Boxing Day 19K

My plan was to do 16, but it turned into 19, and I'm quite happy about that. Even if it is a bit ahead of schedule. Peter and I met Adrienne at the Running Room store at 8:30. Well, truthfully, it was 8:34 on my watch, and probably later on Adrienne's because she arrived first and as every minute went by, I imagine she was getting more anxious about whether or not we would remember to show. After all the Christmas indulging, it was hard to get up and into our running clothes. It had been three straight days of eating and drinking - Friday was Michael's birthday dinner, Saturday the annual Christmas Eve party at our place, and of course Sunday was Christmas day. I was ready to run off some of that extra fuel. However that's not great fuel, and even my Boxing Day breakfast of cranberry pecan cake and a clementine probably wasn't the right stuff to get me through a two-hour run. All in all it was a great run. We did a route that took us first to Dow's Lake, then downtown past the Parliament Buildings, over the Portage bridge to Gatineau (formerly known as Hull), then back over on the Alexandra Bridge and down Sussex to Colonel By and back to the store. Adrienne continued on to Dow's Lake, once again, in order to bring her run to 23K.
This week I had made it out on Tuesday morning, Wednesday evening, and Friday morning. Not bad for the week leading to Christmas. Wednesday's run had been particularly snowy. So snowy that traffic prevented Peter and I from getting to the store on time. We gave up partway there, parked the car in a government building lot off Prince of Wales and ran to the Pretoria bridge and back. The fresh snow was murder on my hamstring. However, since that run, my hamstring has been perfectly fine. The discomfort has completely disappeared. (One thing that might have helped is a yoga stretch I did on Wednesday when I got home. I used an old belt of Peter's and by pulling my right leg up towards me with my left leg extended, I was able to zero right in on the knot that was bothering me.)
Today, I am indulging in complete laziness. (It's all about balance!) Peter and I stayed in bed reading magazines from our stockings until noon. In fact, as I write this I'm still in my pajamas. Later this afternoon we'll drive out to the airport to say goodbye to Nicholas and Melissa (my son and his girlfriend, for those of you who don't know.) The next time I see them, they'll have a new baby and Peter and I will be grandparents. I'd better keep up this running business in order to help redefine what it means to be a grandmother.

Hamstring Reality

Worrying about my hamstring, I skipped my Tuesday morning run. On Wednesday evening, I ran a steady, somewhat speedy, 10K with Allison, Gerald, Kevin, and Adrienne, and I was in pain most of the way. The last kilometre was killer. I knew then that something had to be done. On Friday morning, I was forced to skip another run, but I had left a message with Maggy Ashby, my massage therapist. to see when she could fit me in. Maggy called on Friday morning and I grabbed a bus around noon to go see her. Friday had brought a huge dump of snow, and several buses had gotten stuck in the snow, so it took me quite a while to get to her place. It was worth the effort though because Maggy is amazing. She spent about half an hour taking me through various stretches, then put me on the table to try to work things out. It did feel a lot better when I left, but I had to walk several blocks through snowy streets to make it to the bus stop. And when I got home, I had no choice but to shovel the driveway. It took me about an hour and a half because there was so much snow. Not the best way to care for an injury. My hamstring did feel a lot better on Saturday though. And I did run 16K on Sunday morning. I was telling everyone about my miracle cure, but after I'd run about 3K, I realized I wasn't completely better. It hurt the most on the inclines and where the path was slippery. However, I could bear it, and I completed the run feeling much better than I had on Wednesday. I'm just going to try hard to keep up the stretches, holding them longer, and hope for the best.

Hamstring Worry

It's Monday afternoon and my hamstring is still quite sore. Yesterday, I found that for the third run in a row, I could feel severe tightness in my right glute and hamstring for most of the run. I'm hoping this isn't shaping up to be an injury.
Friday's run turned out to be a steady 10K, perhaps tempo, but the freshly falling snow slowed me down a bit. Still, once I managed to get myself out of bed - harder because there were no run buddies to meet - I did enjoy being out in the snow. I ran past Dow's Lake and all the way to the Ritz cafe at Fifth Ave. and the canal before I turned back. I did see a few other runners out at that hour leaving their shoe prints in the snow. It wasn't cold at all, but a bit wet. My time was just over 58 minutes.
Sundays run was not as successful. I was attempting a 16K but I ran with the group doing 29 with a plan to turn back at Laurier, after a Hog's Back loop. I'm not sure it amounted to a complete 16K. In fact, according to Dwayne's Garmin, it might have even been shy of 15K. It wasn't a great run. The company was fine, as always, but I felt like I was fighting another cold, or perhaps the same one I've been fighting all fall, my hamstring was very tight, and I really had to pee badly. One more trip to the bathroom before we set out would have made all the difference. Sometimes that feeling disappears on the run, but not yesterday.
Yesterday's less than stellar performance doesn't really matter. I'm going to nurse my hamstring a bit and hope for better runs this week. If anyone has any tips about how to stretch it really well, please let me know.

