Change of pace

Last week I talked about how pleasant it can be to explore beautiful trails with friends...then went out and basically did the exact opposite of that the following day.

Definitely not the Bruce Trail.

I decided to forgo my usual run down to the famers' market in favour of a race-specific training stimulus, and also a sort of test. You see, usually my runs are in a state of near-constant interruption: when I run on my lunch or after work there are stoplights that interfere with the flow, and when I run trails on weekends I'm usually hiking (ok, walking) up hills or stopping to take photos of all the pretty things around me. It's not really a bad thing: in most races I end up hiking the hills, carefully mincing my way through anything even the least bit technical so my clumsy arse doesn't fall and hurt myself, and at least stopping at aid stations to fill my hand bottle...if not actually stopping to take 600+ photos of the course itself.

Having done all this for years now, I had serious doubts about my ability to run for any sustained period of time. I wanted to know if I still had enough running endurance (rundurance?) to keep on truckin' for a couple of hours, particularly over fairly flat terrain. I'm doing something really stupid next weekend that makes this of rather pressing interest, and Saturday was about my last opportunity to give it a whack.

I needed a course that would have little elevation change and allow me to run without interruptions - minimal road intersections, and nothing really spectacular that would persuade me to abandon my primary mission in favour of exploration and photography. I had just the thing.

Look out - there might be a slight curve in a mile or so.

I got Tanker - who has always been such a good sport about such things - to drop me off at the Jean Rich Trailhead near km58 of the Cambridge to Paris Rail Trail so I could run back and meet him at our favourite café. A little shy of a 19km stretch of open trail with very little to distract me.

Almost flat, but with a slight net uphill.

Fortunately I had a mild tailwind to offset the gain.

Setting off at 4pm with the sun due to set at 4:50pm, I just tried to find a comfortable, sustainable pace, and made it about an hour and a half (and just shy of 15km) before needing to bust out my headlamp. I had brought a few gels with me, but I'd eaten a peameal bacon-and-duck-egg laden bagel for a late brunch a couple of hours before starting and was still getting some nasty burps as the sun went down. I took an electrolyte tab at 1h7m as dusk drew in as my vision was going a bit weird - I have a theory that sodium loss affects my sight because your eyeballs are basically just bags of saltwater - but other than that I just drank water.

And watched this on repeat for the best part of a couple of hours.

I had to pause ever so briefly at Footbridge Road (km72) for an oncoming car that waved me through, but as I ran through the darkness an idea occurred to me: since I'd got my Garmin watch in April of 2016 my only 21km-ish runs had been on trail, so Garmin Connect still showed that my half marathon PR was something like 2h48m - a far cry from my actual (very modest but still a bit quicker) road half marathon best time of 1h58m13s. It would be pretty easy to extend my route a little to see if I couldn't draw that down a bit closer to my real capabilities..

..so of course I did. An extra few blocks through Galt, where I did have to stop at a couple of stoplights, but I ended up with a final "chip" time of 2:12:49 with a total start-to-finish duration of 2:14:20. 

Not so bad for an ultra dork.

I will freely admit that the run beat me up a fair bit and wore me the heck out, which does not necessarily bode well for next weekend...but then again nothing about that race really seems like a good idea, so why moan about it? I managed another slow, easy 10k on some lovely trails the next day, stopping whenever I wished to take photos in brilliant sunshine.

Which was often, as the Royal Recreation Trail is a favourite.

I also got a little cross training in toward the end of the run.

Show me a climbing wall and I only know one way to behave.

Monday I was back to my usual lunch run shenanigans, but Tuesday I ended up working through my lunch break at a client's office, and then a fair bit of overtime as well. I managed to slip out of the office around 6:30pm for a quick run, but knowing I needed to do some more work after I got back meant I needed it to be as efficient a use of time as possible. So, I did another thing I never do: hill repeats.

My office is on a street with a decent size hill in the middle, and the only way I could run 5-ish kilometers without encountering an intersection - and particularly the 4-way stop that is a terrifying free-for-all just 200m from my office's driveway - was to run out-and-back over the sizeable hill 3 times, for a total of 6 uphills. 

I also learned it's a smidge bigger in one direction than the other.

I'd hoped that working until 8pm was the last of the arse kicking the universe had in store for me on Tuesday, but it was not to be - our water heater apparently breathed its last gasp sometime after we got home, with Tanker and I using the last of its labours before collapsing into bed. I called Wednesday morning to see when we could get it repaired, but the first appointment that wouldn't require one of us to take a day off work wouldn't be until Friday evening.

I did my usual post-work 8-ish kilometer run down toward my Mum's house for a visit on Wednesday, but then the weather snapped cold again on Thursday, when I don't really have a lunch break on which to run. I couldn't quite bring myself to venture out in the frosty night air once we got home from work, knowing that there'd only be cold water to wash up afterward. So, I actually took a day off running to do something else that has seldom happened this year.

*GASP*

Yep - I splashed my way through only my 5th swim of 2019, and my first since mid-June. I was annoyed to find they'd removed the pace clock in my absence - I can't seriously be the only one who uses it! - but it was gratifying to realise I could still make my way through the water half decently via all 4 major strokes (freestyle/front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly...though it was more like butterflop), if a bit slowly and with a lot of gasping. My reward afterward was a pleasant stretch session in the on-deck hot tub and a lovely, hot shower.

Happy dork!

So, it was definitely a change up for me in the past few days, and I'm probably better for it - doing the same thing all the time lets you stagnate, while new training stimuli drive adaptations that will keep you getting fitter. With the 100 runs in 100 days challenge about to start on Sunday, though, I don't expect it'll last. Let the absurdly contrived plodding begin!