works of wanderlust

Tag: running training

  • head over feets, eleven

    The shoulder season has arrived in earnest. I don’t know if it will stick or if we’ll get a reprieve of warmish weather for the end of the month. Part of me would like it to be around 10C for my race at the end of October, but that might be wishful thinking. Whatever mother nature decides, she has shed her autumn coat and the leaves are now mostly rotting on the ground for the season. The autumn colours are gone once again.

    The last couple weeks I continued my training, in earnest…

    There was a stat holiday in the middle of the week on the last day of September and so we went for a long walk in the dog park on a Tuesday afternoon. I don’t usually make note of my walks here, else they might fill up every other entry being so numerous, but it is notable because the holiday seemed to have thrown off the rhythm of the week and delayed a couple other fitness activities. 

    Thursday I finally made my way back to a pool. As expected the temporary closure of the local pool has turned a quick swim outing into a cross-city adventure requiring planning and navigating rush hour traffic. My goal is to get into the water at least once per week, and when my local pool opens again in December I’ll try and work that back up to a triple. I logged 800 m and they started closing the lanes so I called it.

    Met the guys—RM and LG—for an autumn run through Mill Creek later that same evening. The weather is still holding. Sometimes the fall rolls through and gone in an afternoon, but we’re coming up on a week. I won’t complain and I’ll get out as often as I can in this vibe. We did a fast 6k and felt it.

    Another long walk filled my Friday. I hopped the bus to the Uni and started off on foot with naught but a sketchbook in hand. Over the course of about four hours of strolling through campus, the river valley, the legislature grounds and downtown I drew four pictures and logged about fifteen klicks on foot. 

    Sunday we met for two different runs. We were due to log fifteen klicks on our training plan, but also, we had signed up for a 5k “fun run” called Run for the Cure, a breast cancer awareness and fundraising event. So we met about an hour and a half early and logged a meandering ten klicks through the adjacent neighbourhood. Then we shed some people (who were not doing the fun run) and gained others (who were) and stood around in the cold for about 45 minutes until we set off for a jam-packed five klick not-a-race race. We celebrated with pho nearby. 

    And then I got sick. I spent three solid days prone on the couch and then was a little cautious about getting back into my groove.

    But with the race just two weeks out, I braved the sub-zero temps on Sunday morning (and dealt with the pain of not running for a whole week) and checked the sixteen klick long distance off my training list. It wasn’t fast, but it was filled with autumn colours.

    Tuesday I trekked back across the city for a swim. I can justify the drive because the pool is right beside the vet’s office and I needed to pick up a prescription refill (for the dog, of course) and gas is mysteriously about fifteen cents cheaper over there, which pays for my drive if I fill up over there. There’s a whole story about a thanksgiving altercation involving the dog wherein I wrenched MY shoulder. I swam just 500m because I was sore. But I swam.

  • head over feets, nine

    Training is whatever you make of it. I’m sure there are some strict rules for pros and people with hard core goals, but for a guy pushing fifty who’s been doing this running thing for nearly two decades, I’m still just making it up.

    I mention this because one of my current run crew pals is training for one of those “how many laps can you do in such and such a time” races. It’s in an old mine shaft in the mountains, and I suspect (because I’ve never done one of those) half of the training for that repetitive grind is mental. She logged twenty klicks yesterday doing sixty laps of (literally) the parking lot. And this is amazing if for no other reason than it is kind of min/maxing the whole training mentality, trying to be very analytical about check-boxing the training plan. And I hope it works. 

    But for me, lately, it has simply been getting time on feet—which I’ve been pretty poor at for the months leading into this latest foundation-building streak.

    It’s been a busy few days because of that… 

    I capped off the week with late-morning Friday run, finally getting a chance to try the new bone conduction wireless headphones I’d scored off the reward miles site. They are solid enough for my purposes, and waterproof for swimming. That will be my next big test. I logged about five klicks in the heat.

