Weekly Summary May 24 - May 30

Good news this week was no evil food managed to upset my diet. I already confessed the Vickies and Hummus so that doesn't count. Another nice little increase in training time again, breaking the 8 hour mark with a total of 8:06, with a couple of good double days. There were few very nice highlights to the week.

1) Friday I had scheduled a 20min FF run followed by a strength workout. So I brought a Yoga mat I keep in my office for stretching on, did the FF run in the beautiful sunshine and then strength outdoors in the park. Beautiful. A bunch of people from work had all gone out for lunch and here I was running and exercising, guess where I preferred to be.

2) The weekend was the NCM race weekend here in Ottawa. Saturday evening Kim and Graham both ran the 10km race. This was Graham's first ever 10km race, and even though he would disagree he did really well. He was running strong until the 8km mark where he got a cramp and had to walk. The 8km mark is the tough point of a 10km race and he got to experience it first had. At least he is not giving up and may do a couple of other races (shorter) in the next few weeks. Kim cruised in, in 48mins. 30 secs over he BP, but she wasn't really pushing. She is getting stronger everyday.

3)Puppy Strider ran 6 days straight. With Kim and my schedule for the week it just worked out that for his morning walks they had to be easy runs. Nothing too long, 20-45 mins, but still he is developing a good base.

4) Sunday was a 3:30 run on some nice technical hilly trails in the Gats. It was an good test of nutrition and gear for Wakely. I kept my pace under control, so the distance wasn't that spectacular, but did get a lot of climbing in. Well I can quite honestly say that the caterpillar issue on the trails is pretty well a non-issue. I had visions of running and crunching caterpillars under my shoes for 3.5 hours. Don't think I stepped on one and only saw about 3 on the trail and had to brush 1 off my shoulder once. You can hear them munching away on the leaves, and there are bits of leaves on a lot of the trails, but not nearly has horrific as I had imagined it might be.

So this week is coming along well and will be a busy weekend, but everything is holding together well. Kim and I are being faithful with our Sauna routine and nutrition.

Weekly Summary May 17 - May 23

Figured I better get this posted before the end of the week. Busy times. So another week in the books and another good week where runs went as planned, stayed injury free (mostly), but unfortunately slipped on the diet a bit.

Total for the week was 7:24, so just a little over last weeks total. Highlight of the week was a 2:48 run on Saturday, on some pretty knarly trails in parts. So the diet was doing well until I heard the call of the M&M's from the freezer. What were they doing there? Well Kim thought it would be a good idea to have some for Kingston a couple weeks back and the leftovers we would save if we went out to a movie in the future. Ha! They lasted almost a week. Evil things. Then on Monday (technically this week), we broke out the Mrs Vickie's Crinkle Cuts and Hummus, Yum.

So for Saturday's run I was suppose to run on easy trail, and because of time constraints (I was out at 5:55 in the morning) I decided to run on the Trillium Woods trails close to home. Now these aren't the longest trails and I HATE running loops, so I decided to run one of the longer 7km sections (outback) as part of it. Foolish. I had forgotten how nasty this trail was. About 3km in I tripped on my right foot and jammed my left ankle. Nothing too serious but a wakeup call for sure. Finished the run, but I was dead at the end. That super technical stuff can really tire you out even without adding any significant hills.

Highlight of this week will be cheering at the NCM 10KM as Graham runs his first 10km, and Kim will be his official pacer (if it is cool to run with mom). Sunday I hope to get in 3:30 on the trails in the Gatineau Park with all the Caterpillars falling from the trees. Yuk!

Infrared Sauna

About 2 1/2 years ago I was flipping through a Get Out There Magazine and noticed an add for something called an Infrared Sauna. The advertisement was promoting the Sauna as an athlete recovery device, that also helps with injury prevention and rehabilitation. I was just about to start my training cycle to prepare for my first Boston, and as all runners had suffered a few injury set backs, this really peaked my interest. Also who doesn't enjoy the feeling of a good sweat in a sauna. So Kim and I hit the internet and started to do a little research on these Infrared Saunas. What we discovered really surprised us. I won't repeat all the facts that are repeated in a number of different sites, you can Google those, but here is a quick list of the highlighted benifits.

