works of wanderlust

Category: running & adventure

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

  • head over feets, three

    As we pass through mid-July it has been a mix of rain and smoke and heat. I can’t complain too much because, as I noted to one of my fellow runners, the trails are lush and green and lovely right now—and we’re already starting to realize that the fall and winter are just a few short months away.

    Summer also means that a lot of people are coming and going, and without a proper race that we’re all training for attendance is scattered for our group activities. I’ve been trying to supplement by making good use of my rec centre pass, though, and also finally motivated myself to tune up the bike for the season, even tho the season is almost half over.

    So it goes and recently I added to my fitness by…

    I did a huge cycling lap around the neighbourhood shortly after posting my last update—as in I literally posted and packed up my keyboard and left the cafe via my bike. Later that day I met Ron for a short five klick run, logging a few hills and then some more distance on the flat. This meant that over the morning and by early afternoon I had swam, ridden, and run in that order and for roughly the distance of a sprint triathlon.  Not bad for a random Tuesday.

    By Thursday, and after a very busy Wednesday, I found myself back in the pool first thing in the morning. I had delayed slightly in leave the house tho, and the lanes were packed—three to a lane in most cases—and I realized that lane availabity is probably my biggest anxiety about resuming my pool activities. You may go there and have a whole lane to yourself, or you may be stuck in a lane with a couple of slow flutterboard dudes or forced to share a lane with someone passing you every other lap because they are training for the olympic gold or something. I never have to worry about space running because there’s thousands of klicks of trails in the city, but just eight lanes in the local pool.

    That same evening I had a solid run with the regular Thursday crew meetup. We dashed through the Mill Creek trails and I logged a six klick run that felt better than most anything I’ve run in the last month. Good news, perhaps.

    Friday and Saturday were pretty chill, but Sunday morning despite threats of rain the crew met up for the regular weekend run and coffee.  We logged an easy eight klicks (mostly because a few people were recovering from their ultras last weekend) and then parked for some java in the rec centre.

    I capped off my weekend with a lot of laps at the pool. Sundays are generally a free community day, so until exactly 7pm when they kick out the masses the pool is too crowded to do much of anything. But by ten after seven, the lanes are all but abandoned and I had a lane almost entirely to myself for long enough to increase my distance again. I logged one thousand meters, or twenty full laps, bringing my return to swimming back up into to more real distances for the first time in years.

  • head over feets, two

    Apart from a few sweltering days, the weather has been mostly cooperative for some good outdoors summer adventure. Of course, my return to the pool has meant that I have exerted quite a bit of that sweat equity back into a refreshing laps at the local pool where my rec pass is grinding out the milage.

    The last few days I logged…

    After swimming on Tuesday morning, I got it into my head that I should go back later that afternoon to reaquaint myself with the strength equipment at the gym. Mid-afternoon in the summer holiday season was not ideal for this, but I did get a full lap of sets done while tripping over the hoards of gym-rat boys hogging the equipment and taking selfies. But after sufficient reps I came up with a kind of quantitative measure for overall effort distilled as a single number—y’know, for my spreadsheet—that summarizes how much strength work I did. It’s not magic, but it gives me something to chart.

    The heat subsided on briefly on Wednesday evening and that brought out a respectable crew to the run club at the store.  Our regular group leader was sick, so I helped pinch hit and led the front of the group while KB, the manager took over and pushed from the back. She was tapering for a fifty miler this weekend, so didn’t want to be pushing it near the head even just for a seven klick run around the neighbourhood.

    I was back at the pool the next morning, dutifully doubling my distance over my introductory session just two days prior. That was almost off the table entirly because even as I was crawling into bed the night before my arms were raging with exertion pains and I had to take something even just to get comfortable to sleep—which I did, and felt well enough to log five hundred meters worth of laps Thursday morning before coffee.

    I here use the words “guilted” and “motivated” interchangably. Either one, I found myself organizing our regular Thursday evening running adventure, sans adventure, with just a regular meetup at the Mill Creek starting point. Most of the crew was getting ready for a road trip down south to the S7 Ultramarathon so anything too extreme and ankle-twisting was off the table. 

    I rested until Sunday morning and when no one else showed up for our standard run, I swapped my track shorts for swim trunks and logged yet another increment upwards in my watery distances.  I have been building with the goal of hitting a respectable time & distance combination that makes a punch on the swim pass card worthwhile, and right now 800m in a little under 25 minutes seems to fit the bill.

