I’ve been keeping a not so secret secret from you. I usually like to tell you guys in order to keep myself accountable. But this time, I’ve let my husband in on it, and we’re in it together. How cheesy does that freakin’ sound?

It might not be majorly exciting to you, but we’ve been running 3-4 miles (5-6km) together up to 3 times a week, and I have been looking forward to the weekends when we can run together. Other days I head out solo — which I find good, you need that every once in a while. But boy the time does not go by fast when I’m running with no music, and no one to chat to. Times like these, I remember my running buddy in Canada, Tanya, or Coach Steve who coached me for a few months a few winters ago. I always like to think of what we’d talk about together, or what they’d say to me when I was having trouble keeping up.

My husband has been amping up his mileage and speed, as he is training for the Boston Marathon this April. Where as I have absolutely no interest in running more than an hour. Alfie has been going with us once a week (we don’t like to take him any more than that), here we are about to go for our Valentines Day run and he’s rearin’ to go.

Me and Staples are in on this campaign together called #GetOutAndGo, because as you may or may not know February is American Heart Month. We want to encourage you to get your heart rate up at least for 30 minutes each day! I’m a bit slack on the every day part though. I was given a Garmin and a few other running accessories that I’ve been playing with the past few weeks and although I’ve had a long history of love/hate with regards to running, I can finally know my pace when I run outside.

I do have to tell you that I’m not as fast as I thought I was, especially since I hadn’t been regularly running in 2014. For the first half of our run, I can comfortably maintain anywhere between 8:40-9:40/min mile. Ideally I would love to keep that pace up for the entire run, but then I get winded, and need walking breaks. Hence the average minute mile pace being close to 11:00/min miles.  I’m all self-competitive like that. I also like to play games with my brain, and sprint as fast as I can to stop lights, it’s exciting to see how speedy my legs can be.

I love a clunky watch on my pinner wrists, so I didn’t mind sporting it, however I did watch it like a hawk on my runs. I can see how people become addicted to their pace, wearing one of these. My runs used to be “stop whenever you want“, and “slow it down to speed walking pace.“ Now I’m all “I AM THIS SLOW? Let’s speed’erup man!” Again, self-competitive talk it’s all in my head. I complain a lot on my runs to try and get some empathy from the husband. Which, if you know him — clearly doesn’t work. HAHAHA.

Luckily for us, the weather is perfect this time of year in California to run in the early evenings here. January and now into February, I’ve been tracking the progress and writing down each of my runs in my agenda, to keep me motivated to keep at it. Views like this doesn’t hurt either.

Oh running. Nobody said it would be easy. But it’s well worth it. Most times I hate it, but that feeling after the run? Euphoric. As I blog about climbing, yoga, running, and The Guy’s Ironman triathlon training, I’m trying to promote a healthy lifestyle and to stay on course. I’m not sure I’ll be blogging about my running adventures all the time, since I’m no pro. But if you want to read some of my favourite Canadian running bloggers who keep me motivated to run on my own when The Guy is at work, check out Krysten, Christina and Jessica.

So you won’t be seeing me in any races anytime soon. But I’ll continue to join my husband on his shorter training runs or going on hikes with our little Pom! Stay active my friends, and #GetOutAndGo.