• Weight Loss
• Better Circulation and Increased Energy
  
• Cardiovascular Health
  
• Speed Recovery from Injuries
• Detoxification
• Improved Immune System
• Improves your strength and vitality
• Relieves pain (joint pain, sore muscles, arthritis)
• Combats cancer causing environmental causes

I encourage you to do a little research into these wonderful devices. One word of advice if you are looking for one is to purchase is to look at Carbon vs Ceramic heaters. The Carbon ones provide much better Infrared penetration.

Kim and I didn't spend too much time in it last year, we got lazy, but are back at it with a vengeance now. Anything we can do for Wakely, NYC, and longer happier lives.

Weekly Summary May 10 - May 16

Seems like forever since I posted a weekly summary but since we are now in full on training for Wakely and Haliburton it is time to get both serious and accountable. I seemed to have recovered both physically and mentally from Pittsfield and Boston and all ready to get serious again. Really looking forward to some nice longer training cycles and building on the strength I gained over the winter. Also one of my main focuses will be diet. Kim and I have both found our weight slipping up and those nasty M&M peanuts getting the better of us.

Total training time for the week was 7:17, with quite the mixed bag of activities.

Mon: Noon 30min Elliptical

Tues: PM 70min, including Beaver Chase see Perfect Evening

Wed: Noon 30min on grass in my Nike Free 5.0

Thu: AM 64min - Great early morning run in the Trillium woods

Fri: Rest

Sat: 5Peaks Kingston 2hr19min - What can I tell you, a perfect race day by an awesome RD and his crew. A million thanks to Derrick, Sara and all the volunteers that made this race happen. I actually ran the Enduro course as a warmup and then paced Kim through her race, followed it up with a nice easy cooldown. I really wanted to focus more on the training mile than speed for the day so being able to run the enduro course twice was great. A really fun trail (some how I ended up 2nd in my AG too. What a hoot)

Sun: 61min - Kim and I stopped at the Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area on our way out of Kingston Sunday morning. What a wonderful spot, just north of the 401 for a run. If you are ever in the Kingston area I would highly recommend checking it out.

We are having a busy week at home and work and heading towards the weekend it is not getting any easier, but we are hoping Monday will be a PJ day at home, butt on couch with coffee.

Perfect Evening

Last night was the first of four races that is part of the Beaver Chase series that Kim and I enjoy participating in each year. As we both had to do the same warm-up and cool-down we figured it was easiest to actually run to and from the race. Kim got home from work, changed, I brought a Backpack with everything we would need and off we went. The run to the race was nice and easy, we registered, chatted with some old and new friends and headed out to do our strides and finish our warm-up. The evening was perfect, overcast with a slight breeze, cool, but such that you still felt comfortable in shorts. We hovered around the start area, talking with more acquaintances, many we hadn’t seen since last August at last year’s final race. We both had a guideline of race pace from Derrick that in all seriousness we were planning on following. So the race started with the typical – “Go!” and off we went. I fell into my stride fairly quickly and noted that I was way faster than goal pace, but cleared most of the initial crowd and settled in. I was focusing on my average overall pace and up to the half way I was running a fairly relaxed 4:20/km so I figured I’d step it up just a bit. A short while later we had to run an out and back section, coming back I passed Kim, grinning like the Cheshire Cat because she too was running faster than Coaches Pace, and feeling great. I passed one other guy and headed for home finishing off the last few hundred meters feeling better than I have at any previous BC races. My final time was 22:40 for the 5.4km route and I felt like I wasn’t straining at all through the race. Almost exactly 3 mins later Kim came sprinting in passing a young kid that has been her nemesis at previous races. Both of us way exceeded our expectations for the night and felt great and had a good time doing it. We chatted and cheered for a while and finally grabbed the backpack and headed home for our cool down. The entire run home we were replaying the race to each other, laughing and glowing. As soon as we got home, we grabbed a bite to eat and then both of grabbed our Laptops to upload our race data, and stood back waiting for Derrick to yell at us for misbehaving.

So I recount this story with the title because last night it was great to be a running couple. From the time we headed out to the time, really we went to bed, it was all about running and each other. We supported each other, kept each other company, fed of each other, celebrated together and just had a blast doing one of the things we love the most. What makes it even more special, was the day before we celebrated our 19^th wedding anniversary. When you think about being married to your life long partner and friend, nights like last night are truly what it is all about. Thanks my love, can’t wait for the run on the beach in Barbados for our 20^th.