Nurtured by Love

Category: Running

Another marathon?

5-6 workouts a week, totalling 3.5-4 hours. Definitely sustainable.

I’m vaguely thinking about running a marathon again this year. Maybe the one I ran five years ago in Vancouver. It was a nice route, and by running the same event I’ll be able to see how my fitness is holding up over the years. Also I have a kid attending school nearby and another one who is going to be performing the Brahms violin concerto with an orchestra in the area around that time.

Right now I’m just trying to figure out if I have the time and (more to the point) the energy and motivation to enjoy the amount of training I’ll have to do? I decided to mock up a schedule training program for November and December to test the waters. I created a schedule of about four runs and one or two cross-training workouts a week. Nothing too demanding in terms of length or speed, just an attempt at consistency. I figured if I ended up feeling tired or unmotivated with the near-daily workouts, that would be a sign not to build to a marathon. But so far it’s going well. My no-workout days feel weirdly empty, and I’m enjoying my runs a lot despite the gross November weather and the early sunsets.

A typical marathon training program has runners build the length of a weekly Long Slow Run from 10 to 32 km over about 20 weeks with a bunch of easier shorter runs filling out the week. A few of those shorter runs will involve intervals or speed, but a lot of them are just “easy 5k’s” or whatever.

I expect my mileage graph will look less tilted than this.

But I know some things about myself and about the science behind distance running that are going to lead me to diverge from that typical plan. First, I’m not a beginner, so I’m starting at a higher mileage level, about 30k per week. Next, I know that I am one of those people who can push my distance pretty easily at any point. For instance I ran a really solid trail 25k in 2012, having not run anything longer than 8k in the preceding several months. I have little doubt I could finish a marathon tomorrow if I really needed to so I don’t need high mileage to build my confidence. Those really long training runs tend to mess with my running mojo when they come week after week. So I’ll avoid most of them.

I also know that slow runs between 60 and 90 minutes train your body to burn fat, the endurance fuel, and that there’s a law of diminishing returns on this count for runs of longer than 90 minutes. Not to mention an increase in the risk of injury. So I plan to do two or more slow runs in this middle range per week (or even, occasionally, the same day), rather than one massive run on the weekend.

And I know that my old stand-by workout, the 5k medium-speed run, is pretty useless from a training standpoint. It may be good for my state of mind, and it works the kinks out and helps burn calories, but from a training standpoint I’d be better off doing short runs of intervals or hills, or cross-training, or even taking a day off. So I’ll try to minimize those non-specific purpose-less runs.

Weird thing I noticed this week: my resting heart rate is really low. I got a new HR monitor after not having a functional one for a couple of years, to help me maintain my run intensity in the “low” range during endurance runs. I was lying down messing with my phone just before heading out for a run today and happened to glance at my Vivoactive watch. My HR was 46. I’ve never seen a reading lower than 50 in the past, more often around 52. Maybe my heart is just unwinding and will eventually slow to zero and that will be that? Ha, just kidding. I’ll take it as a sign of improved general fitness. Who knows why or how, but I’ll take it.

November 22, 2015
Running on

My six-year runniversary, celebrating the start of my informal middle-aged commitment to running, slipped by without me noticing. When I began running at age 46, I was really excited by the whole endeavour. I enjoyed the milestones, I liked noticing my progress in mileage, speed and endurance. I ran a few races, I had a few injuries, I logged everything using apps and spreadsheets and loved watching the graphs I could generate. I participated in online and in-person running communities as much as I could.

And then for a couple of years I swung the other way. I ditched all the fit-tech, the races, the goals, the groups, the tracking. I just wanted to enjoy the process of running by myself, the zen of being out there, not focusing on the numbers my activity would generate.

The Vivoactive also has quirky custom watch faces: what more could I want?

Now my pendulum has swung back. I’ve just replaced my old Garmin Forerunner 305 with a swanky Garmin Vivoactive. It has some smartwatch features that work with my phone, is small enough and comfortable enough to wear as a day-to-day watch, does accelerometer-based fitness tracking, talks to a heart-rate strap, and most importantly to me has a GPS chip in it that tracks all my self-powered outdoor travel. It does the tracking without the help of my phone, and because it’s waterproof I can take it pretty much anywhere without any worries.

