Other than "marathon training", not much else is happening these days in the workout department. Sure, I had two glorious days of biking with friends last weekend, including my first slow-mo fall on my P2 in front of three dozen of "serious" cyclists (they all had matching kits, booties and cleat covers), which left me with a couple of colourful bruises, including a big one on my ego. I have no explanation other than the bike did not want to go when I clipped in to go. Imagine that.
I also went swimming a few times, twice with the tri group, and once with a swim coach who's supposed to do a video analysis and pick at my flaws next week. I learned a few tricks and heard some old truths. I did not mind swimming with the group either. Maybe it's a new beginning, despite my old frustrations and fears. I'm giving it another chance over the winter and maybe my brain will stay put and get on with the program. We shall see...
But back to running, I still have this marathon to run in three weeks. I'm still going for the full, even though I had serious thoughts about switching to a half, just to be able to run with Nicole and Sam and make it more fun. But then two other friends of mine are running the full as well, so I'm thinking that we may need each other in the long run, literally. I promised myself that if my legs don't start screaming, then I shall not chicken out. So legs, until then, shut up.
My schedule is not too crazy and although some may think that I will be running this marathon unprepared, I think I know my body better. After all, I ran my first and best marathon by accident without doing any runs longer than 25km. Then I trained for one "properly", with several 30km+ runs an it ended being my worst. I am going for a PR, even if it's just a minute. I think I can do it as my fitness improved a lot in a year and a half of training for triathlons. But if things end up going downhill, aside from the course incline, then I'll reevaluate. One thing for sure, I'm going to carry my magic pickle juice for good juju.
Last week I went on my longest run this year, 24km which I chose to do on the Caledon Trailway, away from the city. Last time I ran there was in the summer during the race simulation day. Initially I thought about going early in the morning, but as my alarm clock went off, I heard the rain tapping on my window and changed my mind. I was afraid of catching a cold by running 2 weekends in a row soaked to the bone, so I postponed it for later in the day, hoping for mother nature to take a break from all the bitching and crying. She did around noon, but we were eating lunch. When we eventually got ready to go, it was 2:30pm and the sky was looking menacing again. It was also cold, so we decided to grab a coffee on the go, but by the time we got to Timmies, the rain started again. Seriously, WTF!
We drove about 15 minutes north to the trail, debating whether to turn around or HTFU it all the way. Once we reached the trail and parked the car, I was reluctant to get out. This was not going to be fun.
Mmmmmm, corn.
Do I really have to get out of the car?
With this guy, it should not be so bad.
We took the picture above just before we started running. The plan was for Zin to do 12km with me, then 12km on his bike, while I kept on running. Not even 30sec after we took the picture though, it started pouring. Are you freaking kidding me? Not even a light rain, but buckets of water. We turned into soaked beans again.
It didn't look pretty anymore. More like a long streak of diarrhea.
My mood took a 360 degree turn and I was ready to strangle someone. The victim of biggest convenience, hubbs. He must have sensed the fumes coming out of my ears because he took off ahead of me to stay safe. The farthest away he was running, the more annoyed I would get because I was feeling so slow and unmotivated and I had no one to share my pain with. Despite the beautiful setting, I did not want to be there, running in the rain, having to jump over puddles to keep my feet dry.
Chasing my hubbs
Leading the way
I kept on chasing him up and down the trail and telling myself that I'd run back to my car and end this misery. But once I finished the first 12km, I could not stop. I was running away from the car again, but this time I was counting the kilometers to the turn around point. Six more, then the last six. That didn't sound so bad anymore. Maybe I could do this, even if the heart wasn't it in. Zin put on his funny attitude, trying to cheer me up. He succeeded for about a minute, then I went back to fighting the voices that were telling me that enough was enough.
Somewhere in that little brain of mine, something was telling me to keep smiling
Especially for this guy, my everything. A gel for another smile, maybe?
The kilometers were going by slower and slower and to add insult to irony, a stitch decided to park itself between my ribs. Hello there little fucker, and no, I didn't miss you. Now, get the hell OUT. Sigh, it didn't listen... stayed there pretty much until the end, just because it could. I pushed through, telling myself that for sure it'll come back during the marathon and then what? Walk, maybe, but what if I didn't need to?
