Ramblings

pre-edit: this is probably confusing, any maybe considering how I often omit certain details that make ramblings make sense, it may make very little sense, but I feel like writing.

You know how all over the internet, facebook in particular, you see those memes sort of inspirational pictures with quotes written over them. I always seem to find them less than inspiring. In fact, I seem to find them completely contrary to the way I need to think in order to feel like I'm acting like a good person.

One phrase I find particularly confusing: "It's not about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself". Now, as I typically subscribe/like to lots of ultra running related things on facebook I have seen several varients of this meme from running sites. I assume I, the reader, am meant to feel like running in mountains is an activity that can be used to turn myself into something. As though I can become something better, from this it would seem that philosophically speaking I must first buy into the idea that we as people have any semblence of control over who we are, and if we did that we could change it. Neither of these last two statements do I believe to be true. I don't want to try and pin down any sort of science on a specific age, but surely it can be understood that our thoughts and beliefs are quite solidly formed by the time we are an adult, from both genetics, and from the way we are raised.

The idea that we can create ourself also seems to imply a desire to be able to control ourselves. This is understandable in todays western society where there is the pervailing feeling that an individual can not affect any real sort of change, so of course it would be attractive to be told that you can control something (yourself). The fact that ultra running groups are using this quote is even less surprising. The idea that ultra runners choose to run in the mountains because they are wanting an escape suggests they are not enjoying the society we live in, which is rather opressive (or some would say) so perhaps they feel by running and 'connecting with nature' they are able to exert more control, and create themselves, rather than accepting the fact that society exerts creative forces upon them.

It may be just me, but I find when you exert control on something (even yourself) and creating is an act of control, you never do as good as when you accept instead. the quote for me would better read "it's not about creating yourself, it's about finding and accepting yourself". Consistently I have found in life that failure occurs when I attempt to control and create myself. To do this one requires a certain high internal locus of control, again, only leading to failure.

All my life I attempted to control, only yielding negative results. When I made the conscious decision to turn my life over to the will of another, things started to turn around. Waking up everyday with the request in prayer "to be shown how to act in accordance with anothers will" and to ask especially "for freedom from self-will".

So, for me, it's most definitely not about creating myself. It is about finding and accepting myself, and letting myself be guiding by another in a positive way.

"thy will be done - not mine" is the path to the best life. To do this I think it best to accept the hands I've been dealt and embrace them.

I'm not sure if any of this made sense, probably over thinking, and really don't know if any of this made sense. I wish I could type as fast as I think.

Week ending May 27: feels like summer

May 21 - 27

mon may 21: no run

tue may 22: run 22.42 km with 1020 metre elev gain in 3 hrs 37 min; bike 13.81 km in 58 min

mtn bike from top of little white forest service road to bellevue trestle, ran upper crawford trail and some logging roads and the kvr, bike back to car



wed may 23:

am: 13.41 km road bike in 32 min

pm: 5.74 km trail run in 52 min

thu may 24: 15.61 km road run in 78 min with 224 metre elev gain

fri may 25: no run

sat may 26: 24.06 km run with 687 metre elev gain in 3 hrs.

sun may 27: 33.11 km road bike in 90 mins; 520 metre elev gain, up hwy 33 for a bit, then some fun loops on the back roads

Weekly totals:
Run: 67.79 km; 8 hrs 41 mins; 2,106 metre elev gain
Bike: 60.33 km; 2 hrs 33 mins

Didn't quite get as much exercise time in as I wanted.

Next year; I make less plans

Next year, I think I need to do my best to not register for as many races more than three months before the races. Yeah, that may mean I don't get to run in certain races that have wait lists and/or sell out in a day or less, but with how often I change my mind about racing plans (just look at the posts I've made about planning for 2011 and 2012 and compare to what I've actually done) I think it's a much better plan.

Also, I need to remember to read this at the end of the year when I start getting big plans in my head that should really be toned down.

