works of wanderlust

Tag: sunday runday

  • Terry Fox-ish

    Every year on this weekend for a generation Canadians go for a run.

    Forty years ago a young man named Terry Fox, long since deservedly held up as a national hero, attempted to run east to west across the country. He was in remission from cancer, and had lost a leg to it, but set anyways out to raise money and awareness.

    He made it about a third of the way before ending his run and passing away shortly after.

    The Terry Fox run is usually held annually on this very weekend and brings out countless folks from across the country to continue the run in spirit and memory.

    It was a virtual run this year thanks to a lingering global pandemic.

    So. It was pretty much a normal Sunday Runday for us.

    Except.

    Except a couple years ago one of our run crew passed from cancer.

    Her family put up a memorial bench in the local dog park in our river valley, a convenient distance away for a modest Sunday run.

    We might not have specifically run for Terry Fox this morning, but I’d like to think that ten of us adventuring down to find the bench, running through the autumn trails, and finding the memorial for our fallen crewmate was kinda a parallel effort in the right spirit of the day.

  • It’s All About the Trail Shoes

    Sunday Runday and with less than two weeks until my first in-person race in over a year and a half I found myself facing a morning run dilemma.

    New shoes.

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about new shoes.

    Quite the opposite.

    While on vacation in the mountains a few weeks ago I finally found a pair of trail shoes in my size and splurged. The next morning I broke them in with an (a previously blogged about) eight kilometer trail run up some steep incline and early morning terrain in the wilderness beauty of our National Park system, and then …

    … well … that dilemma I mentioned a couple paragraphs back compounded itself: I haven’t run any trail since, and the shoes had been sitting by my front door looking more forlorn than the dog when she needs her morning walk, and that other thing I mentioned in my opening sentence about an upcoming trail race kept nagging in the back of my mind.

    In two weeks I’m headed back out to the trails we visited last month for our little adventure with the wasps. Apparently the wasp situation has cooled alongside the weather, but neither of those things cooling off negates the fact that I’m signed up to run a roller-coaster single track trail half marathon quasi-ultra later this month.

    And as of this morning I’d run a mere eight kilometers in that brand new pair and brand new style (to me) of shoes.

    I tossed them into my backseat this morning on my way to meet my running crew and humbly suggested that we maybe, possibly, if anyone was interested run some trails as our Sunday route.

    There were some hefty dark clouds lurking to the west and the forecast (though cloudy and dry as we left) was for some light drizzle after a good soaking overnight.

    We decended into the river valley and into the rain-soaked single track weaving through the forests. The leaves are starting to yellow as the days shorten and fall creeps ever closer.

    By the time we exited that first stretch, my new shoes were clumped with mud and each weighed about a kilogram heavier than when I had entered.

    I was also dragging a small branch clinging to my heel, and I pulled off to the side of the path to clear the worst of it into the wet grass.

    A bit further down along we turned upwards towards a short ascent and into a utility corridor between the highway and the neighbourhood where the ankle-deep grass was still sopping with last night’s rain.

    Onward looped us into more single track and by the time we found our exit back into the asphalt of the nearby suburban streets not only were all our feet soaking wet and muddy, but the rains had truly arrived and would not let up again until we were well done the other half of our morning run.

    Soaked. Dirty. Tired. Epic.

    All for a pair of trail shoes…

    …and, oh, of course, the mental confidence that goes along with logging another medium-length trial run using those shoes, breaking them in, trialing them out, and generally assuring myself of their fit and function leading into that upcoming race.

  • Runner en Route

    Sunday Runday, and the day slipped away from me.

    I plodded out a ten kilometer loop in the wee hours of the morning, running with the same trusty group of friends who have kept me company through a summer of adventure running and virtual race training.

    Yet over the summer something silly and spontaneous happened which I haven’t yet written about here.

    I signed up for a half marathon.

    A real one.

    In person.

    And.

    It’s outside of Canada.

    In the next few months.

    Yeah.

    I’m planning to travel.

    On a plane.

    With my family.

    Have a small vacation.

    And run a half marathon.

    With people.

    We thought it through.

    We think we thought it through.

