Fall 2014 - Week 1

Hey hey! Back on a plan, goals ahead, races to run, etc etc. Lots of weird looking selfies and run recaps coming your way (I'm sure everyone is waiting eagerly for those).

As a quick reminder, the goal is a sub 1:50 half at Oakville, or, failing that, at Road 2 Hope. So that's a 5:12/km pace but I want to have a bit of a buffer in there so I'll be aiming for 5:09/5:10.

Monday: 9.5k easy. Normally Monday is a rest day, but I had to start my ragweed allergy shots blah blah blah boring details omitted so I got in an easy run before heading off to the doctor.

Suck it, ragweed.

Tuesday: Rest day.

Breakfast smoothies. We are going through SO much frozen fruit and raw spinach these days. Still need to find a non-revolting protein powder, though.

Wednesday: 8.5k with 2k at tempo. #5amrunclub because I was hoping to avoid the humidity, but somehow it was more humid at 5 than it was later in the day. #fail. I'd planned to do 4k at tempo but this run sucked balls so I called off the tempo after the first 2 (5:09, 5:12, for those playing along at home). Whatever, I do what I want. Flexibility, yo. Or something. Mostly I just hate humidity and it was CRAZY ASS HUMID. I'll take the 2k as a start.

This is where I was going to put a sweaty mid-run selfie, but they came out so badly that I think they might make people go blind, so here's a picture of a bunny instead.

Thursday: 10k easy. It was early, but not too hot, and I took a wrong turn and had to add on some random neighbourhood loops at the end to get the distance. Isn't that just the worst? When you need 700m to get to your goal distance for the day and you have to run around the block and suddenly your block is the LONGEST BLOCK EVER. That last 700m took longer than the whole first 9k, I swear.

Huh, so the slightly above your head selfie angle thing really does work.

Friday: 6k easy. Oh yeah, I am in training now. I was thinking 8 but couldn't get out for this one before the sun was fully up and it was all hot and humid (stupid summer), so I cut it a bit short. I may have mentioned once or twice that I'm not really fond of hot weather running. Trust me, it's going to come up again and again and again over the next two months.

Saturday: 50k bike ride. Actually closer to 60 but my watch went a bit nuts at the beginning of the ride and lost a few km. If your watch doesn't record it, does it really happen?

This picture makes me laugh. I have no idea why I'm staring off into the distance all DEADLY SERIOUS. Photo credit: Irina.

Anyway, Saturday was also my birthday, and what better way to kick off the party than my first ever group bike ride? Holy crap that was FUN. Like, seriously, ridiculously fun. Road bikers are making more and more sense to me. The miles just seemed to fly by - it felt more like riding 20 or 30k, not 50k. Big thanks to Irina and Zindine for organizing, and I hope they'll invite me along on a another ride soon (maybe once I get my road bike).

Kim has mad selfie taking skills, even if we did make the rest of the group wait for 5 minutes while we got this one perfect. With Nicole and Sam. Photo via instagram.

Sunday: Planned a 20k trail run, but things went sideways almost immediately when my planned route was blocked off by a bigass locked gate. I regrouped and found another trail entrance but it didn't really get things started on the right note.

I did see deer, so that was kind of cool. Nature!

Then the trail itself was kind of boring (it was the Ray Lowes sidetrail on the Bruce Trail) until it got close to connecting to the regular Bruce Trail, but by that point I was kind of over things, and it was really hot and humid and every step was a step I'd have to run the other direction to get back to my car, and that was increasingly seemingly like a bad thing.

I need to come back and start with this section, way more fun stuff here than the sidetrail.

After consulting google maps and getting bitten by 4,000 mosquitoes, I decided to run back to the car on what looked like a minor local road, which turned out to be pretty pleasant (Old Guelph Road for the locals). It was just me and an occasional cyclist, pretty much, which made for a nice run, and it was fairly nicely shaded from the sun. Plus it was downhill. Until the end, when to get back to York it went uphill, then more uphill, then a little bit MORE uphill. Not ashamed to say I walked part of it. You do what you gotta do in the summer heat, pretty much.

Old Guelph Road. Nice and quiet, but HILLZ. The cyclists I saw climbing up looked like they were working pretty hard.

In total I managed almost 16k, which is fine with me given the temperature and the humidity.

So sweaty! But I found the Bruce Trail head office. So that's neat.

All in all, this week pretty much rocked. I had to shorten and change some things, but I like to ere on the side of being ambitious and then scale back if necessary, so I'm pretty pleased. 50+k on the bike, 50+k on the run, and my legs feel great, so I am happy. gotta be pleased with a 100k week.

The upcoming week figures some big excitement - my husband is home with the kids so I can bike commute at least once to work, which will help log a few more cycling km. Oh, and I might just be doing a few cycling km on my NEW ROAD BIKE which I am getting fitted for and bringing home in a few hours. Happy birthday to me!

Another photo from Irina. Hopefully Big Red won't be too upset when her little speedier sister comes home. She's been a terrific and reliable bike for me over the years (Rocky Mountain Whistler, for those who are into these sorts of things). I'll still use her for bike commuting, and at the rate kid #1 is growing these days Big Red will have a new rider sooner rather than later.