I’m not training or setting any goals at this point. But I enjoy seeing my numbers improve, particularly since I’ve just introduced regular road-biking into my life and that’s changing my fitness. Cranking up the steeper sections of the mountain roads here several times a week is building my muscle mass, for sure.

I do have a chronic running-related injury in my left ankle/heel stretching back three or four years now. It has defied all my efforts at repair and rehabilitation. It’s always there, but if I limit myself to at most 3 or 4 times a week, totalling 20-25k maximum, mostly at a 6:00/km pace or slower it stays under control. So the cycling, which doesn’t bother the heel at all, is filling in the rest of my exercise week really nicely. I can alternate an easy run with what are for me harder days of hill-climbing on the bike. This works beautifully and will continue to be a great way to stay in shape at least as long as the snow is off the roads.

Now that I’m both running and biking regularly, there’s a niggling voice in the back of my head muttering “tri, tri, tri.” But I am not a good swimmer, nor do I much like swimming,. And the lake is too cold 10 months a year. And the pool in Nelson is about to be closed for months for asbestos removal. And, and, and… So I’d be surprised if a triathlon ever happened for me but I suppose you never know.

If Erin weren’t so damned fit, this result would make me younger than she is.

Here’s a cool result from a nifty if fairly crude tool. The worldfitnesslevel.org calculator quizzes you about your age, gender, size, weight, resting and maximal heart rates and exercise habits, and gives you a “fitness age.” I come out looking pretty healthy these days.

Just for fun I repeated the quiz with what I think were my stats just before I started running. I came up with a fitness age of 40 vs. a chronological age of 45. I’ve definitely widened the gap since then!

Lately my life seems to go like this: Cooking, cleaning, computering, RUN! Cooking, cleaning, computering, RIDE! And repeat. Whatever. It works.

July 10, 2015
Xeroshoes

Another review in the gear-and-gadgets vein.

First I made my own huaraches. That was really fun, and they worked well enough, but I didn’t have quite the right sole material. The soles were thick enough but not rigid enough. They flopped and slapped, and if I didn’t have them laced fairly tightly the front end would flop down during my stride-through and I would sometimes catch the toe end: not fun!

Then I bought a pair of Luna Sandals, looking for something more rigid for rougher trails. Maybe some of their models are great, but I went too much to the other extreme and bought the Leadvilles which were far too rigid and clunky for my tastes. I still own them, but I honestly can’t imagine a trail that would be so rough that I’d take them over a more minimalist sandal: you really can’t feel anything through them. Miles and miles of sharp scree, maybe. Typical rough and rocky Kootenay back-country trails? Naw.

Amuri Cloud: slight heel cup, and one of the lacing adjustment sliders

Finally last fall I bought a pair of Xero Shoes Ventures. They are sort of a hybrid between a flat basic home-made-style huarache and a manufactured sandal. The have techie lacing fittings and slightly engineered soles and a manufactured toe post. But they’re super light and thin, and just barely rigid enough to avoid the toe-catching and slapping sounds I got from my home-made jobbies.

I really liked them, and used them for casual wear, beach and boat stuff, regular runs, trail runs and hiking. Until a couple of months ago, when one of the toe posts fell apart for no apparent reason. I was sad. I had really wanted to like them. I couldn’t decide what to do. I know runners in conventional shoes trade their $120 shoes out every six months or sooner, but as a minimalist runner I thought I was done with that hamster wheel.

Once the laces are adjusted they work as slip-ons. The black area is the foam, the brown the solid rubber.

Finally a couple of weeks ago I figured I might as well write to the company to ask about buying replacement toe posts. They were fabulous. They apologized profusely for the problem I’d had, said they hadn’t had much of this problem but no manufacturing process was ever completely free of defects, and they would like to send me a free replacement pair of sandals — but could they talk me into their newer Amuri Cloud style, which was a little bit lighter with part of one are of the topsole replaced with thin foam. Sure, I said!

They arrived within a few days, no small feat considering where we live. And I love them even more than I loved the Ventures. Partly because of the slight cushioning and better grip and breathability of the foam, and partly because I like the mocha/black colourway.

Gentle but secure lacing — finally!

