While running is largely a cardiovascular sport, I’ve been told that hill training is where the sport bleeds into the strength-building, weight-lifting, bench-pressing equivalency side of things. Most of the time we’re training our lungs and muscles to do hard repetitive actions over and over and over again, sometimes for hours, the whole ‘let’s go run up and down hills for a while’ thing is more about training those muscles to get stronger. Or so I’m told.

Not only am I neck deep in this new half-marathon running clinic — things are going well, I’ve signed up for a race, I’ve been keeping up with all the runs — but now I’ve gone and volunteered myself as a guest speaker. It’s not that Heather was in a bind, or was short on a topic or anything, but she mentioned offhand a while back that “oh, wouldn’t it be neat if…” and I promptly stuck my hand in the air (metaphorically speaking) and offered my insight. The topic, inasmuch would please H2G2 fans, is digital watches. Well, specifically digital GPS watches and how to use the watches and the data in a meaningful way to improve one’s running. Now that the price of [...]

For the third time I stand foolishly on the brink of a long summer of running. But having not written for over a year, not written last summer, future readers of this blog will find a large gap in the story of my running. For one, readers will not know that I trained for and ran two more half-marathons last summer. I completed the Intact Half in August yet again, and followed that in September with (though not a true half) the twenty-two click Melissa’s run. The second half-marathon not only netted me a beautiful view, but also a terrible time and an ankle injury that has taken months to recover from. I sputtered through the winter, took some of the spring off (swimming lengths [...]

First day back after a nine day break. You’d have thought I would have written more given that I was off, but it’s funny how the opposite is often true. Exacerbate that fact with the lack of useful Internet connections whilst hanging about the Fringe and it slowly becomes more obvious why I’ve been mostly quiet. The rundown goes as such… Last Sunday morning I pried myself out of bed quite early and made my way downtown for the much-anticipated half marathon. I ran. I prevailed. I didn’t set any speed records, particularly since my knee gave me grief around the nineteen kilometer mark, but I finished within a few minutes of my goal time. Had I not hobbled my way over the last two [...]

Last night was the last night. Our half-marathon clinic — the one that started back in April of this year — and has had me touring the city trails on foot for many mornings and evenings for most of the spring and summer is complete. That pretty much means the next anticipated run is… yes… the race. If you read that post way back, the one following the first clinic, written on May 1st, you’ll note I predicted that out of the original nineteen in attendance (and ultimately there were over twenty-five registered) I figured there would be about six that run the race. Really? People asked. That can’t be right… Actual numbers? Last night there were nine of us out on the last night [...]

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. Between running, working, and those other little things that come up… well, y’know… This quasi-drought it killing my garden. It sucks. Sure, I can pump water on it all day long, but the moisture bakes out of the soil in less than a day anyways. Some of the plants are doing okay — after they get established, they flourish because they can get their roots down deep enough — but the seedlings are slow and suffering. If I get even a dozen carrots out of the patch this year, I’ll be surprised. I spent a couple hours building Claire a sandbox the other day. We had looked at a couple of the plastic doo-dahs, but I figured it [...]