Training in the rain

Oh, look! Marathon training is back! With hills and speed sessions and long easy runs... and more rain than we could have ever asked for. We complained about not being able to make a fire while we were camping because of a total fire ban in the region, but with all the water that got dumped on us since we came back, we could have called all our training sessions "aqua-runs" or "aqua-rides", and I'm not even mentioning the leisure "aqua-walks", not even necessary. Bottom line, training in the rain has been the norm lately and we have the pictures to prove it. ;-)

But first, a bit of running updates. As I mentioned earlier, I started training for the upcoming Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, my first attempt at the distance on this course, a do-over from last year's injury/surgery/death in the family all-in-a-month combo. This may as well be my last marathon for a while since I'll be focussing on triathlons in the next two years, so better make it a good one. Hell, I'm even going to call it my "A" race for this year. With two marathons under my belt, I think I know what to do/change/improve although if I want to go for a PB, it's going to be a whole new territory. One thing I am pretty sure I won't change is putting one foot ahead of the other. But this time, they may be landing a bit differently too.

So far, running has been pretty uneventful, but fun, well... sort of. I ran to the movies (yum, I saw Magic Mike), I ran while being sick and coughing my lungs out (yuck), I ran in heat and humidity worse than a steam room (yikes), I ran in the rain (whee!) and after the bike (ouch), I ran suicidal hills (crazy drivers coming at me!) and recently on the balls of my feet (tough, but I finally found my calf muscles). Last but not least, I ran all these with my hubbs, because he's on his journey to becoming Superman and he runs faster than me and he's pushing the pace when I'm not too cranky. I can't wait to see how my body responds to this marathon training after the swim/bike/run regimen I put it through in the past few months.

By the way, bigger and meaner triathlons will be coming right after the marathon, so my coach is still having me doing swims and bike rides twice a week, plus a brick and strength training. This shall be interesting.

Now, for the bike workouts, as I said before, they've been wet for most of the times. Let's start the picture show. Nobody should complain about wet t-shirts, right?

The picture above was taken during our first ride after coming back from vacation. We'd been completely blindsided by Mother Nature as this pretty cloud moved in towards the end of the ride on our way back and we hadn't seen it coming. 30 seconds after I put away my camera, we were soaked. Hail was coming down furiously and when you are riding as fast as you can away from being turned into a crispy meat stick, it HURTS. For about a minute I thought about ringing a door bell on one of the solitary houses along the road, but decided to HTFU and keep on going, our own house was only 10 minutes away. No incident as you guessed, I lived to tell the tale.

This ride may have been a relaxed one, but with hills occupying a good chunk of my new schedule, the following ride was completely opposite, minus the rain that came to spoil drench the party, as usual.

Armed with a new cog (12-27), I promised I'd return to Horseshoe Hill to test my legs. What better way of doing this other than riding the hill not once, but 5 times in a row? No horse flies in sight this time, I bet they don't like to get wet. We drove closer to the hill and parked our bikes near the Caledon Trailway, then went for a 25min warmup before starting our ascent. For the actual hill repeats, we needed a half a mile long hill, so we chose the top. The rest is history tracked in a chart with lumps of all shapes and sizes, enjoy!

As for the rain, it started shyly during our last repeat, then unleashed in full force to the point that it got us wet enough to skip the shower for the day. Here are some pictures taken at the end of the workout, sorry that they are not more revealing.

Not wet enough

Is this thing on?

Superman!

We really enjoyed the hillfest so we'll be going back for more! Pray for more rain so that the flies stay away.