I should say that I found both my original Xeros and these new ones quite frustrating to get adjusted at the beginning. You can adjust the overall tightness of the laces, but by sliding the knot you can adjust the angle of the forefoot lacing, and by pushing or pulling the laces through the side-holes you can adjust whether the tightness is more in the forefoot or heel. There’s no real science to what works to prevent excess tightness and discomfort while keeping the heel straps from slipping off. Maybe other people have less trouble than I do. My foot is relatively narrow and tall so perhaps I have an especially small window of optimal fit with this type of lacing. I’d think I had it, but then I’d go for a run and the heel strap would slip down, or I’d get a pressure hot-spot from the knot. Try again. Different problem. Try again.

But eventually I found it, the optimal lacing tension for me. Barely on, but always on. They’re my favourite footwear. I didn’t use them for the circle route because I know that when I haven’t done a lot of recent running in huaraches I get horrid blisters in my toe web-space if I run too long in them. Since these are new, I didn’t have time to acclimate to them. But next time — yeah!

July 23, 2014
My Fitbit

Fitbit Flex

It’s an activity tracker, a value-added pedometer. I bought it about 15 months ago. I got it as a way to be less obsessed with tracking the minutiae of my exercise. With my old Garmin (has it really been five years?!), which is bulky and a bit uncomfortable to wear, I tended to geek out and get all micro-analytical when presented with the detailed real-time information about distance, pace, speed, slope, calories and heart rate. It fed into my self-competitive tendencies, and I would find myself running too fast or too far, just to make the next round number. 5k in 25 minutes, or 10k today instead of the 7.2 that feels about right, or a negative split on the second half of the run. That tended to lead to injury and to focus on the data record, with less enjoyment of the actual running. The graphs were beautiful, but distracting.

I wanted to focus more on the experience of running. For a while I ran completely ungadgeted. I had dropped the iPod quite early on, but dropping the data was a big change. It was lovely when I was motivated to run, but sometimes I felt I needed a little prod to get out the door. I thought the Fitbit might be able to give me a little bit of self-accountability without feeding into my self-competitive tendencies.

I was right. It has struck the right balance. Knowing a step-count record is accumulating – or not — is enough to give me a little nudge when I need it, and yet the information it provides is minimal and delayed, so it acts more like a pat on the back when I’ve done well than a coach yelling at me to “push faster!” or “do one more lap!” I’ve worn it almost every day and I still like it a lot.

I like that it counts the about-the-house-and-yard-and-town exercise I get, which I tend to undervalue. I like how unobtrusive it is, and how it looks almost like a simple rubber band bracelet. I like the well-oiled bluetooth connectivity with my smartphone app, which means I can check historical and current-day info anytime on my phone. It has a sleep-tracking function, which I find interesting. It will show me measurements of my total sleep time, and of my times of restlessness and wakefulness. It’s not a perfect accounting, as it relies only on left arm movement, but it provides some interesting information over time. I like the way I can set truly silent vibratory alarms that alert me and no one else. The alarm will awaken me from sleep, but it can also tell me when a violin lesson should be wrapping up.

I find it has very good accuracy. I’ve tested it by counting steps and measuring distances with GPS, and it is as near to perfect as a wrist-band pedometer could be. It counts my treadmill exercise too, which a GPS-based device doesn’t, which is a nice bonus.

I wish it were waterproof. It’s splash- and sweat-resistant, but it’s supposed to come off during showering, washing dishes and minivans, while swimming and in the pouring rain.

I’ve had lots of problems with the charger. It just doesn’t make a connection as reliably as it’s supposed to. That was true of the first charger, which started getting really finicky after about three weeks, and eventually I couldn’t get it to charge at all. The company quickly sent me a replacement, but that didn’t completely fix the problem. So they sent me a whole new Fitbit, which did fix the problem, but only for a couple of months. Now I have two complete rigs, neither of which works well. The new one is much better but it only rarely charges perfectly. Usually I have to carefully construct an array of elastic bands and wedges to hold it in just the right spot in the charger to make contact. The old one I sometimes can’t get to charge for weeks. Sophie used it for a while, then gave up.

And I wish it had a watch. I would never wear a watch and the Fitbit together, and sometimes I would like to have a watch. How tough could it be to add a watch to the display? For a short time the company offered a newer model, the Force, which had a time display, but it was recalled and pulled from the market due to problems with the clasp. It hasn’t been re-released, nor has anything else taken its place. And in the meantime Nike has stopped making their Fuel Band, and it seems like everyone is holding their breath, waiting for the Apple iWatch to drop. It’s in the wind ….

