Tender

 A long time ago, in a galaxy not far away..

Umm, actually the same one. This one. At least I think..

..I played hockey. Most people who say that were sensible enough to play as either a forward or defenseman, but when have you ever known me to be sensible? I've never wanted to be anything but a goalie.

I'm not known for my good decisions.

I played a couple of years in the Mississauga Girls' Hockey League, a couple of years in the Mississauga (boys') Hockey League, and a couple of year for my highschool. My last season was 1998-1999, before I was even 20 years old. I got in a little ice time here and there after I got together with Tanker in 2001 - a bit of shinny on outdoor rinks in Alberta, and then some occasional ragtag scrimmages with guys he worked with after we moved to Ontario: one of his coworkers was friends with the guy who closed up Meadowvale Four Rinks on Saturday nights, so every month or two we'd sling this guy a case of beer and a few bucks per person, and we'd get to play for a couple of hours after the end of the last legitimate ice time - usually around 1am-3am or something ridiculous like that. 

That came to an end (I'm not sure if the guy changed jobs or took flack for his indiscretions) in 2005-ish, and that was it for hockey until an alumni tournament popped up for my old highschool in April of 2010.

I still had my old jersey!

I was in my first real season of triathlon, having only started running in November of 2008. I was 30 years old, in far better shape than I'd been in highschool, and had a ball on the ice...even though we kind of got slaughtered in the tournament, and only about 5 of us showed up for the Sunday game after everyone went out to Dave & Busters after the Saturday games. 

Team photo from Saturday, before the outbreak of brewer's asthma

After that, running just took over. I'd run my very first ultra 6 months later, spend another 5 years racing triathlons, and hockey - apart from something to watch, either at a rink for some local junior action or on tv - just fell out of my life again. 

..but all the equipment stayed.

I changed jobs in 2020, and learned that the company I joined had previously participated in a charity hockey tournament. Covid, of course, prevented any such thing from going forward in 2021, but toward the end of the year one of the women in our R&D department posted that the Let's Body Check Cancer tournament was probably a go for April 2022, and who would be interested in joining?

I didn't stop to think - I just threw my hat in the ring, especially since the co-ed tournament rules require that we have 2 women on the ice at all times. With me in net, we were already halfway there!

Except, it had been twelve years since I last strapped on the pads. In that time I'd broken my left wrist, destroyed my right ankle, had multiple major back injuries, and have been struggling with a low back/left hip issue for a few years now. When I started playing I was a teen-aged competitive dancer and could do the splits all 3 ways, and throw my legs behind my head. Now I'm past forty, and trying to raise my leg above waist height is...problematic. Let me tell you: ultrarunning is not particularly conducive to good flexibility.

So, I got to work. About 4 weeks ago, I started stretching daily, quickly finding a series of YouTube videos and even some free programmes from Maria Mountain of GoalieTrainingProTV. 10-20mins per day of focused stretching and mobility work, in hopes of not actually having all of my hamstrings and adductors explode..

I also dragged out my hockey bag, pulling out all the gear to see what - if anything - needed repairing or replacing.

Chest protector and gloves are (more or less) good to go

Still remember how the skates and pads go on, and can still reach all the straps!

These were the same model pads Damian Rhodes used as backup goalie for the Leafs in 1994

My old Tackla goalie pants were sadly NOT good to go - once we realized how much so, Tank immediately quarantined them in a sealed garbage bag, and got them out of the house before someone came to have us tried under the Geneva Convention. Having looked at the only stick I still owned, I discovered it would likely shatter into splinters if it were actually called upon to stop a puck, so I found a great deal on a (probably slightly too long) newfangled lightweight composite one.

Think the tape will make shooters go crosseyed?

Sarah - our tournament organizer at our company - let us know that RIM Park had adult public skate times on Saturday nights, so I laced 'em up for the first time in probably a decade to see if I still knew how edges worked.

The old volleyball knee pads are indicative of my level of confidence

Fortunately, I'd been taught to skate as a toddler, so the habits of a lifetime took over and I managed to stay correct side up.

Yeah, I wore a pair of hockey gloves as well, in case of crashing.

I found a pair of ridiculously discounted knee pads - seriously, they were $90 marked down to $10! - and started using them to protect my knees while stretching in the livingroom every night. Since the floor is just cement under the carpet (with no underpad), this was a big help!

Fionny - while adorable - was less helpful

I'd found a pair of discounted goalie pants - which have all sorts of extra bits of padding when compared to regular (way less expensive) skater's pants - online, and they arrived in a big cardboard box. Putting them on, I was astonished by how big they were!

