother me all night.

Thus started the cycle of wakefulness and sleepiness... the next thing I knew, I was wide awake trying to convince myself that my heart had not stopped beating, that I had to keep breathing steadily lest I pass out, that my body was feeling numb from all the panicking. At every hour I would get up and shake myself awake, dispelling the night terrors for another minute, but sleep was not able to overtake my wide-eyed brain. Maybe brain is too much flattery for it, after all it tortured me with last night - I'll go with pile of grey goo.

At 5, my mum's alarm went off. She took about a half hour to get ready for work, and then I heard the door shut and lock.

I was barely concious of what I did the next four hours. I don't fathom why I did any of this. I remember getting changed into garish running clothes (pastel green sweatpants anyone?), turning on the TV to watch the weather channel, turning off the TV, turning on the computer, turning it off, sweeping the floor, washing a quarter load of laundry, reorganizing my stuff, turning the TV on and off again, boiling water, turning the computer on and off, checking the TV, drinking an entire litre of water, checking my email, drying the quarter-load, sticking my nose in my plants and then inevitably falling unconcious in bed, at a not-so-healthy 9:30 a.m..

I wish I could say that I got all the sleep I needed because I have a run tomorrow that happens to start at 10 a.m., but I kept getting woken up by a number of things. Somoene cleaning the balcony. Jorgh calling. Jorgh calling again. My mum arriving home at 1. My mum waking me up because Jorgh called yet again. Then I felt bad because Jorghnassen kept calling because I asked him to, so I stayed awake.

Anyway, if I don't get such astounding results tomorrow (eg. falling flat on my face, running the other way, calling a cab mid-run) then you can blame it on PARANOIA PARANOIA PARANOIA PARANOIA and some LSD OCD.

Needless to say, I didn't go running today. My mum thought I became colourblind.

RUN FOR THE CURE I labeled myself

I couldn't resist playing with Photoshop and the techy font. This will be on my back on Sunday, while the front will have the number. 

FREE E-BOOKS - Rock on!

Project Gutenberg collects books that are out of copyright and free for the public and makes these books available for download bliss. Of course, it takes a lot of effort and crazy reading to get something like this put together, so they rely on volunteers to digitize, proofread, format, and put together these thousands and thousands of books. This volunteer project is called Digitized Proofreaders.

So while I'm waiting for... uh, just waiting... well, I'm proofreading pages that have been spat out by a scanner and OCR program. Today is the 5th day since I joined, and I'm up to the 60th page. I am currently most involved in a textbook on algebra for high school, and it's probably the most annoying proofreading project there (other than the smudgefest-sideways-tables-scanned-with-a-flashlight books and the ancient-languages-with-weird-markings-and-charaters texts). I've hit upon the pages no one is eager to proofread because they're pages of nothing but fractions, and the OCR garbles every single character from these scans.

But on the plus side, I'm rank #2259, tied with only 20 people. YES!

RUN FOR THE CURE 2006 Some People Screw Up at the Bank and Elsewhere

I went to the CIBC today to drop off donations, but somehow the tellers don't know what the printed page of online donations looks like. Maybe it's the English that threw them off. They made me register *again* for some reason, but now it's out of my hands. For now.

If I reach $300 by the end of October, I'll get a puffy one-shoulder bag. Let's keep raising the funds! :)

After the bank, I went around the corner to the Running Room (Coin des Coureurs, in QC) and picked up my participant's kit. I only discovered the t-shirt they gave me was dirty on the collar, like someone had dropped cola on it. :(

Just waiting for the rain to stop... *sigh*

On the plus side, I'm runner #1448. AWWIGHT!

Help me Run-da

Go for it! :D 

RUN FOR THE CURE 2006 FUND RAISING Stuff

To tell you the truth, I'm still $105 dollars away from the goal of my selfish ass not paying the registration fee, and I have about 5 days to get it. As I have very few readers to begin with, let's lay the situation down properly, and then you can tell your friends.

