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.

A few days behind in my posts

I spent the weekend camping with my family at Charleston Lake Provincial Park. I did some kayaking, hiking, running, swimming, biking, and walking. I had intentions of running both Saturday and Sunday, but after Saturday’s 10 km run on a difficult trail and all of the other activities listed above, my body did not want to run again on Sunday morning. I decided to sit, have a coffee, and relax for a while before having breakfast and then packing up our site.

Since I didn’t do a long run on Sunday, I decided to do it after work yesterday (Monday). I got out for a 16.25 km run last night and it was tough since I was tired and my shoes are also pretty much done. So.. I need to go shopping for shoes again.

Car Camping Weekend

Ryan and I went camping at Guelph Lake Conservation Area this weekend. It was a relatively last minute trip as we decided and booked it just a couple days before going. The car was loaded without even really going through any of our camping items, so a couple things were missing,but nothing too important (didn’t have a dish cloth, so a potholder was used instead).

I had intended to go for a shorter easy run on either Friday night or Saturday morning, but we got to the park a bit later than planned on Friday evening and after a very loud evening (other campers, some of who were kicked out that night) and after an animal ran right into the side of the tent in the middle of the night, and a couple of girls decided to walk by talking, laughing, singing, etc LOUDLY at 4:30 am (they were kicked out) I was not bright-eyed or bushy-tailed at 7am, so I stayed in bed.

Saturday became a cross-training day with lots of walking, swimming, paddling, and a bit of hiking.

Saturday night was much quieter, but we did still the skunk waking us up by walking along the edge of the ten (on the edge of the tent floor). I guess we invaded his walking route. He didn’t bother us, though, just woke us up a few times.

I did get out for my Sunday run today. This morning, I went for a 15 km run, a good portion of it on 2 trails, one being the Speed River Trail. It was sunny and hot, so I was very glad to be in shaded trails for about 9km of the run. I had an enjoyable run, but really wanted to jump straight into the lake from the dam, when I was running across it. I resisted, of course.

It was a quick weekend, but a good one. It was quite a contrast to our camping up in Algonquin the previous weekend. But as they say, variety is the spice of life.

Today’s Run:
Distance: 15 km
Weather: 25 C, sunny, not much wind.

I had a week off… but not really.

A week off running, yes.
A week of doing nothing? Definitely not.

Ryan and I just got back from Algonquin Park late Sunday night after a 4-day trip to the interior. We actually stayed on the same lake the whole time this year so that if we wanted to stay put for a day, we could, but if we wanted to go out paddling all day, we could pack a day pack and head out, coming back to our already set-up site.

So… seeing as I was camping on a small island, I did not do any running out there. Instead, I was paddling, swimming, and climbing up and down the hill to get from our beach to our tent.

I’ll have more on the trip, as well as pictures of the trip, on my photo blog next week or the week after (I have a few other photo things I need to finish up before I start looking at the Algonquin photos).

Today’s Run:
Distance: 3.5 km
Weather: 22 C, feels like 30 C, wind 6 km/h