HOLY CRAP Y'ALL

These were literally advertised as being a "more tapered fit for a more flexible, mobile goaltender"

Do these hockey pants make my butt look big?
Just jokes - I know it's actually my butt itself that does that.

I did some finagling and adjusting and finally got them to more or less play nice with my chesty, and my brand new pair of suspenders (as my old ones were shot).

..but I'll still have to go through doorways sideways.

Saturday night again: my second skate! I wore my new knee pads this time for a little extra armour, and tried some more goalie-specific skating.

C-cuts and T-pushes and shuffles, oh my!

Come Sunday, I decided to try putting the whole business together..

How to build a goalie

Turns out the knee pads I got won't work with my old sofa cushions, so I'll stick with the stock thigh boards and...hope for the best?

At least I could move!

Stretching daily continued, with some decent progress - I'm still a long way from my bendy old days of youth, but have a lot more range than I did when I started.

This is the side impacted by back/hip issues, so isn't great - but better than before!

The other side is a little better

Jonathan Quick I'm not, but this is only after 3 weeks of work!

I'd noticed that the ol' trapper was looking a little worse for wear around the edges, lacing-wise, so I ordered a kit (nylon cord and a specialized threaded needle) from Bay Area Hockey Repair in California, and hoped it would arrive in time.

Because I wasn't sure it would survive the tournament..

With 8 days to go before puck drop, the kit arrived...leaving me to figure out how the heck my glove was put together, so I could take it all apart and re-do the perimeter.

It isn't particularly intuitive, and was highly stressful

I went slow, un-lacing and re-lacing a bit at a time

Done - ready to flash some leather!

Fast forward to the final Saturday night before the tourney, and my last chance to get on the ice - I was a little shaken up from some other stuff going on in my life, but got out there anyway. 

Going to take it as a good omen that this was the last song of the final skate!

So now I was down to details, really. Tanker had convinced me to buy a new mask, as the one I had was more than 2.5 decades old, the foam had hardened, the elastic had gone, most of the clips were broken, and there was a somewhat worrying crack in the chin.

Not to mention it had been living inside the leg of my old hockey pants, so putting my face in it was probably not my best choice.

The new mask was just white, though, apart from some branding. Who wants to play in some plain-jane mask? So I decided to try my hand at some DIY graphics..

With waxed paper, scissors, and electrical tape

This tried my patience enough that I very nearly abandoned the whole stinkin' project.

1/10 do not recommend

However, I actually kind of like the end result..

Simple, but I think it works

Not bad for a first attempt, anyway

Not really happy with the back plate, but the beauty is that I can just peel it off..

Nice to have a little war paint!

Now down to a day before the tourney, I started packing all my kit into my giant hockey bag, and noticed that all of the elastic in my chest protector is completely shot. I'd tied some knots in it previously to snug things up as it had stretched significantly even before the tournament in 2010, but even those left things a little loose now. So, I worked those apart, and snugged down the arms and the strap across the back.

It's messy, but should help things stay in place better

For some of the elastic, all I could think of was to stitch some folds into it to take up some slack.

It doesn't have to be pretty - it just has to work.

So now everything is in the bag - it only just barely fits with those huge freakin' pants - and I'm about as ready as I'm gonna get. 

..which is not necessarily confidence inspiring.

I don't have any ideas about setting the world on fire at this tournament, but would at least like to be an asset rather than liability to my team, and hopefully not hurt myself too badly. 

Hoping my team won't be willing to trade me for this after the first game!

If you'd like to come out and watch the hilarity that is almost assuredly to ensue, we have games at 6:30pm on Friday (April 8th, 2022), 10am and 6pm Saturday (April 9th, 2022), and either at 10:15am, 11am, or 12:15pm on Sunday (April 10th, 2022) at Cambridge Sports Park. If you'd just like to donate to help fund life-saving cancer research - the real reason for all this madness - you can use THIS LINK to do so online!

Of course, my secret hope is that once...just once...I'll be able to hear that "OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH" as some shooter realizes his "sure thing" goal just disappeared into my glove instead of the net, or bounced off one of my practically-antique pads and harmlessly into the corner.

A girl can dream, right?

Tank will be on site taking photos and video, so no matter what the outcome, I'll see y'all on the other side!

With a bit of luck, I'll even still be able to walk..

Shaken Snowglobe

 For newcomers here, hi! It's 100 runs in 100 days season, so I basically run twice a day each Saturday and Sunday.

Also: I'm sorry you've reached a point in your life where you feel my blog is the best thing you have to read right now. I hope things improve very soon, and in the meantime I'll try to include pretty pictures!

Saturday - apart from the blistering cold in the morning as I ran down to the farmers' market - was relatively uneventful.