This blog post sounds like a race report already, but trust me, I'm trying to speed up my thinking. It's just that I have a few more pictures and I need more paragraphs to drop in between. Maybe I'll find something interesting to say. Yeah, what about that tiny little snake across the path? Or the beaver dam? And let's not forget the Hwy 10 overpass which I hate with all my guts. If you see my heart rate going through the roof, it's because of it:
Going East
Going West
Okay, I am seriously running out of words here. So much verbiage for a shitty run, it's not even worth it. Just so you know: I DID IT. Ran all 24km. Then, laying on my back beside my car, on the cold and wet ground, I looked at the sky for a while, and didn't regret a single minute.
My coffee was cold, my legs were aching. Hubbs was driving. I was in love again - he was going to bring me back home, to my ice bath, my comfy couch and Breaking Bad.
Last in the series of late recaps, my running comes as a natural suite to the weekly swimming and biking adventures that make this triathlon bouquet quite a wet and smelly mess.
Stretching my calves on the stairs and drying my boob sweat...
Currently training for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, my running regime has been a combination of brick runs, hill repeats ad nauseatum , speed intervals which push my maximum HR off the charts and long slow runs in zone 2-3 which I've been spicing up by getting lost on trails like these:
My longest run of this marathon season has been 2h today, in which I ran a little over 18km. I usually do all my runs with hubbs and since he's new to distance running, it's cool to be with him when he reaches those "longest ever runs" milestones that I hope will motivate him to join me for a marathon soon.
I am always a bit apprehensive of marathon training since it spoiled the party several times by bringing me pains in places that I never thought I'd get to complain about, such as the arches of my feet, the back of my knees or my Achilles tendons. But this time around, armed with a ton of info on barefoot running thanks to the revolutionary book "Born to run" and thousands of articles on this topic, I am convinced that mechanically, I'd be better off using the balls of my feet more efficiently. If you still haven't read Christopher Mc Dougall's book, you can listen to him or watch the "The Perfect Runner" short film by David Suzuki (only available for viewing online in Canada, but you can read the scientific information part, it's pretty much a summary).
...Followed by icing the legs
I am not particularly interested in wearing Vibrams or going completely barefoot, but rather teaching myself a forefoot/midfoot strike instead of a heel strike. And this is exactly what I've been doing since I started training for this marathon. I took a new pair of Adidas Glide 2 shoes out from the box and started doing all my long runs using a forefoot strike. At first I kept wondering what I looked like, going from hippo to ballerina - and spending 1h on the balls of my feet definitely felt like a workout. The long runs kept getting longer but I stuck with it, nursing my calves with ice baths and compression socks - and for the first time in a month, this week I put on my older sneakers to go out for my speed workout and I just could not make my brain do anything else but forefoot strike. Then I did the 2h long run today and this new way of running felt entirely natural. It took one full month, but I think I managed to alter my running form for the better and with zero pain as a bonus (I am not talking about muscle soreness, but injury - so far, so good, touch on wood).
Not sure how my training schedule is going to shape up over the next few weeks, but I know that my longest run will be 3h30. Hopefully feet are going to get even stronger by then. I am getting pretty excited to see that I can hit sub-5 intervals with a new and alien form of running. If it keeps doing its magic, I may even see further improvement in my overall speed and who knows, a marathon PB? Coach said to trust myself - now, that's going to be a challenge.
Funny thing is, I am getting blisters in new places, such as under and between my toes. With every long run, I have been trying different pairs of socks in the hope of finding the magic ones that leave my feet smiling. I don't know whether I should shout "Eureka!" just yet, but running with a pair of Injinji toe socks today didn't bring any tears or fears.
Toe socks rock!
Happy feet!
