Alternative methods

I did not run that much in the month of April.

Even though it's getting pretty out!

Between the goalball tournament at the beginning of the month and the hockey tournament on the penultimate weekend, there just wasn't really much time...though admittedly I did get out for a little bop the Sunday of the hockey tourney.

On the same trails I usually run down to the market every Saturday

I know I should be getting some big hours of training in with some of the lofty goals I have for later this year, but there's a caveat here: just because I'm not running a ton doesn't mean I'm not doing a lot of aerobic work. Consider these two heart rate records:

Each about 90mins, averaging 144bpm and 142bpm respectively

We see some spikes and drops in each, indicative of periods of high output with short recoveries in between. The top one was actually from a 12.5km run down to the market on Saturday morning, on a mix of paved paths and singletrack trail.

Oh, and some rather soggy boardwalks

The bottom one? That was a little different kind of workout.

I didn't get quite as much work in at stick & puck on Sunday - it's only 50mins as opposed to 90mins - but my average heart rate was even higher, with much less recovery as I faced breakaway after breakaway.

Avg 146bpm: Garmin classes this as a "tempo workout"

The grey graph at the bottom there shows the other aspect of goaltending that had previously escaped my notice: temperature. While hockey is played on ice, the massive amount of equipment I need to wear to keep me (mostly) impervious to injury by pucks - when added to the hard work of actually trying to stop them - means I cruise around 30c/86f while I'm in net.

I checked the video - you can't actually see my hand steaming when I take my glove off to grab a drink, but it happens.
Instead, you get this screencap of Tanker trying to score on me.

So basically I'm not only getting and extra hour or more aerobic work in while playing hockey once or twice a week, I'm also getting some heat acclimation...maybe?

Not to mention some extra strength training from lugging all my gear around

So I guess I'll find out quite soon whether or not this actually translates into any running resilience: the Rugged Raccoon 50k starts tomorrow afternoon, and I haven't run for more than 90mins since early March. With rain most of this week, the course is likely to be a giant mud pit, so I'll just go wallow around, eat some cookies, and see how she goes!

Time to ride - or at least run - off into the sunset