Category: Being active
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Marathon Training: Week 6
I’m proud of my 28 black boxes. They mean I have done some sort of aerobic workout (running, biking or both) every day for the past 28 days. My total time spent exercising is going up by about an hour a week, with most of that increase due to running (the green bars). This was the first […]
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Something of Substance
This is where I really start training. It’s no longer about just building mileage through daily runs. SOS stands for “something of substance” and it refers to runs that have a particular training focus. There will be three of these every week from now on. One will focus on speed (or later strength), one will […]
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The trainer
Well thank goodness. I was just getting sick. That was why I was feeling so tired. Two days and three nights of low-grade fevers, aching legs, headache and fatigue. Then … nothing. My immune system seems to have won. So, this is my bike trainer. I got it last summer, used, for $150. It’s a CycleOps […]
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Cumulative fatigue
It’s a good thing, supposedly. At least in this case. But I’m feeling it today! The idea is to train your body for endurance without doing outrageously long or difficult workouts, but by simply doing them frequently enough that your body doesn’t recover completely in between. By pushing your body to do more work before […]
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Here I go!
I took the plunge the other day and signed up for a marathon at the beginning of May. The idea had been rattling around in the back of my head for at few months and I didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to committing, but then on a whim I clicked on an email […]
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Another marathon?
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 […]
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2015 Loop
Last year I carved some time out of July to do a self-powered trip along the Silvery Slocan Circle Route. I did it counter-clockwise over three days, combining kayaking, running and road-biking. This year, with a new-to-me road bike recently acquired, I decided to do the same route all on two wheels. I rode clockwise for […]
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Summer, here and gone
It was an early summer. The trees were greening up a good 3-4 weeks earlier than usual, and the season continued to unfurl early. The lake got “warm” (as warm as it ever does) in June. The wildfires were burning by the end of June. The huckleberries peaked in mid July. The wildflowers up Idaho peak […]
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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 […]
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(Two) New wheels
I bought myself a new bike. It’s a 2005, so it’s already middle-aged as bikes go, but it is in great shape and is a world apart from my 1989 Terry Symmetry, which was decidedly elderly and decrepit. The Terry was my first step up from the world of chain-store bikes and it has stood me […]
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Getting around
Here’s our minivan. We bought it about 18 months ago and it transformed my driving experience. It made access to alpine hikes a breeze. Road trips and drive-in movies were awesome. I loved not having to hike in from the highway end of our driveway even once last winter, and knowing that winding mountain roads […]
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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 […]
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My Fitbit
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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
