Great News and Project Biwa

It's a cloudy day here in Kobe and I'm expecting rain any time now. My legs feel great this morning even though I did my long run yesterday. I thought they would hurt more, but to be honest, I could easily run today. I won't though. I am forcing myself to take a day off from running. I realize that I physically could run, but overall, I'll benefit from a day off. A day to heal will make me just that much faster and stronger.

I heard some great news today from a few different sources. First, thanks to the help of my friend Steve Miller, aka, qiranger on You Tube, i have my first little sponsorship by a company. It is small, but I think it's going to be very cool and useful on my running journey this year. I will tell you more in tomorrow's blog post (I wanna test it out first).

Second, while chatting with my parents in Canada this morning I found out that my family, including extended family, collected funds for Running to Help Japan. They will donate a nice chunk of change to the Running to Help Japan project. I was amazed and so happy. A lot of children in northern Japan will benefit from so much generosity.


I made a video yesterday while on my long run. In this video I also mention another charity event going on in Japan. My online friend Dimitri is doing something called Project Biwa. He will cycle around Japan's largest lake, Lake Biwa during the last weekend of May and document it through photos. he is doing this to attract tourists back to Japan and raise funds as well to help in the relief efforts after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Check out my most recent Running to Help Japan video blog:


Click below to sponsor Running to Help Japan and Save the Children Japan:

Pre-Dawn Running to Help Japan

I'm officially back to work which means, with family and work obligations, the only time I can train for my Running to Help Japan Ultra Marathon is before work. I commute to work everyday and normally (pre-running) woke up at 6:00am. Now, I have to wake up at 4:30am in order to get the necessary kilometers in! I'm of course not complaining about this at all. Runners across the world do this sort of thing on a regular basis.

Today I ran downtown to Meriken Koen in Kobe, along the waterfront. it was a stunning morning. My knee injury seems to be behind me and now I'm just battling blisters (I minor inconvenience compared to the knee thing).

last week I ran 48km and this week I'm hoping to run about 58km.

To be honest, knowing that I am running this to raise money for the people in northern Japan who are so in need of ALL of our help, makes it pretty damn easy to get out of bed in the morning and run!

Here is a video blog of today's run (training for Running to Help Japan):




Misplaced trust: 30-foot tsunami wall didn't save Japanese village



Defiant Japanese boat captain rode out tsunami

Running to Help Japan Training Continues and Black Water

Today was a day filled with a picnic, a sick son and a run. I went to the Hanami party like I mentioned yesterday, but didn't drink since I wanted to get a training run in afterwards. I initially planned to run this morning, but my son woke up around the same time as me and was feeling miserable with a cold. I decided it was better to hang out with him in the morning and run later on.

I had a decent run downtown and by some of the waterfront in Kobe. It was a slow pace, but my knee felt stronger than any other run in the previous two weeks.

You can see a map of my run this evening (recorded with Runkeeper, the app I will use to document my 60k run in a few months):


The game plan for tomorrow is an early rise and 10-11k before breakfast. I also plan to go to sleep earlier than normal tonight. The more I sleep, the faster my knee heals!


I wanted to share a great song with you all today. this was written and performed by a Canadian musician who lives in Nagoya, Japan. Check it out and share it:




You can sponsor me when I run my 60k ultrarun to Help Japan: