Catching Up: May and the first half of June

I started a post a while back.... like over a month ago.... about Boston and April in general, but still haven't finished it, so I'll put that one on the backburner for now and move on. It will be here at some point, but not today. In the meantime, I don't want this blog to sit idle.

So.... let's pretend April didn't happen for now. I'll give a May and first half of June recap here and then maybe just maybe be a little more regular at writing stuff going forward.

I ran one race in May, but I wasn't actually racing it. I was never planning to race it. I signed up for the Ottawa Marathon maybe two weeks before the event, with plans of running it as a long run leading up to the 50K in June (which is coming up this weekend). It was 3 weeks before race day, so it seemed like an excellent time to jump into a marathon and with family in Ottawa, it would be an inexpensive weekend away. Plus, it's Canada 150 this year, so I figured it would be a good year to take part in the fun that is Race Weekend in Ottawa!

But... let's back it up a bit and talk about all of May.

The first three weeks of May were solid training weeks. I got some decent long runs in, and some solid workouts. Mileage was where I wanted it to be as well. I was feeling good. Actually, that statement is untrue. They were great and I felt good until the second last day of week three.

I was running my long run, which also included a workout component and.. around 9 or 10 miles in, my foot started to hurt a bit. Not so much that I needed to stop, but it was *something* and I didn't like it. I had this dull pain in the side of the ball of my left foot. I had done my run with a large out and back section and this started around the turnaround, so it's not like I could really just stop anyway... I had to get back on foot whether it was running or walking... and well... running is a lot quicker. So, I continued and the pain went away after a while, so I didn't need to take a shortcut back to my car. I finished up my 22 miles and headed home.

The next day (Sunday), I went out to run what was supposed to be 12 miles. It became 4 miserable miles. I had heel pain, foot pain, ball of foot pain. You name it. Not fun. I took Monday and Tuesday off running completely and went to see my chiro on Wednesday (she's fantastic, by the way). She worked on my calf and my foot and gave me some exercises to do at home. I ran a short easy run that day and a short workout the next, and by Saturday I felt great again! I'm continuing to do my exercises to make sure this doesn't happen again!

Ottawa:
I drove to Ottawa straight from work on the Friday. Traffic wasn't too bad getting out of Toronto for once, so that was good. I arrived Friday evening around 8pm and my sister had already picked up my number and shirt for me. Thanks Andrea!

Saturday morning, we took a lazy coffee drinking morning for a few hours before I headed out for a run and was pleasantly surprised to see how good I felt. It was great! No pain.

Daisy

Got back, went out and about with Andrea and the dog, then it was off to watch the 10K! The 10K was the Canadian Championships and is always a fun race to watch. This year, I knew a lot of people with Elite status in the race, so it was even more fun to be able to watch them warming up in front of the line, and starting ahead of the pack. My sis and I watched just around the corner from the start, then headed toward the finish, to watch from the VIP tent. Oh the perks of having a sister who works at City Hall. :) Cheering from the tent with open bar and food was a lot of fun. Andrea sent me some photos that she took:

It was great to not have to be concerned about what I was eating or drinking or the fact that I was on my feet for several hours the night before the marathon! I was already enjoying this not racing the marathon thing and it wasn't even race day yet. :)

Sunday morning, got up at 5, got ready, headed downtown. No warmup before this one, since I was planning to start out nice and easy anyway. The "plan" (which really wasn't much of a plan at all since I hadn't come up with a real one)... so the loose plan, was to run the first half nice and easy and then run around goal 50K pace for the second half.

I started running, and found myself just behind the 3:30 pace group, which was where I kind of wanted to be, but there were too many people and it was frustrating so, I passed them after a bit and planned to just stay a little in front of them where there was more room. I was running along, enjoying the sights and the spectators, giving high fives to kids on the street, etc. I was having fun! Around 8 miles I glanced at my watch and noticed that my average pace was quicker than I intended it to be. Whoops! So at this point any loose plan that I had went out the window. I was still enjoying myself and it still felt easy, so I just kept doing whatever. When I was crossing a bridge a while later, I thought maybe I should back off a bit until I get to 20 miles and then try to pick it up and run the final 10K strong. Well.... that's when the temperature really started to rise. It got hotter and hotter and the sun was beating down in full force. I made full use of aid stations and had fun along the way. I wasn't suffering or anything, but I wasn't going to try to push things too much, either. I had a freezie incident at one point... a very nice person who was handing out freezies happened to cut both ends.... so I was dripping red sticky liquid all over my legs. I actually ended up pulling off to the side to eat my freezie and then start running again! haha. I didn't want to give up my freezie, but I didn't want it to keep dripping on me! :)

I finished the marathon in 3:31, which I was perfectly ok with. I wasn't trying to hit any goal times, I had a solid long run, and an enjoyable one at that!

