works of wanderlust

Category: running & adventure

My sport involves feet and trails and moving one quickly across the other.

  • #RunClub : New Season, New Plans

    Sunday Runday, and for my #RunClub approaching spring is usually a time of ramping up our training, distances, and intensities for all those summer races.

    By mid-March of 2020 we were swimming in a kind of moving goalpost of uncertainty. Races were being cancelled without much warning. There was always a sense of… well, we’ll see how things look in a month or so.

    As mid-March of 2021 approaches, nearly a year into the local reaction to the global pandemic, our uncertainty is a lingering aftershock of the past twelve months… mixed with hopeful optimism… sprinkled with a dash of we’re all kinda used to this now, right?

    Last summer our “coffee club with a running problem” moved our weekly meetings to the parking lot of the recreation center (closed to general access) where we had been meeting to run for nearly a decade.

    A club that was usually twenty to thirty members strong, accustomed to weekly Sunday morning takeovers of the local café, found itself instead quietly gathering in lawn chairs over asphalt drinking take-out coffees near the bumpers of our vehicles while we observed social distancing rules.

    Then winter hit.

    ….and the deep, dark, cold lockdown happened.

    Me out there running solo was a thing for at least three months. Coffees were virtual, hugging a mug at home and staring into the familiar glow of my iPad for a visit via screen. It’s only been in the last couple weeks that the weather has cracked through the zero degree barrier and made resuming the coffee club meetings in the local parking lot a real possibility.

    Which is the noteworthy thing about today, I guess.

    This Sunday last year was normal: races being planned, training being sorted, coffees being shared in close company.

    Next Sunday last year was when all that normal-ness shattered.

    We sat in our lawn chairs in the parking lot this morning after a ten klick run, wrapped in blankets and huddled in hoodies, sipping take-out coffees. It felt normal… which is the strangest part, because it still is so not normal.

    A new season of not normal.

    And I don’t know how to plan for that.

  • An Intro to Running with Dogs

    Another Sunday Runday, and for the last couple weeks one of my small run crew cohort has joined us on the trails with her faithful canine running partner. A two-year old collie, her human leader (one of my long-time running friends) has spent a lot of effort training the dog on harness and leash to run at a steady pace beside her.

    Which reminded me…

    A puppy runs towards the camera on a snowy sidewalk.

    A couple months before I kicked off this blog we welcomed a new addition to our household. The pictured pup is a little more than five months old, a Miniature Australian Shepherd, and full of spit and fire.

    I’m hoping she’ll be a runner some day.

    I’m hoping that this spring we’ll find out.

    It was specifically one of the questions I asked the breeder: How will she run?

    Oh, she’ll keep up with you. She’s not short on energy.

    All that said, we’ve done some quick sprints on our walks to give her a taste of moving faster than a stroll, but five months is too young to properly begin distance training with a dog.

    Most online research I’ve done on this topic suggests a puppy should be at least six months old to begin a proper training program, and (not coincidentally) her veterinarian just happens to be one of my running crew so I’ll be getting proper professional clearance before we begin.

    Still, running alongside a well-trained running dog this morning got me itching for the spring thaw… just in time to start thinking about how to introduce my favourite energetic pup to my favourite outdoor sport.

  • Overnight on Public Lands

    The province where I live currently has over eleven thousand square kilometres of public lands that are available for a variety of recreational activities, including cross-country skiing, backpacking, and overnight camping.

    A small tent in a forest.

    Sadly, much of that land is at least three or four hours of driving away… so nothing is close enough for a quick weekend getaway, at least not without some substantial planning.

    With everyone sticking closer to home due to lingering travel restrictions, it seems like a lot of the so-called official campsites are (like last year) likely to be booked up quickly by the RV crowd. We enjoy our share of backpacking, though, and it seems like it might be the summer to jump with both feet into the backcountry, random, boondocking-style of camping and see where that takes us.

    I thought it would be useful for both my readers, and my future self, to write a post where I compile some resources and thoughts on the topic.

    Resources

    Public Land Use (an Overview for Alberta, Canada) is the official government website detailing many of the places, rules, and parameters of those who choose to stray from the well-travelled path and forge their own adventure.

