Racing

So, I just did some quick adding up. Would you believe that since January of this year, up to yesterday night (April 23, 2006), I have run over 820 km? Holy crap! Well, I double checked, and that number is accurate. I’ve put this distance on my own two feet in various shoes over the past 13 weeks. All of this of course is preparation for the marathon, which will be my third time running it. This distance doesn’t include any other things I’ve done, like skiing, snowshoeing, swimming and biking either! I’d like to say I’m a machine, but it really doesn’t feel that way. I’m just a regular guy, who’s been able to be pretty disciplined about getting out there and doing what needs to be done. I’ve got a bit of drive, since I’d like to start coming out with some possible podium finishes in various races that I’ll be doing this summer.

Speaking of which, my schedule is already filling up fast it seems. As of right now, I’m planning to do the marathon, 3 triathlons (including a ½ Ironman), 5 adventure races (hopefully including a ridiculous 1-week, unsupported ‘expedition’ race), 2 trail running races, and playing ultimate Frisbee. Jody isn’t so pleased to hear about new races I’d like to do, since it ultimately means no camping or outings on those weekends. Of course, camping is usually a challenge in itself, what with the Great White Beast, Jonah.

As the title of this post indicates, last week marked the longest week in my marathon training program mileage. From Tuesday to Sunday, I ran a total of 80 km, culminating in a 32km run on Sunday! I repeat this same week twice more in the next 5 weeks, and then it will be the final taper to the marathon. I’m pretty sure I could finish the marathon with no problem tomorrow if I had to, but I’ll still need these next 7 weeks to tune up my engine. Thus far, I’ve had pretty good luck with my training program, avoiding both injury and illness, the bane of any endurance athlete’s existence. That changed for a me a bit in the past week, with me coming down with a nasty little bug. At first, I was worried that perhaps it was my old friend strept throat coming back to haunt me, but as I write this, I think it’s just a nasty cold brought on my who knows what. All I know is that it has caused me to take 2 days off work to basically sleep. Normally, on a sick day, I try to catch up a bit on chores, but this time around, it was sleep central for me, not getting up till after 1 pm both days. It also caused me to yet again seek out medical advice. I still have not gotten a family doctor, and at this point, figure I won’t be getting one anytime soon. Instead, I just keep going to Appletree Medical Clinics. This time, I even signed up to be part of their ‘group’. Essentially, it makes them my family doctor.

Alright, I’d like to file a formal complaint with Mother Nature. What’s up with this frickin’ freezing rain when I’m trying to run? All week, Jody has been lamenting that I’d be spoiled at the end of the week by a nice warm run before diving back into cold weather. All I can say is … I’ve been had! Yes, the temperature has gone up, and is at this exact moment sitting at a mere -2 degrees. However, why don’t we just throw in a little rain into the air. What’s that? Oh yeah, it’ll obviously freeze in this temperature, a seldom-enjoyed meteorological occurrence known as freezing rain. The result has got to be one of the most miserable runs in my training this year thus far.

Breaking news… Jim Doucette and I managed to get a podium finish at the March 4th, 2006 Raid Pulse Winter Adventure race this past weekend. Yay bronze medal! I’ll update this post with a picture and full stats as they are added on to the main Raid Pulse website. We were third overall in the duo male category with a time of 6hrs. 20 mins. on the 5-8 hour, 45-50km course. The funniest (or not so funny) part of this win is that the race was 90% skiing, which was definitely not our strong suit. Just ask Jim what he thinks of cross-country skiing. The course wasn’t super-hard or anything, and I handled the navigation for the whole race. We did quite well on a certain portion of the course where other must have had problems. We were actually 3rd to cross the finish line as well. However, 6 other teams managed to get on to the ‘advanced’ course section, meaning the automatically place higher than ‘standard’ course finishers. I think that as a result, our overall placement was 8th. Either way, we were pretty stoked by the placing. Jim even informed me that this was his highest finish in a sprint race. He’s won before, but generally, that’s on multi-day races, which are his specialty (and where I’d like to become a specialist as well!).

So.. did everyone get outside and play this weekend? I made sure to get out and freeze my extremities a few times over the course of this weekend. First off was the finale for the Mad Trapper Snowshoe Race series held out at Mike Caldwells ‘Ark’. I had to go to it solo this time around, as Kev was otherwise tied up, and Jim was helping a friend carry out a last-minute move. The pending snow had me a little worried when I went to bed Friday night, but when I was leaving Saturday morning, the roads were still clear. I arrived about 30 minutes early, in time to weasel my way into scoring a set of Atlas DTSL snowshoes for the race. These are the ultra-light racing version of what I use. I’ll compare it to going from running in construction boots to slapping on a pair of running shoes! Not to mention that I didn’t whack my ankles repeatedly. As a result, I was able to boot it for most of the course. As my reward, I wound up finishing in 7th place(hmm..results actually have my in 8th, oh well)! Yay me. Funny thing is, my time was comparable to the other 2 races. I can only assume the course was a little slower than last race. Even better than that is the fact that I wound up in 4th place over the series for males. Yippee. Have a look at the full results.I still ended up pretty pooped, and soaked. I kind of blew up on the second lap (hilly course), since I went a bit too hard on the first lap (flat course). As usual however, it was a great time. I’ll have to return next year.