Time…time…what time is it?
Tonight (Friday) while running south along the span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1208637574_0″Rideau Canal/span I had an br /interesting experience. A runner was coming towards me from the br /opposite direction as I fumbling with my GPS watch. He started br /pointing at his wrist and shouted time, time, what time is it? I wasn’t br /sure what time he was interested in as my watch was showing that I was br /18 minutes and 34 seconds into my workout as well as being span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1208637574_1″6:45pm/span. I br /shouted back that it was span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1208637574_2″18:34/span which seemed to satisfy him. On the way br /back, I bumped into the speedsters that I run with span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1208637574_3″on Wednesday night/span br /who were doing their warmup. I sped up considerable and they responded br /allow us to do the next two miles at a pace very close to slowest kmbr /interval pace of 4:20. It felt good to burn off a day’s worth of br /stress. At the same time my legs were nicely limbered up for swing br /dancing.br /br /Last night, I had my first of six span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1208637574_4″lindy swing dance lessons/span. We br /reviewed some of the basic moves and spent much of the evening doing br /slow step, slow step, followed by step – triple step – step, with the br /s-ts-s being done on a eight count. They mentioned that it would be br /frustrating at first but if we were patient the prize was out there br /waiting.
Spring running
I did something spring last night and repeated it tonight, run in bare legs. The weather in Ottawa has finally turned for the better as the snow and ice piles are quickly melting away. There is so much snow melting away it is causing large puddles to form; my interval course is no exception. Tonight, I did 5×1km intervals on 60 second rest. The workout was made a little more difficult as there were two large puddles located on the course which we had to cross ten times. We would run hard/fast, hurdle over the first puddle, run hard/fast, hurdle over the second and then run to the finish and then repeat the process all over again. A crosswind made for uneven interval times. 4.16/3.52/4.16/4.04/4.18
Easter and Facebook
My Easter weekend was more productive than usual. On Good Friday, I ran in a 10 mile road race close to where my folks live and ran a race that came with a surprise. My second loop of a five mile course was 63 seconds faster than the first. This was good news. During the weekend we installed a new countertop in my folks kitchen which went without a hitch. I also did something I should have done at Christmas but for time and weather reasons didn’t; to catch up with some of my running friends. On the weekend, Perry and I went for a seven mile run on an extremely hilly course that we would usually do twice a week while training on the cross-country team. The course is known as the “three-hills” and every two miles you have to descend and climb the a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Escarpment”Niagara Escarpment/a. We finished the workout in a brisk 53 minutes. Perry and I haven’t seen each other for a while as he went to Korea to teach English after university. During the fall we reconnected by Facebook and vowed to catch-up and go for a workout. He is married and has an energetic son that loves hockey. We played a game of pickup hockey after our run. I did some a href=”http://www.geocaching.com/”geocaching /awhich was good as area near Niagara Falls has less snow and as a result locating a cache involves little or no digging in the snow. In keeping with tradition, the three families got together for an Easter dinner and the kids are getting older at an incredible rate.
Good Friday Road Race
There is a Easter tradition with my family which is to start off the Easter weekend with a road race. For the past eight or so years, my father and I have run in the Burlington Good Friday road race. A runner has two distances to choose from to do a spritely 5km(3.1miles) or 10 miles. My father always runs the 5km race while I will switch between the two distances. This year I ran the 10 miles. The race went really well and I finished to find a surprise waiting for me. The course is two loops. The course undulates as you run along the shore of Lake Ontario. Ten miles is a long distance and you have to pace yourself as there is a danger of starting out too fast and having to suffer for your early exurbance. I started out at a comfortable pace and sped up as I started to warm up. My goals was to pass as many runners as I could. The first loop went well and have had more energy than I thought. My five mile split was 37.02. It was time to take the race a little more seriously. I increased my pace slightly and started to pass people at a more brisk rate. Each successive mile was done at a slightly faster pace. At the finish line, the clock said 1:13.04. My second half of the race was 62 seconds faster than the first. I am pleased with my race as it lets me know that I have been able to perserve through the tough Ottawa weather and thay my running, snowshoeing and swimming is keeping me fit.
