April Showtime

Montreal Getaway

For Christmas I gave the girls tickets to either Broadway style show or concerts.

So early on in April and in my April Awakenings post I talked about meeting Nicole and a trip to so Lia could attend a concert, but I didn't post some other photos of us and the condo and exploring churches in Montreal.

So this is the cafe I met Nicole at.

I do know the girls had an amazing time at the concert and it was her first real experience in a venue where it was her and one of her BFF's

No concert photo but here they are as we figure out the Metro

So while the two girls went on a shopping excursion Kiera and I went and walked our legs off and explored a whole bunch of churches. I took too many photos but will not bore you with them as I don't remember all the names anyways so here's just a couple of pics.

Each church had amazing architecture

1st church we saw just outside the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth 

Rare selfie

Photos do not do this justice

Fun trip, but definitely if the traffic/construction was better we would enjoy it more, but we didn't want to be stuck in downtown chaos. As it was there was an accident as we were leaving and we managed to be stuck in the jam.

Toronto Getaway

The final series of the showtime was for Mei-Ling seeing Dear Evan Hansen and a date night with her mother so we took the opportunity to give ourselves a bit of a getaway and head to another AirBnB and enjoy the family time. As it was we discovered that I need a AirBnB lesson in checking out places in where we go as this was in a high rise apartment and reminded me so much of when we lived in Toronto. Don't get me wrong the apartment was just fine for us for sleeping, but definitely not a hotel and the price was somewhat appropriate for what was provided. Especially since we had parking included and with a hotel that would have been an additional cost. Needless to say it was enough to get us through the weekend even if the kids had a bit of a wake up call on trying to get away from hotel luxury living. 😜 

Part of the itinerary also was that we flew ML down to the Island on Porter as she finished her last exam and is now done Year One of University. So this was her first solo plane ride and even though it was just like an hour flight it was solo while the rest of us braved driving to Toronto through rush hour. ML handed it like a champ, but really it was pretty uneventful.

Another adventure we did was visit The Cheesecake Factory so we indulged and had to see what the big deal is all about.

Sure add a skinny menu to make it better

I had to make room for this Reese's PB cheesecake

While Kiera and ML went to see Dear Evan Hansen, Lia and decided to watch IT. I had never seen it but she wanted to so it was quite entertaining. Sure there were some scary parts, but it was more entertaining watching Lia squirm. 😊

After the movie I went out and picked up the theatre goers at the Royal Alexandra and heard how amazing the musical was. Lots of tears, but definitely worthy of all the musical awards it received.

#YouWillBeFound

Oh and of course I went for a quick jog out to burn off some of the awesome food we had!

still maintaining the turtle pace

Lower Don River bridge and yes this is the bridge the bloor/danforth subway line is

finish at the sketch apartment

Our drive back we also stopped in Kingston as someone had a craving for gourmet grilled cheese. So we pulled into K-town and stopped at MLT DWN and enjoyed some good eats with waffle fries.

Delish

So after indulging ourselves I finally had the chance to explore the Brockville Railway tunnel. I've seen so many people post this in the past and I needed to check this out myself.

It was quite amazing what they've done.

difficult to capture what this experience is like

I'm a caboose runner and this is my support 😃

One end of the tunnel

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!!!