Another Donation

Some very exciting news with our fundraising, we received a $1000 donation from Keystone Excavating ltd. Thank you to Jim Elias over at Keystone for bringing this together for us. We are thrilled that you want to be a part of this exciting journey with our team and support the Arthritis Society. We can’t wait to see their logo on our training jersey.

So that brings our team fundraising up to $9325 and that means we are over a quarter of the way there!!!

Most of my week has been spent at the gym with my friend Melissa, she is being a great support! I started with my personal trainer on Tues and meet with her again Friday. The kids have been off school all week so it’s been a bit of challenge to get out for “power” walks but the cross training at the gym in the evenings has kept me on track.


Our Survivor Pool fundraiser is underway and we have 2 pools, thanks again everyone for your support. We have our bottle drive coming up Tues Feb 28th. We will be set up in the parking lot of the Southpointe Bottle Depot in McKenzie Towne off 130th ave. Shaw tv is going to be there interviewing us, so stop by drop off your bottles and say hello! We would love to see you!

March 2,3 and 4 we will be set up at the Calgary Farmers Market so you can stop by there too. We will be collecting donations and selling our bracelets!

Changed it Up

Well Sunday's walk kicked my butt. My friend Melissa loves doing intervals so we did 6km of intervals, 2 minutes of power walking and 3 minutes of fast pace walking. The last 4km which was mostly uphill we did a steady fast paced walk. I usually feel pretty good after 10km but I definitely felt the difference doing intervals that's for sure. This week it's off to the gym on non walking days and personal training at Motion Fitness starts on Wednesday. Super excited about that. 
We posted an ad on Kijiji looking for people's help to help us with our fundraising and we've had some responses from people that would love to donate items for silent auction items at our fundraising events.
Check out our fundraising thermometer ...
we are almost a quarter of the way to our team fundraising goal which is great news. We still of course have a long way to go so we need your help. :-)

My team mate Heather has created a blog post on our arthkickers website, check it out.

Have a great Family Day!!

e.x.c.i.t.e.d

Well it's been a crazy week and we have some exciting news!!! First of all a huge thank you to Motion Fitness in Okotoks, they have donated a gym membership for me from Feb to Oct. and I am super excited about that.  I am excited that they want to support and be a part of my journey!
We are $1200 closer to our fundraising goal this week and that is so awesome!  On Feb. 28th our team will hosting a bottle drive in the parking lot of the Southpointe Bottle depot. Not only are we going to be collecting bottles but Shaw TV is also going to be there to interview our team and the Arthritis Society.  We can't wait to share our story!! So we would love for you to stop by and be a part of an exciting event!!
We are currently looking for a place to print our logo on some t-shirts as well as help us with our training jerseys. If you have any suggestions of places for us to check out, we would love to hear from you.
Our bracelets have made their way to Ontario and that is such an awesome feeling. Thank  you to my friend Jodi out there for helping us sell them. The support is so much appreciated.  Also thank you to all our family and friends that are supporting our survivor pools, we are thrilled to have 2 pools on the go! Good luck to everyone playing!
Phew ... that was alot of information...lol!!

I know that October seems so far away but we would love to complete our fundraising before the half marathon in May so that we can focus more on training, so please share our website http://www.arthkickers.com/ with your family and friends and help us real our goal! :-)
 Every donation big or small will help us reach our goal!

Slow Week

Well it's been a bit of a slow week around my walking. I really needed to give my hip a bit of a rest so I've only done 3km so far. Friday I hopped on the treadmill and the rest of the week I was able to do a bit of core work. Holy man I can feel the abs! The 3k felt pretty good, so I will proceed with my Sunday walk. I have a feeling it might be a chilly one since we are heading out at 8:00am. I'm headed to my sister's so really want to get a walk in before I do, so 8am it is! :-) I am also going to be meeting up with a company called simplyforlife.com They are going to set our family up with meal plans for more healthy eating, so we are pretty excited about that. It's a 12 week program so that should give me a jump start into things. Although I have been walking my butt off and watching what I eat the scale still isn't moving. That is a bit frustrating for sure. A friend and I are weighing in together once a week hoping this will help keep us both on track as well. Enjoy the rest of the weekend I will let you know how my early morning walk goes! :-S Thankfully it's with Toccoa so committing to meet her will make it easier to drag my butt out of bed by 7!! :-)

What great February weather!!!

