Running

Meredith and I have been meeting three times a week to run.  We are running in the 10k Sun Run on April 17th.  I have run it twice before, and Meredith has run it three times.  Our best time was just under 63 minutes.  So this year the goal is to run it under 60 minutes.  Seems like an easy goal, or at least it did at the start of our training.  We started following one training plan, and then switched over a couple of weeks ago, because the original one wasn't increasing the minutes of running per week enough.  So now we have 30 training runs under our belt, and 11 more to go before the big day.  Because Meredith works a regular daytime job, we would have to meet after she was off work for two of the days, so many of the runs were done or at least finished in the dark, and it seemed like more often than not it was raining as well.  It has been a wet winter.  We do one weekend daytime run.  We try to vary locations, and prefer not to run alongside busy roads.  Our training sessions start out with 5 minutes of walking, then an intervals of running with one minute of walking in between, and then a cool down walk at the end.

Usually I take Luna.  She is attached by leash to a belt around my waist, and she runs out in front of me, or maybe slightly off to the left.  Generally it works well, with one exception.  Two weeks ago we ran in my neighbourhood.  We were just about finished, it was a matter of a second or two before the timer went for our  five minute cool down walk.  I glanced at Meredith, and Luna chose that instant to cross right in front of me, and down I went.  The heels of my hands sort of took my weight (and I'm thankful I didn't break a wrist), and then I collapsed onto Luna and tried to embed my right elbow and knee into the pavement. We were close to home which was kind of nice since there was a bit of blood dripping.  It seems to have healed up okay, the scabs are just about ready to start falling off.  My right shoulder took a hit too, and I didn't need that, because I have a few falls that have already been hard on that shoulder. Sometimes it's hard to lay on that side in bed.

Here's a few pictures from some of our runs.  I kind of suck at taking decent pictures with my phone while running.  There were lots of ducks and geese on this section.  The gander that is just about to take flight here was stood in the middle of the trail honking and challenging us as we were running up.  Thankfully he 'chickened' out as we got closer.  They can be quite aggressive when you get close to their nests, but they probably aren't nesting quite yet.

Doing our stretches at the end of the run.  Sometimes it is so wet that we just hop in our cars and say we will do our stretches at home, and promptly forget.  This was at the start/end of the Discovery Trail and there was a gazebo thing that kept the rain off us. Klutzy Luna walked further along this wall to where a post came out of it, and promptly fell off.

On Wednesday of this week we had a long run, 55 minutes running time, broken into 10/15/20/10 minute segments.  Our first one that we could take advantage of DST, and an actual sunny day! We parked at the dyke along the Fraser River and then ran uphill to Douglas Taylor Park, and back. It worked out well that the 20 minute segment was mostly downhill.  The sun was just setting as we were finishing off. Looking to the southwest at the last of the sun on Mt. Baker in Washington state.  That was a tough run.

On Friday (Meredith had taken that day off, it was a slow week at work due to Spring Break) we ran the 'easy' run of the week.  It was 6 intervals of 5 minute runs.  I said since it is our last 'easy' run for a few weeks, lets add a little spice to it and do some trail running in Downes Bowl. There was a nice cool breeze blowing that day, and it was sunny!, but down in the Bowl, which is quite protected, the air was still, and very soon we were quite HOT. The hills were hard work, and halfway through we said enough of that and headed out and up onto the flatter ground where there was a breeze.

In the bottom in a swampy area. A nice boardwalk to run on.

The end of the boardwalk 

And back up the hill we go, we went up and down a few times.

The next couple of weeks we do some long runs, and the easiest one is 4 intervals of 10 minutes running.  The hardest is an hour with just a one minute break in the middle. You'd think by this point that a run of 5 minute intervals would seem so easy, but really it doesn't. I'm waiting for that feeling of having wings on my feet.  

I think I will be waiting a long time.