Raining and running…
On my way to work today, I felt compelled to take off my winter gloves. Something unexpected was happening where I live; it was raining for the first time this year. It felt good to feel the rain landing on my hands. If you live in Vancouver or Victoria, British Columbia, I think this thought would come with a groan as it is always raining on the west coast. This can mean that warmer weather is on its way. There was a downside to this warm trend. The snow is starting to melt forming large puddles that one must dart between. This is made more challenging at night when it is hard to distinguish between the black road and a puddle. This became more apparent during my a href=”http://www.runningroon.com/”Running Room /aworkout in the evening. I ran down to the store trying my best to avoid getting a soaker but failed miserably. The workout took the form of four mile warmup followed by 5 x 1km repeats on 90 seconds rest. It was my first speed workout of the year so it sets a benchmark on which I can only improve. (4.04/4.09/4.24/4.24/4.22) On Friday, I head down to my folks place and will run in the a href=”http://www.burlingtonrunners.com/goodfriday/”Burlington Good Friday 10 mile race/a. The race is long enough that I can only treat it as a training workout.
Mundane jobs
I was at a wine and cheese last night and as we drank more wine the topics of the conversations started to get more interesting. We all started to describe some of the more boring and mundane summer jobs we had when we were younger. One of my friends Jessica talked about spending the summer filing forms in folders. All day long she would file forms for the city. The discussion eventually came around to me and I describe how I was part of a team that sorted 10 tons of pears for a local cannery. Each pear had to be measured. If it was larger than 2.25″ it would be sent to the fresh fruit market and if it was smaller it went to a cannery to become part of a fruit cocktail. We would sort the pears that had been picked during the day in a large barn just after dusk. During the day I would pick a ton of pears or 60 a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Apple_Bushel_by_Zelphics.jpg”bushels/a. It was hard work at the same time it was fun and rewarding work as you could see your progress at the end of each day.span style=”font-style: italic;”span style=”font-style: italic;”/span/span
Phoenix half-marathon — part 2
The Racebr /br /I awoke at 5:15 am and started the processing of fueling for the race. It would take the form of four bowels of a href=”http://www.kelloggs.ca/cgi-bin/klog-canada/product.pl?product=458″Kellog’s Vector cereal /aand hot tea. At 6:00, I headed down to the lobby and was able to catch the race shuttle a couple of minute early. The start area was a haven of activity as there were 30,000 runners milling around the downtown core of Phoenix. I had brought along the daily babble puzzle and worked on it while watching the sunrise. As it was getting brighter, I checked out the senate building and took some pictures of nearby statues 1 2 . At 7:30 am the marathon race started which much fanfare. Of note, the organizers had set aside 27 corrals. I started munching on a Clif bar. At a little before 8:00, I stripped off my layers of warm clothing and dropped then off at the UPS depot and headed for the start line. It was a cool 4C/39F. After the playing of the national anthem we were off on our 13.1 mile journey. My first two miles were done at a brisk pace of 6.55 and 6.59. At around mile 8, I started to feel my energy level drop, so I pushed back a Clif Gel with 25 mg of caffeine. This would stabilize me for a little while but I was running faster than my energy intake could keep up. At mile 9, they had a volunteers handing out Powergel so I grabbed two. These would act as a lifeline for the final three miles. I had run the first half of the race too quickly and was starting to pay the price. I could still rely on one advantage and that was, I knew the race course and could run towards familiar landmarks. At the start of the Tempe Town Bridge with 1.5 miles to go, I opened up and sprinted for as long as I could and held on until just over the finish line. I would finish in position 456 while 21,000 participants were still out on the course. The finish was special as I was a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158141400289224354″greeted with flowers and two beauty women/a. After cooling down for a while and sucking on multiple popsicles it was time to see how JB’s race was coming along. With ten minutes to spare, I was able to watch him cross his finish line. a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158141288620074642″JB/a was excited by his finish as he ran a 3:28 marathon which was two minutes faster than he had expected to finish.br /br /A little while later I headed over to buy some tea. It is special tea and much sought after. I