What another beautiful day to be outside walking. I was hoping to do another 12k this Sunday but had to be happy with 10.58. Even after a painful walk for my friend Melissa last Sunday, she decided to join me again this Sunday. After reading my blog yesterday she did try to back out because she didn't think she could do another 12k this weekend since the blisters on her feet were still in recovery mode. I didn't want her to back out and wanted her to walk with me so I agreed to her only wanting to do 6k. :-)She wanted to tackle the hill that I've been doing so that's what we did. I knew I wanted to do to 12k so I headed out an hour before I was meeting up with her to walk. I only managed to do about 4.5km because walking was actually very painful today. So I did 10.58km in total but it was a tough walk. Thanks Melissa for joining me otherwise I'm not sure I would have even done the extra 6. The good conversation and laughs always takes over the pain!!:-) I love the support, it means alot! See you next Sunday!! :-) Well tomorrow is definitely a rest day and starting this week I am going to start on a 14 week walking program for the half marathon in May. I'm also going to go and check out motion fitness gym and see what I do there for some cross training. Thanks to everyone who reads the blog and supports me in one way or another!:-)

Squeezing a one hundred dollar bill ...

A busy week! So far this week I have logged 17km and tomorrow I will add another 12k. A very successful week!! Tues a neighbor decided to walk with me so that was awesome, I love walking with someone else, it takes the boredom factor out. Thursday it was a lonely walk by myself but I pushed my way through it. So you're dying to do know what the post is about right ... squeezing a one hundred dollar bill!! Well first of all I didn't finish the post title..lol!! It should say "pretend you're squeezing a one hundred dollar bill between your butt cheeks" ..lol!! Thank you Cathy for the tip ;-)!! I met up with my friend Cathy to collect her bottles for our bottle drive (thanks Cathy) and while I was in her company I asked her what the trick to walking faster was, since she has walked a few marathons and done amazing. And that was her response to me ..."pretend you're squeezing a one hundred dollar bill between your butt cheeks" when you are walking,take shorter steps and get those arms moving. So this morning before I left I was demoing (well not really cause I don't have a $100 bill in my posession..lol)for my family what it looks like when you pretend to be doing just that...well holy heck that is actually very difficult to do!! :-S The first time I tried it I completely locked my hip up and didn't think I was going to be able to walk for the rest of the day!! But I stretched it out and tried it again. So during my 5km today I decided try this newly learned technique. It took a while to get in a groove and amazingly enough it works. I was able to increase my pace for part of the walk.It works a totally different group of muscles then I'm used to using when I walk so we will see what tomorrow brings! I think it will be awhile before I can walk an entire walk like that but it's a new goal!! Thanks Cathy ..I think..lol!! I think I might even be able to keep up with Toccoa with this new technique!! :-) We are still collecting bottles so drop us a line and we will happily pick yours or give you a drop off point. A big thank you to the Calgary South Trail bottle depot who has allowed us to set up a big bin inside the depot for people to just drop their bottles off there for us as well! It's located on 130th Ave in McKenzie Towne right behind Home depot. We have just created another event on our facebook group and that is our Survivor Pool for the upcoming season of Survivor which airs on Feb 15th. You don't have to be on facebook to join just drop me a line and we can get you signed up! It's $20.00 to enter and pick your survivor. You will then have a chance to win half the pot of $180 if your survivor wins the game! The other half of the pot is donated to our fundraising. You don't even have to watch it we can just let you know if you win or when your person is voted off!! We need 18 people per pool so join us and support our fundraising! :-) Enjoy the rest of the weekend!! I will check in tomorrow after my 12k! :-)