1. This is 100% legit. I did this last year. I'm doing this again this year. I'm probably going to haul my butt to do it again next year. I don't need to have a friend or a friend's friend or someone in my family stricken with, or even die from, the disease to justify fund raising for breast cancer. I'd have chosen the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada if that were the case, but it pains me even to think about that in the first place. Maybe I'll do that next year too, then you'd probably think that I'd have a reason. But I don't need one, do I?


2. Oh jeez, an online form that wants a credit card number. You know what? You don't have to use the form. You can email me for details. I'll even post my email address for spamrificness: chowmaylay[AT!!!]yahoo.com ... One person gave me a cheque. (THANK YOU, PERSON!) All I needed was a name, address, and email. That's if a tax receipt is wanted. You get one if you ask. Otherwise, you can just tell me your name is Mr. Incog Nito and I won't even bat an eye.


3. If you have ever made yourself a promise that you believe in, when throughout your whole life you have never believed so concretely, for your own sake or the sake of a friend or someone you have never met, then you know how I see this run and how much it means to me. Damn the psychological barrier of registration.

So all I need is perhaps 2 very nice people to donate ~$50, or 5 equally as nice people to pitch in $20 or so, or 10 (uh, 11) amazing people to abandon their coffee doughnut habit for a few days and scrounge up $5.

Please, please, please... if nothing else I ask for this year (I don't think I ask much, do I?), I ask only that you invite your friends or anyone you know to pitch in and sponsor me. /begging

RUN FOR THE CURE 2006 Motivation

It matters not why I run for this 5 km charity run. For charity, perhaps?

This post is more about how to motivate oneself to run. People are reported to do physical exercise when they are depressed or idle. But how do you gather enough strength to get up and go?

1. Pick a moment when you're sure nothing is going to happen. Give yourself an hour or so.


2. Drink some water. You're going to need it.


3. Put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Put on some sport socks. Put on your shoes. Now you have no excuse.


4. Run a bit. Then walk a bit. Then run a bit more. Then heave a couple of breaths and walk a bit. Then run a bit more. But don't turn around.


5. Once you're through for the day, note where you have arrived. Then go home and have a good long drink. OF WATER.


6. Tomorrow, you're going to run to that point.

Here are some downsides to running outside, before you tell me that you experienced such-and-such and never want to do it again:

• Embarrassing moments of tripping on garbage, rocks, sidewalks, your own feet: Check.


• More athletic people passing you: Check.


• Less athletic people passing you: Check.


• Rather ignorant kids taunting you: Check.


• Rather ignorant and stupid kids calling out racial epithets: Check. :(


• Little doggies running at you barking: Check. Hell, I almost kicked it today.

But here are the upsides:

• People walking on the street encouraging you: Check. :):):):):)


• Turning a not-so-pasty white colour: Check.


• Kids actually saying hi for some reason: Check. ?_?


• Noticing your new shoes are dirtier and wearing down: CHECCCCKKK. @_@


• Self-motivated goals more easily achieved: Check.

The last one is because if you are on a treadmill, you can always tell yourself you're through and quit the machine, sit down, and swig some Vector water or Ethos water, or whatever the hell it's called.¹ When you're outside, you don't really have that option, so you mentally have to push yourself to further lengths. Because 5 km is a kind of a long walk home anyway.

¹I condone the buying and selling of water only when it's necessary. For instance, when you're out in the middle of nowhere and dehydration sets in. On the other hand, it makes as much sense to privatize clean water as it does to privatize clean air. Why must we turn to such alternatives? LOLz Anyway, keep hydrated.

T-0 Yay!

I'm having a happy birthday, thank you. :)

On the other hand, I ended up with quite a few blisters (and one that turned very purple, due to someone stepping on one by accident. No biggie, tho, eh?) from walking a lot in unbroken shoes a few days ago. So my activities lately have been mainly walking around the plateau area. Fortunately, blisters can be solved with Davy's solution.

