All Downhill From Here

Morpheus

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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Apparently I’m not “goddess” material. That’s okay, I guess. TxSkatemom ended up with a god as her answer, too. I must say that I like how that description of Morpheus suits me though.

ObligatoryRunningNote: Did the long route from Gord’s last night – about 9.5 km. At first the wind was “cool and refreshing” as Yolanda, Linda, Tim and I ventured down the Holly Park Hill and past the Ukranian church. By the time Linda and Yolanda turned back at 10th St. the wind was getting even cooler, but I was just warming up by then. By the turnaround point on the 14th St. bridge there were little droplets of rain threatening more, and the air smelled wonderfully humid. Funny, when we turned back the wind turned around too, and we ran into it all the way back.

Recently-married-Tim and I had an engrossing conversation about step-families and second marriages that completely distracted me from my feet on the way back. As we climbed the curling club stairs the sparse droplets of moisture turned white and fluttered down.

We had a thin layer of snow on the ground this morning, but it’s gone now.

You know, I don’t think I’ll ever run across my whole city, much less around the whole world, but Jesper Olson is running around the
world and could use a little company and lodging along his route. Check out this site if you are interested in running with him or offering your hospitality. Go here for his planned route and daily photo reports from his camera phone.

Looks like he’s coming through here around Mother’s Day.

In the last 10 days I’ve juggled my husband’s elbow surgery with my son’s new soccer practice schedule, listed our house, and sold it. We had a minimum of three showings a day for the seven days it was listed, and let me tell you, it’s darn hard to plan and execute a husband’s 40th birthday party in the midst of all that.

A big thank you to Dawn, who offered her kitchen last night so we could have Hubby’s dinner and celebration with great company and without disruption.

I’m looking forward to some plain and simple running this weekend. No terribly long distances, but long enough to get in a good hour’s work out both days. The last two weeks I’ve only run on Tuesdays and then long runs on weekends. Not good; I need my three days a week, so I’m splitting up the long run into two this way.

Now, on with the house hunting!

Dawn picked me up and we went to Gord’s for our weekly run last night. We ran along the top of the ridge overlooking Memorial Drive, then west along the drive towards 14th Street. After we were good and warmed up, we talked about doing some short intervals. Krista opted to run 1 minute intervals, but I didn’t want to go that fast, so I ran 2 minute intervals. Yolanda and Linda didn’t seem keen on speedwork, and said they would take the “trot along in the sun” option.

It was a gorgeous night. I actually wore SHORTS and a short sleeved shirt. I had brought my water belt to hydrate between intervals.

My first 2 minute interval I didn’t go totally ALL out, just worked on increasing my speed beyond what I usually run. I walked a bit after, to catch my breath. As I’m walking along, our prodigal Penguin, Tim jogged happily by after doing his trail hills. This is the one who took off 5 months of running to drink beer all winter and then showed up to run 10k with us 2 weeks ago. Tim cheerfully offered the comment “Beer and Burgers are GOOD for you!” as he breezed by. Ah yes. Quit walking, Karen.

I turned around to go back for Linda and Yolanda (Krista was already ahead), but they were just caught up to me. We crossed the 14th street bridge together and then I did another 2 minutes of faster running. I turned back for Linda and Yolanda, and they still weren’t very far behind. So much for “trotting along in the sun”! They’d caught a little speedwork bug, too.

After that we kind of separated as we broke into our own jogging speeds, with the understanding that we would meet up at the market for some B & J. If you follow the link you’ll see what flavour I had. If you’re Jon, or my posts about food make you uncontrollably hungry, don’t go there.

We headed back out into the twilight to walk across Prince’s Island Park and back UP the curling club stairs. I was chilly now, as a breeze had come up and I couldn’t run and eat at the same time.

Dawn has a fantastic description of our Sunday group run, complete with lots of photos on her blog. I really like her shots of the pathway heading under a bridge, and the view of downtown.

I’ve been a little computer-deprived, as we’re selling our home and showings are cutting into my blog-therapy. One should never list one’s home during a PMS week.

I had a good run with Yolanda and Linda, although we didn’t do our 18km as planned. We ran along the river on the south side from the Eau Claire YMCA to Edworthy Park, where Linda’s GPS read just over 9 miles, but then we ran back on the north side, which was shorter. Duh! We should have run back on the south (longer) side again, but that didn’t occur to my tired brain until later. We tried to compensate with an extra loop on Prince’s Island before heading back, but it still wasn’t far enough. According to Linda’s note to me yesterday, “Turns out we did 9.69 miles (15.56 km), in 1 hr 56 min (I stopped my clock for bathroom break but not walk breaks), and our average pace was 11:59 min mile.” No wonder I wasn’t feeling as tired as I’d expected towards the end.

Oh well, I was getting hungry, the cafe was calling me like Winnie the Pooh’s honey pots, and it was time to meet up with the others. I had the broccoli mushroom lasagna too, and it was very good.

