Remembrance Day

I found myself with a rare mid week day off due to Remembrance Day falling on a Wednesday. I looked around for something to do and found a race in Vancouver. The race info said the race was taking place at Brockton Oval, which is a track. So I thought it would be fun to run 8k on a track.

Except the race started at Brockton Oval and was actually a trail run. Although I train on a hills course I wasn't prepared for an actual trail run. Against my better judgement I decided to run the race anyway.

Halfway through the race I was on pace for a 34 minute 8K but I lost focus as I was thinking about my awesome pace and tripped on a rock as I was running downhill. I sprained my ankle pretty bad.

I sat there for a few minutes in pain and disappointment. One of the many runners who passed me asked if I had tripped on a rock. When I told him I had he responded with a sympathetic "Son of a b*%#@, eh?!" Honestly, that made me feel alot better.

Eventually I was able to put some weight on the ankle and even started a halting jog. It hurt but I was determined to finish the remaining 4K to honor my grandfathers who served in WWII. But I was soon discovered by a race marshall who advised me to stop running while she radioed for the medical car. Discretion being the better part of valor I decided that I had given it a good effort but needed to not dammage the ankle any more. The ride back to the start was so embarrassing. So with my head hung in shame I achieved my first DNF.

The xray the next day showed a small avulsion fracture so I'll be on a crutch for the next two weeks and then re xray it and go from there. Hopefully the next x ray will be fine and I can start working back to my base mileage.

Adjust or Run in the Dark!

Daylight savings is wreaking havoc with my running schedule. That, and alot of early morning staff meetings at work means that I have to do more training at night than I am used to.

Today I was running 4oom intervals after sunset at Oak Bay Track. It was dark enough that I didn't see the other runner who started doing laps with me. When I passed her, she looked something like this...so I think I need to get to bed earlier so I can run in daylight...

Joy in Running

For some reason I forgot that I parked my car at my wife's Grandma's house yesterday. I took a cab home from the airport instead. I didn't even realize it until my wife got home last night and asked "Where is your car?" So my punishment was to run all the way to Grandma's house this morning to get the car. Its 8 miles.

It wouldn't have been so bad except it was raining sideways this morning. But sometimes you got to run in the rain. Except the rain stopped about five minutes into the run. The sun came out as I was running on the lakeshore. Sometimes you just gotta feel the joy of running.

Competition

Yesterday was another grind at Cedar Hill Chip Trail. I ran five laps. 10.88 miles. 1160 feet of elevation. I started at sunset and finished in the dark. I saw another fast runner doing laps in the other direction on my 2-4th lap. Having a rival always brings out my best. I never wanted him to see me slowing down. And I wanted to outlast him. I didn't see him on my fifth lap.

Gettin' Sweaty in the Parking Lot

University of Victoria's track was closed to the public yesterday. So instead of cancelling my speed training, I decided to run laps in the adjacent parking lot. The outside loops looked to be about 400 meters and there wasn't alot of traffic so...why not? As it turns out, the loop was 0.22 miles (a 400 metre track is 0.25 miles) so it was fairly accurate.

It was a little cold so I wore a warm up jacket and hoodie to the track. When I saw that the track was closed, I took off my jacket and hoodie and placed it on the grass and started doing laps. My friend Steve was with me and kept me company.

It was alot of fun. A couple of college kids were rollerblading in the parking lot too. Only a couple of cars entered the lot and I was never in danger of getting hit by a car. I did have to chase a guy away who was rifling through my jacket. I was finishing my last rest lap before my final 400m lap. I saw him wandering around and then he actually grabbed my jacket to check it out. I started yelling at him "Hey!" "Hey!" "Hey!" before he finally noticed me. "Thats my stuff." He dropped it pretty quick and made some lame excuse about how he was just taking it to turn into lost and found. He eventually drove off in a beater van.

That little exchange must have given me some sort of energy boost because I ran my final lap in 59 seconds!