    And we’re going.

    To another country.

    And I’m running a half marathon while we’re there.

    Really.

    That said, I’m not one hundred percent sure I’m comfortable with the whole thing yet, at least insomuch that I want to share any more details. Suffice it say, I am officially training for a race as of July. Yikes. During a stubbornly lingering pandemic. Double yikes.

    More vague details to follow in a future post.

  • Hobbling and Hurting

    Sunday Runday, and it’s been a couple weeks since I sat down to write a post. It is a summer break for me, after all, and I’ve been out on the road, in the mountains, on the lake, and … as the topic of this post will soon reveal, running through the wilderness.

    In fact, a few interesting things have happened in my running career since last I checked in. In particular, I may have spent some money on race registrations. In person race registrations.

    The BIG one I’ll save for another post.

    The little BIG one ties back to this morning’s Sunday running adventure that was had, all resulting from a spontaneous decision to sign up for a local (quasi) ultramarathon and the opportunity to do some practicing for that.

    And again, in fact, I wrote in passing about my intention to do just that a few months back when I wrote about a nature sanctuary we had visited west of the city.

    The River’s Edge Ultramarathon is an honest-to-goodness ultra marathon race through challenging terrain hosted on a large chunk of private land at the edge of the North Saskatchewan river. (Adult) distances range from a short 12km sampler run to a full 100km solo looping race of insanity.

    Last weekend I signed up for the half marathon “koda” distance, twenty-one klicks through rolling riverside terrain (and even some wet crossing to a small island, I understand).

    As the race host prepares the course and readies for the event, he invites some interested locals (ie. us) out to the start line to help clear trails, trial the trails, or just run the course. So, Sunday Runday and seven of my crew found themselves driving thirty minutes west of the city to spend three hours in the wilderness for one of the permitted practice runs on the “homestead” loop.

    Across a little more than three hours, we pushed through nineteen klicks of grinding hills, mucky soft peat, cliff-side crags, cow pastures, grassy stretches, ambling over barbed wire fences, and stumbling down rope-supported descents.

    On top of the regular running pain, the wasps had taken over the landscape. I didn’t count but I would confidently say there were well over two or three hundred nests along the length of the trail, and I was stung at least twice… which was about average for me and my fellow participants. Ultra-style trail running with a hot, burning, muscle-spasm of wasp-sting pain in your calf is nothing to shrug off.

    In about six weeks we’ll be back out there for the real race, trudging through similar loops on a (hopefully) cool September day, and my in person race career will have seemingly resumed with a challenge I wouldn’t have expected to take on again so soon.

  • Big Canada

    Sunday Runday and I waited until today to finally make a big blogging deal about the latest running adventure in which I’ve signed up to participate. I’ve been sitting on it for a couple weeks and have been excited to post about it.

    In fact, shortly after I wrote about running inspiration and alluded to my good friend who was just finishing up a virtual cross-Canada race logging nearly five thousand kilometers over twelve months, the same friend sent out a group chat wondering if anyone would be interested in something similar this year, but in relay form. He wasn’t keen on the solo route again.

    Eight of us put up our hands, and dropped our cash on the table… and that’s how about three weeks ago I found myself signed up for “leg number two” of The Big Canada Run where the nine of us are going to need to log ten thousand kilometers between July 1st and June 30th of next year.

    Ten. Thousand.

    10,000 km.

    That’s about sixty-two hundred miles for you imperial system folks.

    And as I’m writing this on July 4th, you can probably imagine that we’ve already started logging those kilometers… and yes, your imagination would be very correct.

    Our team is currently sitting at just barely two percent done having kicked off the meandering virtual trip across the continental map with a group breakfast run on our July 1st Canada Day holiday in the scorching hot weather which ended, as all breakfast runs should, with an eggs and bacon picnic in the grass beside a freeway. Yup, really.

    With my share of ten thousand klicks to clock, it could prove to be a very interesting running year for me. Perhaps it might even inspire me to train a little harder and do some races that are a little more based in reality, y’know, sooner than later.

    And I’ll drop some further updates when we hit significant milestones. Stay tuned.