Week ending May 20

May 14 - 20

I only ran on monday and thursday; total about 18 km of trails.
And also walked 5 times, and short bike ride 5 times (30 mins each time while dogwalking).

Accidentally had a rather easy post race recovery week. I'm not sure how well the working 6 days/58 hours works into a recovery week though.

Didn't today (monday) and will be bacm into a regular schedule now. And I bought a cheap mountain bike so I can add more variety into the exercise if I want.

Race thoughts, life plateaus, unanswered questions, thinking like a dig

I've had trouble thinking about how to come to terms with myself about my race day performance at my race at this past weekend. And strangely, sitting in the park watching my mom's dog (which I'm dogsitting for a week) and pondering some deep chats from earlier in the day seems to have gotten my head properly wrapped around it.

My current life philosophy has me to the point where my life goal is currently to be "happy and content like a dog". Tonight, after work I'm sitting in Ben Lee Park near the tail end of walking my moms dog, watching him wander around contented as possible, tail as high as it could get, no concerns in the world. Just ten minutes prior, I'd walked past an older guy walking his dog, a kodiak I think, on a leash and he says to me to call my dog back. I said something like "no worries, my dog won't hurt a soul and wouldn't fight back, he's as happy as can be". And sure enough, the other dog barks and bites at my moms dog, and my moms dog just runs away with his tail wagging, no big deal. He's happy and nothing can take that away. And I realise (EPIPHANY!) that this mental thought process is what I've been trying to get to for the last couple years. Well, this really isn't much pf an epiphany as I'm well aware of this, perhaps it felt like an epiphany for realizing that I'm now at that point.

In 2010 I used the motivation of training for the Death Race as a way to move beyond a horribly failed almost decade long relationship and a way to try to keep myself on a positive path, to stay out of trouble. It worked. But when the training stopped I fell back into old habits. Hard. Real hard. Working and running in 2011 I came to the realisation that for me to get past old life habits, and to maintain that I needed to maintain a running regiment that was very focused. And it worked. Even if it isn't necesarrily true, I view myself as a negative, 'bad', person, and I go through a daily effort to counter the habits instilled in me by my parents growing up. The efforts required to maintain a training program to get there (to a race I mean), the journey itself, seems to provide me with the tools that I need to transfer to the rest of my life to improve myself from what I perceive to be a not good person.

I overthink things, and take things too far in terms of my desire to 'fix myself' in this regard and think I need to become some sort of perfect before I go try and move beyond a certain plateau pf life improvement. For example, I've been single for three years because I feel I can't go looking to share my time with someone until I've 'fixed' myself.

Anyway. The end of my school year (2010-11) I was suspended from university for having a recieved a 'failed year record", basically a technical way of saying that I failed more courses than I passed. The reason? After falling out of training from my 6 month long crescendo of training for the death race I slowly fell hard back into old habits. Even though in 2011 I still managed to carry myself through finishing three ultras that year, I was into some bad habits. Most of that school year I was taking psychadelics on a daily basis, even while at school while working in a chemistry laboratory. Yeah, I got a couple A+ grades in the courses that interested and came natural to me, but failed the rest and thus received a 'failed year standing' and was told that I must take a whole year leave from school. This academic result came two months after me realizing that I was messing up bad and needed a change. I finally dragged myself to AA meetings and did that for 87 days in a row and intensified my previous sessions with the counsellor at school (drug and alcohol consellor I had seen on occasion regarding relationship issues in the past). And like my constant journey of changing myself from the person I felt I was to whatever the person I felt I wanted to become, I continued in my style of a couple steps forward, a step back, a couple steps forward... repeat etc. Except the last couple months had been a couple extra steps back, followed by a more intense effort to take a few giant steps forward.

