Vacation /Week 3 Antelope Canyon Training

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. 

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. 

Trail Map

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. 

Headlamp is a must

With our headlamps and flashlights we ran almost 7 km of hill repeats before heading into the trails

Still Dark

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.

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.

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. 

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

San Francisco Marathon - Race Recap

This post has taken me quite a long time to write. Sorry for the long delay. It was a tough race for me; mentally and physically.  It was written over the past few weeks as I was able to look back and try to remember the race.

The San Francisco Marathon was my second marathon. I'm not too sure what I was thinking when I registered for the race. I had talked it over with hubs and we were going to head down with the family for a holiday during the weekend of the race, but due to some unforeseen circumstances I ended up heading down to San Francisco on my own. I am very lucky to have a cousin who lives right in the heart of San Fran, which was super convenient for me.

I took the last flight out to SFO Friday night as I knew for certain I would get a seat. Working for an airline has great travel perks, but only when there are seats available for you. It was hard to leave the family behind, but I knew I had to run this race. After finding my way to my cousins cozy apartment, I crashed on her couch and tried to get some good rest. I had read somewhere that it was important to get lots of sleep 2 nights before the race. I knew this wasn't going to happen as it was already way past midnight and I was planning on waking at 7am to attend the SF Marathon Shake Out run hosted by Bart Yasso.

After a quick 6km loop with Bart

The Shake Out run was perfectly scheduled right before the expo. It varied in any distance that you felt like doing. I ended up doing a short loop towards the Golden Gate bridge and back. It was a nice and easy 6km. The run ended at the expo location which had just opened when I got back from my run.

This is not what I had wanted to see

It was a pretty large expo with many retailers. I was able to pick up a few things that I needed and was able to head out and enjoy the afternoon if beautiful San Francisco.

I decided to take it easy and not kill my legs trying to explore the hills of the city and try to relax and calm my nerves. I knew that I was going to  be facing some challenging  hills in the morning. I took it easy, had a nice clean supper and passed out for the night.

It's a good thing that I was still on Eastern standard time as it made the wake up for the race very easy for me. My coral was set to start at 6:02 am, which gave me plenty of time to prep for the race.  I had my standard race breakfast of oatmeal and warm water and headed out to the start line. It was going to be a perfect day for a run. 

Ready to Go

Cupid's Span in the background

I was quite nervous about the race as I was going to be running it by myself and couldn't quite find a pacer in my coral.  As a runner, you always want to do better than your previous race, but I knew that there was no way I would be able to better my marathon time this hilly course as the only other marathon I had done was flat. With this in mind, I decided to try as hard as I could to stick with my slower than marathon race pace for the majority of the race. I would try my best at the hills and walk the moment I started losing my cadence and hope to make up for the speed on the downhills.

The marathon is a loop that starts out on the Embarcardero and brings you past the 'sights' of San Francisco finishing back along the water where you started.

The Race

Miles 1-5 The Embarcardero, Fisherman's Wharf, Ghiradelli and Fort Mason.

First of many hills

I had run this first part on a layover I had in June, so I knew what to expect. I started out as slow as I could trying not to get caught up with the crowds and knowing that I had to pace myself for the next 26 miles ahead of me.

It was nice to take in all the tourist sights even though I wasn't going to stop and take any selfies... this is race after all :)

Mile 1= 9.08, Mile 2 = 9.01, Mile 3= 9.18 Mile 4 = 10.37
Mile 5 = 9.59

The sun was just peaking out but definitely still overcast. I could see the fog just over the Golden Gate bridge as we were running towards it.

Miles 5-10 The Golden Gate Bridge

I was running up to the highlight of this race, the Golden Gate Bridge. There were great crowds cheering us on as we were about to run onto the bridge. This was the first time I had ever been on the bridge. I have visited San Francisco many times on layovers, but never had the chance to get to the bridge and now I was about to run over it. I pulled out my first GU around the 6 mile mark. The bridge was packed with runners and many were stopping mid pace to take photos. It was super frustrating trying to dodge these runners that were like pylons in the middle of the road. The views were stunning, but as you can see from my photo, it was still rather overcast.

