Category Archives: Fitness

Fitness Friday: Blackmores Sydney Running Festival Half Marathon

September 29, 2017Fitness, Runninghalf marathon, Race, Racing, Run, RunningChelle

Finally! I hadn’t run a half marathon all year and I was starting to feel really weird about it. I like to run two a year, but this was my first one of 2017, which feels weird given that it’s in September. I usually like to space my half marathons out a bit more so I spend more time training overall.

But anyway, I was equal parts excited and nervous about this race. Excited because I was going to be running in beautiful Sydney, Australia. We were going to run across the Harbour Bridge and see absolutely beautiful vistas of the city. But I was also nervous because this was my earliest race starting time to date. The race STARTED at 6 am – which meant I had to get up at 4 am (the grossest hour of the day) to eat breakfast so that I could properly digest everything before the race. And the other reason I was nervous was that once we got to Sydney, we discovered just how very much NOT FLAT the downtown area is. There are some seriously vicious uphills in Sydney and I was more than a bit horrified.

If you’ve been following me on Snapchat (snap is “muyourmind”), you’ll notice I tend to talk a lot more about fitness on there. But for those of you who don’t follow me: I was plagued with about a month of sickness after we moved into our new condo in August. Between unpacking, painting, and whatnot, my husband and I constantly had some kind of cold we kept passing back and forth to each other. It was so bad that I couldn’t work out for 4-5 weeks, which meant I was incredibly nervous about my physical capacity to finish this race. Once I finally got over the various sicknesses, I had only two weeks left to exercise before we left for the first leg of our trip which was in Bali. I knew I’d have zero chances of running the week we were in Bali (which is where we went before Australia) because even the nighttime temperature hovers around 27 degrees and my body and lungs just can’t handle that for running.

Thankfully, before I got sick I had been following my half marathon training plan to a T which saved me a lot of pain later on. Had I slacked on it, I would’ve been completely set up for failure. So I was able to utilize the two weeks before vacation really, really well. It meant doubling up on long runs during the week, but by the end of the two weeks I felt moderately comfortable that this was a race I may not do amazing in, but that I would at least be able to complete with my dignity intact. With this in mind, I was hoping to complete the race in about two hours and ten minutes.

Fast forward to race day. I got up at 4 am and ate my breakfast, and, miraculously, I didn’t feel vomitous. There’s something about getting up that early that usually makes me feel like I want to heave, but I didn’t have any of that this time. I ate my breakfast (granola and yogurt (or oatmeal) before a race – always), then went back to bed and sort of just rested for the next hour or so before I had to get up and out the door. The lovely city of Sydney has an absolutely subway system that was up and running by time I caught a train at 5:15 am from King’s Cross over to the race start zone at Milson’s Point. I went by myself since it really wasn’t necessary to get David out of bed just escort me to the start line. The only thing that was a bit poopy about that was that I had to wear nothing but what I was racing in to the starting zone. And given that this was a 6 am start time and Sydney was finishing up their winter season, it was very brisk 6 degrees when I left our AirBNB in Darlinghurst!

I got to the start zone about five minutes before the race started, which was PERFECT. We started off the race without kerfuffle (honestly, it was a pretty subdued start – I think because it was so freaking early.). The first part of the course forces us to run up an incline, loop around and then we get on the Harbour Bridge. I’m not generally one to take pictures during a race because it’s detrimental to keeping your race pace, but since I figured I wasn’t going to be busting out any kind of personal best this race, I wanted to document some of the neat things I saw on this race. And that shot of us running over the bridge was one of those moments. It was like “ohhh wowwwwww!” (Pictured above.)

Another one of those moments was this sadly blurry shot. We were running down an offramp (maybe an onramp?) that I think accessed Harbour Bridge. It was so freaking cool for all of us to be tunneling down this ramp together. I loved seing the rock walls on either side of us.

And of course how could I not take this photo? The sun had fully risen at this point and there’s the Sydney Opera House in the background. The green balloon ahead of me is the 2:10 pace bunny. Which is funny, because I had thought that I was ahead of her by this point!

