All Downhill From Here

I made it to Frostbite Falls again! This year I even made it on time, without a short-cut, and did a few victory laps before unpacking my lefse to share with all the other Penguins. Last year I didn’t get to FBF until January 35th. Make room in the hot tub, Penguin buddies, I’m diving in!

I only had one kilometer left to get to my goal of 105 km for the month tonight, so essentially I arrived at the falls on my run up to the store, before even meeting up with the group. I ended up running a loop around Ranchlands with Dorothy from the Marathon group. She and I chatted about a couple of her marathons, until I realized that keeping up with her was going to be work. My chatting suffered, but I ran faster and better with her as motivation.

Funny, towards the end when I mentioned that I was going faster to keep up with her? She admitted that she was going a little faster to keep up with me. Hah, that pack mentality works so well for me.

It was about -5C/23F with a blustery NW wind blowing falling snow in whirlwinds around us. There was already a centimeter or two of snow underfoot in most places, so footing was a little challenging. Today’s snow was quite a respite from all the dust the wind blew up yesterday, so I didn’t mind much.

Grand total for the month: 111 km or about 69 miles. Not bad at all.

Now that I have your attention, I thought I’d sneak in a link snerked from Susie over at Finally Running. I’ve always been fascinated by how my Myers Briggs type affects my approach to life, and this site has a wealth of information relating to how you can use your MB Type to be more successful with your fitness.

Go check it out, then come back and tell me what you think. I know you’ll come back to find out about the beer.

Win Your Weight in Beer
I think I might race the St. Patrick’s Day 10k this year. It’s the race’s 20th Anniversary and they give out a nice long-sleeved shirt with your entry. It’s actually ON St. Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17. If I win the Grand Prize, I could win my weight in beer! Not that I could ever drink that much beer; I’d share. And we’d happily eat our post-race beef stew while we watch the Irish Dancers do their thing… There’s also a 5k that day and it’s a nice, flat course around the University of Calgary. It’s the home of my fastest 10k EVER.

Print-and-send registration form here or register on-line here.

Wanna come?     

“Hills are speedwork in disguise” – Frank Shorter

I do believe the above to be true, however, sometimes you just have to do some honest-to-goodness 400m repeats. Tonight the RR 1/2 marathon group had 6 x 400m on the menu, so I tagged along.

After the warm-up we were reminded a couple of things about speed repeats:

• Try and keep them at 85% of your max heart rate, or pretty close to a race pace.
• NO TALKING. If you can talk, you’re not running hard enough. (oh yes, I’d almost forgotten that… why do leaders always look at me when they give that instruction?)

I had a BLAST! Running fast is so fun when you remember how to keep it going.

The second one was my worst-feeling one – I don’t think I’d let my heart rate come back down enough in between. Plus I did the 400 m in less than 1:30. Shocker – no wonder it nearly killed me!

I actually had to remind Tim not to talk during one of the first repeats. “Tim!” (gasp gasp) “Go faster, eh!” I kept the rest of my repeats under 2 minutes by 5-10 seconds and rather enjoyed splashing through the puddle towards the end. I consciously monitored my form  by leaning forward. I thought of running down stairs and tapping lightly with my feet as I flew along (I think Mark gave me that idea).

I worked on keeping my breathing steady as long as I could in each one, too. It felt great to breathe so deeply without a hilltop frowning back down at me.

The 400m stretch of mostly-dry sidewalk on which we ran had a wee rise towards the end of it, and we ran full on into the westerly Chinook wind. It was a good challenge. We cheered each other on as we walked back to the start each time.

Of course, there was a wee hill involved in tonight’s run, as per my New Year’s resolution. It involved the slight rise up from my neighbourhood to the store. Thank goodness it’s there – it made for a very enjoyable run back down to my home.

Today is an important day for two reasons:

a) It’s Dawn’s birthday! Go over and give her some comment lovin’. And while you’re at it, tell her what a wonderful job she did in putting up my new blog header. Suhweet!

b) It’s my 7th runnerversary. Seven years ago today I started running with Jeanine, Nancy and Terri out in the snowy darkness. We ran 30 seconds at a time and walked 4 minutes in between, and we all survived.

I’m heading out to find some more hills to climb tonight. Life is good.

Today after coming home from work I changed immediately into my running clothes – none of this procrastination stuff like I sometimes do. After a light supper I dropped off Little Runner at with her fellow Girl Guides and headed out right away for my run.

Tonight’s run became 47 minutes of icy puddle jumping around my rolling neighbourhood. I gained elevation in at least three separate instances and the legs didn’t complain much like on Saturday. They actually felt really good for most of it, once I got going. I probably could have gone longer – but thoughts of upcoming Wednesday hills sent me home.

Apparently my hill-bank has been re-filled for the week.

I will attempt to take it easy on Wednesday, as this Saturday I’ll be attempting to stay upright in and out of 12-mile Coulee. Thankfully the race isn’t 12 miles long – only 8k or 4k. Considering last year’s ice on that course? That’s plenty.

That’s the sound my legs made as I tried my first hill this morning.

“You have exceeded your weekly hill quota. Please find flat terrain.”

Hah, when we were merrily going up and down last Wednesday the only parts complaining were the lungs.

Of course, I still went up a big hill anyway, because that was the route I’d planned, and it was “just one”. I hiked up a grassy steep one, because I wanted to enjoy a view. Then I found a road that twisted up further out of the valley and climbed it, too. Most of my 90 minute long run today was flatter, but I had to include an elevation change in there. None of my training runs will be entirely flat this year if I can help it.

The run was a long haul today. I started from our local soccer center (I dropped off Soccer Boy at practice at 8 a.m.) and ran along a flat river road nearby. The road was scimpy on the shoulder and rife with semi-trucks, but they were good about pulling aside for me when they could. I happily chugged along 15 minutes of that before I tackled the first hill and the *ding* happened.

My legs were heavy, even on the way back down. I made it back to the soccer centre in 51 minutes, in time to take SB home, and then I headed back out for a final slow 5 km around my rolling neighbourhood. I was a bit wobbly by the time I got home, but I did it.

Remind me, again, who said “Hills are our friends”? Ah well, how was I going to find my limit if I didn’t try to exceed it?

This run brought to you by a few posts I really enjoyed this week, about which I thought as I chugged along today:

• I pondered this quote and decided I really like it. Thanks for posting it, Jeanne!
• A shout out from Brit really brightened my day and gave me a smile as I ran through the snow and ice. Someday I’m going to meet her and give her a big hug.
• This crazy parody Donald wrote made me laugh out loud, and I loved how he worked in the moral of the story. The tune stuck in my head all the way up a hilly black road today.

Two weeks ago I did 7 hills and thought it was a lot. Last week it was crazy-freezing outside so we did only 4.

Tonight we did NINE! Actually slightly more than that for me, because I had to run up a hill to get to the store, and then we ran uphill some more to get to the hill. But officially it was 9 repeats of the same 3-minute stretch on Nose Hill Drive.

My running buddy Tim kept me company on the hills and that made it a little easier. Tonight I felt strong and I worked hard in some places, but it didn’t kill me.

Running down from the hill to my home was bliss. Tired bliss. Tired bliss in a hurry, because I was late picking up Soccer Boy from refereeing. Not counting the times we waited for the group (when I stopped my watch), I ran for about 95 minutes.

FBF update: 13.4 km tonight gives me 59.7 km so far on my way to 105 by the end of January. Getting there…