Mile 6 = 9.28, Mile 7 = 8.45, Mile 8 = 9.43, Mile 9 = 8.32
Mile 10 = 8.47

The crowds on the bridge

Coming off the bridge

Miles 11-15 Presidio into Golden Gate Park

The crowds freed up after we got off the bridge, but the hills were just about to start. There was a rather huge descent, which were followed with what seemed like endless hills.

Mile 11 = 8.34 Mile 12 = 10.07 Mile 13.1= 9.44 (2:07.41) Mile 14 = 9.30 Mile 15 = 8.57

One of many ascents after leaving the GGB

Mile 16-19 Golden Gate Park

In GG Park with the Second Half Runners
on my tail

This is probably one of the favourite parts of the course as the crowds and runners thinned out. This is where the First Half Marathon ends and the Second Half Marathon runners start. There was a section of this race where it was only the marathoners running and I was running all by myself with the fresh air and tall trees an my back drop. I could hear the Second Half Marathon runners getting ready to start as I ran by their start area and shortly after I was overtaken by fresh legs that were starting their race. 

Mile 16 = 10.24, Mile 17= 9.42,  Mile 18 = 9.19,  Mile 19 = 9.40,

Heading out to GG Park running by
the Conservatory of Flowers

I was trying really hard to stay focused as I could see new group of runners blasting by me. It was really tough as my legs were getting really tired and the hills were really starting to get to me. I was really no prepared for all the ups and especially the downs.





Mile 20-26.2 Haight Ashbury, Mission, Potrero, and Mission Bay

Mile 20 = 9.42, Mile 21 = 10.40, Mile 22 = 9.40,  Mile 23 = 14.49, Mile 24 = 9.54, Mile 25 = 9.49, Mile 26 = 9.25

Coming in for the finish with Cupid's
Bow in the back

This final stretch was a killer. The sun had finally burnt through the clouds and it was starting to get warm. The Second Half Marathon runners were fast and plentiful which really was a downer as I was starting to lose steam. Did I mention there were more hills? It was great to run through this area as there were lots of people out on the sidewalks cheering us on. I probably needed this as I was starting to run out of steam and I knew that I was not going to be able to finish under 4:15. My knees were starting to hurt from all the hills, my glutes starting to burn, and my stomach was starting to dislike the GU I had taken. I knew that the rest of this race was going to be all mental and I would have to push through the pain. My knees finally decided to give up on me around Mile 23. I couldn't run anymore as my legs locked up. I couldn't even walk. I was 3 miles away from the finish and there was no way I was not going to cross the finish line. I hobbled over to the side and tried my best to stretch it out.

After a quick stretch I joined the rest of the runners and ran as fast as my legs could take me to the finish line. I had gone over the course map with my cousin the night before, so I knew as soon as I saw AT&T park, I was almost there. I saw some of the other runners that I had been running with and felt good that I had caught up to some of them. When I saw the finish line, I charged with all I had.  I was hoping to get some photos crossing the finish line, but some guy decided to cut right in front of me and totally photo bombed my crossing.

All Done!!

I crossed the finish line in 4:23:40 Pace 10.03

Overall Place - 2607 out of 6625

Women -  621 out of 2311

Age Category - 95 out of 352

Post-race thoughts

I'm thrilled that I was able to finish the course considering all the hills. I would definitely incorporate more hill training and not just the baby hills here, but I would look for some bigger ones and train my body for the ups and especially the downs.

The City of San Francisco put on an amazing race. It is one of my most favourite cities in the world. I was able to run through and by some of the highlights of the city. The volunteers were amazing. There were many volunteers from the Harley Davidson clubs. Many were dressed in their full leather attire and wore bright fluorescent orange hats to indicate they were volunteers. They were placed throughout the course from the start to the finish. They were always there to give us high-fives and at all the turning points.

The free race photos were a huge bonus. The race and expo were very well organized. The course covers a lot of the city and is a great destination race, but is quite challenging with all the hills.  I was quite beaten up by the hills. Looking back now, I wonder if I could have done better. This was only my second marathon and I still have to learn how to pace myself better as well as when to take my gels. I had a blast visiting the city and hope to maybe run it again one day.

Happy Friday!!

Are you racing this weekend?

What are your most memorable races?

Are you training for any up coming races?