    Alberta Parks Random Backcountry Camping is a guide from another branch of the government with some more plain language guides, rules, and hints for where and how to camp outside of designated campsites.

    Beginners Guide to Public Land Camping is an adventure blog where they have already done some resource gathering for this topic. I’m not necessarily saying go there and check their list first … but I did.

    How to Camp Respectfully is another blog-like site with a great run down of how to get away from everyone else who is trying to get away from it all and find some backcountry camping solitude with respect for the land.

    Permits in 2021?

    I'll continue to add-to and update this post as I do more research on the topic.

  • Urban Creek Run Club

    Sunday Runday, and the weather improved by about thirty degrees Celsius over last weekend. I’m not afraid of the cold, but since I couldn’t run with friends I’m not running alone in brutally freezing temps.

    This weekend we resumed our small band of cohort runners for the second real run club of the year, and located some urban trails closer to the downtown of the city where we could enjoy the zero degree weather.

    The run included some scenic views of the downtown. (I used to work in one of those buildings! I guess I still do, I just haven’t been there in almost a year.)

    We navigated our way through some of the asphalt paths, still crunchy with a layer of dirty snow, up and into one of the neighbourhoods, and then back into the creek valley via a staircase. My calves were not impressed. I guess I should go up and down my stairs at home a little more frequently than to just refill my coffee.

    During the fall this is a lovely canopy of colours rich with that scent of gently decaying foliage. Today it was a well-trod winter path, wide enough to socially distance.

    None of us were feeling particularly fast, but it’s been a long, cold off-season. Most of these folks should have been running marathons this year, but thanks to the pandemic it’s more likely to be virtual 10k races.

    And yes, those are shorts… anything warmer than zero is shorts-weather around here.

    And the creek, still frozen, beckoned us for a short stretch of our total distance. The water underfoot is frozen for about thirty or forty centimeters of ice thickness. If it happened to crack though, no worries: the creek itself is only about a meter deep.

    Cold yes, but not too deep.

    We concluded with some lawnchairs in the parking lot, drinking some coffees from a nearby local and independent cafe, bundled up in our blankets and trying to keep at least six feet apart while we recovered.

    Hopefully the running season keeps at this pace, even though my personal pace could use a lot of improvement.

  • Spreadsheets & Footfalls

    Sunday Runday, and I’ve been hiding in my basement from the brutal cold, focussing on cross-training which is never a replacement for actually getting out on the trails.

    Not in quality of workout nor in the enjoyment of the effort.

    Runners on a trail with thick green foliage.

    I’ve also been reflecting on the last year of pandemic lockdown and realizing that I’ve let a few things slip. I used to be particularly diligent in how I recorded and tracked my fitness. Used to be, being the operative words.

    Last year, for example, I completely neglected using the tracking tools I’d built for myself over the last decade. Before using Strava as a tracking crutch, I was meticulous in how I tracked and recorded my runs. I had built and refined a simple but useful goal-based spreadsheet for time and distance that calculated a few other factors in keeping myself on track. How much did I run. How did it compare. How much did I need to focus to catch up or get on track with an annual distance goal… that sort of thing.

    I also made it available to others for a few years in a row on my previous website:

    Make Your Own Copy of the 2021 Run Tracking Log

    So, since I’ve started using it again and I’ve put in the effort of updating it for 2021, please make a copy and use it. It’s mostly simple, but I’ve always preached that in running (or life in general) information and data are powerful allies.

    Spreadsheets can be for more than business and budgets.

    They help track goals and progress.

    They highlight gaps and changes in routine.

    They offer insight into trends in your training.

    And they provide an ongoing overview of what can be accomplished by day after day after day of hard work which is motivational and can often give that extra nudge towards improvement.

    I’m neither fast nor competitive, but that also means I don’t have the benefit of a coach or endless access to resources that could improve my training. I’m just a guy who likes to get out on the trails, but that doesn’t mean it’s none of it is worth tracking. It’s worth it to me, and a spreadsheet is a simple and low-cost way to track it all.