It's the week before Christmas ladies!

And by the end of the week the days will start getting longer again!

Well I've had my end-of-year run with my partner today, as she's going home for the holidays on Wednesday. We ran a (self-organized) half-marathon!!! Plus, we had some sun with us, which was a great bonus!!!

We had planned to run in Stanley Park but with all the fallen tree around here we thought it was maybe not the best idea. We wanted to run on the flats because 21.1 km is the longest distance we've ever done (from a max of 17km last weekend) and we wanted to give ourselves a chance. Stanley Park would have been great, but that's life in the PNW!

So we ended up running 2 loops of our 10 k route, plus small detours to get to 21.1. The course is not hilly but it's definitely always ups and downs, mostly long progressive ups and sharp downs. The GREAT part about that course is that it finishes with a 300m downhill, instead of our usual mile-long hill!!!

We started at a 5m20s pace on the first kilometer and I was a bit worried we'd burn out before the end, but we kept up. We walked for one minute every 15 minutes or so, even when we didn't need to. Well, we finished in 1h55m18s, which is just above a 5m20s/minute pace!!! I could not have been happier.

We were rewarded with views of the ocean and of the snow-covered mountains, and a big bowl of vegetarian chili on rice when we got home (thanks to my borrowed-slow cooker).

Now on to training for that sprint triathlon in March! Training for speed, not distance.

Life is good! I'm really thankful to have the ability to run like this. I didn't think I would ever do that...