I’m waiting too. I hope my Fitbit lasts until the kinks in the as-yet-unreleased iWatch get worked out and the 2nd generation hits the market. Another 18 months, maybe. Despite its limitations and the charger quirks I really do like the balance the Fitbit strikes. But I’m pretty sure I’ll be one of those keeners pre-ordering the iWatch 2.

July 23, 2014
Almost a circle

So here’s how I felt on the third morning: revolting.

Jittery, feverish and nauseated.

The first day was amazing. I had rented a kayak from Smiling Otter in Slocan (my paddling destination) and brought it home the night before, depositing it on the lakeshore. I was on the trail before six for the short run to the lake, catching the first glints of sun sneaking through the Carpenter Creek valley.

First sun: my shadow crossing the Carpenter Creek bridge

It was a hot day but the lake was still in shade and I kept to the east side all morning, tucked into the shade of the mountains. I’d rented a solo touring kayak, much sleeker than our tandem, and made really good time. I’d allotted six to seven hours for the 27k paddle, and finished in four and change. Along the way I saw bald eagles, great blue herons, ospreys, mergansers and countless plovers, swallows, killdeers and such. The lake stayed completely calm until mid morning when some wind blew up. It was pushing me on my way, but the swells and chop were getting rough just as I was passing the cliffs at Cape Horn and knew I had nowhere I could tuck in. I kept checking behind me for the telltale “black line on the lake” that can arrive in ten minutes and capsize unwary boaters who don’t take shelter, but it didn’t come. I pushed hard the last few kilometres just in case, to the river’s mouth, and all was well. I let the river current push me the last couple of kilometres, returned the kayak, donned my shoes and pack, and set off on foot.

Lake mostly shaded by low morning sun

I took the afternoon’s run along the rail trail at an easy pace. I arrived in Winlaw by mid afternoon, hung out by the creek to cool off, then had an extended lunch/dinner at Sissies. Eventually I barefoot-jogged the 4 km to my B&B for the night. My chronic ankle problem had really flared up on the trail, and I wasn’t feeling too optimistic about the next day’s 54km run, but I had a deep sleep and woke up the next morning feeling a lot better.

Rail trail along the river

The next 25k was also along the rail trail. I stopped after a couple of hours for a snack and was very surprised to pick up an unsecured wifi signal, presumably from a nearby house, though I couldn’t see anything. So I had a fun little chat with Fiona. Thanks, whoever you are!

I met a couple of skittish bears and a tiny fawn and a few toads and snakes as well as making a positive ID on a Lazuli Bunting, thanks to my iBird app. Love that app! It also lets me talk to the birds by playing recordings of their songs. They get very intrigued and usually come closer.

Lots of giant black slugs on the rail trail in the morning

The southern part of that day’s run was amazingly hot. The forecast when I left home had been for cooler weather but the thermometer at Taghum at 3:30 that afternoon was in the 90’s. I was in full sun for most of the last four hours and although I stayed well hydrated I felt worse and worse. I suspect I was pretty close to getting heat stroke, as I ended the day nauseated, headachey and feeling weirdly feverish. Couldn’t stomach the idea of dinner. I couldn’t sleep, either, which was odd because I was definitely running a sleep deficit from the two previous nights.

The next morning I decided to do what I’d been toying with the night before: take the bus to my bike, rather than running the 30 km along the west arm of Kootenay Lake. I was still too nauseated to eat, which meant all I’d eaten in the previous 36 hours was a small bowl of granola, a salad wrap and a couple of Luna bars — despite having run more than a marathon. I knew I couldn’t run until I could eat again. I worked into the morning gradually, drank more electrolyte stuff, and more water, and some coffee, sat around a bit, and then hopped on the bus.

On the ferry. My very old bike is awesome, but is currently in need of some TLC.

I jogged to my bike, feeling a little better, and rode back to the highway. This involved a side trip across the Harrop ferry to my friend’s place, which was a nice diversion. A few kilometres later I stopped and managed to eat a bit of late breakfast.

Near the summit of the pass, looking towards home.

