23 days....

Only 23 days until ENDURrun 2011. The 8 day, 7 stage, 160 km event has snuck up quickly.

I'm into full out training again, which is good. I'm back up to mid-20s (km) for my long run and will get that into the 30s shortly. I've been running 5 times per week and am bringing that up to 6 times this week.

We've been busy with wedding photos (http://shootthethrill.ca) since the end of May and we've gone on a couple of camping trips, so it's been a bit of a challenge to try and fit everything into my schedule. Ryan and I did a kayak camping trip in the interior of Algonquin Park on Canada Day weekend, which was fantastic, but I wasn't able to get any running in that weekend because there were no trails. I did, however, get a good cross training weekend of paddling and swimming.

Last weekend, we went to Emily Provincial Park, where I was able to get in a few runs. I did one short run within the park on Saturday morning, then an 11 km run that included both road (5 km) and trail (6 km), and on Sunday I ran (well.. tried) from Lindsay to the park on the Trans Canada Trail. The first 10K of that run was in direct sun and it was HOT. For the first time in my life, I actually found it too hot to run. I had to walk a fair bit in the first 10K, but then a bit of cloud came over and there were also trees providing shade. The final 14K were much more enjoyable and I could actually run the remainder of the distance.

This week has been fairly good for running so far. As I already mentioned, I got 24K in on Sunday and since then, I didn't get a chance to run Tuesday, so I ran twice on Wednesday. I did 4K in the morning and then 11K at night. Last night I got in a great workout. I ran from work to Runners' Choice, then ran with the group to Columbia Lake for some hill repeats, did 6 on each of the 3 different types of hills (long/gradual, steep, etc) for a total of 18 hill repeats, ran back to the store, took a short watermelon break and then headed out to run home. My total distance covered last night was just under 20 km.

I just might go for a short run after work today before heading to the Beer & Rib festival and tomorrow morning I'll either be doing boot camp at McLennan Park or going for a run, possibly trail or a road/trail combo.