The race course itself was one of the most interesting ones I’ve done to date. The course meandered through a lot of downtown Sydney and while there were a lot of switchbacks, it never felt awkward. That being said… there were a lot of inclines. The course avoided a lot of the bad ones I’d become aware of in the core, but they were still there and they were an energy sucker. That being said, I was putting out an insane pace for this race to start off with. For the first 10 kilometers or so I was pushing a pace of 5:50 per kilometer and I honestly thought “holy crap, I will actually nail a pb!”. I felt amazing – my body was happy to be running, I didn’t feel sick from being up so early and the temperature was cool which meant I could breathe easily.

Sidenote: this race had the best manned water stations I’ve ever seen. Each station had loads of volunteers (amazing, given the hour of day) and plenty to drink. I was able to guzzle water and non-branded “electrolyte drink” at every station. Some of them had jelly bean gels, and, even better for me, a few of them had GU gel packs. I had forgotten to pick up any gels for this race, so when I saw the gel packs around kilometer 12 I was elated. Even more amazing? They were actually chilled! If you’ve gone and downed a gel pack mid-race you know that they generally tend to be warm and gross by the time you eat them. (Usually because you’re carrying them on your body and they’ve warmed up, or they’ve been sitting in the sun for a while.) Not these gels! They were blissfully cooled which made choking them down so much easier (because, let’s get real – those gels aren’t exactly the most fun things to shove down your throat while you’re running).

Despite my excitement over myself race, around the 16th kilometer my left knee started to suffer. And it was weird because it came out of absolutely nowhere. In my training runs I hadn’t had any joint issues (but I also hadn’t been running this fast either nor doing these uphills) so I was really taken aback when it got so bad that just bending at the knee was problematic. I forced myself to start doing kickbacks with my legs in order to loosen up the knee joint, and it worked long enough for me to cross the finish line at a gallop (but dang if it wasn’t painful), but at this point my pace had slowed down so much that it made my previous quick pace irrelevant.

In the end, I crossed the finish line with a chip time of 2:09:21. Which is under the 2:10 I wanted! A personal best for me would’ve been under 2:07 or so, but given all of the circumstances that lead up to this race and how I felt towards the end of the race, I am EXTREMELY happy with this result!

Race Results

Finish Time: 2:09:21
Pace: 6:07 per kilometer
Overall placement: 4845/7219
Age group placement (Female 30-34 years): 33/539
Gender placement (F): 1888/3434

Fitness Friday: Panic Sets In (Half Marathon Training)

August 25, 2017Fitness, Runninghalf marathon, Race, Racing, Run, Running, trainingChelle

(old photo from several years ago - conveniently recycled for this post!) — (old photo from several years ago – conveniently recycled for this post!)

This will undoubtedly be an uninteresting post to many, but sometimes you have to face reality and just… put it out there.

So what’s the issue? Basically… I’ve got a half marathon in Sydney, Australia scheduled for September 17th and the longest run I’ve done in the last thirty days is 7 kilometers (this past Monday). By now I should be doing 60-80k per month and have solid lungs and muscles in place in which to complete a half marathon. But, with the condo purchase and move, and my never ending various sicknesses (in case you missed my update video: I’ve had two colds, an eye infection and horrifically debilitating food poisoning in the last three-four weeks), my last long run was only 11k and it was on July 22nd. To say I’m panicked about this upcoming race would be an understatement.

I went back to training this past week and set about an insane plan: I’m alternating 7-8k runs with weight training and then adding in progressively longer long runs as time goes on (I’m doing 12k tonight, then 14k AND a 15k next week alongside weight training and some shorter runs, etc.). The sad thing was that given my immediate start on Monday of this past week, it meant I only had 2.5 weeks to train for a half marathon which is a rather daunting task.

Of course, I do have a solid level of fitness that has helped keep my muscles from atrophying too much during the last month where I’ve done NOTHING, but it’s still really frightening to realize you are not only sorely under trained for something, but that you’ve got very little time in which to make up an entire MONTH of training. Half the issue is that although the race isn’t until September 17th – which would lead you to believe I’ve got more time that I’ve indicated – the reality is that we leave for Bali on September 7th and there’s NO WAY I can run in Indonesia because the night time temperature is 27 degrees!

