Two 10k’s, one Tri, and maybe one half marathon?!

This week we came to an unfortunate realization – the triathlon that we were hoping to do was closed because they had reached their maximum for registration. Kait and I wouldn't let this get in our way! Although the one we had wanted to do was a female triathlon and might have had a better atmosphere for our first we decided to find another one. Turns out finding triathlons isn't that hard (deep down I was kind of hoping there wouldn't be one – just the thought of competing in one turns my stomach!) so we finally settled for one in Calgary. Mark your calendars: August 8, 2010. It's going to be a really big day for us. We're hoping to just have fun and finish... strong (that's for Kait - I'm just hoping to finish haha)

Kait being the slightly more competitive one has this great idea to compete in two 10km runs and one half marathon just to help train for the tri. Writing this blog entry is giving me butterflies as I type. We haven't found a half-marathon yet because of conflicting schedules but it is on the agenda for this summer. If anyone knows of any, preferably close by, please let us know!

So, just a recap:

May 9, 2010 – first 10k of the summer

May 30, 2010 – second 10k

August 8, 2010 – the triathlon

Sometime throughout the summer there will be a half marathon! We might have a bit of a road block right now but we haven't let that stop us before...

The great thing about our list is that it pushes us out of our comfort zone and into a new place where it's exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time – hence the butterflies. Kait and I were chatting a few days ago and we realized how much this has actually changed our lives (I know... very cliché). Just by setting out and trying to complete our list gives us a sense of empowerment - who knew getting out there and pushing your limits would result in such a thing?!

Anyways, if you're reading this I encourage you all to set some time aside and write your own list. It doesn't have to be anything like ours (it's looking like a life project now!) but just some fun/different things that you want to try. We are always looking for people to help complete some of our items on our list so you should definitely join us... maybe it's on yours too?

And to finish off here is another quote from Curious Case of Benjamin Button... I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again

#7 – go on a zip line

So I initially chose this item because of the zip line that was going through Robson Square in Vancouver during the Olympics. When Kait was here for the Olympics I thought for sure that we would be able to try it out! A zip line, during the Olympics, in the busiest part of downtown and free, what could be better? Apparently 30 million other people thought it would be awesome too. It didn't even occur to me that the line up might actually be long! On every single news channel they said to anticipate a wait for 7-9 hours to take a 20 second ride on the zip line. I was beginning to think that this would't happen for me. I was under the impression that the zip line would only be open during the Olympics and would shut down after the closing ceremonies.

I re-watched the gold medal hockey game on Shaw V.O.D and then watched the late night news to see if they had any Paralympics on – can we say Olympic withdrawal? I decided to go brush my teeth and then they started talking about the zip line! My ears perked up a little and then they mentioned the line up - ONLY 90 MINUTES! Are you kidding me?! I could definitely handle a 90 minutes wait. I thought it was a dream! I sent a message to my friends and got a few commitments. Unfortunately, the day of my friend Keshika couldn't make it but I was determined to try out the zip line.

Alvin and I head down there and the sign said 3.5 hours. I know what you're thinking – who would wait 3 hours to go on a zip line for 20 seconds? Well, Alvin was a trooper and stuck it out even with low blood glucose levels and it starting to get cold. To be honest, it didn't seem like three and half hours at all, we had so much fun and met a good group of people while we were waiting. Who knew you could get that close to some people in such a short amount of time? Within the first half hour we had our full twenty second zip line experience planned out and what we were going to do. We had all decided that we couldn't go across looking like fools – bottom line: we're all cooler than that and you don't wait in line for 3.5 hours just to have a boring ride.

After we got suited up and started climbing up the 6 stories of stairs we decided we probably weren't going to be going across upside down, backwards, superman, or running man but still had to have fun going across. Here is what the ride looked like!

NOTE: The screaming is not out of fear but we were really trying to milk the twenty seconds experience for all that its worth! We did get some attention while we were up there – that's for sure!

Quote for the experience from my friend Benjamin Franklin: He that can have patience, can have what he will

#25 – send a random person in the phone book a letter

Well, we figured this would be an easy list item to complete so we decided to make it just a little bit harder. With all the excitement of the Olympics we decided to send a postcard... internationally. It was a pretty tough decision as to where we would send the card, you would think that this would be easy but it definitely wasn't.

We started off brainstorming places that might be into the Olympics – Mexico was definitely out with only one athlete competing! We started off with Australia, then Ireland, England and then finally we decided on Norway. It turns out that addresses are really hard to come by in Ireland and England.

Kiersti had just visited Norway for a year and we knew that they would speak a little bit of English. Lucky for us Norway was doing really well in the Olympics and we figured that their country would probably be supporting them/actually know the Olympics were on. We did a little creeping on the internet and found a Norwegian household that we could mail our postcard to. Kait and I had absolutely no idea how their addresses worked so we called up our trusty Norwegian traveller (Kiersti) to breakdown the address for us – much to our surprise there really isn't anything to a Norwegian address, not even a postal code/zip code!

Roy from Norway, if you ever read this, we really hope you enjoyed your postcard!

This item was simple but hopefully in the process we added a little more 'cheer' to someone's life and a little more confusion.