When I recieved my email from the university saying I was to not attend university for a year I was okay with that. I looked at it as an opportunity to achieve a certain level of 'fix' to myself and then maintain a plateau of that work on myself. Except that didn't last. Working at the golf course (which I really enjoy most days as its very professional) I was abble to distract myself, it was good. But I was laid off at the end of October 2011 and ended up working five different jobs at restaurants that were just horrible. Quickly my illusions of reverting to advancing myself in the culinary world were shattered as I realized my summer job at the gold course was one of the few restaurants in town that was good to work at. Quickly I soured on the culinary world. Yet, I had maintained a clean lifestyle, no drugs in 2011, and since dropping alcohol from my life I maintained that. I acted quickly and re-acquainted myself with the counsellor at the university and wrote a fantastic letter to the dean of science at the university explaining my life situation and the challenges I felt I had overcome and exaplined I was a changed man and asked for my suspension from school to be reconsidered and to be let in early, I was totally over my time away from school and wanted to get that done and move on with my life. They let me back in, and in novembet I found out. At the same time I found out about the running group that I have been running with since the beginning of the year. Things were looking up. I felt good. But... I knew I needed motivation to achieve my goals at university. At the time I didn't realise it, but I think looking back at my success at the death race, and the coupled 'fixing' of self that is my constant life goal, was because of the consistency provided from running. I knew that I needed running back in my life in a much more consistent way to help me achieve my goals at school.

So I ran. And I've run a lot, I set lofty goals, and in my head self talked myself up. Motivated to the max, I needed it. May 15 and I'm already at 1450 km for the year. I've never run more than 2050 km in a year. Idle hands are the devils playground for me. I know this. For me my running goals, even though I tell myself they are, aren't running goals, they are life goals to help me achieve the level of progress I want in myself.

It's worked for me. Yes I'm a better runner, but the main life goal thus far into the year has been finishing my degree. I've done what I needed at school every day to do it. And so the thing is, the thing that drives me to run, has been done. At a meeting at my running group at the beginning of the year we were asked the goals for the year. I believe my answer was something about "being consistent" unsaid to even myself was that I wanted to be consistent in regards to how I act as a good person. The work dput into running, has me to a much better level of that than I have been before, I"m happy with that, It's got me to a point where I successfully got school done.

The last couple weeks before the Elk beaver 100 km race I was very nervous about school. At the beginning of the semester I had a meeting with the professor within the chemistry department in regards to double checking that I had met all my degree requirements. I only needed two courses to finish. I signed up for three courses, and knew that I only needed two to get my degree. And, I hated one of my profs. So without checking with the prof I switched courses and forgot about it. Until I had done my exams and was suddenly scared shitless about no longer meeting the degree requirements. Daily I checked the university website to see if my graduation application status had been changed to 'application approved". And I waited, and still kept training and running. And waited.

A week before the race I checked again. And it said "graduation approved".

YES!

I had acchieved my goal. The goal that I took two years too long to achieve, that I had lost relationships and friends through a course of revisiting drugs and alcohol that I wish I hadn't done so. But I had done it, and mostly through the realisation that running is the tool that took me to the place that made me able to do it. And suddenly, within a day (and a week of my 100 km race) I was totally de-motivated to race.

I had achieved the main life goal. And the journey of running took me there. I had already reached the finish line. I didn't know it at the time, and it's taken a few days of hard thought to get there, but I instantly lost motivation to race that race as I had already won. The motivation of the race, and the journey of the training, was the tool I needed to do what I really wanted.

So on the day of the race. When the going got tough, and the pain started to come that I knew would come because it's a long race and that sort of pain will come, and I knew that I could finish by pushing through that world and accepting that I would live in a world of self destruction to do so. I gave up. I quit. I stopped.

Nothing left. And I was completely okay with it. I know other runners who have DNF'd, and have read race reports of others that have done it and I expected it to feel so different. But I couldn't be any happier about DNFing. I smiled, and I was done. I finished the race I really needed to finish and that was good enough. Maybe a little silly that I needed to take a ferry ride and drive for a day and run four and a half hours to figure that out, but it was a great trip with the family, so that's okay.

Looking forward, I really don't know what to make of these thoughts. I feel like I'm satisfied with the time I've spent at this life plateau and it's time to get on with crescendo'ing upwards again.