I’m mostly putting this out there so that I don’t give up. I WANT to run a half marathon in Sydney – I love that feeling of being in a different country and doing something strenuous because I get this intense feeling of catharsis caused by such a long run. But man am I nervous. I also feel like something ALWAYS happens when I train for a race – like why can’t things ever go smoothly??

So that’s where I’m at. Fingers crossed I can still walk after this half and enjoy the rest of my vacation!

Fitness Friday: 2017 Pride and Remembrance Run

June 30, 2017Fitness, RunningRace, RacingChelle

2017 Pride and Remembrance Run - starting zone — 2017 Pride and Remembrance Run – starting zone

Hoooo boyyyy! I was WAITING for one of these races to finally happen in my racing “career”. The race where you’re sick for the day of the race and don’t want to even cross the finish line because you’re so ashamed of your finish time.

Heck, even before the race started, my friend and I did not look super keen on it!

Frankly, it was a long overdue for me – the 2017 Pride and Remembrance Run marks my fourth running anniversary and it’s slightly astonishing that I had never been physically ill for a race prior to now. But there we have it – I was coughing and phlegming like a beast going into this race and it’s almost a week later that I’m writing this post and I still sound deathly ill.

The girl beside me looks so happy! And I just wanted to die. LOL

The race got off to a really bad start to begin with – there’s supposed to be a sub 25 minute corral (which is not me – I’m a solid 26 minute 5K runner), and everyone else was supposed to go five minutes after that corral took off. That’s not how it ended up working. The air horn went off and EVERYONE took off. I was so unprepared to start that I didn’t have my music ready to go or my Nike Plus tracker set up to go on my phone (Garmin was good to go though). I spent the first thirty seconds of the race fumbling around with my phone trying to get the music going while bouncing up and down. What a mess.

I had this hope that despite my sickness, my body would somehow overcome that and bust through with a decent time. I was pretty hopeful at first – my first kilometer clocked in at 5:18, but then I hit a wall and my speed just started to slow down incrementally per kilometer (2nd kilometer was 5:47, then 6:15, then 6:17, etc.). I had zero drive to push harder and I really just wanted it to be over with.

Thankfully getting very close to the finish line

I had a few moments where I was determined to just drop out of the race and/or start walking. It was at that point that I started bargaining with myself: was it more shameful to finish a race slowly, or at least complete it without walking? In the end I decided that I would just not walk any part of it, but still push on and finish.

The whole race I felt like I was very close to coughing up a lung and/or throwing up because I just felt so wretched. I was so out of it I didn’t see my husband in the end zone taking pictures (like the one above), nor did I realize I’d worn the wrong SHOES to the race! I didn’t even catch on till we got home, I took my shoes off and then later on was like “wait, why are THOSE shoes out and not my new running ones?” (Not that it would’ve made a difference, but the shoes I did end up wearing have clocked over 900 kilometers on them and are quite worn down on the soles.)

Soooooo in short? Worst race of my life! I finished with a chip time of 30:15 which is far and beyond my worst 5K to date. So now I have a new personal worst! To give you an idea of how slow that is for me – I usually run a half marathon (21.1 kilometers) around a 6:05 per kilometer pace. This race was done at 6:02 per k. So suffice to say… I was pretty annoyed.

2017 Pride and Remembrance Run Course and Details

On the flip side? I completed it even though I felt atrocious. I bargained with myself and was happy that I managed to talk myself into NOT walking the race. Yes, my personal pride is injured by this race time, but I was also sick and I *know* I can do better next time. Of all the places and races to be sick for, I’m glad it was in a run I feel extremely comfortable with and in my own neighbourhood.

An enormous thank you to all of the volunteers corralling people and handing out water, and to the people cheering us on at the finish line. You guys really, REALLY help us out!