My mom always taught me these are wild crocuses, but my my buddy Dianne calls them prairie wind flowers. Whatever they are, they mean spring to me. When I was growing up, nearly every year my mom used to take us out to a hill where she knew they grew and we would pick a couple. They grow on scrubby hills and are often the first wild flowers to bloom around here in the spring. They are soft and fuzzy and don’t last long. Enjoying a crocus is a temporary treasure – a seize-the-day kind of thing. I think there is a Japanese term for this, called wabi sabi, which means extremely valuable and beautiful, but temporary.

On Friday I only had time for a short, hilly jog, but I eagerly scanned the brown hills in the grassy area south of my neighborhood for hues of soft purple. I went up and down 2 small but steep hills before I got to the last one, and I really hoped I would find them before I had to go home. I hoped I had not missed the season for them. There they were, all over the 3rd hill – several clumps of fuzzy pastel purple blooms, shivering in the breeze.

I brought my family back there yesterday with the camera. We traipsed over the hill and admired the hardy blossoms. Little Miss Purple (wearing entirely purple) picked one and enjoyed the softness of it all the way home.

My legs were heavy and uncooperative last night, but somehow they pounded through 10 km at our group run. I think my legs were a little tired from our long run on the weekend.

Our core group of four went down the Centre Street bridge and along the south river pathway to Crowchild Trail and back. Crowchild Trail is a major freeway that has a nice little pedestrian bridge crossing the river underneath it. The ground was dry and the air was cool, with a breeze. I wore two long sleeved shirts and leggings, but didn’t need mitts.

There were pairs of Canada geese starting to show up along the river banks and pathways. In the next month they will just about take over the pathways with their green/brown goose poop and we will run past protectively honking, flapping nesting couples. Yolanda pointed out a beaver swimming downstream as we crossed the bridge.

At about 7 km I lagged behind as the others pushed solidly on. I had a little gas and just needed a longer walk break for my tummy to settle down. I think it was good to run by myself for awhile, too. I was able to concentrate on my form and run a little lighter. I just about caught back up to the other three towards the top of the Curling Club stairs. Krista bravely cheered me from higher up, “You can do it, Karen!” I had no breath left to say much, but answered with the only positive syllable I could muster, “Aye!”

At the top of the stairs Krista-the-Energizer-Bunny gamely kept on running back towards the store. I walked a short bit to catch my breath, decidedly shook off my whinyness, and chose to practice a final sprint, as if there was a finish line around the last corner. I raced past Yolanda and Linda, and caught up to Krista just as we crossed the finish line together. Of course I hadn’t let the others in on my silly daydream, so they all looked at me funny when I raised my hands and exclaimed “59 minutes! Did you see that! On the Clock! Woohoo!”

In reality it took me over an hour and 13 minutes to run 10k last night, but the fantasizing at the finish was fun. I’m looking forward to speed work or hills or something besides plain old distance this Thursday.

Last night I picked up Dawn and her granddaughter and we headed off to the Calgary Roadrunners Beer and Pizza social run at the Calgary Sailing Club by the Glenmore Reservoir. If you’ve never been to Calgary you might be a little surprised to learn that yes, here in this dry expanse of prairie, we do have enough water in one place to float a sailing club. Just barely, but we do.

Dawn and her cute tot opted to stay fairly close to the clubhouse and do a longish walk at the little one’s speed. I hooked up with Yolanda and Linda to run around the reservoir, about 16 km/10 miles.

We set off shortly after 4:30, plenty of time for us to run all the way around the reservoir and be back in time to stretch before pizza at 7. It was a beautiful evening for a run – maybe 8C/46F with a brisk breeze. After about 18 minutes of running we took our first walk break, tied our outer layers around our waists and then I set my watch to beep for walk breaks at 10/1 s.

Our route took us in to the Weaselhead first. We stayed on a paved path the whole way. If you’d like an idea of some of the scenery where we ran, I recommend this site. I left my camera in the car.

At about 50 minutes we took an eating walk break – I had a chocolate chip cookie I’d brought from home. It was just the lift I needed. Linda chuckled as she spotted her husband running towards us as we ate and walked. He had chosen to run around the res in the other direction, and she knew that when he got there he’d ask her if she had eaten to keep her sugar level up. She’s a Type 1 diabetic and has to watch that pretty closely.

We ran on towards the dam, up across a pedestrian bridge and then down under the causeway. As we headed back up a big hill I was chatting with Yolanda about her upcoming race, the Police Half (map of course on this site) , and she waffled a bit. She wasn’t sure she had trained quite enough and hedged about doing it. Just as she expressed her dubiousness about the whole thing, we ran past a raised manhole cover on which someone had carefully stencilled the grafitti *commit*. I saw it and pointed it out, and we laughed so hard we ended up walking up the rest of the hill.

Just as we passed Heritage Park Dianne met us on her bike. She’d come out to meet us with her youngest in the double bike trailer, and chatted with us for our last half hour. She could tell I was getting tired towards the end because I wasn’t picking up my knees. She was right; by then I was quite ready to be done, but it felt good to finish!

I usually do my long runs all by my lonesome, so I really appreciated the great time we had together on our run. The company sure helped the time go by a lot faster. I need to do more of these!

We settled into the clubhouse, stretched changed, ate pizza and visited with other Roadrunners. I like these events. No clock, but still a good run and a chance to connect with other club members.