    I repeated that swimming distance this morning, Tuesday, and my goal for the day is an exercise triathlon: I swam this morning, biked to the cafe to write this post, and will go for a run later this morning. Details on that to follow.

  • head over feets, one

    I used to write a whole blog about running and fitness. And then? Well. It was one of the only things that was lost that I truly cared about in the hack that took down my little private server—back a couple years ago. Ten years of rambling journals about races and training and side-fitness projects. It was not something that anyone but I read, but I did go back and peruse it on occasion.

    I miss that, and it’s hard to just start over from scratch with something that big.

    But…

    Starting in July I’ve decided to get back into the fitness groove. I haven’t fallen completely off the truck, but I haven’t ben focused. And that is in itself a multidimesional effort of motivation, accountability and grit. To that end, I am going to do what I always do when I start getting serious about my personal fitness, and write about it. But no stand-alone website for now: the format that is really working for me these days is the quippy list of short-form reflections, tucked away in the files of this blog.

    That said, so far this month I have:

    Logged a Canada Day run with the crew.  We used to more frequently do this thing where on any stat holiday (usually Mondays) we would meet at the local breakfast joint, trot out a five klick run, and then go for a long breakfast. July first is not only a stat holiday but kind of a second mid-year new years resolution day, so a good day to start off on the right foot, even if it ended with a side of bacon.

    A few days later I logged a solo seven klick run in the rain. For a dozen reasons no one else showed for runday sunday, and those that did ran inside (for injuries reasons) or on their own outside (for pace reasons) so I went off by myself into the drizzly neighbourhood and got a short lap done.. and done.  It was nothing particularly special, but it would have been just as easy to go for coffee and skip the run when no one is there to breath down your neck about it. Grit.

    Yesterday I cracked and bought a pass to the rec centre. Back when I worked for the municipal government, the half-price annual pass was a deal and then some. Now, still paying a slightly discounted rate (‘cause Karin gets a deal through work after all) was a slightly tougher pill to swallow. But excuses be damned and effective last evening I have a year of access to the pool and the gym.  I celebrated with a sixteen klick ride on the stationary bike.

    This morning I was feeling ambitious, new pass in hand, but cautious. I haven’t swam laps in over two years. Seriously, I looked it up. March 2023 was my last time in a pool. I used to be damn near religious about it and even did a triathlon a few years ago.  So I suited up at quarter after seven with the ranks of all the senior swimmers and did a ten lap re-introduction to a sport I once moderately rocked. First time back in two years I didn’t want to push it. Ten laps was enough to feel it, but not enough to burn me out for another two years. I’ll be back soon enough for a little longer next time.

    In the meantime, I went right back to one of my old fitness hacks: the trusty spreadsheet. Strava and those other apps are all great for social cred and light accountability in the fitness jam, but nothing beats a good old fashioned fitness ledger to see the numbers laid out on a grid.  That, and I’m still in a bit of a value mindset having just dropped a lot of money on an annual pass and I want to see if it is worth it—though I suppose “worth it” is a subjective thing and getting out and moving is a tough thing to quantify. For the next year I’ll play fitness accountant in my spreadsheet, tho, and see how it all adds up.

    Now? Off to buy some batteries for the scale. Eep!

  • head over feets: zen edition

    I have been doing a self-experiment. (That’s what I am going to call these things that others might call “challenges” or “streaks” of trying to build a habit over the course of 30 days. Experiments on myself.) I have been meditating every day.

    And before you get the images of me all new-age yogi omming on a cushion with incense and such, I’ll tell you instead that it has been an effort much more of a timer-based mindfulness exercise. Me just sitting there with my eyes closed focused on stillness and breath and focus of thoughts. I read a more science-focused book on meditation and the author compared the health-based meditation to mental pushups: just repeating the focus, correcting ones form, adjusting, repeating, and building mental strength and stamina. I mean, it’s all the same stuff in the end, but instead of chanting I have an app on my phone that makes a gentle sound when the timer expires.

    I’m working on a whole article about that experiment that I’ll publish in a couple weeks, but I’ve had some reflective thoughts on the effort and how it relates to another kind of meditation I’ve been doing for nearly twenty years, thirty day challenges be damned. 

