2018 Year in Review

4 Weeks Post Ablation

As of December 31st to today I've RUN almost 18km!

It has been four weeks since I had my Ablation and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm participating in the #RORunStreak and it's only Day 3. The purpose is to encourage others to run in January to motivate and inspire runners that winter running isn't that bad. I did all 31 days last year and it was flagged in my #YearInSport from Strava as my busiest month and it was!

Overall the bruising is subsiding and after a night out with some friends one of which is a PT said I could work the tight areas gently and massage them out. BUT I didn't feel comfortable with that so I've been doing some mild stretching and knowing to listen to my body. So far so good and my goal right now is continue to run continuous to remind my muscles that this will work. 😄

2018 Year in Review

2018 started off much like this month by participating in the #RORunStreak basically run a minimum of a mile indoor/outdoor and it counts.
Let's break down the race highlights:

January 

Richmond Road Race was a race I wasn't going to do last year, but my friend wanted to swap out and take over volunteering as she was sick so I took her place and ran the 10K. I will just say it was cold!

February

Winterlude Triathalon - Team Bushtuakah Trail Runners

This was fun with Therese and Phil, but sadly the x-country ski was cancelled so the course turned into a Duathalon and the 8K skate turned into 12K and the skier chose to skate or run so Phil pace Therese. We placed top 10. A lot of fun, but cold!

March

Hypothermic Half and Around the Bay. Both of these were great highlights. The Hypo Half was "fun" what's not to like about going in loops to do a half marathon? Well you get to see your running friends pass by each loop AND the post run brunch is great!

Around the Bay: well that was my 1st official away race and it was fun from rooming with RBSri and hanging with my RB's to meetup with some Team Awesome people.

April

Somewhat low key and highlight of this month was a couple of Run To Beer speaker series and a Pancake Prediction Run. The Prediction run was fun as no electronics and you had to guess your time. Challenging but it was fun. Also this is when I decided to try Peak Performance training and started working on building speed and working on pacing in Zone 1 heart rate zones.

May

Busy month of Peak training and my 1st ever trail race with 3 Beavers and of course Ottawa race weekend and the Voyageur Challenge. 

The trail race was a 3 hour how many loops can you do in 3 hours. Yeah that was tough and muddy but I had a blast!

Race weekend!! What can I say my first multi race event. 3 races  over 2 days. 5K, 10K Saturday and the 1/2 on Sunday.

Lots of fun memories and the culmination of meeting up with Team Awesome. Well most of them and of course being a VIP for the event.

June

Well this pretty much will bring me to the point of starting the blog, but this month was more peak training and the start of meds for my hypertension. This month was a healing month and of course the lead up to the diagnosis of my Atrial Fibrillation. The other highlight was the Ashley's run and my 2nd Perth Kilt Run where someone took my Kilt and I ended up with a Kilt that was way too big for me. Very comical and definitely not exactly the best when running. 

So the rest is pretty much the start of the AFib Asian blog and big highlights of the first six months of the year.

The last six months are what you already know if you've been reading my blog.

So I'll focus on the Best 9 or Top 9 photos that my followers on Instagram liked.

Best 9 on Instagram

Starting on the top left corner

1 - Being selected for Team Awesome for a 2nd year

2 - Canada Army Run Commander's Challenge 3rd year in a row

3 - Marathon du P'tit Train du Nord

4 - Flat Dan ready for the brisk cold temps for the 1/2 Marathon at P'tit Train du Nord

5 - The 5K at Canada Army Run

6 - The 16th anniversary of my mom's passing

7 - The Light Run with Run Ottawa members and a week after my Ablation (I walked)

8 - Flat Dan w/ the run gear for Canada Army Run Commander's Challenge

9 - At the start of the ill, injured and disabled runners for the 5K

Definitely the Canada Army Run seemed to get a lot of likes, but no surprise in the City of Ottawa as there is a large civil servant population and people liked those photos. Not arguing at all.

2018 was definitely a humbling year with big goals to aspire to, but then having to park those goals and fix an important organ in my body. 

I thank you all for following me and hope you continue reading my blog as my journey isn't over. I won't really know the full success of the Ablation until the healing is done and I have symptom free. Basically no more AFib! Here's to 2019...my comeback year and of course my 1st Ultra!!!