However, I am having a serious problem above the waist where chaffing is taking new shapes and sizes. It's not easy to know what to do since I lost a few bra cup sizes in the process of shedding 50lb, but all my sports bras, being stretchy and all, still seem to fit. With "seem" being the emphasis here because in the "feel" department, it looks like this (front and back). Dark spot in the middle of the top pic is one of my gallbladder surgery scars, but the pretty butterfly underneath is entirely courtesy of my Polar sports bra. The front chaffing scar is about 4 inches large at the top, 2 inches tall. The ones in the back, I have no freaking clue where they are coming from, I suspect they were produced by the seams because the bra does not close at the back. Nice and symmetrical, I am a work of art. Oh le sigh.
Lesson learned, this is the second bra that I am retiring from the long runs, the previous one being the Moving Comfort "Juno" that imprinted the darker spot on the bottom right since the Paris Marathon. I cannot win, I think I may start a bare-chest running movement (with duct tape for support). Who's with me for running naked? Or have you found no-chaffing magic clothes? Either way, do tell because... Ouchie ouch!
Until then, enjoy the ironic photo of the day - who says that I don't know how to sport a butterfly?
After the triathlon, we went camping, thus I was disconnected from the interwebs to be able to blog. We only made an hour stop by our home so I can shower and change clothes, then we drove straight up to Algonquin where we made a new attempt at living in the wilderness, that is living in a tent for 10 days. Some people told us that was rather hardcore, but we found that the time passed by rather quickly and the return to work was actually more violent. I won't go into details as how the days went by, but I will try to recap our fitness opportunities since that's the theme around here.
Hwy 60 - are we there yet?
I'm surprised that we remembered how to set up this tent
Bed head, coffee, compression socks and sandals.
But when you're in vacation, these are a bit more subtle as I am going to explain.
Walking:
When you're in a large campground, your first exercise is walking - everywere, but especially to the washrooms. To sum it up, our tent was located 200m away from the washrooms and we counted an average of 5 bathroom trips a day, that's 2km/day... times 10, you do the math. Hurray for pee pee and poo poo to keep us in shape.
Next, trips to the beach, located at 500m from our tent, it provided us with a nice opportunity to bank a km each time we became beach bums. Over 10 days, I estimate those trips to 8.
Walks to the store - we were lucky to have one about 500m away and because we had regular needs for drinking water, ice, bread and ice cream, those trips became quite usual by the second day. Estimated 8 of them as well.
Hiking was our second source of fitness, combined with geocaching, because you have to put some extra motivation in those hikes, you know, dangling a carrot in front of a donkey, that works pretty well. Suited up with backpack, GPS, a good dose of deet, sandwiches and at times, not enough water, we went into the following adventures:
Even since I knew we were going to stay at the Lake of Two Rivers Campground, I gave myself the challenge of finding the geocache placed on a little island in the middle of the lake and what best way of getting to it other than commando, aka swimming. Since I am not such a strong swimmer and the great outdoors still overwhelm me, I chose to do the swim in my wetsuit. People looked at me strange every time I put it on, but hey, I rather be comfortable and relax than drown in front of their eyes.
Commando geocaching
Finding the cache was no problem, quickly signed the log and put back in place. Happy to see an ammo box as well, that was like the cherry on the cake. Here's me with cache GC82F0. We spent the rest of the day on the island, diving in the lake and fishing, that was an all around awesome day. Since I was still sick though, I decided to go back to the beach in the canoe with hubbs and the boys and postpone the longer swims for later in the week.
Speaking of which, the day before the last, I suited up once again and went for a swim around the island, happy and relaxed. Here is the Runkeeper activity for this epic loop.
