My Favourite Run

February 7th, 2007 by LB, under On the Run. 6 Comments

 

Earlier this month my bestest running buddy D had an unmetionable birthday, and redefines life at _0 by celebrating with a run up Sleeping Beauty Mountain.   Here on a snowy gorgeous afternoon J looks back at our litte town. 

This it without a doubt my most favourite run.  Enough of those slopes D, come home so we can run up….more.

Running up that Hill

December 19th, 2006 by LB, under On the Run. 7 Comments

My friend Mik is wondering when, why and how you run hills.  Right, this was supposed to be a fitness blog.  Have I been on a tangent mindlessly blabbing about everything but?  Well…. so glad you’ve got me back on track and hope you aren’t sorry you asked.

For the most part hill training should be preceded by several months of running to develop a good mileage base.  You want to be sure the connective tissues and structures have had time to adapt to the stress of running before you push them to the limit.  This doesn’t mean newer runners should restrict themselves to flat.  Rolling hills are great and can help pique your interest.  You can just take them as they come come, but “hill training” is another matter.

Hill training is typically done to take the runner to the next level; the more serious runner who wants to improve speed, form and enhance cardiovascular conditioning.  It becomes a work out all unto itself and is approached like an interval training session.  I’ll give you an example.

On a hill day, and I must also be honest, I haven’t had a hill day in quite some time, (so thanks Mik for the inspiration) I might park at Balance Rock and run a nice easy 2 km warm up out and back on the highway.  Then I run up the Skaadgaanaay Hill say six times – hard up, but nice easy on the way down and try to maintain even speed on each interval, so the last is as fast as the first. Then a nice easy 2 km cool down to help redistribute the lactic acid, thus decreasing potential muscle soreness.

Now, that doesn’t mean your hill intervals have to be even either.  You might choose a variety of hills so that each interval is different in terms of grade and speed, and you must be sure you build your tolerance gradually.  If your body is new to running hills, maybe start with one minute hill repeats with a light 3 minute jog between each one.

Remember its is essential to build a good mileage base before attempting this kind of training as hill running is associated with increased risk of injury, particularly achilles tendonitis, and D, I know you don’t believe me, but a good warm up is an absolute must, and you would never do a hill workout more than once/week.  Streeeetch.

Now speaking of D, no post on hill running would be complete without mentioning my running buddy D.  I think he would say you hop out of the truck, and run up a mountain until you can go no further and you do it because that’s real running.   You don’t do it to train or get faster…. you do it because you simply love it.

I’d also recommend Spirit Lake. Once you are up the huge honkin hill in the beginning, the smaller rolling ones are a perfect hill run,  and there are some really fun downhill glides…

Hope that helps.   The photo is D, this past summer, dragging M and I up one of those jump-out-of-the-truck-and-run-until-you-drop routes.  He aptly calls this route No Repsite.  Doesn’t the blue sky look positively dreamy right now….

Joyful Day of Running

December 17th, 2006 by LB, under On the Run. 2 Comments

 

This is the view from my bed this morning….

Of course I took off running….. ran 12 K by the water….. 

Then went Christmas shopping with Shark, wrapped a gazillion presents, mailed all the parcels, cleaned the house from top to bottom, hung up christmas lights, delivered the recycling, dug out the Christmas decorations, brought the tree inside…..

Marks of a Good Run

September 14th, 2006 by LB, under On the Run. 2 Comments

I have a couple of crazy friends who share my passion for running in places most people choose to avoid.  Somtimes these adventures involve a great deal of “up”, and often it’s necessary to “punch through” slash or nasty second growth.  We also encounter rivers, creeks, lots of mud and big blow downs.

As you can see my runners don’t stand up.  I know the obvious solution would be trail shoes, but I have feet like dinner plates.  Truly, they are as wide as they are long, so in order to accommodate my duck feet, I have to buy $180 running shoes as they are the only ones that fit.  Sure, the price tag hurts, but I get to keep all my toenails and run pain free. (That goes for my feet)

Anyway, as a good friend points out, I digress, badly.  On a recent jaunt we discussed what for us, constitutes a good run, and here is our list:

1. Completely mud soaked shoes.
2. Mud marks way up the legs.
3. Extensive Spruce Rash
4. Cuts, Scratches and Bruises
5. Really messy hair – well some of us start out that way to begin with.
6. Massive amounts of debris in the bathtub during the post run shower
7. Red marks where we have been whipped by alder branches
8. Shorts full of debris… (pine needles, spruce needles and dirt) so bad you have to stop and empty them
9. Fatigue and extreme hunger 
10. And of course there is the smell thing

Sprint to the Summit

August 6th, 2006 by LB, under A Slice of Heaven, On the Run. 6 Comments

Truth be told, it wasn’t a sprint, but today thirty some competitors were crazy enough to race to the top of Mount Washington in the Inaugral Sprint to the Summit.

These two were completely responsible for my participating in such insanity…

But, really I absolutely loooooved every minute of the entire day…. thanks guys, I needed that!

Love you both, even if I can’t keep up.

Wow, do I miss this!  Here’s to being here next year to do it again, with maybe some training even!

