8K training – Week 5 – Once a run is lost, it is lost forever
Week 5 was supposed to be a step back week and boy did I step back.
On Tuesday I ran 5 miles in the morning and then played an ultimate game in the evening. I’m not sure what happened, it could have just been too much impact, but my left foot was not happy when I went to bed. On Wednesday I had a strange non-localized sort of ache in my foot. I iced and stretched and iced and stretched and by Thursday morning things felt mostly better. I still decided to skip Thursday’s 5 miler and watch the USA vs Ghana world cup match instead though. While I can skip a solo run I have a harder time skipping out on my team so I did play in an ultimate game on Thursday night. Thankfully the turf was super soft and my foot felt fine. My foot also felt fine on my Saturday run so hopefully the 3 days of rest fixed whatever was hurt. I could have tried to make up Thursday’s 5 miler on Sunday but I sort of believe that once a run is lost, it is lost forever. Really, missing one 5 mile run is not the end of the world!
All in all my week 5 step back mileage was 10 miles (5+5).
Happy Summer Solstice
Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Today in Seattle the sunrise was at 5:11am and the sunset at 9:11pm. That’s a lot of light! Contrast this the winter solstice on December 22 when the sunrise and sunset will be at 7:55am and 4:21pm, respectively. What I find fascinating is that today is not necessairly the day with the latest sunset and Dec 22 is not necessairly the day with the earliest sunset. Here’s an explaination of why.
In honour of the solstice I attended the Fremont Solstice Parade last Saturday. Fremont is the neighbourhood just to the west of where I live in Wallingford. It’s a fun area. They have a statue of Lenin and a giant troll living under the freeway. The parade is something else. It started with about 200 naked cyclists (they were covered with body paint) and then followed by lots of different groups including anti-Bush groups, pro medical marijuana groups, a unicycle club, a huge group of belly dancers and of course a few musical groups and dance groups. If you want to see pictures (I repeat, there were naked cyclists so don’t follow the link if that makes you uncomfortable) here’s a link to photos on flickr tagged with “solstice parade.”
Squash and Kale Risotto
Here’s a shot of last Thursday’s CSA box. Supplemented with a few items from the grocery store I’ve already made some delicious meals out of the produce. Here’s this week’s menu:
- Lunches:
- Layered bean dip with guacamole
- Strawberry, orange, mango and peach fruit salad
- Dinners:
- Squash and kale risotto (pictured below)
- Stir fried veggies (carrots, snow peas, mushrooms) with quinoa
- Roasted beets, carrots and fennell (a la Matt)
8K training – Week 4 – My gels are melting!
Another week, another 19 miles in the bag: (3+6+2+8)
Thursday’s run was a bit of a challenge. It was scheduled to be a 6 mile tempo run with the middle 4 miles done at 9:47. I’m not the best judge of pace so my average over the 4 miles was more like 9:10. I was a mess when I got home. It didn’t help that I ran first thing in the morning so I’d only eaten half a banana with a squirt of honey and a gel at mile 3. Note to self: runs greater than 5 miles can’t be done without a real breakfast first.
Speaking of gels I’ve made a discovery. Before I started running I’d heard that gels were pretty gross. Then I tried them last winter on my long runs and thought they were the greatest thing ever. I wouldn’t have called them tasty but they were far from gross. They gave a little boost to my runs even though I acknowledge the effect might have been psychological. I haven’t changed the brand or flavour of my gels but lately they haven’t tasted so great. I think the problem is that the summer heat is changing the viscosity and flavour of my gels. In other words, my gels are melting! During the winter they were almost chewy and I like that much better. I tried putting today’s gel in the fridge 24 hours before my 8 mile run but the gel was warm by the time I was ready to have it. My next plan is to try the freezer. I’m a little worried freezing a gel might burst its packaging or it might not defrost quickly enough once I start running but I want my chewy gels back so I’m willing to experiment.