Race Results

Finish Time: 30:15
Pace: 6:02 per kilometer
Overall placement: 695/1165
Age group placement (Female 30-39 years): 81/202
Gender placement (F): 218/589

Fitness Friday: Sporting Life 10K 2017

May 19, 2017Fitness, RunningRace, RacingChelle

Myself and Jordan before the start of the race

This was my third time running the Sporting Life 10K as I had somehow gotten myself roped into it by my coworkers. I say “roped into it” because a the 10K distance is my least favourite race distance. There’s just something so awkward about 10K – you have to run close to your 5K pace… and yet it’s for double the distance! Ugh! Plus, I had kinda bombed my last 10K race in New York City (that race recap can be found here) so I kinda figured I wasn’t really set up properly (in training) for this distance.

The one massive upside though? Almost the entire course for the Sporting Life 10K is downhill, which automatically means you’ll be pulling a faster time overall.

The start zone for the Sporting Life race - facing south down Yonge Street — The start zone for the Sporting Life race – facing south down Yonge Street

My friend Jordan and I live in the same neighbourhood so we Ubered up to the start zone and got in our corral mere minutes before the race started. I like getting there just before the race starts because then you’re not standing around idle freezing your butt off until you start running, so it worked out well for us! We were both in the 56-59 minute finish time corral. I was hopeful for a 56 minute finish, but my last race a month prior had been just shy of 60 so I was kinda doubtful. Jordan had never done a 10K race before, but he’d run the distance the previous week and had clocked in around 55 minutes, so he could’ve potentially gone in the faster group. As our group started out, we wished each other well and started out at our own pace.

I tried to find my coworkers throughout the race, but I never saw them. I knew we were in the same corral, but when the race has approximately 20 THOUSAND people in it, it can be very difficult to find someone amongst the masses!

Although the 10K distance is not my favourite, this IS a lovely course. The downhill section (basically the first 7-8 kilometers) gives you a completely different vantage point than you would normally see in any given race. You’re constantly looking far down ahead of you and all you can see are masses of people. It might look like a crowded mess at times (and it certainly feels like that when you’re trying to get around people!), but it’s a beautiful mess because you know that we’re all in this together.

Sidenote: This was one of the WORST races in recent memory of people coming to a crashing halt in the middle of the course. People please – DO NOT STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COURSE! Slow yourselves to a halt by the sides, not in the middle! (Read this post on What NOT To Do In A Race – it might be helpful.)

I crossed the track mats a little bit unaware of my finish time – I couldn’t for the life of me remember what my previous paces had been on this course. I prefer comparing this race only to my other Sporting Life races because of the downhill aspect – everyone is automatically faster on this course, so using this as a personal best time is just ridiculous since it has severe advantages over even a flat course.

In the end, I finished the race with a time of 56:12 – which turned out to be my fastest on this course (by 11 seconds from my 2014 race). Even more interesting is that I basically kept the same pace for the entire race – which is something I almost never manage to accomplish. My first 5K was at a pace of 5:36/k and my second 5K at 5:38/k. Usually I plummet in speed for the second half of any race, so this really felt like I had more endurance overall. I was DEAD pleased about that!

This year is shaping up really well for my race paces and I’m so, so happy that I finally feel on track again!

2017 Sporting Life 10K map and stats via my Garmin

Race Recap

Finish Time: 56:12
Pace: 5:37 per kilometer
Overall placement: 6118/18500
Age group placement (Female, 30-34): 409/1687
Gender placement (F): 2314/10552

Fitness Friday: 2017 UAE Healthy Kidney 10K Race Recap

April 14, 2017Fitness, RunningRace, RacingChelle

2017 UAE Healthy Kidney 10K Race - before

A trio of us ( were in New York City last weekend for IMATS and my friends said they were more than happy if I pulled myself away from our group for a morning race on the Sunday we were in town! In looking around for a race on the Sunday, the one that popped up was the UAE Healthy Kidney 10K race that takes place in Central Park. I was elated – not only was I finally going to get the opportunity to run in Central Park (something I’d always wanted to do but had never gotten around to actually doing while on vacation), but the race start zone was walking distance from our hotel! I mean, how perfect is that??