The rest of the day was fine. I felt better for the food. The ride to Kaslo was tougher than I expected, the hills more numerous and steeper. I’d been preparing myself for the big pass between Kaslo and home, but as it turned out the hills before Kaslo were steeper (5-10% grade) than the long slow climb over the pass (3-5% grade mostly, and no problem at all). But it was lots cooler on the third day and occasionally drizzly and made for perfect biking weather. I love that road over the pass anyway, thinking of it as my very own highway since it’s the one that our property is on, and I run on it all winter. There are no utility poles most of the way, so it feels high and lonely and wild. The descent was glorious and I whipped along at up to 50 km/h. Cutting off the morning’s run meant I got home in time to pick Noah up from work, cook dinner, eat (yay!) and get Erin to her gig. Watched an episode of The Newsroom with the younger three kids and went to bed before ten.

I’m still a bit nauseated today but except for that I feel pretty good. A couple of blisters here and there, and that yummy feeling of having done something very long and difficult with my body, but pretty much my usual self.

So yeah. Almost a circle. Not going to beat myself up over a small missing arc.

July 23, 2014
Circle Route

This circle route is one of those off-the-beaten-path gems. We live at the northwest corner of it. Once they widened the road at Cape Horn (at km 25 on the map) in the early 1990s, the motor homes began trundling through in ever greater numbers. Motorcyclists discovered it a decade or so ago and from the May long weekend until Labour Day we hear them droning by on the highway in clusters.

When we first moved here I used to think about bicycling it. Could I do it in a day? I never tried. Life was too busy.

In the depths of last winter, while bemoaning the fact that I wouldn’t be able to participate in SufferFest this year due to family conflicts, it suddenly occurred to me that I could turn the circle route into an endurance triathlon of sorts. Rather than taking roads the whole way, I’d do my first day on the lake in a kayak and day 2 would be a trail run along the Slocan Valley rail trail. The next day would be road-running from the bottom of the Slocan Valley over through Nelson and up the north shore of the West Arm of Kootenay Lake. And the last day would have me on my bicycle heading through Kaslo and over the pass back home.

I had originally hoped to carve out time at the end of June. But family and SVI responsibilities piled on. Then I had be around to get Erin when she got back from Europe, and then Fiona was asked to help out with the Music Explorers program, and had the Dance program to do, the combination taking up two weeks. So here we are in the third week of July already and I haven’t set out, nor have I really committed to doing it. Until today.

I’ve worked really hard to get the SVI administrative stuff done. Noah is solid with his work schedule. Sophie has just started her job, but she’s confident she can get back and forth by bike or on foot as needed. Fiona and Erin will be having a low-key few days at home. Erin has one gig, but I’ve organized a ride for her. Chuck will be on call. Provided I stock the fridge and pantry with lots of food, I have their blessing to leave. So I booked a place to stay for the first night and arranged to rent a kayak and — gulp! — I think I’m going.

I have no doubt that I can manage each leg of the challenge on its own. What worries me is putting them together in the space of three or four days. What will I feel like on the morning of the third day, having run 70 kilometres over the previous day and a bit, facing 35 more and then a bike ride over the pass?

I suppose I’m going to find out.

July 16, 2014
Five years of running
I run. Come rain or snow or slush or all three, I run. I have no particular goals. I have no races planned, I don’t track my mileage any more, nor do I measure my pace or keep track of how often I run barefoot, or how many days a week I run. I’d guess that on average this winter I’ve run about 5k a day, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes not at all. But usually I run.

It was almost exactly five years ago that I started making time to run. I’ve done a Half Marathon, a few 5 and 10k races, a Marathon and a couple of 25k trail races. I’ve usually placed pretty well, in the top 25% in my age-and-gender group, sometimes higher. But this year I don’t think I’ll be doing any organized runs or races at all. That’s just the way it’s worked out: there’s not much happening in the region, and what is available is at impossible times for me. Nor do I feel like spending hundreds of dollars, working out countless family-oriented logistical considerations and travelling hundreds of kilometres in order to test myself against someone else’s timer and a bunch of strangers.

I’ve had my share of injuries, that’s for sure. I suppose that’s the price I pay for jumping into running at age 45 after fifteen years of not doing any such thing. The first year I had a mysterious deep hip pain that kept me from running and carrying heavy objects for almost three months and then miraculously resolved. A year later I hurt my foot scrabbling about barefoot (not running) and had to quit running for a couple of months to let it heal. And the then I developed a waxing and waning discomfort in the area of my left achilles tendon that has kept up ever since.

