works of wanderlust

Tag: running winter

  • little or lotta lazy

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

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

    A few months after my daughter was born and as the days counted down to the stereotypical New Years Eve regrets and resolution-making, my mind shifted towards fitness. Something compelled me to log onto the website for a local running store and sign up for a running clinic.  So it was that starting the second day of January a week or two later in the year 2008 I arrived in the door of the local run club and started their “learn to run 5k” training clinic.

    I have only taken short bits of time off running for injury (or maybe vacations and holidays) since. 

    That will be exactly eighteen years ago in just less than one month. *sigh* My running career will soon be old enough to vote.

    But 2025 has been a bit of a slide, if I’m being honest.

    Sure, I ran a streak in September and a race in October. Sure, I did a Park Run in Tokyo in November. And sure, I have not so much missed a stretch of time in my training… so much as I have just been maintaining.  But, it was not what I would call a peak running season.

    My doctor has told me on a couple of occasions that not only is running probably keeping me relatively fit and young(ish) but it is something of a alternative sort of diagnostic tool: if you ever find that you can’t run because of your heart or lungs, come see me, he said. Otherwise, you’re probably gonna live for a while.

    It wasn’t my heart or lungs, tho, really. Turns out it was my stomach and some secondary symptoms related to reflux and digestive health that has left me hesitant about longer distances for the last while. That, and I have been a bit lazy about it, too.

    Admittedly, it was probably a lot of lazy.

    And yet now that the year is coming to yet another close and I get to look back on my stats for 2025, I realize that it was a relatively grim year for my milage. I kind of wish I had pushed myself a bit further this year, to be honest.

    Yeah, yeah… health first, and there were genuine health quirks that slowed me down and shut off my desire to push out into the depths of the river valley wilderness this past year. Turns out that having a coughing fit what seemed like every ten minutes for six months throws you off your game. You are cautious. You are hesitant. You second guess your own ability. 

    Had I cracked that nut earlier, I may have jumped back into half marathon training or something. And now… well, the snow is flying out the window even as I write this, and the temperatures are grossly unfit for anything I feel like partaking in today. 

    Lazy? Or self preservation? You can make up your own mind. But I do feel a little sad I didn’t cover more trail in my footprints this past year.

  • head over feets, thirteen

    Lucky.

    All good things begin with the number thirteen, right?

    The race kinda wrapped our season, however you look at it, and as an autumn overseas vacation looms I’ve been contemplating things besides long distance training. That said, I’ve been trying to get in some physical activity amid dealing with a minor health issue this past couple weeks.

    On my docket were…

    Tuesday, after a full day and some of post-race recovery, I drove across town to the pool. Gah, I’m getting so tired of not having a pool close by… but I deal and in a couple weeks the local one will be through it’s refurb and I can get back into that groove over the winter. For now tho, laps in Mill Woods.

    I didn’t do much the week that followed the race, but on Sunday (in the wake of the daylight savings time change) we were back to our regular meetup and coffee club run, logging eight klicks in what suddenly felt a lot like impending winter weather. The leaves are all well-gone and there were icy patches on the trail because the temps were hanging out below zero when we started. Long pants weather for sure.

    Did I mention that I gave up caffeine? I don’t know that it is a permanent switch up quite yet, but I’m testing out a theory around this persistent cough I’ve been fighting and I feel like it might be less of a respiratory issue and more of a reflux issue. Too much info, I know, but them’s the reality of my so-called fitness life. So I’m off caffeine for a month or so… meaning I spent most of this week in full on withdrawal. Headaches, muscle aches, general tired and grumpiness. All that, along with a dose of snow late in the week meant I didn’t really get out much at all for a few days.

    I did make my way to the pool again on Friday morning and I swam a bunch of laps. The post-caffeine withdrawal phase felt pretty good and my lungs feel like they’ve opened up. I actually had a mighty good swim and then a nice long soak in the hot tub.  I doubt I’ll have a chance to get in another swim before vacation tho, and hopefully my home pool will be open again when we get back, so fingers crossed that’s my last drive across town for a swim for a long while. It is a really nice pool, but a thirty minute drive was a little much.

    Of course, Sunday despite the flipping cold weather, we met up at the rec centre as usual for an eight klick run. Just as much to remind me of my caffeine withdrawal as anything else, it was a slog. I ran out of gas around six klicks in and ended up doing some walking. I have been doing a whole nutritional reset as part of trying to get this reflux issue under control before our trip, so I’m sure I was just in a bit of calorie debt, too. Ugh! Getting old.

    On Monday I sat down and worked out a game plan for Japan: I’m bringing along one change of running gear, my watch (of course) and I bought some new running shoes to double as fresh travel, walking around shoes but which will more than serve in case I opt to go out running. My best bet is to hope I’m not too jet lagged that I can make a Park Run just a few days after we arrive, and if not that, there is another one much later in the trip. Otherwise, it looks like I might just scope out the streets and parks of Tokyo and try and find a nice homemade route. Travel running is always a glorious challenge.

  • Knee-hab (January Update)

    I ran last night.

    Not much.

    But I ran. Outside. On a trail.

    And I can still walk this morning.

    If running three klicks through on a random Thursday evening in January sounds less than impressive, let me introduce you to my Medial Collateral Ligament injury and the fact that I haven’t had a pain-free run outside or beyond the confines of a physiotherapy-prescribed treadmill run in over six months.

    I pushed myself back in September in the park near my house and ended up limping home and elevating my leg for nearly a week.

    This morning, fourteen hours later, I feel pretty normal. Good. Strong. Hopeful.

    Back in July of 2022 I injured my knee ligament.

    I don’t know how. I don’t know when. I don’t know why. All I know is that one day I was running and training and planning adventure runs through the city. The next day I was struggling to climb a few steps in my house.