Fartlek and Christmas Lights

This week has brought true cold weather running. Now the long underwear makes sense. On Tuesday morning I ran to Frederica's for our 6:15 start. It was about -9 but there was very little wind so it was a pleasant run, even along Dow's Lake. We ran to the Bronson Bridge and back, so for me that was 6K, but not really tempo. (Tempo is a faster than average training pace but not quite race pace.) I found it really hard to get myself out of bed at 5:30 but I was glad I did because I had a great run and gained some energy to accomplish what I had to that Tuesday. I even made it back to my core class at lunchtime. Because of work commitments, including our trip to Toronto, I had missed the last three classes. I'm really feeling my core muscles today.
Last night I went with Peter to the Wednesday night run club at The Running Room. Lately, on Wednesdays, I never know who I'll be running with because so many of my running buddies are doing hill training. I'm not doing hills until I have to! (Really not a big fan of hill training.) It turned out that Adrienne and Kevin, who are training for the Disney marathon, are finished with hills and ready for speedwork. Dwayne suggested they do a 10K fartlek, which was great for me, because I was planning on a 10K and now I had someone to run with. "Fartlek" is a swedish term which relates to speed. A fartlek, in running terms, means to randomly mix up the speed of your training run, incorporating short bursts of intense speed with medium and slow paces. The idea is not to time it too precisely but vary the intensity in a really random way. We did a warm up to Pretoria bridge and then began changing the pace. Kevin called out the speed changes every time we had passed two streetlights. When we moved from streetlights to canal lights, he changed the pattern, and since these were also closer to each other the timing changed. We were headed to Parliament Hill so that we could see the NCC christmas lights. The show of lights began when we reached the NAC. (We were on Colonel By so we could see across the canal to Confederation Park.) Kevin kept calling out the speed changes as we wound our way up to Parliament Hill and did the loop from East Block, past the Centre Block, past West Block, to the flame, and back down to Wellington. The lights were stunning, although I think my favourite colour combination is around the War Memorial. We ran down Elgin and through Confederation Park, and then past City Hall, back to the driveway. We had changed our fartlek by then to 10 minutes of medium running, and then one mnute of speed. The ten minute interval proved to be too long, so we switched to taking turns pointing out landmarks and speed. For instance, at that large skinny pine, we'll switch to fast, then at the Ritz we'll go slow. You get the idea. We ended with a fast sprint from Lansdowne at Bank back to the store. That was my first true fartlek. It was a lot of fun, and although the speed bursts were intense, it made for a quick 10K. At first, Adrienne and I found the slower recovery components hard to do. As Adrienne says, it's hard to switch gears, but as the run went on, I was appreciating and taking full advantage of each chance to recover.
So a beautiful night, although cold, a new training experience, and the magic of the Christmas lights downtown. It just reminds me that it's worth talking yourself into bundling up and going out into the cold. It's always worth it.

Overdressed but Speedy

Recovering from my short bout of the flu and spending the first part of the week with my students in Toronto meant that I only ran on Friday this week. Frederica, Terry, and I had a very pleasant run again along the river. Because they don't maintain that path in winter, we realize that each time along that route might be our last until Spring.
This morning I had a terrific Sunday long run. The "Bridges" route is more or less 14K. I set out with Adrienne, Sheila, Dave, and Allison. It didn't take me long to realize that I was dressed too warm for our -5 weather. There was no wind, so we warmed up quickly. I should know by now that it wasn't long underwear weather yet, but I had it on - top and bottoms. I also had my new micro-fibre mitts which are deceivingly warm. I took them off about 3K into the run, but found I had to slip them on for for a brief warm-up every 10 minutes or so. They're like mini hand saunas. Next time, I'll bring my lighter glove liners. I pulled off my jacket for the last 4K. Way too warm.
We really started off fast today and as a result I did the 14K route in 1:25. Not bad! That works out to a 6:04 pace which is somewhat speedy for long slow distance. So, I'm back on the road. This week, I'll get in my proper runs, which should be, Tuesday morning - 6K tempo, Wednesday night - 10K tempo, and Friday - 8K steady. (I won't run it steady, because I'll be running with Terry and Frederica).
I'm hoping for decent weather, but you'll see me out there running, whatever we get.