Obscene Cell Phone Call

June 24th, 2006 by LB, under On the Run. No Comments

I have many truly wonderful running friends, but D is in a class all by himself  As Patty, a fellow runner, so eloquently described, they broke the mold after they made him, and I’m beginning to think he may need his own blog category.

D introduced me to real running about 6 years ago, when I wasn’t living here on the edge of the world, but had come up for a visit.  I was marathon training at the time and a mutual friend thought we should hook up, so I called him and we headed miles out the backroads, watching for deer, bears and assorted wildlife on the way.

We ran up a mountain.  No exaggeration, we literally ran up a mountain on something that resembled an old deactivated logging road, but in places didn’t seem to be anything more than an ancient deer trail.  There were moments, when searching for footing and struggling to protect my face from being slapped by immature alders, that I thought D was completely mad.  That was until we got to the top.  Somehow,  we ended up in this stunning alpine meadow where I felt I should burst into the chorus of  ”The Sounds of Music”, and from that moment on I’ve been hooked.

In sharing our running addiction we call each other via cell phone when we’re off island running.   Breathless calls have orginated from New Brunswick, the River Valley of Edmonton, the rim of the Grand Canyon, St. Lucia, Cape Perpetua in Oregon and of course many in Stanely Park.  Yesterday I wasn’t home to hear about the dykes in Richmond, but when I got home, there was a message…..

It’s me….. ohper, ohper………I’m running on the dykes in Richmond…… ohper, ohper……and its beautiful……ohper, ohper……a heron is flying by…..ohper,ohper……you would love it……ohper, ohper…..there’s a guy running by me……..ohper,ohper…….but he wouldn’t be running by me, if I wasn’t talking to you……. ohper, ohper…… See you tommorow, Bye…ohper, ohper…..rub, rub, thump, thump……..ohper, ohper……rub,rub, thump, thump……ohper, ohper…….rub, rub, thump, thump……..ohper, ohper…….. rub, rub, thump, thump……ohper,opher…….

But the rub, rub, thump, thump, ohper ohper (darth vader breathing – remember that?) just went on and on.  I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt.  It turns out he didn’t turn off his phone and had put in the pocket of his shorts, so what was left was the sound of his feet hitting the ground, his breathing, fabric and whatever else $%#&% rubbing together, and maybe water gushing in his stomach.  The next funny part, was how when I told him he immediately checked his cell phone to see how long this went on for.

Thank you D, for showing me the pure joy of running where most people would never venture to go……

Great Vowel Shift

June 24th, 2006 by LB, under On the Run. No Comments

Any of you who have participated in long runs, will know that vowels are not typically the focus of runing conversation, but there is something runners spent an inordinant amount of time talking about, and it does involve something that sounds a great deal like vowel.  So when D starting talking today, on the way to Stanley Lake in the pouring rain, about the Great Vowel Shift, I thought he was joking, but no, turns out we were in for a history lesson and a lot of practice making gutteral throat sounds in the bush.  Maybe we scared away the bears.

Learn something new everyday!

Happy Birthday Brother John

June 18th, 2006 by LB, under On the Run, Yackadactyl. No Comments

For as long as I can remember, my brother John has always been there.  Only 18 months younger than me, old home movies seem to indicate he was the best real life doll that ever existed. I can’t  imagine what my life would have been like without him.

Growing up with John was like having a celebrity for a brother.  I used to think of him as bringing home the hardware…. “Top Overall Athlete”, “Top Academic Student”, “Top Overall Student”, every year a big award, and a slough of little ones.  I think he may have even gotten 100% in algebra one term, and it didn’t seem to matter what sport he tried, he excelled.

One of my favourite memories of John is the Victoria Marathon in 1999.  He had run the Portland Marathon the weekend before, and was coming to be crowd support.  Unable to control himself, he signed up for the race while I wasn’t looking, having just run the 42.2 k, 7 days prior.  “Don’t say a word,” he told me and I knew it was best to keep quiet, despite the fact I am sure my face belied exactly what I was thinking.

Normally, John runs a marthon a full hour and 10 minutes faster than me, so when I saw him at one of the 10 km portapotties, I knew something was up.  “My legs are siezing up” he said. “Maybe I’ll run with you for a while.”  I was thrilled, but he looked completely out of place, a frontrunner in the middle of the pack. 

 

(more…)

No Respite….

May 27th, 2006 by LB, under A Slice of Heaven, On the Run. 9 Comments

A very accurate name for a very uphill run, but to be completely honest there is one respite where “it flattens out” for about 10 steps – otherwise completely uphill.

After driving out to our take off point at “dog avoidance speed”, Maureen and I insisted on doing our own little flat warm up before running straight up, while Duncan completed his pre running ritual…..

 

But then he decided to make it more restorative….

 

Never mind the damage to the runners transport vehicle.

After that it was truly straight up….

 

And more up…..

 

Until….. 

And then of course we need to look at where we’ve been and where we have yet to go…

 

“That’s 10C, which links up to 10 D, and then winds up over to 8BA, and then hooks around to the north a little where there’s a big hill, and remember 3 years ago we ran it in under an hour?”

But that was before they put the roads to bed.

And then there is the glorious descent, which includes way more conversation, and we always finsh off with the…..

Good Run!  Thanks guys, that was beyond good, that was the best.  I’ve missed that kind of running so much.  Let’s keep it up.  We missed you Steph