A bunch of numbers that mean something or other.

I have never really been able to figure out what’s going on in my ankle, because it didn’t behave a lot like a tendinitis or a bursitis. So I finally sought out a physiotherapist with a special (barefoot-friendly) interest in running biomechanics. She found a few little things in my biomechanics that needed work (my left hip abductors were much weaker than the right, which was weird but consistent), and I had a lot of mobility loss in my ankle as a result of two years of favouring it. Eventually after a bit of bewilderment she decided I was possibly suffering from a tarsal tunnel impingement, sort of like the ankle equivalent of carpal tunnel syndrome. Whether she was right or not, the active release therapy she did helped a bit, the prescribed exercises drastically increased my strength in some of the stabilizing muscles, the ankle problems are currently mild and manageable, and they no longer seem to be significantly aggravated by running. So that’s good. I still hurt a bit sometimes, but it doesn’t seem likely that I’m doing damage by continuing to run on an occasionally sore ankle.

Ink’nBurn pretend-denim-jean capris and butterfly camisole. So nice!

These days the stuff I use to run is as follows:
- minimalist footwear most of the time: New Balance Minimus Trail shoes or Xero Shoes Sensori huaraches. Otherwise, if weather and terrain promise to be kind, bare feet.
- my Fitbit Flex, because I like the feedback I get about overall activity level throughout a complete 24 hour day
- For clothing, typically stuff from Lululemon and Ink’n’Burn. Most people are familiar with Lulu, but I think I like INB even better. Such amazing designs, with all the clever tech features I like. Neither are cheap.
That’s all. No GPS, no stopwatch, no iPod or earbuds, no heart rate monitor. Not unless I’m on the treadmill.

Would you run here?

Speaking of the treadmill, I’m so grateful for it. It’s boring as heck, especially situated where it is against a wall and a door in the dark basement, crowded in from all sides by paint cans, home repair stuff, Chuck’s various hoarded things, old sports gear and the bokashi bins. But I feel crappy when I don’t get to run, and on days when it’s too late or too gross or too complicated to get outside for a run, it’s a great substitute. I also think that being able to do ten- or fifteen-minute runs two or three times a day has really helped my ankle improve this winter. Running outside is just a big enough production in winter to make it best-suited to runs of 30 minutes or longer.

Where am I going from here? Well, nowhere, really. I’m just going to keep running, doing what feels right from day to day. I definitely want to explore more of the amazing terrain in this area, whether by running, hiking or camping. And I want to continue to be able to move myself over long distances under my own steam, inspired by the wisdom of this quote from Born to Run:

“You don’t stop running because you get old. You get old because you stop running.”
March 25, 2014
Trail-building

Armed with three hand-tools — a mattock, a rake and a saw — I have been gradually building a trail from our yard to the Galena Trail. For years I’ve been frustrated by the can’t-get-there-from-here dilemma that separates me from my favourite running trail. We planted a geocache down on the trail more than ten years ago, and the GPS co-ordinates proved what maps had led us to suspect: while it took 25 to 40 minutes to get to that point on the trail, it was only about 175 metres away as the crow flies.

The problem with getting to the trail more directly was two-fold: the grade, and the vegetation. The direct point-to-point grade was about 47%, which puts you somewhere in the realm of a black diamond or double-black-diamond ski run: definitely not the right way to build a trail. And of course trees, bushes and undergrowth had to be circumvented or moved. I ended up with a trail of about half a kilometre long with an average grade of more like 15%. Definitely hike-able both down and up.

It was a curiously addictive process. I would go out planning to spend 45 minutes touching something up and return to the house three hours later. There’s something about actually changing the landscape, of creating something useful out of nothing — well, not out of nothing, but out of nothing that looks like a road or a trail, nothing useful from a human locomotion standpoint. It was like having a superpower: I bisect the wilderness with roads, using my own two hands!

Next year I’ll get to work extending the switchbacks to allow it to be closer to bike-able. If it was manageable on a mountain bike, one could get to town quickly without needing to hit the highway at all.

I’m sure there will be places where the soil will settle and the edges of my trail will need shoring up. I’d love it wider in some places, even for hiking, and there will be oregon grape and wild rose and bedstraw and devil’s club to be tamed continually. But the route is laid out and for now it’s useable on foot. Meaning my favourite running trail is just four minutes away (eight huffing-and-puffing minutes on the way back).