Total swim distance: 2.2km
Biking:
We didn't bring our bikes with us, not only because we wanted to rest, but because they are both road bikes and we were mostly interested in doing the Old Railway Bike Trail, which required mountain bikes. So one day we rented mountain bikes for all of us and we went on this adventure without quite knowing what to expect. What we feared the most was BEAR. And we found bear poop right in the middle of the trail, which was as close as we got to meeting a bear. It made the bike ride even more challenging, in which we were all secretly running away from an invisible predator, without saying it out loud for fear of inducing panic in each other. The bike ride was a 12km out and back to the camp along the Lake of Two Rivers and Whitefish Lake. Just at the end of Whitefish Lake there was this bridge from which people were jumping in the lake. We were not prepared for this, but the chance was too good to pass on, so without taking our clothes off, we jumped in as well. Below is a picture of me, soaked wet and proud. The bridge was so hot it was burning my feet, the smile only lasted for a second :-)
Wet and wild
Total biking: 24km
Running:
The second day after we arrived, I was still pumped up after the tri and went on a short 30min trail run with hubbs. Alas we didn't repeat the feat as my cough got worse and worse and it was physically impossible to keep a running pace without coughing my lungs out. I even threw up once because of coughing too hard. Not fun at all. That was a reckon mission on the Old Railway Trail, before our bike ride. Looking back, after finding the bear poo, I am glad that we didn't run again on the same trail, yikes!
Total running: 5km
Kayaking:
Before leaving the camp, we had one last mission, that was to rent kayaks for the boys so they can get in some paddling action of their own. That day the current on the lake was a bit too strong though and my youngest son decided that he had enough after crossing to the island. While he spent the rest of the day diving, I took over the kayak and went in a bit of exploring with my older son and later, hubbs.
This has been by far the best vacation we spent as a family. So much fun, such beautiful scenery that we discovered, breathed, tasted, and touched. The only downside was my illness (which is now officially bronchitis) and the impromptu trip to the hospital that I had to make one night with an UTI. Not sure how we can top it off, we wanted to make another family trip at the end of the year to mark our 15th anniversary but all of a sudden, it feels a bit superfluous.
Until then, there will be work, work and work and another marathon for which the training started... oh wait, yesterday!
How was your vacation, if you had any? What are your autumn goals?
I don't want this day to end, it's one of these days when the good keeps on coming. It started early for a Sunday, but long run oblige, I had the opportunity of running with a buddy, so I was not going to miss out on that. Alas, because of the Daylight Savings Time that happened last night, I wanted to make sure that my phone would ring on time, so I took it out of its dock, set a manual alarm for 6:45am and went to bed. It didn't ring. Fortunately I had another alarm set up for 7:30am that coincided with the time I was going to meet with my running friend, so I jumped out of bed, sent an apologetic SMS and prayed that he was going to wait. Nice guy as he is, he said not to worry, so I put on my running clothes, water in my bottles, grabbed a protein bar and a banana, a Gatorade and off I drove to our meeting point. 20min on the clock since I came out of bed, I was on the trail. For someone like me who isn't a morning person, that was rather unfreakinbelievable. We run for 2h on the Etobicoke Trail and averaged 6:37min/km for a total of 18.3km, which was to be the second miracle of the day. Last year I run the same trail at 8min/km, so this proves how much faster I've gotten. I was really happy with this run, I even threw in a 200m sprint at the end. Below is a picture from my favourite part of the trail, even though it was hilly like hell.
After the run I came home and went out for a walk to get coffee and "flush" my legs. A short 1.5km to the nearby Tim Hortons, no big deal. But by the time I cam back, I was STARVING. We decided to go to Pizza Hut since last time we went there was 1 year ago!! I just couldn't get the gooey oozy cheesy crust out of my mind. Thank goodness that the cheesy crust was also thin, so we figured that in 3 small slices there would be around 680cal, half the number of calories I burned on my run. The chicken lover's on a cheesy crust was a go! I devoured those 3 slices. Soooo good.
We made one more stop on our way back home, by Baskin and Robbins for ice cream. I only had one scoop of Rainbow Sherbet, pretty satisfying stuff.
Later on, the day warmed up so much, it was too beautiful to spend it inside. Hubbs prepared our bikes and with the excuse of going to pick up passport photos from Shoppers Drugmart, we went out for another tour of Brampton. 1h, almost 20k, we thoroughly enjoyed this one. Legs are still a-ok, hope they will not complain too much tomorrow when I'm going to throw a brick at them. Well, sort of, I'll have to do 30min bike, followed immediately by 30min of running - this is called a "brick" in triathlon jargon.
I'll leave you with this link to my 2h run and this one to the 19.4k ride. I hope you enjoyed your day as much as we did!