This evening, Jorgh took me to the nice restaurant, L'Express, where he ate too much and I ate tons of blueberries and too much. The up side is that the food is good and the prices are not too bad for a French restaurant (as long as you don't go overboard). The down side is that the place setting seems to have been inspired too much by the cheapo eats; but paper napkins and paper table cover seems to pale in comparison to the unsharp dollar store steak knife...! Anyway, good food.

P.S. Jorgh says tartar is not something you want to eat regularly. Or semi-regularly.

P.P.S. RUN, FORREST, RUN! That's all I ask for all year from anyone, so I'll ask again in a week or so.

O, T.O.

Gone for a while, eh? I'm still hiding from the real world in Toronto, at Eddie and Rebecca's place. I attended a wedding (second cousin's, if a godfamily even counts in the first place) and spent some time being driven crazy by my sister, mother, and brother all at the same time.

Also, I had spent a day with Davy and Stefan up in Chicoutimi before leaving for Toronto, but I won't talk about that much for the moment because I feel all of the following:

1. Bloated from the 9 day long EATASTICFEST called "meeting with family and gorging ourselves."


2. Bloated, having forgotten my running shoes at Jorgh's, and my mother forgetting to bring my running clothes after I told her to bring them.


3. Sleepy because it's fricking 2 a.m. after running around the EX all day and eating.


4. Irritated because I can't sleep.


5. I think my eye is infected because it's been very hard to not gouge it out from pain.

I'll be back in the province (at least) tomorrow, if weather, road conditions, car condition, driver condition, and hair condition permits. Meanwhile, VOTE FOR ME! VOTE pledge for me.

CIBC Run for the Cure

It's finally time! after all that ranting I made below about how much I hate my pedometer, I have sent out the spammails. If you haven't received one, count yourself lucky because the stupid form on the CIBC page is f@$%ed up. Here it is below:

---

I am participating in the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure, on Sunday, October 1st and I am asking for your support for a cause that is very important to me.

This year, an estimated 22,300 Canadian women and 160 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer. We know research is making a difference. Lives are being saved through earlier detection, and more effective treatments are improving the quality of life for those who receive this devastating diagnosis.

I am one of 170,000 participants who will all be walking or running on Sunday, October 1st and I need your support. Donating online is quick, easy and secure! You can pay by credit card and within 30 minutes, you will receive a tax receipt for any donation that has been successfully received. Your donation will be added to the critical funds raised by the Run, and will be directed towards research, education and awareness programs.

I know that you people don't like spam. Especially when you are cash-strapped and see that this email looks like a phishing thing and someone is asking for money. And on top of that, you probably haven't heard from me forever. Or ever. But I'm saying this is 100 percent legit, and I am 1000 percent committed to this run. (Typo? You decide.)

And if you don't feel comfortable donating online, well, you're always free to see me in person and I'll hook you up with a tax receipt, etc. (though it's not instantaneous). Though it will entail travelling, but there's still time. ;)

Thank you. I appreciate your support!

- Eugenie, a.k.a. Ms. C

---

Don't forget to click on the link to check my progress. Or any of the links anywhere.

Irrational Anger

AARRGGGHHH SOMEONE IS GOING TO F#@$ING PAY FOR THIS!!!!



When I started running like a mofo, I was using the fancy Made in China Pedometer/Chronometer/Assometer to check mainly how long I was jogging for. I was a bit skeptical of the step counter because I noticed it would skip steps for absolutely no reason. I was even more unsure of the calorie counting thing so I ignored it completely (but apparently running for half an hour barely equates a can of soda so now I've mostly given up on junk food).

Anyway, it multiplies the stride (I inputted 75 cm because I can't tell) by the number of steps it miscounts (according to the stupid thing, about 5900) and it spews out the distance. In fact, according to the above diagram from RunningAHEAD.com, I had been vastly underestimating how far I had been running.