At work today I had an extended discussion with a co-worker abouut things. About, not drinking and stuff, and I was saying stuff along the lines of me being hesitant to go after certain things in life because of the way I perceived myself. To which the response that I guess the way I am perceived at work by the way I act is much better than the way I perceive myself, so maybe the efforts and bettering myself are working, and it's time to step off the plateau.

What this has to do with running? I feel like my running adventures have been with the goal in the back of my head to "prove something". Not necesarily to anyone, but maybe just to myself. But, with feeling like I've reached a level where I want to be I don't feel a need to prove anything. So I'm not sure where I want to take that thought in regards running.

I very much enjoyed my journey thus far in the year of running; but I feel like the ratio of training to running up and down mountains for fun is a little off. I needed to register for the races I did to use them as a tool to keep myself motivated to achieve my non-running goals. But now, I don't think I really need or want to run three 100 km or greater races within a three month period. It's too much 'work' and not enough time to fuck around running in the areas I want, too regimented. I still know I want something to keep me 'future focused to race for. But I think I will change my schedule from: 146 km trail in early july, 195 km trail early august and 100 km road in mid sept to instead a schedule of 146 km trail in early july and a short 54 km trail in early sept.

I feel like I am ready to transition my running from being something I need to do in order to maintain the person I want to be and to use as a tool to achieve other goals; into something more fun based.

Where this will take me, not sure. Definitely an unanswered question on that way. But running like a contented dog is good for now, and having that take me where it does in my next race is just fine.

Interesting side note; I think in the last few months I've barely written a single deep thought on my running blog, just no side thoughts.

Week ending may 6

April 30 - May 6 (taper week) (six days until race)

Mon april 30: no run, rest day, work

Tue may 1: no run, work, was supposed to do a 40 km run but I just didnt feel it, my 100 km 3 day weekend caught up to me and I rested instead, well as much rest as work can be. Very glad i didnt run as work was a super hectic day.

Wed may 2: no work, run 6,84 km with 369 metre elev gain in 55 mins. Only about 21 mins of this was real running, the rest was super slow jogging or walking, or standing around checking out scenery

Thur may 3: no work, no run; day of errands and housework

Fri may 4: no run, work

Sat may 5: ran 20.39 km with 440 metre elev gain in 2 hrs 20 mins; slow running, work

Sun may 6: no run, work

I only ran twice. I took the idea of a taper/recovery week too far I think. I just didn't feel like running the first two days, and other things happened, and sunday work kicked my ass and I didn't feel like running after.

I feel mentally and physically prepared for my race in six days. I'm confident in my training plan, my mental plan for the race, my nutrition/hydration plan and I'm stoked and ready to go. Let's hope I'm blessed with a great day. No concern about running 100 km, I just hope I can do it fast and finishing strong and still feel good the next day.

Week ending April 29

April 23 - April 29: Build week 3 (13 days until next race)

Mon April 23:

pm-1: 8.73 km road bike to work in 23 minutes

pm-2: 7.99 km road bike home from work in 17 minutes

Tues April 24: no run, work

Wed April 25:

am: road run 30 mins, 30 metre elev gain, 6 km; ran dropped car off at shop, bussed to bike shop to buy a tube, ran home from bike shop

pm1: run 37 mins, 66 metre elev gain, 7 km; bike tire failure (the metal lining that keeps the tire in the rim was exposed from whatever caused my flat, blew out my new tube so I ran to work)

pm2: run/walk 50 mins, 33 metre elav gain, 7 km; run home from work

thur april 26: bussed to penticton, 4 km walking from greyhound station to my mothers house

fri april 27: 6 hr 52 mins run, 1043 metre elev gain, 60.32 km; ran from Penticton to West Kelowna on the highway with a detour up pin cushion trail in Peachland. Fairly tedious run, very glad I through in the pin cushion part. Got a rather painful sunburn on my calves.

sat apr 28: 3 hr 49 mins run, 1036 metre elev gain, 24.15 km; running in myra bellevue park with pace. Meant to only run 2.5 hours, but we did a nice easy paced route that included angel springs which had tonnes of water in it. Felt surprisinglt good considering the effort of the last couple days. worked that night

sun apr 29: 80 mins, 140 metre elev gain, 14.61 km; road running in rutland after work. fantastic evening weather. Was beautiful.