October 27, 2013
Sufferfest Weekend

It’s Kootenay Sufferfest weekend. Chuck is away but the girls and I got involved in volunteering the first day. Fiona and Sophie volunteered as marshalling assistants. Fiona was marshalling up-mountain at the halfway First Aid and Marshalling station. She and I sat right at the snow line with slush falling for 7 hours. Plus it took us almost an hour each way to drive the logging roads to get there. So a very long day. But she was awesome: she saved the day a couple of times when the adults had got too distracted by communications issues to note a bib number on a racer.

The experience played right into her wilderness skills homeschooling project what with the various pre-race first aid and marshalling planning meetings, the communications relaying (we’re way out of cellphone range, and sat-phones were unreliable in places because of terrain) and keeping an eye on runners and riders for signs of hypothermia, and watching and helping them avoid succumbing to the elements. We had a market tent, which helped keep us from getting soaked the skin, and also took our Biolite stove and made hot chocolate for runners and volunteers alike. I was working first-aid, and thankfully there was nothing more than minor stuff; a few of the bikers who looked in danger of getting hypothermic during the first loop judiciously dropped out of the race before attempting the second pass, and none of the die-hards got into difficulty. Not that there weren’t some serious worries by the organizers. It was so cold, and there was a lot of snow up high. The Idaho Peak Run came off just fine: 14 runners finished. But the early snow made for a lot more challenge and hazard than had been expected. I’m glad this hadn’t turned out to be the year for me to attempt that run.

Sophie helped marshal the first and last runner aid stations. She and her marshalling buddy were on foot, carrying water and food since there was no road access. The race director and I had used backpacks and bike trailers to haul in some of the gear the day before, but they still had to carry some. They also had almost no radio or satellite phone contact, so were very isolated. They had a really long day. Sophie had left home by 7 am, and hadn’t surfaced again by 4 pm. I made a thermos of hot mochas, and took to the trail to run out and meet them. I met them at the halfway point of their hike out. I was very glad to see them still upright and coherent!

Me (#493) and some of my running buddies, keeping warm in the rain and mud pre-race.

Today I went over to Kaslo and ran the 10k Sufferfest trail race. I did surprisingly well: I got 1st place in my age-group (40th place overall). It wasn’t a big race — under 200 participants — but I was really pleased by how strong I felt. I haven’t run much the past few months, but I have done a bit of strength training, which is new for me.

I haven’t run a race shorter than a half-marathon in more than 3 years and I really enjoyed the shorter distance. It was rainy, mucky and slippery, with lots of little steep hills, so the times weren’t that fast, but I got in in under an hour. The push up the hill for the finish left me feeling spent, but within ten minutes felt pretty much fully recovered and felt like I could have run a lot farther. Maybe next year I’ll go back to running the 25k. Or maybe not. At this point I find that a 10k doesn’t really require any training more than my haphazard recreational running, and that’s nice.

September 29, 2013
Treadmill!

Look what lives in our basement now. I’ve been wanting one for ages, seriously doing price comparisons and reading reviews for the past 4 years. For whatever reason, we reached the tipping point. Maybe it was my need to revert (after next week anyway!) to a more carefully controlled and scaled-back running schedule in order to try to heal my bursitis. Maybe it was the impending cold wet fall gloom and the narrow slushy highway of winter. Maybe it was definitively getting Sophie on-side in the treadmill camp. Anyway, there is is.

So here it is, squashed into the basement. The hope is that with the construction of a garage we’ll be able to get a bit of the junk out of the basement and clear room to both walk to the door and run on the treadmill. For the time being it’s either/or, and the treadmill folds up to allow one to get to the seldom-used back door. It doesn’t have fancy internet connectivity or a full-colour tablet with terrain-mapping or many other bells and whistles. It is quiet, and strong, and has the basic functionality we wanted. So theoretically after Sufferfest and any other fall hiking I ill-advisedly decide to do, I can start gently trying to rehab my Achilles area. It’s quiet enough that Sophie can use it in the mornings and any noise we hear is quiet enough to be in the “comforting white noise” category.