Afterward, it was back to the VIP tent. :) I spent a few hours there, which was fun.
Ottawa knows how to put on a good race weekend!

After my mini-vacation was over (I took Monday off work to drive back), it was now June and I was having a decent week of running, but.... I ended up getting sick less than a week later, so no workouts and no long run for me. At least it was only 2 weeks from race day, so the timing wasn't horrible. Close enough that I'm not missing out on gaining more fitness before race day, but also far enough out that I'd be fully recovered from the virus going into the race. I figured this would be the last of my "bad luck" heading toward the 50K.... but... I'm me.....

Last weekend, I had a good 12 mile run on Saturday, then Sunday morning met up with some people to run at Chicopee. All was going well until I managed to kick the same little stump that I've kicked in the past (it's maybe 2" tall and not painted or anything, in a section where there may even be some woodchips.... not overly visible, but still my fault for not seeing it).... this time I kicked it harder than I ever have before... I went down, but that wasn't the painful part.. it was my big toe. It's now 4 days later and it's still a bit swollen and still causes discomfort. Fingers crossed that it's 100% better Saturday morning. It's certainly nothing to be concerned about injury wise or anything.. there's no discolouration and movements don't hurt, but I'm guessing there's just some swelling pushing against the nail, that with pressure against my toe when I toe off, there's a bit of pain. I'm just taking it easy this week to hopefully aid in as quick a deswelling as possible. :)

And.... now I'm caught up! (except for missing April)

Late 2016 & Early 2017: playing catch-up

I've been slacking in the blog department again. The fall races had come and gone, I wrote about them... then came winter... and I stopped.. writing, that is, not running.

Let's see if I can remember what's happened since the last post. It's a good thing that I have Strava to remind me.

December:
I did actually have a race in December, but it's one that I don't really think much about. It's a novelty race... but at least only in the fact that a Santa suit is worn. It's still a regular race if you disregard the outfits, which are made of felt, by he way. I hear felt is the new technical fabric for running clothes!

The race is called the Santa Pur-Suit and is put on the main running organization in the area, Run Waterloo.

Photo by Julie Schmidt

My mom has also run this race every year since it starts, which is the main reason that I also run it. It's become a family tradition. My parents were also nice enough to pick up the race kits before arriving at my house on the Friday evening: one less thing to do race morning!

We went out for dinner somewhere.... (I can't be expected to remember THAT much about that day... although now that I said that, I think we went to B. Hmm... I will consult Untappd to find out.... Yep.. we did!), then back to my house.

Saturday morning, we headed to the race, which starts and finishes at the YMCA in Waterloo. It has nice spacious indoor facilities where people can stay warm if it's a cold day. I don't believe it was overly cold that morning, but it had snowed the night before, just as it had each and every year of this race.

I ran started a warm-up solo, then joined some of my Health & Performance (H+P) teammates on theirs. The not-so-cold temperatures made some of the snow turn into slush, which wasn't fun, but hey.. everyone was going to be dealing with the same crap on the roads.

We headed back to the start area and got ready to race. My only real goal for this race was to run it quicker than I had in the past, and hopefully finally be under 22 minutes. I was not hoping for anything close to a real 5K PR, just a Santa Suit PR.

My past times in this race:
2012 - 24:21
2013 - 22:36
2014 - 22:15
2015 - 22:08

The race itself was fairly uneventful... some slippery and slushy spots, but overall, the course was in pretty decent shape. I finished in 21:56. Finally, I've run sub-22 in a Santa Suit. I finished 7th female, and my team, comprised of one guy and a bunch of women, won the team competition.

H+P Dashers minus Larry (L-R: Erin, Emily, myself, Anne) - photo taken at our club Christmas party

Speaking of the Christmas party (see caption above), H+P unveiled the Club Standards that night: new time goals to target, based on gender and age (open vs master). This goes hand-in-hand with our team rankings site, which has been in place for a while now (a year or two? I'm not sure anymore). It's fun to have some friendly rivalries within the club. It is so inspiring to see so many race times drop lower and lower within the club.

January:
I didn't have a single race in January, it was a month of training. I can't think of anything worth mentioning from that month... on to February!

February:
The return to racing happened in February, with interesting conditions. As I'm sure a lot of people had this year, February was warm this year. It was much warmer than usual, and there was no snow for the bulk of the month. This sounds like it would be a good thing for running, and it was for the most part... I got in great training runs with solid footing, but, I had registered for a snowshoe race. I was starting to think that it was going to turn into a trail race, but there was snow the week before the race and it was announced that the conditions were good for snowshoes on the course.

Race #1 - Snowshoes on little snow
The morning of February 4th, I drove to Shades Mills Conservation Area for the inaugural Dion Winter Goose Chase, which was also my very first snowshoe race.

