So this is new....

This was a whole new experience for our family. It was 8am on a Saturday, and already very humid. Here the four of us were, outside running 4km!!! My oldest son Jake was riding his bike, my one year old son Ian was in his stroller, with my husband pushing, and I was running! And we managed 4km before 9am!

We are your average family. I wouldn't say exceptionally active, but not total couch potatoes either. But being outside that early, and doing that was certainly new for us. We survived, there were no meltdowns from the kids (or myself), and we actually laughed and had a good time!

This is part of the reason I named this blog running with potatoes. My goal to raise the money, train for and run the half-marathon sounds great in theory, but sometimes reality hits.

How am I going to find the time to do all of it, and still be a present mom, wife, friend, sister, aunt, employee, board member, etc....?

This experience is going to be all about balance. Between now and December, I am going to learn how to do it all - and hopefully still manage to have my sanity, my husband, and my friends at the end of it! This blog is my way of keeping track of the changes that are happening.

For those that will continue to read this an keep up with me, I cannot promise that it will always be positive, but I promise I will always be honest.

This early morning run almost brought me to tears, just because of the change that is slowly happening in our family. The impact that this challenge is going to have will last long after December and the event. I am going to be changed, my family will be changed and I know that all the money I will raise is going to change 4.5 million lives!

Let me try to explain...

Thank you for taking the time to check in with me! Before we get too far into this, I guess I should try to explain what this is all about, and answer that crazy question...what am I doing?

So for those of you who know me, my best (and craziest) ideas come to me in the middle of the night. So about two months ago, I was feeling a little blue for lots of reasons, and none at all. I think I was just needing something that I could call my own. For all those moms out there, I'm sure you can relate. I have two boys, ages 6 and 1, and I was just starting back to work after my maternity leave. I was feeling busy, distracted and unhappy about the way I looked. I knew I needed to change, but I also knew I needed the proper motivation. So that nagging feeling stayed with me for a few days.

In the meantime, my mom (who lives with me, and yes that's a VERY GOOD THING!!) had just started a new drug for her arthritis. It's called methyltrexate, but it was presented to her as a chemotherapy drug, and scared the pants off of both of us. So I started to research this crazy drug that was going to make her hair fall out, and make her really sick. The first place I started to look was The Arthritis Society's website, http://www.arthritis.ca/.

And here is where the story really begins... I happend to see a tab to the Joints in Motion program. Right away the light bulb went on! I remembered that my stepmother had run three marathons with this team (she's been to Switzerland, Hawaii and Bermuda). I got pretty excited thinking that I could do it too! Why not? How hard could it be? I watch the Biggest Loser too, and saw those people do it. Surely I could too!! So I quickly signed myself up for all the information I could get.

Whithin a few days, I was registered and excited to get started on this journey. Then reality hit me, and I realized I should tell my husband and my mom what I was about to do. So in our family's typical fashion, my husband Wayne was 100% supportive, and my mom cried (because she cries at most things). But then the panic started. Now I was committed to training, and committed to fundraising. This challenge is the best of every world! I have a committment to change myself, and the motivation to keep doing it until it's done. Along with my training, I get to fundraise for a cause, which I love to do! And for the perfect cause! When I think about how I'm going to change my mom's life, I get tingles! With the money I raise for more research and programs and the influence I'm having on her gettting more active, it's just a win-win!

For those of you who know me, the fundraising wasn't the scariest thing. I have been fundraising for charities and not for profit places for years; it's just what I like do. I am very fortunate and proud to have been the President of the Barrie Chapter of volunteers for the Heart and Stroke Foundation from November 2008 to May of this year. So fundraising I can do. However, $5.600 is very new to me!

I am not a runner. I don't like it, I'm just going to put it out there. This will be the biggest challenge of my life so far. I think I would rather give birth to five more babies! It is taking all my determination to do this and my friends can tell you so.

Please stay with me on this journey to see how I'm going to accomplish this goal! Running with potatoes means trying to fit this all into my life. Between my husband, my boys, my job, my free time, my friends, and my other committments, I'm not totally sure how I'm going to do it. But I know I will. And hopefully along the way I will inspire or encourage someone else to step out and try something big, to make an impact!

Thank you for sharing this with me!!