at the end

Well, the big day is almost here. I’m a little disappointed with how I finished my training. I had a lot of other things going on in the last few weeks so I didn’t really do my best.

Amy says that’s ok, because I’m supposed to ‘taper’ at the end. I’m not sure two full weeks (except for ultimate) counts as tapering, more like slacking I think.

Either way, it’s time to get this done. We’ve been building to this for several months. Hard to believe that it will be all over by 10:30 in the morning.

Earlier in the training, I’d optimistically thought that I could get to the point where I’d do the run in 1hr40min. Now I’m hoping for 1hr50 but realize that if I can do it in 2 hours it will be a success.

Thanks for reading everyone! Keep watching to see what happens to this blog next!

The Eve of the Big Day

The big day is finally (almost) here. Michael and I are sitting around listening to the Jays and waiting for bed. We’ve eating our spaghetti, and drank lots of water… visions of sugar-plums dance in our heads.

I’m confident I’ll finish, but I have no idea how long it will take. I’ve noticed that if I run at a pace for a while it’s hard to speed up. I’d like to finish in under 2 hours.

Michael says it’s time for me to stop blogging because he has important things to share with the blogosphere.

Good night.

You win!

Ok, I give up.  You’ve won the training/blogging portion of this project.  I’ve gotten really, really lazy over the last few weeks.

I have been running and playing ultimate, but I haven’t been doing as much as I should.  Once I realized that I could do the half marathon, my motivation dropped.  I haven’t had anything really interesting to say about my runs, so I’ve been silent.

Other than the occassional run, I haven’t done anything that significant as far as training goes.  Unless you count disc golf.  I’ve been playing 2-3 times a week this month.  If this was a throw a disc and then chase it for 21km race.  I’d win for sure.

Ok, that’s it for now.  I’ll post something thoughtful and reflective a day or two before the race.

Friday – 7am

Distance: 5km

Breakfast’s call was mighty, so I took it easy this morning and only did a 5k. Breakfast ended up being as mighty as its call.

One more long run this weeekend and then I cruise to race-day.

Wednesday – 7am

Distance: 10.3922 km

Not much to say, except that I’ve now run over 400 km since November. Wahoo.

Tuesday – 7am

Distance: 10.7933 km
Time: 56 minutes

I really didn’t want to finish this morning. This was run #3 in 6 days which is a bit much compared to the couple of weeks prior. That combined with a bit of dehydration from not drinking as much water in proportion to the amount of turkey I’ve been eating made for a bit of stiffness.

I’ll put in a couple more this week and then an 18-20km run this weekend. Next week I’ll be taking it easy with a couple of 6km’s leading up to the big day on Sunday.

I stopped by the shoe store and picked up a couple gels and gabbed with the clerk about when to replace shoes. I thought my shoes would be ok for like 200000k (my car is doing fine at that milage). Apparently more like 400-800 is normal depending on “whether or not I run like an elephant”. Yikes. I just added up the total of all my runs and I’ve gone 390.217 km. Hopefully they last a bit longer!

Sunday – 830am

Distance: 9.49 km
Time: ??

Another beautiful run by the lake, and then home for a plate of leftover ham and pie. Long weekends are great.

Friday – 1pm

Distance: 16.4916 km
Time: ??

In Kingston this weekend, and I was reminded how great it is to live in such an incredible country. I mapped out a 15km route on gmaps but I only roughly knew the area so I spent a bit of time backtracking looking for paths. In one case what looked like a path from satellite view was in fact some train tracks (not a hazard I wish to take regularly). Then once I got to the waterfront rather than following the road (as planned) I started following whatever trail I could find. My 15km turned into (almost) 16.5km. I think this was the most beautiful run I’ve ever taken. The water on my right, running through parks… very nice indeed.

Wednesday – 7am

Distance: 10.1404
Time: 58 minutes

I went out thinking I’d run 6km, but then fear of the big day (see below) pushed it up to 10. The route I took also included a walk through the Tim’s line-up to get my bagel/coffee, and then I ran the last 1/2 km with those in my hand. Does that count for extra?

Not that I’m actually really for real concerned, but with the big day approaching I’m starting to feel a bit of pressure. I haven’t run more than 12km in a few weeks and now I’ve only got about a week and a half of real training (the last week I’ll probably just go for a couple short runs). I want to go for a 17km on Friday, and then next week bump it up to 20km, and then ride the last week before the race with a couple of morning 6’s.

Working on Speed

Spring arrived, and then it left.  Yuck.

I really need to work on speed, so I decided to run laps around the park last night.  It is exactly 1km around Victoria Park.  I figured I’d do 5 laps and see if I could keep my time under 5 min/lap.

The weather was awful.  It was windy and it was rainsnowing the whole time.  I hope this doesn’t last.

I did the 5 laps.  Only the first and last laps were under 5 minutes.  I guess I still have some work to do.  Not much time left before the race but it’s something to work on in the future.

I can’t run tonight, but I’ll go out for 10 or 11k on Wednesday.  The weather will be nice on the weekend, so I’ll try for two longer runs.