Training for SeaWheeze: Chris’ first entry

Returning once again as the official water supplier of Vancouver’s SeaWheeze Half Marathon, members of the Whistler Water team are training for this year’s big event.  Below is the first entry from Chris:

“Two more kilometres to glory,” I mutter between breaths.

She can’t hear me as she is busy lost in her own world of pop music and thinking about what we will be bingeing on when we get home.

We made it. It was ugly but we did it. 21.1km completed! The week before, we knocked out 20 kilometres, no problem. This extra 1.1 kilometres seemed extremely grueling. Maybe it was the hot sun, maybe it was our lack of hydration or maybe just all mental.

“I never want to run the full distance again until race day,” she said.

Our SeaWheeze story is an unorthodox one. We originally started training for an adventure race in January. It was an excuse to get off the couch. We weathered the dismal cold rainy season. Five kilometres around the track pushing a jogging stroller seemed so difficult. Now, we have progressed to 21.1 kilometres. It is insane to look back and realize how far we have come in so little time.

Kristen, my fiancée, is my strength in all this. She never backs down from a challenge. We had a son, Blake, in June of last year. Training was also her motivation to drop the baby weight. She did!

I had completed the adventure race before and found that my prior training of a handful of runs was not adequate. Both my quads locked up with two miles to go. Fortunately, I was able to massage them out, gulp electrolytes and finish. I did not want to experience that again.

Because the adventure race is so long, we began training for the closest race distance to it, a half marathon. Little by little, we progressed to the full distance. We got really excited when we realized we could actually accomplish this distance!

Now we needed to find a race that could actually incorporate our newly acquired skill. SeaWheeze was the obvious choice! It’s big, it’s fun, it’s lululemon: everything a Vancouverite could ask for.