All Downhill From Here

The Family One Mile Downhill Run was kind of fun. I signed up my whole family including my tired, overworked hubby, and we all did it. First, before we could run the whole way down, we of course had to get up to the top. We hadn’t left much time, so took the steep trail up to the top. We started the hill below Dawn and here’s a shot of her about 2/3 of the way up.

I’m sure when she puts her photos up she’ll have a butt shot of Little Runner and me in there. At first Little Runner stayed back with Daddy, who was walking the race briskly. He had rather enjoyed the hike UP the hill, with his long legs, but didn’t enjoy running down, so he walked. I had run on ahead a bit, so afterwards she saw me and ran faster to catch up. Soccer Boy had taken off like a shot at the beginning, and then again after he retrieved his shoe which came off at the start 🙂 The course went down a winding paved road that cut into the hill, so we couldn’t see everyone ahead of us, just those in our portion of the race.

There was indeed a Timbit table part of the way down. I got one of the last chocolate ones, and Little Runner chose one with bits of fruit in it. I would have eaten one for Jeff, too (as requested), but we were told by the volunteers that there were exactly the same number of Timbits as runners – no extras! There was no water to wash it down with, but it was yummy all the same. Little Runner did not want to rush down the hill, and Dawn easily passed us a couple of times. She heartily cheered us in to the finish, and we had fun chatting with Philippa (her partner from the Light Up the World race) afterwards, too.

We all lined up for burgers, chips and water. They had veggie burgers and hot dogs too. It’s rare to have a barbeque after a race! There were no fruit or sweets, but lots of door prizes. I would have thought that a race promising a Timbit table in the middle would have had some more at the bottom, too. Little Runner won a simple Polar heart rate monitor and some soft Race for the Cure socks. Woohoo!

And to continue my mapping playtime, I downloaded Google Earth and saved this satellite image of my favourite corner of last night’s run. If you look at the previously posted Gmap url you can see where we ran.

They should put a warning on the Google Earth download: “This free product may cause you to waste tons of time and while giving you hours of fascinating entertainment.”

The last few days it’s been what we call hot here: 30C/86F, but today it cooled down just in time for my Tuesday night run at Gord’s. Dawn took a night off, but Krista and I had a nice 5 mile jog. The sun is starting to set a bit earlier again, so we had some great shade from the trees along the river, and there was a persistently strong, cool cross breeze throughout the run. I felt great, much better than I did on Saturday’s run.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to get warm again for the next few days, so I’ll try and get up early for Thursday’s run in hopes of running in some coolness. It really made a difference to have those breezes!

We picked up our packages for the Family Downhill Run tomorrow night. Soccer Boy was not impressed with the goodies in the bag – Secret Deodorant, Dove Body Conditioner, and Kicking Horse Coffee. Little Runner thought the cosmetic stuff was neat, but she absolutely lit up when she found the most important item in the bag…

“Look, Mommy, a new RACE NUMBER for me!”

There’s a girl with her priorities straight.

The last few days it’s been what we call hot here: 30C/86F, but today it cooled down just in time for my Tuesday night run at Gord’s. Dawn took a night off, but Krista and I had a nice 5 mile jog. The sun is starting to set a bit earlier again, so we had some great shade from the trees along the river, and there was a persistently strong, cool cross breeze throughout the run. I felt great, much better than I did on Saturday’s run.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to get warm again for the next few days, so I’ll try and get up early for Thursday’s run in hopes of running in some coolness. It really made a difference to have those breezes!

We picked up our packages for the Family Downhill Run tomorrow night. Soccer Boy was not impressed with the goodies in the bag – Secret Deodorant, Dove Body Conditioner, and Kicking Horse Coffee. Little Runner thought the cosmetic stuff was neat, but she absolutely lit up when she found the most important item in the bag…

“Look, Mommy, a new RACE NUMBER for me!”

There’s a girl with her priorities straight.

I know all you southern U.S. runners are out there at O dark 30 getting in your runs but I’ve been slacking off with no immediate solid goal before me. Did I say something in a recent post about setting some more goals? Well I haven’t yet, and I’m kind of enjoying my temporary limbo.

I did get out for a warm half-hour jog around the neighborhood late yesterday morning, and even dropped by my local Running Room and signed up for a downhill race. Wednesday night I’m bringing the whole darn family along for the Downhill Family Mile. There is a rule which stipulates that “Everyone runs a mile downhill with a pause to eat and swallow a Timbit on the way down the hill or a time penalty will be applied to the runners overall time” ! !

There’s also a barbeque and some other family fun things happening afterwards. I couldn’t possibly pass up a DOWNHILL race, and this sounded too fun for the rest of the family to miss.

I picked up Dawn and we showed up at Gord’s last night. We were EARLY, and I was so proud of not being late that I forgot about bringing Krista’s sweat pants to return to her. Phooey. I’d been remembering all week, too. I should have put them on top of my running shoes.

Had a good, gentle run with Yolanda. She was coming back from not a lot of training, and I wanted to be nice to my knee, so we did a shorter, slower route than Krista. Next week I might try to keep up with her again. It was not terribly hot out, but warm enough to get a nice sweat going. We ran down to the 10th St. train bridge, crossed to the south side of the river, and came up Centre Street. Didn’t look at the watch, didn’t care, just enjoyed the summer beauty of Calgary’s downtown pathways.

It’s nice to be back. I think I need to look at some training and race schedules and plan my next course of training.

This recipe is amazing. Well, for cauliflower it is. I tried it tonight with steak and potatoes and garlic toast. That way if the guys didn’t like it they’d at least fill up on other dishes. Hubby, who is normally pretty critical of my veggie experiements, really liked it (he likes stuff with garlic and pepper). Son said “I don’t like cauliflower”, but ate one piece without complaint. I loved it, and it was WAY easier to do this recipe than making cheese sauce.

My knee is feeling MUCH better than it was a few days ago. I took a few tentative running steps with it trying to get some good photos of Dawn yesterday, and liked how it felt. I still can’t bend it enough to squat or get in the van gracefully, but I still somehow managed to jog with Dawn and Mark this morning. Mark was in Calgary for his cousin’s wedding and gave us a heads up so we could kidnap him from his cute family and take him for a run and coffee.

We didn’t go very far or very fast, but it was cool to hug one of our blog hosts in person and show him around one of our more beautiful running paths. We started at the Eau Claire Y, went to the pedestrian bridge under the C-train near 10th St and jogged back through Prince’s Island. The Calgary Folk Festival was just getting started for the day, and we heard music from there as we crossed back. It was freezing out, and just beginning to rain, but Mark says he likes to run in the rain. It was a good thing he’d brought his long-sleeved shirt along.

Afterwards we went to Starbucks for some coffee and then dropped in at Mark’s cousin’s for a visit with his family. A very cool encounter! And my knee still feels darn good. I’m looking forward to getting in some runs this week.