Weekly totals:
Biking: 41 minutes, 16.73 km
Running: 14 hrs 34 mins, 2375 metre elev gain, 123.18 km

This week was my third longest week of running ever, and April will finish with 394 km running which I'm pretty sure is the most of run in a month ever. Other than the fact that I"m rather tired from the last three days of running (99 km, 12 hours and work) and will be taking ibuprofen to get to sleep today, I feel good. No painful issues.

Very much looking forward to recovering and tapering to the race in two weeks. This week I spent 13% of my time awake running, and probably 20% of my awake time running or preparing/traveling and other stuff from running. I will probably rework my schedule next week to both my long runs on work days, so I can have a day where I don't work or run, and it will be glorious.

Week ending April 22

April 16 - 22; Build week two (of three); 20 days until next race

Mon April 16: no run; exam; work

Tue April 17: run in the morning before work; 33 mins, 50 metre elev gain, 6.41 km of easy road running around home. work after

Wed April 18: no work

am: 115 metre elev gain, 248 mins, 46.01 km of trails on the greenway flats. Maintained a steady pace for first marathon portion. Didn't feel the best though, still neglect my hydration while at work a little bit. Ran the first 42 km in about 3 hr 39 min, which is faster than any marathon race I've ever run.

pm: 506 metre elev gain, 104 mins, 9.91 km of trails. Hike up and down knox twice with some pseudo sprints in between. Intended on running between 50 - 55 in the morning, so I did more later that day.

Thur apil 19: no work; 198 metre elev gain, 64 mins, 8.96 km trails in penticton. Hobo trails, munson mountain and a bit of the kvr. Hot tub after felt so good.






Fri April 20: no run, work

Sat April 21:

am: 1124 metre elev gain, 192 mins, 20.53 km; trails in ok mtn park. I only ran 3 hrs 12 min, I wanted to go longer but didn't hit the trails until later than I wanted to, I woke up to a flat tire and had to put the spare on before heading to the trailhead. Ugh.

pm: 8.57 km road bike to work in 24 mins, no push at all

Sun April 22:

pm-1: 8 km road bike to work in 26 mins, no push at all

pm-2: 8.12 km road bike home from work in 18.5 mins, a little pushed

pm-3: 82 metre elev gain, 63 mins, 13.22 km of road running. Feet sore for the first 2 km as they always are post during post workk runs, paced around 4:30 min/km for about 6 km and then cruised home. Sunday night runs in 17 degrees are always a nice way to end the week.

My legs feel good on the week, looking forward to the challenged of next week (70 km long run planned)

Weekly totals:
Running: 11 hrs 48 mins, 2.1 km elev gain, 105.04 km.
Biking: 67 minutes, 24.57 km.
Total exercise time: 12 hrs 55 minutes

Week Ending April 15

April 9 - April 15: Build Week 1 to 100 k race

Mon Apr 9: rest day: work

Tues Apr 10: work: ran 41 mins, 51 metre elev gain, 8.33 km on the roads after work.

Wed Apr 11: ran 75 mins, 644 metre elev gain, 10.78 km; pace hill run

Thur Apr 12: exam in morning: ran 192 mins, 111 metre elev gain, 35.63 km on greenway.

Fri Apr 13: work, too long, planned rest day

Sat Apr 14: skipped planned run, didn't get to bed until 2 am after working long day. work

Sun Apr 15: ran 217 mins, 1162 metre elev gain, 35.75 km; ran phase 2 of greenway then up myra canyon forest service road to the first trestle and back down. Ran 90% of the hills at steady pace, and was doing a nice downhill running avg pace of 4:30 min/km pace down the fsr. felt good.

Weekly totals: 8 hrs 45 mins running, 1968 metre elev gain, 90.49 km.