    Saturday I went and did Park Run. I started my streak with a Park Run two weeks back and probably would have ended it with a feeling-good sub-thirty 5k, but …

    Sunday was the annual Terry Fox Run in Red Deer so we drove down there to help out and participate. I mostly did the participating part, running (pretty much) two laps for a solid 9k run. I say “pretty much” because (a) the course was a too-short 5k out and back so I never would have hit 10k, and (b) when I was in sight of the start/finish/second lap, I had this feeling that my motivation was sinking enough to call it quits at, well, let’s just call it 4.8km, which is bad for a few reasons, not the least of which is it is short of my 5km minimum for a streak day, so I turned back a hair early and did a second lap without crossing the “official” line. But the whole thing was kind of an honour system race anyhow and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to muster much honour for a second lap if I strictly followed the made up rules anyhow.

    Speaking of streaks, I ran for sixteen consecutive days and logged about 100km in that span. I’m now at a crossroads because my work-back training plan for my race in October has me increasing distances starting next Sunday. This is a wee bit incompatible with the grind that is a streak, so I think I’m calling it today. I ran sixteen days in a row, started with a solid Park Run, ended with a Terry Fox Run, and logged a century. None too shabby. Now, as of Monday morning, time for a few days of rest (and hopefully some swimming) and I’ll get back at the training-proper for my October race.

    Reminder: Blogs are not a replacement for professional advice. Please read my note on safety and safe participation.

  • vision, start line

    Since my modest and cautious update on my knee injury a couple weeks ago, I’ve actually been making some measurable progress in both healing and beginning my re-training.

    Then a few days later I went to a tour showing of the Banff Film Festival.

    I’m not clever enough to make a proper film, but I do think I have an interesting story to tell as I recover and train for Chicago in October.

    So I made a video:

    VIDEO REDACTED

    The first of a series, I hope. The introduction to a happy conclusion, that too.

    It’s a commitment to try and publicly document something difficult like training for a marathon. But it also commits me to training and trying harder to compete the story.

    It’s gonna be a crazy year!

    Check it out and give it a like to help me get some interest.

  • Turtle Power

    Sunday runday and on my solo five klick shakeout I paused beside path to watch a turtle the size of a football basking in Florida sunshine.

    Also, it was nearly fifty degrees celsius warmer than the last time I ran oudoors a little more than a week ago. I haven’t been that sweaty from running five kilometers since the heat of last summer. I could have taken a dip beside that turtle and …

    The runaway train of vacation planning never actually found a means of slamming on the brakes and the next thing I knew I was boarding an international flight to Orlando with my face wrapped tightly in a N95 surgical respirator and wondering, sometimes aloud, at the bounds of my own sanity.

    Back in the summer, when all things virus had seemed to be packing its bags and getting ready to move out of the basement like all uninvited houseguest should eventually do, we registered in a series of Disney World Marathon run events.

    Then we eagerly booked a vacation around that … and waited.

    It all went great from there, right? Well … no. We watched anxiously as a viral variant named Omicron washed a new wave of panic all across the world. Triple-vaccinated and packing a smuggler’s haul worth of PPE, we warily tracked the news and tripped over ourselves justifying taking the trip versus the stupidly high costs of cancelling it and just wallowing in pity at ourselves from the safety of our frozen house. A dozen times we came a turtle’s breath away from calling the whole thing off, swallowing the thousands of dollars of lost travel spends, and buying a big bottle of bubbly for new years eve to forget the whole thing and …

    And.

    And yet, here we are.

    And here I am on a Sunday morning, looking out at a resort swimming pool after a five klick shakeout run, sipping a six dollar cup of takeway coffee, having spent the last four days wandering through the densely packed, pandemic-oblivious theme parks of Disney World and giving myself blisters and aches and pains and overwhelming anxiety and exhaustion in the process.