    Running solo and sans music is, believe it or not, meditative. At least, data point of one, it has been for me. I just didn’t really recognize it until my efforts to be mindful on my living room floor and my solo running efforts overlapped. 

    Yesterday morning I went for a run in the rain.

    I followed a familiar route that led through my neighbourhood avoiding as many roads that I could and focusing on finding a route towards the river valley. I dodged onto the asphalt trail and followed that fo a few minutes until I found the exit into the single track through the trees.

    Mindfulness is about focus on the body and a stilling of ones thoughts. It is an impossible feat for nearly everyone, I am given to understand. One can creep ever closer towards the goal that is infinitely out of reach. Running through the woods my mind turns itself over to the trail, each step a miniature obstacle that requires a kind of focus and attention. The meandering terrain of a single track course maginifies that focus, forcing the mind into a single purpose machine tracking the undulating and potentially dangerous footing while modulating the body for pace and breath and the beat-beat-beat of a racing heart.

    To be fair, this is not the first time I have made this connection between mindfulness and my chosen sport.

    I used to write a lot about the space that running gave me to think creative thoughts, work through problems, or ponder philosophical ideas. (I know, I’m odd.) Going for a solo run has always been a way to slip into a mindful trance of sorts and plod around the neighbourhood working through stuff with an unencumbered mind.  People even ask me how I run without music, to which I would reply that I sometimes do run with headphones but most often I just prefer the space to think.  What I never really recognized until lately was that this thing that the zen folks and the yogis and the chanters sitting atop cushions are all trying to achieve is a state of mental clarity and calm that I already kinda found out there in the river valley trails, and I suspect is a familiar state of mind for countless other runners and trail racing folk.

    I am enjoying my daily fifteen minutes of mental pushups. I turn on my timer and find a quiet place to sit and then just listen to my own breath for a spell. When my little experiment is over, this effort to build a new habit has reached its milestone, when the final chime rings I will need to decide if it remains something I find space for each day. Or, instead, does this become another tool in my health toolbox, like strength training or eating well, is it something I just do to make me a better runner.

  • seeking adventure

    Imagine you are flying.

    Down a trail.

    Over the crest of a low hill.

    Around a hairpin curve in the path blinded by a dense forest of trees.

    I think a lot of people hear the term ‘running’ and can’t fathom that it means anything more than grueling hours spent on a treadmill. I think most people wallow in the sport as little more than a fitness activity, a workout, or a span of time spent sweating for the sake of the sweat and the calories. 

    I have been a runner, properly so, for nearly eighteen years.

    I rarely run for the sweat.

    I do, on occasion, yes.

    But by far what I run for is the adventure.

    I am flying.

    Flying down a trail, over a hill, and around a hairpin curve brushing past the foliage reaching out across the narrow path.

    It did not start out this way.

    For the first couple of years, yeah years, I was stuck in a beginners rut. We do beginner runners such a disservice giving them rules to build into and goals to which they then aspire. How many beginner runners start to either “get in shape” or “participate in some race” thinking that fitness and competition are the best parts of the sport? How many don’t get in shape or don’t “win” the race and stumble back to the couch?

    During the pandemic years I started hosting what I called Adventure Runs. I would post a meeting location. I would roughly plan a route (usually never having run at that location myself). Set a time, arrive, and just run.

    We were not there for fitness or time or training or any of that. It was perfect timing for such things because most races had been cancelled or limited, people were bored and lonely, and the world was damn near empty of pedestrians.

    We flew down new trails, clambered over low hills, and traced unexplored hairpin curves in dense forests that had grown there for decades but which rarely saw more than a few humans on any given day.

    Adventure.

    Adventure is ill-defined. I can set you specific goals for fitness. I can tell you what numbers makes for a good pace. I can adjudicate your finish time in a race. I can see the appeal of quantitative measures against which we can guage our so-called enjoyment of this activity. But adventure? Adventure is raw quality. Adventure is about the feel of it, how your heart sings in the moment and how you end some span of time spent away from everything else, flying, climbing, swerving through the woods feeling unlike anything else.

    I’ve been thinking about adventure again. I have been trying to bottle that effort into a coherent plan for the upcoming summer months. I have been getting myself ready to fly again.