Already I’m amazed at how it allows me to fit running in more easily. So much of my week is spent knowing I have one or another child to pick up sometime in the next hour. Without the treadmill, I couldn’t run at those times, since running would take me away from home and phone range for the better part of an hour. Now I can just take that window of opportunity to hop on the treadmill. If the phone rings, so be it: I hop off, answer, and then drive to town to retrieve whichever teen or pre-teen needs a ride. If the phone doesn’t ring, I can finish a nice 5k while watching my way through a Downton Abbey rerun.

September 21, 2013
Suffer-bike-run

Sufferfest went almost exactly as I expected, except that it was harder, and more fun, and the weather was exceptionally fine. So, not exactly as I expected. But close.

The bike ride was long and hard. The 45k included about 1400 metres of climbing. I was worried I wouldn’t finish before the course closed: a number of people didn’t finish, and a few sneaked in just past the official cutoff but were granted finishes. It was a hard physical slog for longer than I’ve ever worked that hard. Longer than my marathon. I finished in under 5 hours, though not by much. Official times have not been posted. But I’m told I came 3rd overall among female riders. Maybe there were only three women? There were about 40 riders but it seems most of them were male.

Surprisingly I felt pretty good once I had a chance to catch my breath at the end of the day. I had a scrape on my leg from a small crash but that was all. I went home, slept and got up for the run. Muscles still seemed happy enough to oblige.

The 25k run was fine. It had about 650 metres of climb and an equivalent descent. As expected my bones and gristly bits held up well and the next day I just had a pleasant amount of muscle soreness. I managed to shave about 5 minutes off my 2010 time, sneaking in under 3 hours. Two years older and 5 minutes faster, even after a huge bike ride: I’ll take it!

It was a really motivating weekend. Especially with respect to the bike. I have a decent amount of endurance, but I realized it would help to be a lot stronger when it comes to powering up hills. So there’s something to work towards for next year.

Next year I’d like to do the bike ride again. And I think I’d like to run the 10k with Fiona. She’s started running with me and would like to keep that up. There were an impressive bunch of kids running the 10k this year, and she would like to be part of that next year.

October 3, 2012
Sufferfest v2.0

Two years ago I ran the 25k Sufferfest True Blue trail run. I hadn’t trained specifically for it, though I had been training hard that summer. It was the first year for Sufferfest and I wanted to support the event, just a stone’s throw from my home town. I originally thought to run the 10k event, though the 25k looked enticing. I had just run my first-ever race, an Alberta (i.e. flat) Half Marathon three weeks earlier and was feeling good. I figured an extra 4 kms wasn’t that big a difference.

But it turned out the Sufferfest trail run was a whole different animal. Steep up, steep down, rooty and rocky. I had also just switched over to minimalist trail shoes and though I had run in them a fair bit, I hadn’t really run any trails. I felt great at the outset and ran hard — over all that crazy terrain, which quickly took its toll on me. My knee and my foot were paying the price by the end and I did a long rallentando to the finish line. It took me weeks to recover.

So you’d think that if I entered Sufferfest again I’d be a little more judicious in my choice of events. But no, I’ve gone an entered the 25k again, despite a summer of little to no training. I’ve been running on and off, but no real long runs, only a handful over 5 km and nothing at all systematic. (And I’ve entered the 45k mountain-bike race the day before. It’s a length that’s almost double the longest trail ride I’ve ever done in my life.)

My old friend the Minimus 10

The bike stupidity aside, I feel differently about it all this time around. I have a lot more experience pacing myself over long runs and steep trails. I’ve been running in a minimalist way for a long time now. I plan to run in my Minimus Trail 10’s. They’re considerably more minimalist than the shoes I ran my first Sufferfest in, but now they rank as old favourites, and more shoe than I usually run in. On roads I run barefoot. On rough trails these days I wear either Unshoes, my home-made huaraches or Minimus Zeros. So the Minimus 10’s are a solid old standby. I know they’ll work for me. My muscles, ligaments and tendons have adapted to this kind of running — and some — and I’ve done a lot of miles on exactly the sort of trails I’ll be running this weekend. I’ve also noticed that my body is pretty good at endurance running. It forgives my completely non-systematic increases in mileage. I’m fine running nothing more than 5 km for a couple of months and then going out and doing a challenging 15k. Sure, Sufferfest is a big run and I’ll be tired and sore as stink, but I don’t think I’ll be injured.

Not unless that bike ride kills me. Stay tuned.

September 28, 2012