My planned running schedule for the week was made assuming I was going to get tue/wed off work like I had usually been, but I had wed/thur off instead. So my long run was moved to thursday and shortened, which prob wasn't good. Also, the thursday run was the day after a hard hill session the night before, and didn't start until 3:30 as I had been at school all day studying and writing an exam until 2:30, so I wasn't well nutriated and as a result I felt like ass the whole run. Maybe it was running a long run the day after a hill session, maybe it was because I was poorly fed because I spent the day at school in study mode where I neglect my eating habits, I don't know, so I will try doing the long run on the first of my days off. And hopefully this week coming up friday at work won't be a shitshow and I won't be there so long and I'll still get my normal saturday/sunday runs in.

Sunday run was pretty cool, I had intended to do laps at the hilly end of the greenway, but ended up heading up myra forest service road at the end of the first time; intending to go out on the railroad bed and come down angel springs. The FSR was all snow free, but the kvr wasn't, so just came back. I'm very amused with myself that I can run two 35 km runs in what was a fairly busy week and still feel good. The snow is almost melted enough to head up real high into the mountains. Once I'm done my next race and focusing in sinister prep it will be the perfect time of the year where it's not so hot out, and the snow will be melted, but there will be plenty of running water on the mountains to soak in if needed.

Week ending april 8

April 2 - April 8: race recovery week

April 2: rest day

April 3: biked 29.74 km, 65 minutes; biked lakeshore and back swamp road and then up through the orchards, very windy day made for some tough riding.

april 4: 85 mins, 460 metre elev gain, 12.5 km; hill repeats with pace, ass kicked

april 5: 48 min, 68 metre elev gain, 9.01 km; easy post work road run

april 6: rest day

april 7: 1385 metre elev gain, 183 min, 17.15 km; pin cushion repeats (5) with pace. Don't know how I had energy on this day, but I did and the three middle times were fairly fast which felt good.

april 8: 152 metre elev gain, 89 mins, 15.59 km; easy pace post work run.

Totals: 6 hr 45 min run, 2065 metre elev gain, 54.25 km. 29.74 km bike in 65 min.

Worked full time and got in five days of exercise without feeling destroyed, which is better than I can say for most work weeks last year, and I was still at school for parts of four days of the week, so it should become more managable come summer time.

Week ending April 1

Mar 26 - April 1

Monday 26/03/2012; 15.23 km 70 min 92 metre elev intervals on road near UBCO, ankle almost better
Tuesday 27/03/2012 rest day
Wednesday 28/03/2012; 10.8 km 71 min 184 metre elev loops at knox with pace
Thursday 29/03/2012; 8 km 40 min 90 MIN post work; easy street run
Friday 30/03/2012 rest day
Saturday 31/03/2012; 5.5 km 39 min 180 metre elev gain
Sunday 01/04/2012; 21.1 km 89 min 100 metre elev gain OC 1/2 Marathon


Pretty easy week for running, leading up to half marathon on the sunday.

Don't feel like writing, so copy and pasting an email about the race.

Overall, it went pretty darn fantastic!

I ran without ipod, heartrate monitor, watch, or gps. And that felt pretty good. Typically in road races I go out fast, usually passing lots of people at the start, and then end up getting passed by others in the second half, which I take to mean I don't keep my pace consistent throughout. Today, only one person passed me past the 10 km mark, and a couple other runners even commented that they expected to be able to overtake me part way in, but couldn't; so that felt good to be able to maintain a pace.

I found myself thinking about positive thoughts affecting running, throughout the race, when I was in a funk or whatever, I would naturally just smile myself faster, rather than going through negative self talk that I used to do.

