While nearly impossible to get my mind around, the last half marathon that I ran was at the tail-end of an IronMan 70.3 triathlon back in September 2014; over 12 years ago. In all honesty, I had no business signing up for the Seawheeze half marathon this year, but to be totally fair, the race chose me just as much as I chose it!

The whole adventure started back in Fall 2025, when I first got an email from Lululemon celebrating that they were going to be running their SeaWheeze half marathon again in August 2026 in beautiful Vancouver, and would be sending out more details closer to January 2026. When I first saw the email, something flickered in me, but I chalked it up to nostalgia, and didn’t pay it much mind.

As we moved through December, more emails came out related to Seawheeze, and Lululemon announced that they would be opening a lottery for registrations, because they anticipated that they would receive a ton more registrants then they could actually have run the race. Registration for the lottery would open on January 1st, 2026.

By the time January 1st rolled around, we were wrapping up Christmas at the Lakehouse, I was feeling like an overstuffed sausage with the lung capacity of a sick elephant, and I was just over it. Like every year, I vowed that this was the year I would get my act together, and start feeling more like myself again, and almost defiantly, I registered for the Seawheeze lottery, with the idea that if by some miracle I did get chosen, I would use it as motivation to get myself back in shape after nearly 9 years on the downslide. I confidently entered all of my information, my credit card number……my credit card number……. 😐……cheerfully agreed to all of the terms and conditions, and registered.

And then, promptly forgot all about it, and carried on without changing a single thing about my life for the next 3 weeks!

Around the third week in January, right around the Blue Monday lull when the credit card bills are due and everyone has given up on their New Years resolutions, I got a crazy email letting me know that I had been chosen for the Seawheeze 2026 race.1/6 people that entered the lottery was actually selected.

Whaaaaaaaaaaat the what………..?!

Right away, I felt a bit sick because it was a pretty expensive race, and I knew that they had been very clear that there was absolutely no refunds, cancellations or transferring. I went to my banking app right away, and sure enough, there was the charge from Lululemon. Yikes!

That night I sheepishly told Matt what I had done and that I had wasted $400 on the whole silly endeavor. He laughed at me and said very matter of factly (as Matt does): “don’t be crazy, just do the race”.

And I guess that’s where the whole thing really started! My training got off to a bit of a slow start; I couldn’t run for more than 2-3 minutes at a time when I first started (very hard for me mentally. I repeatedly had to remind myself that what I used to be able to do didn’t matter anymore, that I was in a new body now, and that I had to be patient with myself and meet myself where I was at). My sister-in-law Kass and I ran the Good Friday 5K in April, and it felt crazy hard. I remember feeling like my chest was going to explode somewhere around 4KM and thinking to myself: “you’ve really done it this time Sara, you moron… how are you going to get out of this?!”.

But as time has it’s way of doing, the days and weeks ticked on, and slowly things started to come together. 5KM started to feel a lot more manageable, and then eventually it started to feel “easy” again. And then 7KM… and then 8…. and piece by piece, things just slowly started to fall into place. I struggled with blisters throughout my training, and shredded the arches of my feet at least 3-4 times to the point that I couldn’t wear running shoes for a full week, and the other major barrier was that I often ended up doing my long training runs during the peak heat of the hazy Summer days.

And it was hot as hell.

Matt and the boys were the most amazing champions for me throughout my training. Matt hauled all three boys all over Burlington with me while I ran at the track, down by the lake, throughout Huntsville while we were at the cottage… and having everyone be a part of it with me really kept me going on days when I just felt like I didn’t have it. Which let’s be honest, was most of them lol

June and July were really interesting months for me, with some of highest highs of my life, and some really low lows as well. Some of the anxiety that I had done so much work on controlling over the last few years started to take back control over me, and I found myself struggling with panic attacks.

Running really became a nice outlet for me during these months, and I started to really look forward to my runs as a way to clear my head and focus on surviving for an hour or so (lol) instead of agonizing over whatever the worry of the moment was.

Unfortunately, the literal day that we were leaving for Vancouver, I had a bit of a meltdown and left things really uncertain with my work before I left for the day. I came home an absolute wreck, bawling my eyes out and feeling like I had blown up my entire life. My family was decently horrified at the state that I was in, but we had to go to the airport or risk missing our flight, and so we piled into two Ubers (my parents were coming along for the trip as well) and off we went to the airport.

I think that I was in a little bit of shock that evening at the airport. I hardly spoke to anyone, just couldn’t get a coherent thought or sentence out and basically just completely shut down in some kind of anxiety spiral that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I vaguely remember going for dinner in the airport terminal and the boys ordering these warm, salty pretzel bites that I numbly ate off of their plates… and I also remember rain. When we came out of the restaurant, it was TORRENTIALLY downpouring outside to the point that the terminal lights flickered when we were in a store buying drinks and snacks. The lady at the register actually said “oh my, that’s never happened before!”.

We got to our gate and we were right next to another gate for people that were trying to fly to Ottawa. It seemed like there was some maintenance issue with their plane, and those poor people had been camped out in line to board the flight for what must have been a long time, because they were some pissed off. At some point I said something like “they could have driven halfway to Ottawa by now”, and I remember my Dad looking at me hopefully and saying “was that a joke?!”.

Our flight was significantly delayed as well because of the rain, which was a bit of a problem because we were already a late evening flight, and it was a 5+ hour flight to Vancouver, meaning that it was already going to be 1am-ish our time by the time we landed for the boys. By the time we finally got up to board, Matt swatted my arm with the back of his hand and said something like “Leave it here. It doesn’t come to Vancouver”.

