From Ziplining to the Races!

To say that I’m a bit tired is an understatement. I had a fantastic weekend filled with adventure, personal achievements, and quality family time. It began Saturday morning with Extreme Ziplining through One Axe Pursuits. I joined friends Dan and Jasper for a full day of ziplining at the gorge in Elora followed by rappelling down to the river. So much fun, and best described through photos and video. (Great video Jasper! It really captures the event :D)

And as if ziplining wasn’t enough, I then headed to Burlington Saturday evening to run the 10k Moon in June Road Race with my brother Ry and his friend Kelly. This was particularly special for me, since all three of us began running around the same time when we ran our first 10k race 4 years ago in Mississauga. Ry and Kelly are machines and continue to inspire me to push myself that much more, so it was really awesome to run with them again.

The course was flat and quite scenic, passing through downtown Burlington, along the lakeshore, and then through some residential neighbourhoods. At about 2k into the race, I decided I would try for a personal best. Thanks so much to Ry for pacing me, encouraging me when I was clearly running out of steam, and yelling at me to give it everything I had left! The sprint at the end was crazy, but it resulted in a very strong finish and a 10k personal best time of 50:14. Whoohoo! I may have been on the verge of throwing up at the finish line, but it was definitely worth it!

Then Sunday morning was the 5k Bread and Honey race in Streetsville. I was going to be running it with family and I had been looking forward to this race for quite some time. A while back, my brother Rob, my sister Verena, and her boyfriend Bruce decided they wanted to run a 5k race at some point in their life. There’s no time like the present, so Ry made sure we all made an event of it and signed us up for the Break and Honey run. Even my mum was to participate, but couldn’t unfortunately due to an injury. She was there in spirit though :). I am so proud of my siblings for completing their first race and having a strong finish. I’ve never seen Verene sprint like that at the end! It was an amazing milestone to witness (yes, I’m a proud brother :D). Now there’s talk of future races and more training. Could we become a family of runners? *Gasp*, who’d have thought…

All in all, even though I may be super exhausted, there were so many amazing and cherished moments this weekend. I wouldn’t trade them for anything :).