Today’s gentle recovery run was 53 in this summer’s run streak.
My original push ups streak made it to 22 last week, but is back to 5 now, as I forgot to do them Tuesday. Darn it. I tried sit ups this morning. I still hate them.
This year’s bike commutes are up to 98 – I’m looking forward to logging 100 this week.
Race day started very early, as my running buddy and I hitched a ride out with volunteers who met in Bragg Creek at 6:30 a.m. His race (29 km up & down Moose Mountain) started at 8:30. I snapped a few pictures as Race Director Jen sent 50 marathon and 29k racers off on their adventure.
My 16k loop didn’t start until 11, so I rested and chatted with volunteers and other racers until then. I connected with a woman about my age, who hadn’t done this course or much trail running in general. I described the course to her, and upon hearing her usual 10k time, told her I’d be right behind her all the way. We laughed together, but I was mostly right.
I started off at a steady, very manageable pace on the first two kilometers of rolling dirt road. Most of the racers went ahead and I just let them go. I know my pace and am confident in it.
Once I got to the single track my trail legs woke up. Trail legs are kind of like sea legs. Once they learn how to flow over the terrain it’s easier to keep upright momentum.
My steady pace reeled in about three people in the third kilometer. Around then I decided that my mantra would be “stay focused”. This meant just keeping my attention on the path right in front of me – no thinking about other racers or bears unless they were in my way or I was in theirs.
I thought the roller coaster hills at the end would suck big time like they had when I ran the route six weeks ago, but I hiked the steepest ups and actually felt stronger on the descents and puddle-jumping in the last 40 minutes. Yes, there was mud. My shoes and legs got a spa treatment 🙂
I passed three more people and managed to stay ahead of one close behind me, but I tried to just keep running MY race, not in comparison to theirs. One of those I passed was the new connection I’d made before the race. I cheered her on to keep up. Keeping my focus was difficult, but good. I didn’t trip, and I didn’t run out of energy to finish well.
For the first time in years, it actually felt like I had trained well for a race. Yeeha!
I had hoped for a time around 2:10 and was happy to finish in 2:08. Friends cheered me in and I cheered in others. I felt pretty good afterwards but likely will be stiff by Monday. My running buddy finished his race in around 3:53 and was pleased but achy.
We warmed our rears on somebody’s truck tail gate while we refueled with veggie soup, chips, and cookies. Friends shared their race stories and we cheered in marathoners while waiting for our ride to come back down from the aid stations on the mountain.
Posted in Gravity, Puddles, Running, Running Friends, XC Races | Tags: "Moose Mountain", 16k, Bragg Creek, race, run, Telephone Loop, trail
Our monthly Club Night is a social run, where faster runners do a little more distance and occasionally wait for slower runners to catch up. This big warm rock in the shade of Paskapoo Slopes was a great resting spot.
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Today marks 40 daily runs in a row, 15 days of push ups, and I’m in the 90’s for bike commutes this year so far. The daily runs have been about 4-5 km with 10-12 push ups at the turnaround. I bumped the push ups from 10 to 12 about a week ago.
Usually I bike commute home, have a drink and a nutty snack, and hope the evening air is a little cooler when I head out again. I’m recognizing many of the regulars out on the path and it’s kind of nice being one of them. I’m going to miss that path as I’m moving house in a few weeks, but I’ll have another one near the new place mapped out before long.
Yesterday I ran and hiked the Moose Mountain 29k route (http://www.moosetrailraces.com/) with my running buddy. He’s registered to race it in two weeks and wanted a nice easy dry run of it at my slower pace. Some other runners joined us and turned back at different distances on the route. They were good company on the way up. It took us about 5 hours 10 minutes total (15 minutes slower than my race time last year), with a couple of pee breaks, photo moments and a seated snack rest I wouldn’t have enjoyed if racing. I feel a little better trained than I was last year.
Tonight I felt the short run stretching out some stiff muscles, but didn’t feel like I really needed to stop anywhere. The push ups today were a tiny bit easier than yesterday’s.
