"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" ~ Seneca

Sunday, May 25, 2014

To the hills

Yesterday was race day and it turned out quite well.  The weather was perfect, sunny, slight breeze, ~15c at the start. It did get warm durning the race, but better than rain or snow. I do wish they would have earlier starts for these races, push it to an 8 am start and then it won't get so warm. But enough of my complaining, on to the race:
I signed up for the 15K and went in with little to no training. We had just come back from holidays in Hawaii where the majority of my exercise was walking & swimming. I was curious to see what (if any) endurance I had. Again my goal for this race was to finish. So we started off just after 9 with a gradual climb to Nose Hill. Afte the first km my mouth felt dry, so I popped some stinger chews and drank some Nuun. I settled into an easy pace knowing the hills were coming. I'm not a fan of run:walk, but today I was listening to my body. So I walked up the hills. Sometimes I would walk to the top, sometimes I would start running before I crested. So I puttered along on my own. I hit the 7.5 km turn around point at ~52 min. Drank some water, gave myself a pep talk and started the trip back.
I was looking forward to the downhill, but there were a lot of rollers so the downhill didn't truly kick in until ~12.5 km. I tried to open up my stride and let gravity do most of the work.  I found out how challenging it is to run negative splits- even downhill! I was able to click a time of 1:45:06. Considering I ran a 15K last year on the flats along the Bow in ~1:40 last year, I'm happy with this. Just imagine if I had trained?!
Here's to the MEC Calgary, Race #4 in 3 weeks at North Glenmore Park.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Getting back to it

First run last night after a 3 week break from running. Mind you I was swimming most every day, either snorkeling, jumping waves or treading water; not just sitting around. I used this as a test run to see if i should sign up for the next MEC race (#3 for those keeping count). 
While this was not the easiest of runs, it wasn't terrible.  5k in 33 min. Then I walked a bit. Then I ran another 1.6 km, a bit slower. 
So gauging from my breathing and effort, I went ahead and signed up for the 15km run. My main goal is to finish, end of story. It's hard to set a time goal, since 1) the first part of the race is uphill and 2) I haven't been running regularly. 1 hour 30 min would be a dream goal, but again just want to finish and have fun. We shall see. Forecast says rain, but that's better than snow, right?