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A post shared by Chelle (@rachelleyoung83)

The morning of the race was sunny and beautiful. The air was on the cool side of things and for me that makes for lovely running conditions. However, my stomach was a bit of a mess that morning and I had slept uncomfortably the night before because I kept waking up every few hours and STAYING awake for long stretches of time until I dozed off again. It was predominantly to do with race jitters which is something I can never seem to shake no matter how many races I’ve got under my belt at this point. It’s odd too – I hadn’t trained for this race in particular, so I knew I wasn’t going to put out a stellar time so I should not have been nervous at all.

Anyway, I ended up forgetting my Garmin tracker as I was headed out the door which ended up putting me a little bit off kilter when it came to the actual race. I thought my Nike+ app tracker would be sufficient (which is why I didn’t double back to get my Garmin) but it definitely wasn’t, and I certainly won’t be making that mistake again.

2017 UAE Healthy Kidney 10K Race - Nike+ Course Map — 2017 UAE Healthy Kidney 10K Race – Nike+ Course Map

Despite my stomach feeling rotten and the weird race jitters being ever present, as soon as I got into the starting lineup for the race, all of my worries melted away. And as soon as I started the actual race, I felt entirely at home. Running has become such a part of my life that it’s actually incredibly soothing to me. I know that sounds a little bizarre to some people – that the idea of bouncing up and down while covering long distances could even be remotely soothing, but, to explain it a bit more, the movement of putting one foot in front of the other… it’s become such a practiced and comfortable movement for me that it instantly puts me at peace. I experienced this same feeling last year when I did that Half Marathon in Iceland (which had crappy weather conditions and I felt less than stellar due to lack of sleep). It’s like my body just knows what to do and I can just give in to that feeling.

Anyway, I was lacking my Garmin, so the only feedback I had about my pace was coming from my Nike+ app, and it was only telling me once I finished a kilometer. I actually thought I was going at a really good pace, but in the end the Nike+ app was overtracking my kilometers and thinks I finished the race about 600 meters before the end which made all of my pacing totally out of whack. Not much I could do about it – by the time I realized the mistake I was so close to the end and I couldn’t run double my pace to make up the difference. I never really realized how much I rely on my Garmin to keep me on pace. Having that information feedback on your wrist is so, SO freaking vital! In the end, I ended up going a touch faster than my half marathon pace (pace details are at the bottom of this post), so yeah, it was a pretty slow race for me! And I wasn’t really sore the next day so I definitely wasn’t pushing myself. Ugh.

2017 UAE Healthy Kidney 10K Race - All done! — 2017 UAE Healthy Kidney 10K Race – All done!

One thing I was not prepared for was just how many dang hills there are in Central Park. HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS. It’s like a constant series of uphills! I couldn’t believe it! Especially the northern end of the park – it felt like kilometer after kilometer of ascent. I didn’t stop to walk any of them, but it definitely sucked some of the energy out of my system.

One of the things I need to mention about this run is that this was my first experience with seeing “threat level” flags in a race. I assume it’s because of what happened with the Boston Marathon bombings, but every checkpoint had a green flag with something that said “Race Status Alert Level: Safe”, which I anticipate they would change to yellow or red depending on what the conditions were ahead. I think it’s a necessary measure considering what has happened in the past, but when I finally clued in to what those flags meant (took me a few checkpoints to realize!) I was horrified – chills were running up and down my body. It was a moment of “what the hell country am I in where this is a necessary measure?”. It was a really bone-chilling moment for me.

All in all though, the UAE Healthy Kidney 10K was an extremely well organized event. I appreciated just how many hydration stations there were (which even included bathrooms), alongside the safety checkpoints. The volunteers all seemed happy to help and encourage and the overall atmosphere was really enjoyable. Overall, I didn’t LOVE the course design, but there is not much that can be done about that due to the structure of Central Park. So for me, I was just really happy to participate in this event!

Race Results

Finish Time: 59:25
Pace: 5:56 per kilometer
Overall placement: 5197/8615
Age group placement (Female 30-34 years): 430/887
Gender placement (F): 1764/4032

By the way, if you’re ever interested in the other races I’ve run, you can always visit my Race Results page for a breakdown by year and by race. Enjoy!