Taking it easy

Almost a week has passed since my last race, the Goodlife Toronto Half Marathon and under orders from my coach, I did my best to stay put. Thankfully there has been enough excitement this week to keep me from going cuckoo. Here's a little update, with pictures, because I can't keep my phone away. It's like having a third eye, minus the wisdom.

As expected, Monday was slow. Woke up to very achy quads and hubbs suggested that I take some Advil. Oh the miracle, I found 3 gelcaps in a bottle, enough to last me the day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yum. I think they helped, mostly with going up and down the stairs without screaming Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Whenever I'd find myself near the backyard, I'd go out and take a peek. For the first time ever, I have a flower bed and stuff is coming out of it! Living things, that I planted last fall and never thought they would survive the winter, with my luck and all. Since then, there are a lot more tulips in bloom, red and yellow ones.

Nature in progress

So that is going pretty well as you can see. Also, my baby Katsura tree is more beautiful than ever, in its third year of growing roots in my backyard. Since I am such a good mom, here I was giving it water because it was thirsty, and it smiled back with a rainbow.

Can I have a Unicorn with that?

It is a safe thing to say that aside from looking at the pretty flowers and rainbows (and my computer screen), I did nothing all day on Monday. A true lazy bum. On Tuesday, I picked up the pace, so to speak, which meant getting out of the house. The mission was to make it downtown Brampton with my camera and take pictures of the cherry blossoms. I started by going to Target to pick up a chess game to play with my sons, after they proudly announced that they have mastered the rules and it's now time for some face to face action.
After completing my mission of finding a decent looking chess board, I started making my way towards the cherry blossoms, one or two kms north on the Etobicoke Creek Trail. Hint, there is a creek running along it. I took a small break to retrieve a geocache and pause my thoughts for a bit.

Unfortunately, since the mosquitoes were already out and ready for a bloodbath, I decided to leave my reverie and continue on the path, onto safer grounds. Stopped for another cache, but after 20 minutes of turning over rocks under a bridge, I decided to give up. Too many possibilities, my patience ran away.
Eventually I found the Sakura and they were as beautiful as I had imagined. You definitely cannot compare them with those from High Park in Toronto, but they were good enough to lift my spirits and inspire me to take a few pictures.

It was all worth it. After I got tired of snapping away, I went for one last geocache, on the other side of the creek, inside a wooden area. It was quite fun, until I noticed prints on the ground. A lot of them. Not human. They didn't look like deer, they didn't look like raccoon, but something scarier, and rather BIG. I am no expert in wilderness, but I'll take a guess and say coyote. I decided to GET THE HELL OUT as quickly as I could.

For sure that got my heart racing. I am such a baby when it comes to facing anything that's faster than me and has long and sharp teeth. After feeling pavement under my feet again, I walked back to my car and returned to safety, aka curled up in a ball in my bed. Workout : almost 5k walk and a near cardiac arrest to make it count.

In the evening, I went back to the pool, for more pull. Did a repeat of Sunday night, swam until I was too dizzy to count the laps. On Wednesday I went for massage therapy and it was a beautiful sufferfest. Nuff said. He knows what he's doing, so I trust this man to give me new legs every single time. Came out of there refreshed and to prove it, took my bike out for a spin in the evening, my second outdoor ride this year. A very straightforward out and back, and seeing how I was zooming on my way out of the house, I figured that it was not going to be that easy coming back. Indeed, a fierce wind made the second half totally miserable. However, 25k in the bank, I did not complain. It needed to be done, it was on the schedule after all.

And then Thursday came and I woke up with no pain at all in my legs. That was the signal that I could run again. In the morning I had to go to a job interview (oh yes, things have started moving, hallelujah! Two more interviews next week!), which went very well. I was feeling quite joyful the whole day, so I put on my shorty shorts (another first!) and went for a 6k run, a quick and easy one, right? What I had not anticipated was that by the time I went out, there were already 27-28 degrees C, which made the day August material. With no water, I quickly got thirsty and the entire workout was a countdown to me drinking a tall, cold glass of water in the shade. I think it also made it faster than what I had planned, oh well, I didn't die and my legs didn't complain either.

Cooling down with a stretch and lots of water

Yellow as far as you can see. Thankfully I have no allergies.

And with another swim in the evening, the loop is now looped. I have reached the end of another hard week of training and racing and I can rest my bum on the good ol' couch, while I apply to jobs and enjoy the time off. Soon, I know that the madness will start again and I'm going to beg for 5 minutes of laziness.

UPDATE: Some people told me that those prints in the mud are rather those of a big dog, like a Great Dane or similar. What do you think?

PS. Totally unrelated: check out my Bling-bling page, new with my medal and race shirt collection. ;-)