Less than a month...

Well, May has been a hectic travel month for me culminating in trips back and forth across this great country using as many forms of transportation as I could find (I missed taking a boat anywhere - perhaps I'll have to take a ferry to Toronto Island this weekend!) - and of course writing this while on a train heading home. In total I've managed 1 week at home this month which has of course wrecked havoc with my training schedule - as much as I'd like to, I wasn't about to pack my bike a carry-on! Things have picked up since the dismal start to the month regarding running, and I'm finally starting to feel comfortable again without worrying too much about if my body is going to revolt. I had a fantastic run in Montreal this week discovering parts of town I'm now making mental notes to go back to when I'm not all hot and sweaty. I've not had much time out on my bike obviously, but the little I have done has been at a good pace, and I've clocked a significant number of miles on spin bikes over the past while. The swimmng however - this is where I need to step it up. I really don't like hotel pools - 3 stokes per length doesn't work for me... And trying to find a decent pool while you're on the road and working the pool schedule into the hectic work schedule just doesn't pan out either. So I'll be spending more time proportionately in my local pool this month getting ready for Welland on June 26th, heading out on the bike whenever I can grab the time, and just keeping up the pace with the running. Welland is a sprint distance tri, so the run portion is shorter than the road races I've been doing recently - and frankly I'm rather looking forward to a shorter run!

Oh, and can't forget that I need to practice getting on my cycling shoes and clipping in... Still so aware of how easy it'll be to crash and burn in a heap on the floor by getting that wrong!


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It's working...

So I've been working out in Vancouver this week - it's such a short visit that I haven't managed to acclimatize to the time zone change, so this morning when I woke up at 5:30am what else is there to do at that hour other than go for a run!

The hotel is right on top of Stanley Park, so it's the obviously place to run - I've run along the sea wall several times, but usually got for a few km, then turn around and head back. I've never done the entire wall around the park other than on a bike! Given I had some extra time this morning I set my Nike+ workout for a 5k, which is quite a bit longer than my gradual runs I've been doing recently, but I was interested to see how things were working out with the extra short runs and the digestion issues I'd been having on longer runs. I knew the entire wall was around 10k, so I figured I'd run the first half then enjoy the view walking the final 5k.

Around 3k in I knew I wasn't going to run 5k this morning - I felt great, no issues, great views, fresh salty sea air, I decided right then that I was going to go further than the 5k - in fact, it was time for a bit of redemption - this morning was a 10k day. The other thing that was different this morning, was I forgot to put my HR monitor watch on as I left the hotel - so no clue where my HR was at today and I had to pay a bit more attention to how I actually felt rather than just looking at my wrist to see what it was telling me. I got to 5k really easily, and just kept on going - none of the 5k issues I'd seen the Sporting Life 10k. It wasn't until 7k rolled around that the digestion kicked in, but no where near as bad as I've had in the past - none of the entire abdomen cramping up, just simply needed to stop, and as if it was perfectly timed, there was an open, clean, flushing public loo right at the 7k mark. So with that out of the way, on with the remaining 3k - still no issues, no cramping, just a nice easy run all the way to the 10k mark. And what do ya know, I got it done in 1hr 6 minutes - which is a good 12 minutes taken off the Sporting Life 10k from a few weeks ago - much closer to where I expected my 10k time to be - with a head wind off the water no less!

So it's working then - all these short runs building up and getting my body used to all the shaking around. My next few races now are all triathlons, the longest of which will be the Olympic distance in September - I was getting a bit concerned about the runs in the races given the issues I'd been having, but knowing that even after just a few weeks of working on it I've managed to add a couple km before my body cries out at me is certainly good news.

So far so good...

Just a quick update - Saturday was the start of the build-it-up runs... so 1K, 1.1K and 1.2K are now all complete - and best of all, no issues to be had! My pace is a whole lot faster at these lil' short distances - so perhaps besides getting the body used to all the moving around it'll help speed up this slow-poke of a runner while we're at it! Oh, and Ian's been keeping with it also - I think secretly he's kinda enjoying it!

Back to basics

It's been nearly a week since I completed my first 10k, so it's given me some time to think about how it went. While the first half went really well, at the 5k mark there was the need to join the queue for the porta-loo and it didn't get any better from there on in with cramping forcing me to walk the majority of the second half of the race, finally coming in with a time of 1:18 when I'd expected to be just under the hour mark.

Obviously this was quite frustrating, and after doing some reading I'm going back to basics. Theory is that while my cardiovascular is all up for running 10k, apparently my internal systems don't agree with being shaken up that much! So here we go, back to short and gradual - On Saturday I'm starting out with a 1k run, and I'll increase it 0.1km every day to try and teach my body about getting shaken up and learning to just deal with it a bit more gracefully than it did last weekend! Ian says he's going to join me on my running build-up to help his with his preparation for his duathlon in July, so that should be fun :-)

Still, road races are done for a bit now, it's triathlon season! Still with a bit of running, but I'm looking forward to getting something else in there - and especially getting that new shiny bike out for it's first race!