New Year's Eve got off to a great start: after a really wonderful, snowy trail run, I changed at the car and we hiked up the trail for a fantastic meal (ok, more like 2.5 meals) at an incredible local barbecue joint.
 |
| I hadn't yet seen this part of the trail in winter - it's breathtaking! |
 |
| There are no photos of the ridiculous quantity of animal parts we consumed. Even the collard greens had bacon in them! |
After hiking (more like waddling) back to the car, we drove over to Bingemans to check out their Gift of Lights display, some of which I'd run through earlier as the trail. It's quite an impressive bit of work, including animated figures and a neat tunnel of lights that I got to run through twice on foot and once in the car.
By the time we got home and I'd managed to shower, I was in rough shape. I spent the rest of New Year's Eve prostrate on the couch, sniffling and coughing in a torpor. Tanker roused me to some kind of life a few minutes before midnight, we watched the CBC coverage at Parliament Hill to kick off Canada's 150th year, and after a bit of stand-up comedy I dragged myself upstairs to bed. Party animal!
The first few days of this brand new year have been spent agonizing over a series of car issues (that we finally seem to have sorted out - knock wood!) and fighting a sinus infection with swelling severe enough to cause stabbing toothaches and incessant phlegm.
 |
| And the throbbing - OH GAWD THE THROBBING |
Thankfully, it's never progressed past "head stuffed with goo", so I've been able to continue getting some fun stuff in, like our New Year's Day cross-country ski (and hot chocolate brew-up in the woods):
 |
| So happy the Mill Run Trail is (mostly) open again. |
Plus a backyard campfire to end the first day of the year:
 |
| We only found out once we were out there that it had dropped to -10c/14f. |
I've kept on running, too, though the workouts have been fairly short and I've been prioritizing sleep (for once in my bloody life). Apart from being ill, I'm trying to ensure I might have some hope of getting through Saturday.
 |
| At this. |
Despite some lingering snifflyness and the recent Arctic blast of air (windchill of -20c/-4f for last night's run) being the worst thing possible for heat acclimatization, I do still intend to at least show up for the RUN4RKIDS 8-hour indoor ultra. I have no idea what I'll be able to accomplish in my rather diminished state (which I'm assured is not communicable), but I'm going to give it a whack. I hope to manage at least 45 or 50 kilometers - enough to really call it an ultra - but I simply won't know what's possible until I get out there and moving. Having never run an 8-hour before, nor run on an indoor track, I have no benchmarks or performance expectations - I'll just show up and put one foot in front of the other until either 8 hours or my tolerance has expired.
Please, no bets on which comes first.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Go on, have at me!