Once we finally got in the air, the flight was smooth, and the boys all fell asleep mid-way through. I didn’t sleep a wink, nor did I even really listen to music or watch anything. My mind was absolutely swirling and I just couldn’t quiet my thoughts to focus on anything. The flight was smooth and uneventful (although I did have Austin’s long-ass legs draped all over me for the last 2.5 hours!), and before I knew it, we were landing in Vancouver.

Something about this race being in Vancouver really made it feel like all of this was meant to be. If you’ve been around for a long, long time, you may remember me working in a role that had me spending about a week of every month out in BC, traveling all over the province to visit retail sites. Something about the time that I spent in Vancouver all those years ago really stayed with me, and the city has always had a really special place in my heart. I’ve been lucky enough to go back out to Vancouver a couple of times more recently for work events too, and every time I go back, it feels the tiniest bit like coming home.

If a crisis ever struck my family and I didn’t have any more family left in Ontario, I swear I’d move out there in a nanosecond.

Matt and the boys had never been to Vancouver, and even my parents had only ever really passed through on their way to other destinations, so I was crazy excited to share one of my favourite places in the world with them.

It took hours for our bags to come out at the airport. Because of the torrential downpour in Toronto, three big planes had all ended up leaving within 30 minutes of each other for Vancouver, and we had all landed one after the other, so I guess the baggage handlers were slammed.

The boys just crashed right there on the airport floor, and after waiting about 90 minutes for the bags, I suddenly realized that it had been nearly 8 hours since I had last eaten, and I was about to DIE from hunger. So naturally I wandered down to the lower level of YVR, found a 24 hour 7-11 store and bought myself a turkey, cheese and crackers Lunchable that I then proceeded to eat with my hands sitting cross-legged on the floor of the airport in front of the baggage carousel. My mom (who was still behaving like a functional human being) looked at me like I was some kind of sea urchin and literally said out loud “What the hell are you doing?”

I die LOL

Finally, finally, finally the bags came out, my Dad had gotten his hands on our rental car (a big shiny black Tahoe), and we finally started the drive into the city to our hotel. It was 3am our time by now and we were T-O-A-S-T.

We finally got to our hotel room around 4am our time, and basically just collapsed on top of the beds in our clothes, we were just a complete hot mess. The race expo opened up at 8am local time the next day, but we had decided early that we weren’t going to be making it for opening, so I think we ended up setting alarms for 9:30am local time, and crashing.

Although it wasn’t long, I slept solidly and we woke up somewhat refreshed, and EVERYONE was excited to go and check out the city, get my race kit picked up, shop at the expo (hellooooooooo super-size Lululemon store?!) and most importantly: see the mountains that I had been promising the boys for weeks.

We made our way down to the convention centre and I was so thankful that my mind had quieted a bit from the gong show the previous day. I was truly excited to be there, and chatting away a mile a minute telling everyone about the tradeshows and the meetings that I had been to as we passed the various buildings.

Lulu had completely taken over the plaza in front of the Vancouver Convention Centre and there was all kinds of yoga and activities in front of the Olympic cauldrons. We took some pictures, went in and picked up my race kit and then I got in line to enter the race store (at this point, it was only open to runners) while the boys, Matt and my parents hung out in the plaza.

The line to get into the store was long, but moved fairly quickly and within about half an hour, I was in! We were only allowed to buy 10 items (lol) and everything was limited edition Seawheeze merch, only available for this weekend, so as you can imagine, the pressure was ON. I wanted to get gifts for everyone that had come with me too, so darted around the hall like a mad woman back and forth between Mens, Womens and all the sizes for everyone. I settled on my 10 items and got the heck out of there.

Sharks, sharks, Marketing sharks.

After we finished at the expo, we decided to take it pretty easy and went back to the hotel for the boys to swim in the pool, and to try and get everyone a nap. I was on HIGH ALERT, and wouldn’t go in the pool with the boys because I was freaked out about swallowing water and getting some kind of stomach virus or something the day before the race (lol). We did all end up getting about an hour and a half nap in the afternoon, which was life changing, and then went for dinner at a restaurant that I had been to several times with the Retail Business Managers that I had worked with years ago.

I had a really simple spaghetti for dinner, and then we walked back along Robson, stopping at the Lululemon flagship store and spending some more money there, before heading back to the hotel to get ready for the next morning. I couldn’t believe that the race was TOMORROW, it all just felt surreal.

Matt was deep into his phone analyzing the course and trying to figure out the best place to take everyone to see me along the way, the boys were crazy town jumping all over the room, and I was pacing back and forth trying to sort out pinning my bib to my shirt, laying everything out and making sure I didn’t forget anything. I placed a grocery delivery order for some bagels because I hadn’t thought about breakfast and wanted to make sure that I had something that I trusted in the morning to eat.

The funny part was that our hotel room literally overlooked RIGHT onto the start of the race, and when I poked my head out the balcony to look for the grocery delivery driver, we realized that literally probably a THOUSAND porta-potties had been delivered to the street, they were completely lining both sides of the road, alllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way down as far as the eye could see. We all got a kick out of that, and when I finally did go down to meet the driver, I had to literally poke my head between the porta-potties for the guy to see me!

I got my bagels and headed back upstairs. I paced around for a few more minutes, and then got into bed, with my alarm clock set for 5:15am.

This was it. There were no more “tomorrows”. It was go time.