I do think I could have gone faster though. Not taking the day off work on Saturday really affected my run today, and maybe running on saturday as well. I only got 10 hours sleep total the last two nights. My time means I averaged a 4:13 min/km pace, but there were times of the run that my mind was foggy from lack of sleep and if it were a trail race I definitely would have tripped on something from lack of focus. I think in a race like this I could definitely maintain 4:00 min/km pace or better if properly rested. But, oh well, this race wasn't a major goal race or anything, I just wanted to do it because I've done it for 6 years in a row now and its neat to gauge my fitness through the results.

work as a workout

Today's work work-out:

30 - 40 fifty metre sprints down a hallway

30 - 40 sets of stair climbs (half of those carrying at least 15 pounds)

about 2 km worth of steps

70 - 100 times carrying or tossing weights (garbages, stock pots, oil pots etc)

Throughout the day I do these sorts of physical activity, in between prepping and cooking. It feels like my heart rate is bouncing back and forth from 100 to 130 and back for nine hours, and at the end of the day my muscles in my legs and upper body feel not just tired, but the same soreness as though I've had a workout.

Last week; I worked Friday night, ran 2.5 hours saturday morning, worked saturday night.
This week: Work thursday night, run after work at night, work friday night, run saturday morning (short), work sat night, 1/2 marathon race sunday morning.

Work, eat, run, eat, sleep. Repeat. And Yet I feel like I have more energy than last year.

Week ending mar 25

Mar 19 - Mar 25

mar 19: no run

mar 20: 59 mins, 344 metre elev gain, 9.77 km; running trails on mill creek up and down two tits. Saw a couple coyotes running around, very cool, well maybe not as they were in town.

mar 21: 102 mins, 156 metre elev gain, 18.8 km; today was meant to be a beep test which I was actually looking forward to. Ran a couple km to warm up, then ran a few more before going right into the beep test, which was completely uninteresting and uninspiring. I thought it would be cool to challenge myself to see how far I could go in the test, but running back and forth over a 20 metre stretch didn't do it for me. So I just stopped. After I ran another 10 km, much nicer.

mar 22: 75 mins, 419 metre elev gain, 13.16 km; scenic canyon regional park trails. Snow is almost gone, which is so cool because these trails are so close to home.

mar 23: no run

mar 24: 147 mins, 708 metre elev gain, 16.46 km; trails in knox mtn. Beautiful day, felt good to get running with the sunrise, and the legs still felt good through my whole workday after. But the next day felt rough

mar 25: 79 mins, 109 metre elev gain, 15.58 km; greenway and roads through the orchards. Kept the pace under 5 min/ km for most of the run, but it felt rough for parts.

Weekly total:

Time: 7 hrs 42 mins
Elev gain: 1736 metres
distance: 73.77

Week ending March 18

Sat mar 10; was the 50 km trail race. Made the mistake of hanging arounf in my sweaty wet gear for an hour outside before getting changed, I think it helped my get sick, but I didn't feel it until wednesday. So tired driving home from Vancouver, picked up a hitchiker in Merrit just to keep my awake.

sun mar 11: 48 minute recovery run, some hills some trails, and 8.84 km. Felt good to stretch the legs out after.

mond mar 12: 51 minutes 314 metre elev gain and 7.02 km. Felt like running angel springs trails. legs were feeling mostly race recovered by now.

tuesday: no run; massage therapy appointment though. started to feel sick, earache and head cold coming on.

wednesday: spent the day sleeping all day other than 4 hours in the day

thursday: 86 minutes, 533 metres elev gain, 13.58 km in knox mtn. Was running along nicely thinking how easy a section of trail was compared to the terrain I was running in vancouver when I slipped on some ice and landed funny and rolled my ankle a bit. walked most of the rest of the run.

friday: no run

saturday: no run

sunday: 213 minutes, 752 metre elev gain, 20.05 km; really slow run in myra-bellevue park. The city snow is melted, so I got over excited and ran some of the higher trails. Still lots of trails with knee deep snow, and of course lookout trail has a tonne of treefall to climb over. Not much actual running happening.

Didn't get as much running as I wanted, but I felt good by the end of the week in terms of muscle recovery. A little annoying about the ankle though, by the end of next week I should be solid again though. Sadly, with end of term happenings at school, nothing will be beyond a two hour run until april.