All Downhill From Here

I really am! I’m a little pink dot on a very cool Running Blog Map that Mark is setting up for the RBF.

Last night I ran with our little Penguin group in that little pink dot on the map. We took the usual route I’ve described lately, only backwards. Down the curling club stairs, West along the river, over 14th Street and back up Centre Street. My legs were quite tired even before we got to 14th St. and I was very glad for LL, Tri-Babe and Yo-go, who kept me going. They also kept me from straying off the route (twice!) – my brain was just not along for the ride. My mouth was busy rambling on ad nauseum about how much fun I am having blogging. Perhaps next week I’ll shut up and ask Tri-babe more about her vacation in Halifax …

You can’t really see it from the pink dot on the map, but it had rained earlier in the day and the route had a lovely, damp, not-frozen smell that we probably won’t get to experience for much longer.

I wrote the following with my magnetic poetry glow kit (glows in the dark).

run through big mess
down up
blast out of gravity well
super woman

I’m going to have to make up some more words with the spare letters and magnets. I didn’t have the words “ice, mud, race, brave, friend, snow”. Might be needing those this winter.

Let’s see if I can do pictures on this blog o’ mine.

Here’s my trail shoes and socks after the Edworthy race this weekend. It’s not like I’ve raced a Muddy Buddy race or anything (I must try that sometime).

I got out for my second 8k of the weekend this afternoon. It had lightly snowed this morning and by the time I got out for my run most of it had melted and a heavy fog settled in. I couldn’t see much further than 50 meters, so I just ran in my own little fog bubble. Cars wooshed past, in and out of my bubble, and I heard the echo of an airplane somewhere above.

This was supposed to be a “recovery run”, from yesterday’s race, and also a way for me to make up some distance for not doing a long run this weekend. I intended to take it easy, but felt really good and finished it in really good time. My back is a little achy and I have a bit of a tight hamstring – probably from those fancy dance moves on the mud yesterday, but otherwise I’m feeling WAY better than I did after the Waldorf XC earlier this month.

We all also got our flu shots today. Little Mermaid’s cold is progressing along and she is still coughing and has sniffles, but as she has had no fever she was able to have her flu shot.

In even more other news, Pirate Boy made chocolate butterscotch fudge this afternoon with the butterscotch chips he made me buy. He even looked up the recipe at the Chipits site on his own. Considering I’m not usually a fan of butterscotch chips, it’s pretty yummy.

Psycho-Mermaid from Halloween has calmed down quite a bit since Sunday, but now has a tickle in her throat, so I’m keeping her home from school today. I’m sneaking some echinacea tea into her bit by bit , disguised as “honey tea”.

Normally I would have sent her off, as she doesn’t seem to have a fever yet, but we’re scheduled for a family round of flu shots at the clinic this weekend, and I don’t want this to balloon into anything preventing her from getting the shot. We had flu shots last year and I think we had the healthiest year as a family ever.

It’s a good thing I didn’t postpone yesterday’s run to today in hopes for better weather! Now I can supervise her paint-by-number debut, knowing my 5k trial is in the bag for the week.

Have you had or are you planning on a flu shot this year? Are you affected by shortages? What do you think of flu shots?

Thanks to Mark, who’s been very patiently teaching me how some of these mysterious light switches work in my new blog house. 🙂

Looks like those 28 seconds have found some friends. I ran my benchmark 5k in 30 minutes and 23 seconds. It will do nicely for a starting point.

I measured out my route on the neighborhood boulevard yesterday in the van on my way home from work. When I ran it shortly after 9 a.m. there was very little traffic, so I was able to keep to pretty much the same side of the street the van had gone, for accuracy. The first few km were an ever so gentle up-grade, with the wind behind me.

The last two km were a little bit downhill, with a 50m steep block up in the first part of the last km, head on into a blistering Chinook wind. I tried to think of the wind as extra oxygen being pushed into me, and envisioned my sweat being whisked away, leaving me lighter and faster. I ran up the hill I normally walk up when I’m not timing myself. The last 500m were tilted ever so gently down. I let my stride go huge and galloped, gasping to my finish line.

Who but Mr. Cook was walking past my finish line! Mr. Cook is a 68 y.o. dude who walks 80 blocks a day around our neighborhood. I had a nice chat with him before heading back to the house.

I’m going to send my time in to the Penguins Faster 5k Challenge and see if I can improve on the time over the next 8 weeks.

I need a fairly flat, not too long, speedy run today. Thursdays are often hill-days for me, but I’ll get plenty of hills in the Edworthy XC 8k race on Saturday.

I need something speedy, to tell my body it can go faster than my 10k PR of 1:00:28 (Brooks Women’s Run, Sept 19/o4). Plus 5 km shouldn’t tire me out before Saturday’s XC.

It might be even more than 28 seconds stuck to my butt at the Jingle Bell race this month, if I keep on dipping into the kid’s halloween stash.

Here I go, out the door, into the nasty Chinook wind…

There is something about our Tuesday night group runs that is very comfortable for me.

It might be the predictability, that every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. I’ll be heading out for about 50 minutes somewhere North of downtown on one of Gord’s medium-length routes.

It might be that Tuesday is a night when I don’t put high expectations on myself. It is a social run; no speedwork, no hill repeats, no pressure of having to last through an onerous long-run distance. Some nights we do run a little faster or longer because we are motivated by keeping up with each other, and some nights we go a little slower or walk more, to wait for each other, but either way it is no big deal on a Tuesday.

It might be the familiar company of my pals with whom I run. Often as we are updating each other on life developments over the week the miles float past a little more easily. The minor complaints of our bodies fade a little as we learn more about what book Yo-go is reading, LL’s son’s latest accomplishment, etc. As we share our recent mileage and upcoming goals we find encouragement and new resolve to press a little harder, do a little better.

Last night was all of that for me. It was even a little bit warm (comparatively), as an added bonus (7C/44.6F). We glided sublimely down over the Centre Street bridge with the Pink Lady valiantly doing speedwork and chuckling as she stayed ahead of us. South of the river we followed the pathway to 14th St. and headed back. We crossed North under the C-Train bridge at 10th, met a returning Running Room group, and headed up the Curling Club stairs.

Darn it, I was going to count the flights as I went up the stairs this week. I didn’t even think of it until my hamstrings called out to my brain for a distraction, half-way up. Maybe next week I’ll remember.