bought multiple boxes of Revolution tea and walked ever so slowly back to the hotel. We closed out the day with a celebratory dinner at the a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158141421764060850″Cheesecake factory/a.br /1:36 — 13.1 miles/21 kmbr /Mile splits time heart rate datebr /1 6.55 162/131br /2 6.59 13.54 164/165br /3 7.21 21.16 168/166br /4 7.07 28.23 168/167br /5 7.15 35.38 168/169br /6 7.11 42.49 168/170br /7 7.23 50.13br /8 7.23 57.6 168/169br /9 7.24 1.05.01 171/173br /10/11 15.40 1.20.42br /12 7.20 1.28.20 173/175br /13 7.23 1.35.25 173/178br /13.1 1.36br /br /The Road Tripbr /br /On Monday morning, I was up early as we had to pick up the rental car at 7:30 am. JB’s dad took us out for breakfast before we started our trek north. Our first stop was a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montezuma%27s_Castle”Montezuma Castle /ain a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158142370951833458″Camp Verde/a. It was an impressive sight. The Hopi Indians had built their homes into the side of a rock face 15,000 years ago. During the summer heat the thick wall would keep the folks living their cool. We continued our journey north and stopped in at a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158142388131702658″Bell Rock /a(N34 47.506 W111 45.697) in Sedona. All around us the soil and rocks were red. It was like driving through a Martian landscape. Throughout the drive I let my mind wander as I envisioned John Wayne riding ahead through the desert and through the large rock outcrops. Continuing north we stopped at the a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158142396721637266″Chapel in the Rocks /a(N34 49.920 W111 45.988) which is a church built in the 1950s in a rock ledge which is an architectural marvel. The next part came as a surprise, snow and cold. Flagstaff had received about a foot of snow in early December and it was still on the ground. We stopped in at a href=”http://home.nau.edu/”North Arizona University /aand took a tour of the campus. The university’s crest contains a snowflake and the mascot is a lumberjack. Flagstaff is also the site of the US Olympic training center as it has an elevation of 7,000 feet. We threw snowballs and built a snowman. Our journey would take us next in an easterly direction to the a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barringer_Crater”Meteor Crater /a(N35 01.934 W111 01.298) which is the largest well preserved crater. It was huge and could hold 20 football fields at the bottom. We arrived a little late and missed the hiking tour around the perimeter. A couple of facts about the crater: As the sun was setting we started our journey in a south-westerly direction back to Phoenix. We closed off the day with a steak dinner.br /br /Tuesday’s adventure would involve a fair amount of driving as we headed south just as the sun was rising. We headed in a southerly direction and were within earshot of the Mexican border. Our destination was a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone%2C_Arizona”Tombstone, AZ /a(N31 42.837 W110 04.018). The drive south started out flat as a pancake and ripe for speed traps. Tombstone is an old Wild West cowboy town frozen in time. There was the famous OK Corral, the general store, the post office and the saloon. The saloon was just as one would expect a great bar, cheap drinks and scantly clad women. JB opted for a whisky on the rocks and I a local Merlot. Drinking the booze on an empty stomach gave me a bit of a buzz. We visited the world’s largest rose bush and the attached museum. We stopped in at the OK Corral to watch an enactment of the famous Wyatt Earp shootout which was fun. The Tombstone Epitaph, the local paper, has a museum so we checked out the offerings. As the sun was setting we visited the Tombstone graveyard which is home where the remains of 50 of the famous western heroes. Back then justice was severe as the ceremony was riddled which folks that experienced really gruesome deaths. On our journey north we stopped in at the University of Arizona campus and eyed some weird signs. They have a pedestrian crossing for both deaf and blind folks next to a performing arts center. Visiting the a href=”http://www.arizona.edu/”UoA/a would mean that I had visited all three of the universities in the state of Arizona during my stay. Early Wednesday morning I caught early flight back to Ottawa.br /br /a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008″http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/a
Hills and more hills
Tonight, I did my first hill workout of the year. It was six repeats of 400 yards up a gradual incline. The rest of the team did eight but I opted to slack off a bit as my legs are still recovering from the race. Over the next couple of weeks, the number of intervals with increase as well as the length of each intervals. It felt good to be running with the team again.