So, at most one of the following statements is true:

1. I have been running about 4.4 km for the last few days.


2. I have been running about 4.8 km for the last few days, given 10% error.


3. I have been running about 5.0 km for the last few days, given a ruler, a calculator, Google Maps, and a curvy monitor.


4. I have been running 5.23 km according to Google Maps and this tool.


5. Or the most popular: I have not been running any of these distances because EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN GADGETTYTHING IS SHITTING ME.

VENGEANCE

Sunburn... Slowly...

One disadvantage of running too late in the day is getting too tanned. I didn't realize how red I was getting until yesterday, when I came back inside and took a shower. I get flushed naturally when I drink (a modicum amount) or exercise, so I have to wait a while until I noticed the tan line was not just a different colour, but red. Also, it seems that I was just to the point that things would have started to peel... and that's all fun and games.

So I'm trying to go for two different goals here: not to burn by interspersing days in between running (but trying to wake up early enough to avoid high UV times), and to get to 5 km eventually because it's been 3 months and I still haven't gotten there yet. :(

But there's a way to have you encourage me, and that's to donate to the cause. More on that soon.

---

I noticed the It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! essay contest, but I don't have a 500 word story to submit. On the other hand, I do have a 154 word story for you, so that should suffice. I don't like remembering things that happened in elementary school.

Worst Hallowe'en Ever

When I was in second grade, my mother - who is inept at making artistic things - attempted to help me create my bee costume. It consisted of a yellow tee-shirt with black stripes sewn on, a pair of black jogging pants, coat hanger and pantyhose wings, and a pair of pipe cleaner antennae. I was pretty proud of our creation, until I wore it to school that day. Another girl in the class was also dressed as a bee, but her mother was a costume designer! Her perfectly sewn yellow-and-black striped torso was also stuffed, which gave her petite figure an adorable puffiness, stinger included. Her headgear was spring-mounted, a cute detail indeed. And her wings were sewn into shiny patterns, not unlike a real bee. Everyone thought she was adorable. She received the school prize for best costume.

And it didn't help that it was too cold to go trick-or-treating that year.

Less Posting, More News

I'm on my two week long wedding attending blitz. I'm currently posting from Chicoutimi, for those of you in the know, my birthplace and origin of all those tasty blueberries I take home. I just attended one on the 24th in La Baie with Jorghnassen, the non-religious notary kind. Then I must schlep myself to Toronto tomorrow with my mum to attend another wedding that I have yet to figure out who is getting married to whom.

Meanwhile, the principal from the learning center has a possible job opening for September that I have a pretty good feeling he wants me to fill, but I'll have to wait for further response. I haven't mentioned it before because I don't want to cause bad karma. Kaaarrrrmaaaaa...

Lil V is in China right now and the Chinese government has been censoring her BLOGGER viewing so I'll try to post less for her to have less to catch up to. :p

I'm still trying to train for the 5 km Run for the Cure, although it's hard to do so when I've left my running shoes behind and I haven't been moving around a lot. I spent yesterday jogging in the pool (aquajog?), and I'll probably stairclimb in Toronto, although I don't think I want to do it if it gets really muggy down there.

Couch-to-5K

I don't know why I didn't find this webpage last year. This program recommends jogging interspersed with walking, spacing out the workout days. This way, the body can tolerate the stresses and adapt to the workout.

I didn't do this. I needed a sped up schedule, because the run was barely a month after I had registered in September, and I was definitely not in any sort of shape. Well, maybe if blob counts as a shape.

Today, the temperatures did not let up. It must be in the 30s with humidity here, and everyone is praying for rain. (And now as I am typing this, the rain is starting to fall.) The humidity was thick enough to cut with a knife when I went jogging this morning (quite a bad idea today for me - I was ready to keel over from the heat).