I arrived nice and early, picked up my number, chatted with a few other runners, and then headed out to do a warm-up on the course in my trail shoes. The course was supposed to be a 3 km loop, run twice, so I figured I would just run it once as well as the little bit from and back to the building for around a 4 km warm-up. I ran around a bit and found the start, went through, and started following the flags. After a while, I start to wonder why I don't feel like I'm heading back toward the start/finish area. I looked at my watch and saw that I had already been running more than 2 miles... and I have no idea where I am. I was still following the flags, so I was clearly on the course, but I had run a distance of more than a full loop... and couldn't see anything that I recognized. I looked around a bit, trying to figure out a way to take a shortcut back, but nothing looked familiar. I started running again and calling out "Hello?" hoping that marshals were out on the course and could direct me back. Time was passing and it was getting closer and closer to start time. I needed to get back to the building, take off a layer and get my snowshoes! I was stressing for a moment, but then just found it funny that I managed to get myself lost. I was only planning on running this race for fun anyway, no goals, just a first attempt at running hard in snowshoes. If I missed the start... I missed the start... not the end of the world.

I finally found my way out and got myself to the building with only 7 or 8 minutes until race start. Got myself to the start and got my SS on just in time, while they were making announcements. Turns out the course had been changed and was now a single 4 mile loop. No wonder I was confused on my warm-up!

I lined up, and the girl beside me took off with the gun, but slowed a little after a km or so. I passed her and she stuck on my heels, until she passed me back around 1.5 miles (yes, I realize I keep switching between km and miles... that's just how I roll). I didn't react to her passing me. I just didn't have my head in race mode and just kept plugging away and let her go. Unfortunately, this put me in no man's land. I ended up slowing down a bit and then had to remind myself that even though I wasn't that into it.. I was still in a race and needed to at least run somewhat hard! So... I picked it up and could see people through some of the trees ahead, so I had some sort of target, something to focus on to get myself to pick up the pace and try to close the gap at least a bit.  I was gaining on the girl a bit, but then a hill showed up.. one that I somehow managed to miss on the warm-up, so I had no idea it was there! I was not expecting this large climb just before the end of the race. I did not handle that climb well... so there was no further closing of any gap. I got myself to the top, ran down as quick as I could and finished the race 56 seconds back from her. Not close at all. But... still 2nd female (8th overall) in my first snowshoe race, so all in all, not a bad day.

Just before the unknown-to-me hill. Photo from Spafford Health and Adventure.

The conditions... there was not much snow at all, but it was still nice that the race remained a snowshoe race. I had registered for a SS race two years ago that had been cancelled due to too much snow! (the roads hadn't been plowed yet and nobody could make it to the park).
Race results and recap can be found here.

Race #2 - Trail shoes on snowy and slushy roads
On Sunday, February 12th, I woke up and looked out the window.... what the crap? Snow... and lots of it. It was completely clear out there the night before. In fact, it was really warm the day before! This was less than ideal.... but it's February... what can you really expect?

I arrived at RIM Park with lots of time to spare before the start of the Re-Fridgee-Eighter, the first Run Waterloo event of the year. I met up with teammates and the conditions were on everyone's minds... what shoes to wear? I brought three different pairs because I wanted to see what the roads were like around that part of town. As I drove in, they were just starting to plow, but first round plowing doesn't generally get down to the pavement, so it was iffy.. plus, that was the main road.. what would the smaller roads be like? The answer, as it turns out, would be very very snowy.

I ended up putting on trail shoes, went out for a warm-up with Val and decided that the trail shoes would stay on for the race. A road race in trail shoes..... didn't seem right.... but in the end, I was very glad I made this choice.

In the race itself, I don't think there was a single section of clear road. It was either a thin layer of slush and snow, thick slush, or thick snow. During the race, it snowed, and there was also some freezing rain. I guess it is supposed to be a winter race.... .and it certainly was!

I ran most of the race around what I considered to be half marathon pace, and that's because I couldn't go any faster in those conditions. I felt like I ran it well, that I raced well. I ran the 8 mile distance in 58:22, which I would not have been happy with on clear roads, but in this... I was quite happy with it, especially when compared to last year, when this race was the first indication that there was something wrong with me. It took 2 more races last year before I knew I was anemic, but this was the first race that felt crappy. OK... back to this year. I placed 6th for females.

The best footing on the course. Photo by Julie Schmidt.

After the race, which was the first of any of his races that Lloyd Schmidt has missed since becoming RD back in 1987, a group of runners brought the race to the hospital, where he was recovering from cancer surgery. Lloyd means a lot to everyone in the running community (as well as to many outside of the running community); he is constantly giving and is one of the most selfless people I know. A short video about Lloyd and the event can be found here.

I think that's a good place to end this post. I'll write about last weekend's race in a separate post.