    There are a number of smooth and flat walking trails just out the front door of our hotel, winding around lagoons and restaurants and wire-suspended gondolas, leading into and around and between Epcot and a make-believe Star Wars lands. As thousands of racers congregate here over the next few days for races starting later this week, I saw dozens of fellow runners out on the boardwalks and asphalts. I even saw some of the race crew flagging locations for aid stations and mile markers and marshalling points.

    We have a couple days to cool off. A few more days of park-hopping and pool lounging. We pick up our race packages mid-week and run before the weekend starts in earnest. I’m wondering how I’m going to tackle a half marathon I didn’t really train for, on which I’m banking on residual fitness and sheer determination, plodding along at a turtle’s pace to finish the thing on pure willpower.

    This morning on my tour of the hotel trails, weaving around families walking towards the park gates, and as I trotted by wearing my 2014 Disney Half Marathon running shirt, one of the race setup workers looked up, pointed and snapped a photo of me from his phone. I smiled. It was probably the only time I’ve been out in public this week without a mask so it took a moment to remember how. I guess if you see a sweaty forty-something guy smirking akwardly on the runDisney socials this week … maybe it’s me?

    Or maybe I should have posed with my new friend the turtle. I’d bet we have more in common these days than we realize.

  • We Interrupt this Training Plan for …

    Sunday Runday, and I woke up to a skiff of fresh overnight snow and a minus twenty world out my front door.

    Yeah, you read that right: -20C. (Not even mentioning the “feels like” -33C wind chill estimate that accompanied the forecast on my weather app.)

    As I was eating my breakfast, one of my running partners (who is a government meteorologist) texted me at 7am with the (I assume) professional advice of “stay warm, I will not be out this morning…”

    And then I did the thing I’ve done too often this past year and a half…

    What do you wish you’d done
    less of this past year?

    … I tried to get out of my run.

    Sure, it was the coldest day of the season to-date, and sure, I’ve been feeling a little lazy since slowly nursing a sore heel back to health.

    But the last twenty-one months has been full of countless excuses to curl up in a ball on the couch and ignore the realities of life, the universe and everything. Who hasn’t wanted to do exactly that? Sometimes multiple times per day.

    This morning as I looked at the outside temperature, as stuck my barefoot out the back door, as I let the dog out at quarter past six in the biting cold, I immediately started thinking of additional excuses to stay home in my pajamas and curl up on the couch with a coffee and Netflix … y’know, instead of doing a training run.

    I didn’t stay home.

    I wanted to bail.

    But the text message thread the followed left me feeling guilty that one of my other partners had already left his house and was en route to our meeting place. I complied. I layered up in my warmest gear, dug a fuzzy buff and an extra pair of wooly mittens from the cupboard, and made my way in my truck (switching on the 4×4 for the treacherous roads) over to the nearby parking lot from where we usually leave. Nine klicks later of slogging through the cold and snow and wind. The sun was barely cracking the horizon and as it lifted over the frosty treeline just to the side of the path a beautiful winter sunrise cracked a bit of the cold and offered a hint of apricity against the brutal, biting freeze. A cold run. A run at the limit of my cold threshold. Weather that literally hurts. We ran for nearly an hour with frost clinging to our lashes and ice crusting on the brims of our toques.

    I wanted to bail, bail like I’ve done a few too many times this past span of time, but this time I did not. I ran. I froze. I kept running. And ultimately I returned to the warmth of a hot cup of coffee and some good conversation. But I wanted to bail nonetheless.

    In 2021 I wish I’d done a little less of that wanting to skip the things that used to be the highlights of my everydays, runs, and adventuring, and getting out and about. I know there have been great excuses, often even mandates and strict rules enforcing those same reasons, but I wish I’d had less opportunity to slip into whatever pattern it has created for me and left me thinking first of a reason not to do something than the former excitement that launched me off that couch and into the world.

    I don’t know for sure how to do that less, but I think it’s worth aspiring to.