CN Tower - Check!

My son and I climbed the CN Tower this weekend - again! 

It's a tall tower. See how it towers over the rest of the city?
Photo source.

That's 1,776 stairs, folks. 144 flights. Sweaty work. This was my third time, his second, and we both PR'd :-)

28:50 for me; an outstanding 21:02 for the boy!

Have to say - I was pretty nervous going into this as I haven't been specifically training for it. I used to take the stairs to my 7th floor office every day, but had to stop back in December when we moved to a building with locked stairwells.

So I was pretty much hoping that this winter's boot camps and C25K would get me there.

And they did!

I shaved just over a minute off last year's time AND had enough energy left over to say "OK!" when my son suggested that we jog back to the subway afterwards. I'm calling that one an NSV.

This has become an event that I to use to monitor my fitness levels - not just my finish time, but also how I feel afterwards. It's been very gratifying to see an improvement from year to year.

For my son - last year, he wasn't old enough to go it alone and had to stick with me. He was really nice about it, but definitely felt that he was held back by going at his mother's pace (um, thanks, kid). He was really eager to see how he could do on his own this year now that he's old enough to fly solo.

Turns out that he's a powerhouse! Said that he took a brief break at the 96th floor but otherwise went straight to the top. Shaved 8:33 minutes off of his "waiting for Mom" time. Huh - guess he really WAS holding himself back last year!

I'm crazy proud of him. And grateful. Grateful that he's a fit kid, grateful that he looks at challenges like this as fun, and grateful that he does stuff like this with me.

To you parents out there - how do your kids stay active? Mine are pretty active but balk at most afterschool & weekend lessons/leagues outside of Guides & Scouts - they really prefer to have their free time to ride bikes, kick a ball around, go for hikes and so on. This past weekend, they tried to teach the dog how to hula hoop - which meant that they spent a lot of time hula hooping to show her how it works. Whatever keeps you off the couch and outdoors, right?

In other news - I've been gaining and losing the same 3-4 pounds all winter and I've had enough. Time to recommit to weight loss. This was a good week of gigantic salads for lunch, portion control at other meals, no idle snacking, and tracking everything on myfitnesspal. Let's see how long I can keep this up - would be great to smash through this and hit the next milestone.

Here's this week's recap -

Saturday - CN Tower climb in the morning; slow jog to the school playground in the evening then walk back (2.6K round trip). Slept very, very well afterwards.

Sunday - Rest day.

Monday - Curves circuit integrated into a boot camp = 50 minutes of pure awesome. Then a very slow 250m at the pool. My arms were very, very tired!

Tuesday - Rest day. 1K slow walk with the dog.

Wednesday - 2K dog park walk after work, then later Stella and I went on our first real run in a while. Did 3 sets of 10s and 1s, covered 3.6K.

Blackberries take terrible pictures after dusk. And the flash makes the dog squint. But then we ran, and it was a good one.

Thursday - Another Curves circuit integrated into boot camp for 60 minutes. Sweaty, hard and hilarious.

Friday - Rest day. Should have gone for a run but the legs just weren't willing.  Instead, my husband dragged me out to help my daughter make a new addition to our family zoo. Meet Cinderella and Cocoa:

The pets outnumber the humans now. At least these don't shed.