Stacey Dales fan club
During my grade 12 high school basketball season one of the best games we played was a 42 point loss to Thousand Islands Secondary School (TISS) at a tournament in Hamilton on the day of the 1995 Montreal unity rally. TISS was a really talented team and they had a super star player named Stacey Dales. Our goal was to not let them beat us on the fast break and instead make them actually run their offence. And we did it. They only scored 4 points on the fast break but they still beat us big time. I played in many games against Stacey during high school but that’s the one that sticks out the most in my mind. Even more than the time that my city team, the Nepean Hoop Kids, actually beat her team, the Brockville Blazers, in the 1996 Eastern Ontario Basketball Champions. That was the one win out of probably more than 10 games played against her.
After high school I went on to play a season and a half of basketball at the University of Waterloo and Stacey went on to … bigger things: the University of Oklahoma, a NCAA championship game, the Canadian National Team, the Olympics, the WNBA and the ESPN analyst desk.
Last week I finally got to see her play in a WNBA game when the Chicago Sky came into town to play the Seattle Storm. The level at which these girls play basketball blows my mind. I made my Dad, Jeff and Leah all vote for Stacey for the All-Star Team!
Dave and Angela’s wedding
This past weekend my friends Dave and Angela got married in Hamilton, Ontario. They’re friends from way back in the St Jerome’s days of first year when we all lived in residence and took Math 135 and 137 together. In fact their wedding was a nice little SJU/UW reunion and I got to see lots of friends I hadn’t seen in years. Their reception even included doing our Frosh dances.
Here are the lovely bride and groom. It was great to see them finally tie the knot – they’ve been together since high school!
I attended the wedding with four of my favourite people in the whole wide world. Here we are looking fabulous.
8K training – Week 3 – Running in TO
Week 3 was a solid training week. This is especially pleasing since I had to schedule my runs around travelling to and from Toronto and Hamilton for Dave and Angela’s wedding. My total mileage was ~19 miles (3+5+~3+~8). The approximate distances (~) were runs that I did based on time (instead of distance) in Toronto.
Matt ran the 8 miler (really a timed 89 minute run) with me on Sunday. We didn’t have a solid plan when we started but we ended up doing some trails through High Park and then running along the waterfront boardwalk. I almost always run alone so it was great to be able to chat with someone during a run. And the scenery was a nice change of pace from my standard Seattle routes.
DiscNW Spring League B Pool Champs
In my last post I mentioned that running had been put on hold two weekends ago due to ultimate frisbee. The games we played were actually the DiscNW spring league playoffs. ThunderStats played the regular season in the A pool. We did so-so. Most of our team spent this spring doing at least one of: trying to finish their PhD dissertation, interviewing for jobs all over the country, playing on the men’s or women’s UDub ultimate team or training for a marathon or half-marathon. Understandably some people (myself included) had to miss some games and we played most of the regular season with very few subs. Based on our less than stellar record we were dropped down to the B pool for the playoffs. Miraculously we had almost 100% attendance for the playoffs and ended up winning 3 games straight to take the B Pool championship. I think this pretty much solidifies our position as a high B pool/low A pool team. Yay us!
8K training – Week 2 – new shoes!
First things first, I bought new running shoes: Brooks Adrenaline GTS 6. My new shoes are a full size bigger than my previous pair – I’m now wearing a men’s size 9.5! I had to go bigger because as my mileage increased before the half marathon I got a nasty blood blister on the end of my second toe. So far the shoes seem pretty good. I was a little wary of going with a men’s shoe but these are a narrow width so the fit is fine and the sales associate assured me that she’d put lots of women in these shoes and no one had come back with problems.
Now onto the running. Week 2 started out right on schedule. I did two short runs, a sprint training session and hit the weight room. Then the weekend came and everything took a back seat to ultimate frisbee. I was supposed to take Saturday as a rest day and then run 7 miles on Sunday. Instead I played two ultimate games on Saturday and one on Sunday. We had lots of subs so the games weren’t too strenuous and I seriously considered running on Sunday evening. But by the time I got back from ultimate I was tired, hungry and probably a little dehydrated so I decided to axe the long run and bake calzones instead.
For the record, my week 2 mileage was 10 miles (3+5+2). I find this number depressingly low but if I think of the three ultimate games as sprint training it’s not so bad!