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Posted in Bike, Running, Running Friends, Streaks, XC Races | Tags: "Moose Mountain", Bike, Bragg Creek, commute, cross country, friends, mountain, run, streak, summer, trails
Path from Zoo bridge Calgary 2012, originally uploaded by Downhillnut.Bike Commutes:
I’m up to 89 bike commuting days this year. I should be able to reach 100 before September, even if I take the staycation I have planned in a couple of weeks. I haven’t taken the bus to work in months.
Running Streak:
I’ve run 30 days in a row since July 5th. So far the minimum is about 4k on week days, with a long run of about 18-22k on the weekends. I will eventually increase some of the week-day runs again, but the idea is to keep it very simple and easy to do daily.
Push-ups Streak:
I have been incorporating push-ups at the mid-point of my short runs, and it’s not so bad, so I’ve decided I can do those every day, too, even on long run days. So far the minimum has been 10 regular man-type push ups, but sometimes I do 12. It’s not much, but it’s a start, and if it isn’t really difficult I’ll just do it without thinking much about it. Today is Day 6.
I downloaded a cool iPhone App called Streaks to track these, in case anyone is interested. The app doesn’t count the bike commutes, as that isn’t a streak, just a yearly count.
Over a fun weekend in July, my running buddy and I ran and “fast hiked” some of the trails around Chateau Lake Louise. We made it to both the Agnes Tea House and the Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House, and enjoyed views from the Little and Big Beehives.
The scenery, including wildflowers, beautiful rock formations and waterfalls, was truly stunning.
Via Flickr:
Most postcards of Lake Louise are taken from the view point at the far side of the lake behind me, at the Chateau. In this shot, the Chateau is very tiny in the background.
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Last month I scored a last-minute opportunity to race Leg 10 in the Kananaskis 100 relay, a 100 mile relay through the Rocky Mountains, ending at Nakiska, one of the 1988 Winter Olympic venues. I’ve run Leg 9 twice before, and was delighted to get to run Leg 10 this time.
To back track a bit, I had been training up to almost a half marathon distance this spring just for the heck of it. I had the time and encouragement from running friends, so the weekend previous to the K100 I had handily managed 20km in town on a paved bike path. A few days before the race a friend of mine posted an appeal to local runners on Facebook. Her sister’s K100 team needed a last-minute runner to take on Leg 10, 18k of mountainous trails.
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Lucky me!
I love mountain trails. I could run 18k, if they don’t mind my slow pace, and they didn’t mind at all. I love the fun running teams! Within 48 hours of the race start I had connected with the Prairie Mountain Goats 1 team (from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), garnered a check-in card and a t-shirt.
My running partner was also racing that day – he ran Leg 2, so we drove out together and I supported his run by checking on him every 2 km. His long run schedule called for more than the Leg 2 distance, so he continued running well into Leg 3 to finish up 24 km. There was a light rain much of the day, but it resulted in refreshing running temperatures and he did well.
We had awoken early that morning (5 am) to get to the start of Leg 2, and my relay leg wouldn’t start until 6:00 pm, so we drove ahead of the race for a while, had lunch and a nap. Once rested, we cheered on his team mates and one of mine. We chatted with other runners we knew.
The rain steadily got heavier, and I prepared for a very wet mudfest. Most of the Leg 10 runners begin at a forced start at 6:00 pm instead of waiting for their team mates to come in. The race is organized this way to ensure that everyone finishes before dark and for supper, including the volunteers. I was estimating a finish time of around 8:30-8:45 and getting hungry just thinking about it.
Since it had been raining so much, the race organizers cut Leg 10 short to avoid losing racers in a swollen creek crossing. They announced that the new distance would be 13 km instead of 18. I high-fived a few Roadrunners I knew in the pack before we were sent off into the wild, and away we went. As if on cue, the rain lightened up and stopped.
Within a few minutes the pack had left all but a few of us behind and we stragglers bonded as we bounded through puddles and muck. Wheeeee! The downhill start was fun, but it was going to suck on the way back. I tried not to think about that and focused on efficiently using the gravity. Eventually as we got closer to the turnaround the pack met us on their way back and we exchanged a few more high fives and encouraging cheers. The sun shone for a while and we soaked it up.
As I rounded the corner at the 3k-out water station on the way back I checked my watch and decided either the course was even shorter than 13k or I was totally kicking butt. The climbs back up to the finish line were very challenging, but again I managed a steady effort and it took everything I had left to keep running at the finish.
