This past week was the first of my 2 weeks of vacation. We didn't actually go away on a holiday, but I was looking forward to being home. I was excited to get ready for the Christmas Holidays and to be able to train everyday at home and not skip out on workouts because I would be on the airplane and jet lagged.
Monday, was pouring rain. I was hoping that it would let up for our speed workout, but that DID NOT happen. We all showed up and ran loops around my buddy's home. The distance is just short of 1 kilometre. We did a lap warm up and ran 4 loops and 1 lap for cool down. We were all soaked to the core. It was just short of 37 minutes, but we were all done. Finished off with 5.82 km.
Tuesday could have been a lazy day, but I called up a buddy who is always willing to run and thank goodness I did. She got me out and was able to squeeze 10km out of me. We were still jumping puddles from the rainfall the day before. It was a nice and comfortable run. I've gotten so used to running slow that I must remind myself to push again and embrace the pain. Having a quick run let me spend some quality time with my mama the rest of the day.
Wednesday was back in the trails for some hills. We decided to go into the
Rouge National Urban Park. I just learned recently that it is the largest urban park in North America and it is literally in my backyard. There are many trails through the park and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting the Toronto area. It is easily accessible by public transportation and also has parking and visitor centres. There are also guided walks that you can get more information about from the link above.
This trail offers many lookouts of the city and surrounding areas. I was happy that it was cold enough for it to snow instead of rain. There are many different route options when in this park. My buddies opted for routes with hills which are good in the long run, but I still whine and complain. One of the many highlights is the climb up what used to be a ski hill.....
Truth be told, I only was able to run part way up the hill and spent most of time huffing and puffing way up.
We decided that Thursday would be a day off so that we could rest up for our long run planned for Friday. I was thrilled to have the day off. We decorated the house and the tree. The kids were thrilled and I was happy that the kids have finally figure out the step ladder and are tall enough to get the decorations somewhat evenly spread out on the tree.
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| It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas |
Friday was going to be the longest run for this training cycle. 20 miles was planned, but we decided that we would try to do at least one of our two long runs in the trails since our race would be in the trails. 20 miles on trails is very different from road. We decided to just try to average out the amount of time it would take us to run 20 miles on the road and spend that amount of time in the trails. So, 4 hours was what we agreed upon. We went 20 minutes just north of us to Durham Forest. I couldn't believe how much snow they had.
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| Trail Map |
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| Snowy Trails |
After 4 hours in the trails, my watch told me that we had only covered 23 km. I was so deflated and sad. I couldn't believe that we only covered so little distance, but it did put things into perspective. I am going to have to push harder. I am usually the last one trying to catch up to my buddies. It's always hard for me to know how hard I should be working because I want to make sure that I can keep up for the duration of the run. It is something I am still learning. Pacing myself to have enough energy to keep going, but also to work at my highest potential. The weather was quite ideal. There was not much wind and the snow on the ground was more like packing snow, so it had grip for our shoes. I'm sure we were sweating under all our layers, but we were not uncomfortable. We all had our packs with enough nutrition for the time spent. I had two 10 ounce bottles of
Hammer Perpetuem. My friends had Hammer Sustain and Skratch. We had some gel bites and other goodies packed away.
I was quite tired after the run and made it home just in time to pick up the kids from the bus stop still in my run outfit. I had spent most of the day in the trails. Thank goodness for time off.
Saturday was back in the trails bright and early. Since it is now much darker in the early mornings, my friend and I do some hill repeats on the main road into the trail head to kill some time before the sunrise so that we can get some mileage in. I have to be back home fairly early take take my kids to their weekend activities.
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Headlamp is a must
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With our headlamps and flashlights we ran almost 7 km of hill repeats before heading into the trails
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Still Dark
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I've run this trail quite often and have taken the kids in here, so I feel quite comfortable on this trail. I still often have no idea how far I've gotten or how much further I need to go.
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| When light finally Appears |
I am constantly checking my watch to try to figure out when we need to turn back as this is an out and back run for us.
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| I'm sure there was Something chasing Me |
My friends like to to out further than I would like to, so that I will push harder to rush back to make it back to the car. I'm happy to know that they believe in me, but I always want to cry when I'm pushing as hard as I can to make it back. I imagine bears chasing me down so that I can catch up to my friends.
Thankfully I made it back to the car for 8:29 and rushed home to bring my little to basketball for 9. The kids greeted me with excitement as they woke up to find our elf. She was back with Advent calendars for them to help them with the countdown to Christmas. I had spent the better part of the week trying to remember where I had hidden her. Thankfully, I found her the night before.
Sunday is family day for us. We head to
church and took the kids to the mall to see Santa. The kids are getting older, but they still seem to want to believe and visit him. Thankfully, it has been the same Santa for the past 6 years.
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| Mall Santa |
Hope you all had a great week. We ended our week with a beautiful concert performance by
Heritage at our church, performing classic Christmas carols. Here's a short clip.
How was your week? What are you Christmas traditions? Are you training for anything or on a rest period?
Thanks for reading
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