---

We visited an old couple from church in Ste-Foy this afternoon because my mum heard that the woman had broken her ankle from a fall and was going around in a wheelchair. In the meantime, the man is fighting cancer while having recovered from a stroke last year. It is most frustrating because the woman is 75 and fiercely independent. They still live in a rather large house with a large yard teeming with flowers and growing things.

I had one very embarrassing moment (or should I say many continuously embarrassing moments) while in conversation with them due to my mum. She is very vocal about how she feels about aging, and she considers herself, that 58 year old knucklehead, WAAAAAAAAAAY OLD BEYOND BELIEF. Now, talking to two people in their mid 70s, she proceeds to completely dismiss how anyone their age can "do anything." It doesn't help that the people the couple know are all in their 70s or older, who apparently can't "do anything!!!"

They were pretty lighthearted about it though, laughing at me while I hid my completely flabbergasted face, as my mum kept going on and on about how these old people were simply incapacitated from disease and illness or just ready to croak. I was most grateful for them not to have kicked us out of the house after having fed us a light lunch.

I swear, she'll last another hundred years, be able to totter around and do a billion things, and still hammer out the same schpiel.

Run For the Cure: Progress?

So far, I'm into two weeks of jogging and I'm concentrating on increasing my endurance. Funny enough, I've increased the length of the jog but I have yet to increase the time jogging... maybe I'm getting faster? And paradoxically, lazier?

No donations yet as of today. I haven't really been campaigning much, nor advertised the running thing yet to people, except my mum and some more perceptive readers of this blog. Stephen, yes.

Now, I am probably the last person in the world to ask anyone of anything. If I were a plant, I'd be that 4000 year old tree holding onto nothing but rocks on a cliff side, waiting for the day someone comes by and says, "OMG DOODZ THIS GUYZ 4000 YEARZ OLD!" thus validating my existence. Anyway, how this relates to jogging I don't know.

But I'm just saying I don't like having to ask anyone for money especially when I am quite certain they don't have any to part with in the first place. So I won't. I'll send an email out later in the summer but I won't beg for donations.

All that I ask of you is that you might think of me when I'm huffing and puffing on October 1st, chugging away at the last few hundred meters of the run, and send me a thought, a slight hope, that I don't collapse before the finish line. :)

Run for the Cure 2006

Dear Reader,

Once again I am participating in the Run For the Cure, where I train by running, from being a blob of goo to becoming an average-fit Canadian and actually accomplishing a 5 km run around the old city. This time around, though, I have started much, much earlier and my goal is to make the 5 km below 25 minutes. (Or not.) Either way, I will still be raising funds and I hope that you can help me reach the $150 goal.

Last year's $300 was quite wonderful, mostly due to one anonymous donor helping me reach the threshold of registration-waiving. :):):) Although I am grateful for this benevolence, I don't think it could be repeated, so my goal this year is once again $150.

I registered for the Quebec City run, Sunday, 1 October 2006. I'll leave the progress report to the very end where we can all analyse my lack of routine.

Thanks for your support!

Yours truly,
Ms C, the blob

Ran for the Cure: Thank You! Merci!

My total is actually $300! I want to personally thank everyone who pledged for me, and encoruaged me to run. If you tracked my progress over the last three weeks, you will see just how much that encouragement has given me the motivation to achieve this completely baffling result. (And those of you who don't know me, this is absolutely completely baffling.)

Just because the run is over doesn't mean that the fundraising drive is over.

Anyway, I held up my end of the deal. I dared to slowly and stinkily trot 5 km of the gentle rolling slopes of the old city, and made it in a record time (!?) of 33 minutes. How did I do that? I really don't know. Maybe being last in the running crowd pushed me a bit more than I thought. But, hey, someone has to be last, right?

Here are the results of the Quebec City cohort. ... Well, considering that PEI had about half the amount of participants and about just as much raised...

Run for the Cure 2005

Jorghnassen!

5 km, 33 minutes later!

YOU!!!