    I figured a couple weeks recovery.

    After a month I went to see the physiotherapist.

    He told me it may take a couple months, but maybe as long as four months.

    It’s been six months and I’m finally feeling like there is something resembling hope in a recovery.

    It was -15C on the trails.

    My crew meets sporadically but regularly at an elementary school parking lot near an access point a ravine.

    In the spring, summer and fall it’s a beautiful asphalt trail descending into the river valley under a canopy of big old trees.

    In the winter, its dark and icy and hauntingly creepy.

    I recorded a walking tour there just last week and the view hadn’t changed much to last night, except that I was plodding along at one minute run to one minute walk intervals, and listening to the crunch of my feet through the dark forest trail.

    My four companions kept my pace for the first of my one minute intervals, but then I purposely slowed and they dashed ahead. On my second interval I almost felt like if I pushed it I could catch up with them. On the third interval they were little more than bobbing headlamps in the distance and by the fourth I had descending into a canopy of eerie trail that was as much like a haunted pathway towards some frozen hell below as it was the scene of my running recovery run.

    At eleven minutes I made a u-turn and returned to my truck, logging exactly three slow kilometers of winter plodding and setting the stage for a “now we wait to see how I feel in the morning” scenario.

    And?

    And?

    I already spoiled the lede, of course. I feel fine this morning. I can still walk… have walked. Gone up and down the stairs a dozen times and…

    I have an appointment with my physiotherapist tomorrow. Now I need to fess up that I pushed the program. I suppose it all worked out tho, huh?

  • Running into Spring

    Sunday Runday, the first day of spring, and yet when we stepped out into the last few hours of winter air this morning it was blowing and cold as if winter was reminding us that we all lived on the Canadian prairies and we don’t get to simply up and decide that the chill has left for another year.

    It had been nice all week.

    Well… nice enough that warm hats became optional and the concrete of the sidewalks made a strong appearance as the layers of ice finally melted into chilly, slushy puddles that slowly drained into the storm sewers.

    We’d gone for an eight klick run through a local ravine on Tuesday evening and returned with wet, blistered feet from sloshing through sloppy, water-logged melt still covering the aspalt trails.

    This morning, avoiding the wind, we tucked into some suburban walking paths that wend their way along the back fences of a couple neighbourhoods that back onto the thawing creek. Where we’d been snowshoeing just a weekend ago was now a briskly flowing waterway the colour of milk chocolate twisting between the naked trees.

    As we burst from the cover of the shelter paths and out onto the streets the wind was just starting to pick up speed and carried with it the hint of more snow.

    And as we rounded the last corner towards the parking lot the hint of snow had turned into a very real peppering of icy sleet blasting our bare cheeks for the final push towards our coffee social.

    It didn’t go unremarked that annually April is when our training proper usually begins. Longer distances. Hill repeats. Tempo runs. These start to populate our calendars as the snow melts and the sidewalks clear and the evenings offer a bit more daylight.

    It didn’t go unremarked that April is only just about a week and a few days away.

    I signed up for a short race in April in a nearby bedroom community after a friend suggested she’d like some company for a ten-miler and the first in-person she’ll have run in about three years. It wont be my first even this year, but somehow it feels like starting to be back to normal.

    Back to the office in April. Back to local racing in April. Back to hill repeats in April.

    Let’s just hope spring cooperates.

  • Interesting Places

    Depending on how the rest of my holiday-countdown week shapes up, how the holiday break happens (or not), and a couple of pandemic-related decisions that have yet to be made get sorted, going out on the winter trails last night for a six klick run in the falling snow may have marked my last run with the crew of this year.

    Describe your 2021 in terms of fitness, health, mind and body.

    In fact just about a week ago a new bridge opened up crossing the mighty North Saskatchewan river.

    About five years ago the old and well-loved foot bridge at the same location was closed (amidst protest) as construction of a new leg of our rapid rail transit system was officially started. The Tawatinâ Bridge which opened last week now stands in its place and is an LRT rail bridge with a wide pedestrian foot bridge suspended below it. The view from that footbridge is of the city, the river, and a huge collection of indigenous art embedded into the concrete.

    We parked near that bridge last night even as the snow started to fall and then we ran a loop through the river valley trails near downtown, a run that concluded with crossing the bridge (on foot) for the first time.

    It was dark, snowy, and the bridge was spectacularly lit and illuminated brilliantly even by the frozen precipitation all around and in the air.

    If it was my last crew run of 2021, it was a fitting one.

    We call it another year of lockdowns and uncertainty, but to be sure for much of the world it marks the first full calendar year, January through December, of what is turned out to be the embodiment of that famous curse “may you live in interesting times.”

    Who knew interesting times would be so repetitive and boring.

    Admittedly in the last two years I’ve lost a measurable amount of my fitness.

    I entered 2020 with the plan of training for and running the Chicago marathon, while two years later (not having ever stepped a single foot in Chicago after all) I plod out ten klick runs on the regular, but can’t barely conceive of training for a full marathon distance lately.

    Running has kept me healthy though… mentally, physically and soulfully.

    That likely has as much to do with a core group of six or seven people as anything involving sneakers or trails.

    That said, a run like the one we did last night would have been an unusual adventure two years ago. Meeting somewhere other than the running store. Meeting at a time off the regular schedule. Running a course that was as much exploration and discovery as it was an exercise in fitness and training.

    The pandemic, in blocking off the regular pattern of things, has disrupted so much in negative ways, but in adapting to those disruptions it has created interesting changes.

    May you run in interesting places isn’t so much a curse as it is a cure for the mind and body.

    And we certainly spent 2021 running through interesting places.