Phoenix Half-marathon parthttp://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158142882052942002 1
Getting therebr /br /Friday January 11br /br /My adventure started at 5:00 am when I caught the taxi to the airport. I arrived at the airport a little later than expected and was whisked through security and customs with the stern warning that if I did hurry I might miss my flight. This had the unintended affect of boosting my blood pressure needlessly, as once I was in the departure lounge it was announced that the 6:30 am departure would be delayed due to light bulb issues. There was some talk in the lounge about how long it could take to replace a light bulb. As time went on the airline staff called up more and more folks rebooked them on other flights. After a five hour delay our flight took off and we landed in Philadelphia an hour later. My new flight to Phoenix would leave late afternoon so I had lunch and spent much of the afternoon surfing the web with my laptop. I had packed a Robert Ludlum thriller novel helped in passing away the time. The flight to Phoenix was uneventful and JB met me at the airport. In keep with tradition, we had supper at PF Chang’s and started off the meal with lettuce wraps. The main course was Chicken Chow mien. JB dropped me back at the hotel and I bedded down after a 21 hour day.br /br /Saturday January 12br /br /I awoke at 7:00 am local time which is 9:00 am Ottawa time and headed down for breakfast. My first stop would be Arizona State University (ASU) which is the location of the half- and full-marathon finish lines as well as the shuttles to the start line. My goal was to see how much time I would need on Sunday morning to walk/jog to the shuttle buses. The further they were away to earlier I would have to leave. The distance was 1.5 miles. While on the campus, I tried my hand at some geocaching but couldn’t find a single geocaches but found a a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158142834808301682″petrified log /ainstead. As I was heading back to the hotel, JB texted me and we set up a rendezvous time. Once back at the hotel, I checked with the front desk and they confirmed that there were still some seats available for the 6:15 am shuttle to the start line. This was a relief. I took the last available seat. My legs would be grateful on Sunday morning.br /br /Early afternoon JB arrived and we headed over to REI to pick-up an order that I had placed over the Christmas holidays. It was a relief to find that the down jacket I had ordered fit. While trying on the jacket we starting talking to a staff member originally from Michigan and she was able to give me a good overview of the features of the jacket. From REI, we headed to downtown Phoenix to the race expo which was twice as large as last year. I quickly picked up my race package and we checked out the rows and rows of exhibitors. We next headed out for lunch at a local burritos chain. The next part was cool as we drove up to one of the highest part in the Tempe/Scottsdale/Phoenix area, a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158142882052942002″South Mountain/a, having an elevation of 2200 feet. It is a long a windy road without any guard rails. The a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Phoenix_Jan2008/photo#5158142869168040098″trash cans/a are elevated and set at an angle because of the coyote threat. The panoramic view from the top was awesome.br /br / It was then onto JB’s place where I met his folks and watched and listened as he played a variety of pieces of music on his piano. It was great listening to him play his concerto. Our plans of eating at the Spaghetti Factory were scuttled when we learned the wait time was 90 minutes. We opted to have a pasta dinner at a nearby fast food place. Before heading back we stopped at Kroger’s to get some bananas, fig newtons and pretzel goldfish. Before calling it a night I laid out my running gear for the morning.
Wet in Phladelphia
This weekend I’ll be in Phoenix, AZ running in my second PF Chang half-marathon. Last year, I set a personal best for the half-marathon distance (13.1 miles) in a time of 1:33. On Sunday, I hope to try run a faster time. As I type this blog I am sitting at the Philadelphia airport waiting for my flight to leave. I was up at 5:00 am to catch a 6:30 am flight and arrived a little later than I had expected. I had to rush through security only to find out that the airplane was having light bulb problems. The flight was delayed and delayed for about five hours scuttling my chances of arriving in Phoenix during the early afternoon. Once I boarded the flight at 11:00 they explained the problem. A light bulb for one of the main sensors on the plane had burn out. They would have to remove a couple of panels to replace it. I’m glad that they spotted the problem while we were still on the ground.