According to the results, my name is Glen Ackerman and I finished in 1:22:46. We found out later that it was more like 11.5 km, which gives me about 7 minutes/km – good enough for me, especially considering the mud and hills!
There was a small crowd cheering a few of us in and I appreciated it very much. In that crowd were two of my new team mates from Leg 1 and 9 – very cool! They introduced themselves and we thanked each other for an awesome experience. My team captain found me a little later and gave me a gift card to a running store in thanks for filling in. Sweet! Thanks again to the Prairie Mountain Goats for a very fun day, topped off with a fabulous run.
I headed inside to warm up with a burger and a beer, and enjoyed hearing others’ experiences of the day. Later that week my muscles reminded me of how hard I’d raced, but it was a good ache. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
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Posted in K-100, Puddles, Road Races, Running, Running Friends, XC Races | Tags: mud run relay race K100 Kananaskis Alberta trail mountain Nakiska
Bike Commuting Progress Check:
So far this year I have tallied 76 bike commutes.Considering the remaining vacation days I have left and that winter could begin mildly or late (one never knows), it’s possible I could achieve a total of 140 – 150 commutes before Christmas. Awesome!
Running Counts:
I haven’t seriously started counting my runs yet, but it’s also possible that very soon I could break out in an every-day running streak. So far this week I’m up to two in a row, and have runs planned for the rest of the weekend.
Sometimes I keep myself amused on a long a run by counting things along the way. This weekend for my 20 km run I counted sets-of-wheels, dogs, and butterflies.
Leading up to the 20k run I had done a few weekend long runs of 18 km, but this 20 was a mental stretch for me. I was running a familiar route and knew where the bathrooms were, and I had my beeping watch to remind me to drink/walk every 16 minutes, but I needed something in between bathrooms and beeps to keep my mind occupied. If I could distract myself enough, I wouldn’t be looking at my watch every 2 minutes or wondering if I really need that bathroom break.
The set-of wheels category kept me very busy. I had to make decisions about what qualified as a set as I went along. At first I was just going to count bicycles, but then I decided to include roller blades, wheelchairs, and baby strollers. Eventually the criteria evolved into “non-motorized wheels currently bearing the weight of at least one human”. So the guy walking his bike with his friends in the fun walk/run I came across didn’t count, nor did the cyclists resting next to their bikes at a picnic table, nor any empty baby strollers. Any bike trailer or contraption carrying a kid attached to a bike got lumped in with that bike as one unit. The four cyclists still astride their bikes yet stopped for a drink, counted.
If it came close enough for me to notice, I counted it. I counted some things more than once, because I decided not to remember if I’d already met each cyclist or not (we were on a multi-use path in a loop around the reservoir). When my friend with his dog looped back for me 3 times, I counted his dog each time. At one point I saw a lady calling for her dog, but didn’t actually see the dog, so it didn’t count.
The butterfly category included moths. I considered counting dragon flies because I like them too, but maybe next time.
I chanted to keep track of the tallies. “89:8:7, 89 wheels: 8 dogs: 7 butterflies, 90!:8:7, 90:8:7…” Sometimes they sounded like measurements to me, or lock combinations. The verbal memory system worked. I was able to keep running between water breaks and ended up not needing a bathroom at all.
It was the warmest day on which I’ve run this year, and in the last few kilometers I started to feel woozy. I knew I was almost done and that I would still finish if I succumbed to fatigue, quit counting, and walked. Instead, I chanted the numbers louder, like a football quarterback at scrimmage. The intense focus on the numbers helped me cut through the brain fuzz and I finished well.
I tallied 265 sets-of-wheels, 65 dogs and 23 butterflies.
A ladybug hitched a ride on my elbow from the Zoo to the Science Center today on my bike commute home.
I took the long way home (12 km), which would have gone around the Zoo if the path hadn’t been closed due to high river water. Fortunately, due to last year’s construction on that path, I know the detour well. It was still a very nice ride, with lots of sunshine and no headwind.
Today’s ride was number 61.5 for 2012. Two years ago I wasn’t sure if even 50 bike commutes per year was a reasonable goal for me – now I strongly prefer cycling over my other commuting options.
All Downhill From Here 