Though did include this spectacularly frozen waterfall in the morning, and the stunning sunset above in the evening

The trails, though, were covered in ice - it was difficult for my screw shoes to get traction in the morning due to the deep cold (it was something like -14c), and while it warmed significantly through the day (to about -1c by evening), spikes were definitely required. To make matters worse, freezing rain began to fall that night, and with temperatures expected to climb above 0c on Sunday I anticipated slush. The wind was also howling terribly throughout the day, which led to me procrastinating about running - even the first run - until late in the afternoon, when I finally got myself kitted up and headed down the hill to a little tract nearby.

In spikes again, because the cold wind meant everything was still treacherously icy

The clouds had broken apart as I dressed, and I arrived just as the sun dropped behind the trees.

It looked like it would be a beautiful evening

The wind still whipped powerfully through the forest, with gusts producing alarming creaks and cracks over the cronch-cronch-cronch of my spikes biting into the ice below my feet. 

Please forgive my shoddy camera work!

I finished up in the last of the daylight - a few cedar-lined metres of trail had to be run on faith alone, as I couldn't really see - with a bright moon riding high above.

Just a few little puffs of cloud to catch the warm sunset hues

The way out - a shining ribbon of ice leading into the darkness of the woods

My plan was simple: drive the handful of minutes home, have a snack while I waited the requisite hour between the finish of one run and start of the next, then run point-to-point so I could escape the worst effects of the still-powerful wind from the west. I'm incredibly fortunate to have my amazing husband Tanker on board with these ridiculous ideas: he'd drive to the other end of the trail, go for a bit of a hike of his own, then wait for me to appear to drive me home. My end of the bargain is just to plod along from one place to another.

Things looked marginally more complicated as we reached the top of the hill on which we live, mere moments after that clear moonlit sky - we suddenly found ourselves in a blizzard!

Safely home...but what did this mean for the second run?

It was a bit more than an hour before I set out once more - in a warmer, dry shirt under a dry jacket, and with a headlamp on my toque-layered head. The temperature had fallen again, but the snow had stopped; the skies, however, were thick with low clouds that reflected the light from the suburbia surrounding the trail.

The headlamp was just along for the ride

I ran (and walked, on weary legs made heavier by the spikes still slipped over my shoes) upriver and downwind.

Towering freeway lights in the distance like false moons below the clouds

As I reached the one section of trail that would take me briefly into the teeth of the wind, the snow began to fall once more.

I guess I shouldn't have worn my "Let it Snow" toque!

Crossing the bridge over the river, it picked up from flurry to squall, and the headlights of an oncoming car danced with thick flakes illuminated in their beams.

..and falling in silent legions into the river below

As I trotted and trudged through the final section of trail, the swirling mass of snow about me had reached whiteout proportions. I tried turning my headlamp on for a moment while paused, and immediately turned it back off again.

At least I could mostly see without it - with it on, I was nearly blind

Despite running downwind, the sheer volume of snow in the air meant it started to cling and drift on me - on the brim of the hat I wore beneath my toque, on my shoulders, on the fuzzy nose wipe material on the thumbs of my mittens. 

I'd be lucky if Tank recognized me to give me a ride, rather than trying to cut off my arm with a lightsaber

The squall was relentless, and I was forced to move even slower as the blanket of white hid the roots and depressions in the trail, making even spiked footing a bit treacherous.

The trail is mostly groomed, but there are still a few things that could send me sprawling

In the end, it took me forty two minutes to "run" just over five and a half kilometers - nearly fifty, if I include time spent stopped, either catching my breath or marveling at the storm. I came upon Tanker at the eastern trailhead, vigorously engaged in brushing snow off the car: nearly 3cm (more than an inch) had fallen in the thirty-ish minutes since it began. 

There was only one thing left to do..

Let's test the snow depth a little..

As I tried to stand, I found my fleece skirt and even my braid had frozen to the ground! It was a bit of an effort to get up, but I was able to regain my feet and survey my work by the headlights of the car.

Remember how there had only been the merest skiff of snow during my first run, just 2hrs before?

Then it was time to try to brush myself off before I carried an entire drift into the car with me.

I've never been so grateful to have a thermos of hot chocolate waiting for me!

I'm grateful that I was able to safely get through such a wild experience - it was truly awesome to be in the thick of such a storm, to have it swirl around me while everyone with any sense was holed up indoors. I wouldn't advocate for doing it on purpose as I'd hate for anyone to have a bad outcome, but it was something I'll definitely remember for some time!

The real kicker? Within five minutes of leaving the trailhead, there was no longer a flake in the sky. The snowglobe had settled once more.