The Running Diva

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Sean and I were supposed to meet this morning but somehow got our wires crossed and missed each other. He was going to take me on a run he wanted to try behind Thetis lake and up Scafe Hill or Mount Iron Horse as Sylvan advised me to call it. In the end it was probably a good thing. I ended up running two loops at the lakes and could monitor myself much easier on  the flat terrain. I heard that Mount Iron Horse has a “staggeringly steep climb”. I felt pretty good today. I ran very easily for the first 5km and progressively felt better and went a bit quicker as I went along. I ran the first loop in 43′ and the second in 41′ and then a very easy 20′. I was pretty happy with how I felt so I think I am back on track. I also had a good two hour nap this afternoon. I realized that although I have been off work these past few weeks, I have managed to fill my days up with projects so I have to be sure to get my rest in there.

I got a call last week to be the soloist for two concerts this weekend. The soprano who was supposed to do it go into a car accident (she’s ok thankfully, just can’t sing right now) and they needed someone last minute. Since the concerts are on Friday and Saturday night, OCal is going to ease up on the training so I am not feeling too tired to perform. Some of the repertoire is new but there are a few pieces I have done already so it won’t be too bad. We’ll have to get used to this sort of thing all through the year. Brent may schedule a wo for the team on a day I have to sing in a masterclass or recital so I’ll have to rearrange my training week when that happens. Hopefully there won’t be too many conflicts.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Last Saturday OCal had us do 4 x 1 mile on the grass at Lambrick Park. We were able to measure out a mile long loop while we ran the warm-up using my nifty Garmin watch. The wo was tough for me today…too tough. I was breathing harder than I should have been and just couldn’t get my legs to fire. OCal and I figured that the low iron levels were to blame but later in the day I realized I had run 12 days consecutively. It was an oversight since I thought OCal was trying something new but he accidentally didn’t schedule my usual day off. I thought it was odd and should have red-flagged it. So, that dumb error, coupled with my low iron…it’s no wonder I was beat! I took Sunday completely off and the rest of the week consisted of easy to moderate running, a leisurely cycle and on Friday I did 4 x 60″ for some turn-over. Having an easy recovery week is probably a good thing anyway.

I have been too glued to the Olympics to blog regularly! Sorry! It was a boring training week anyway!

This morning I met up again with the group at the lakes for 2 x 10′ with 2:30 rests. OCal showed up on his bike to monitor our paces. Slaw showed up to add some mileage which was a bonus for Juice. Slaw provided some company and support for his tempo run. [If you want to laugh hard, read Slaw’s entry on hair-removal using duct tape].

I felt I ran the wo decently considering I still wasn’t feeling very smooth and perky. I worked hard but was careful not to push. I wore the Garmin and it recorded 3:38 pace for the first interval and then 3:37. I am still breathing a bit hard but I felt better than last week.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Dave and I made plans to meet at Beckwith Park this morning. OCal happened to be going for a run with Paddy and was passing through the park so he stuck around and watched us go through the drill circuit we put together. After a warm-up we did 3 sets of four different drills (plyos, strength exercises etc) with 80m strides between each drill and a lap of jogging between sets. We fine-tuned the circuit today so that we started each set with a plyometric drill. We want to be certain of holding good form in the plyos so we found that doing them after the lap jog gave us enough rest to go into them fresher. Juice came along too and did the 30′ warm-down with me and OCal to his place and then continued up around Christmas hill and back to the park.

I got my blood test results and sure enough my iron levels are a bit low. Not as low as in 2005 but definitely not in the range they should be in. My ferritin since last fall went from a reading of 50 to 23 (ouch) and my hematocrit and hemoglobin, although still in the normal range, are on the low end as well. I am not that surprised. Looking back, I suspect I was low starting this past spring. At least I caught it early this time. So, I’ll get back on the program of taking liquid iron regularly again. I was trying to not take it all the time since I was told that taking an iron supplement all the time can be harmful.

This evening we went to the send-off for our Olympic triathletes who leave next week for Beijing at Fort Street Cycle. There was a very large turn-out, apparently more than what they were expecting. Everyone on the team was introduced including the support staff (yay Kimmy!!) who will also be going. It’s going to be an exciting race for both the men and women. Simon of course is ready to reclaim his gold medal status. Carolyn Murray is so bloody strong and Lauren has had such a great year too…I can barely wait to see how well they do! Good luck to all you guys!!!!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Juice and I met Dave this morning at the lakes. Juice couldn’t make the IRR wo later in the day so he decided to do it while we did our tempo run. Dave and I did a warmup and ran to the 9km marker, did some strides and then started our 20′ tempo. I felt good for the first ten minutes but then much like last week, started breathing a bit harder than I would have liked. I went for a check-up after struggling with last week’s tempo run and asked for my iron levels to be checked. I remember feeling like this in 2005 and found out my iron was low. It’s been almost a year since I had it tested so I am long overdue. Anyway, I hung in there and got it done but my pace was 3:48, but I was breathing like I was running a 10km race! Dave jogged back to come and get me and then we ran back to the field together where we did about 20 minutes of core/balancing exercises with the medicine ball. I was beat the rest of the day so I hung out at home and made sure I took it easy the rest of the day. After dinner I ran an easy 40′ at Cedar Hill and felt pretty good!

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Juice and I took the ferry over to Saltspring today to do our run. What a gorgeous day we had! The route we did was hilly but you can’t really avoid hills on this island so we ran it fairly easily. A nice dip in the lake and trip to Ganges to walk around and explore, made it a great day!

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

My two week holiday is now over. I took a couple of weeks off from singing but now I have to get back at it and started back with 45 minutes, mostly consisting of warm-up exercises. I didn’t feel as rusty as I thought I would.

I did a 30′ run at Cedar this morning at an easy pace and the met the Aspire group at the Oak Bay track in the late afternoon. It was hot out with no wind. Give me that over wind and rain any day! Jac came along to watch us and cheer us on. The set for Prancy, Chops and me was 1200 (90) 800 (75) 400 (60) 400 x 2 with 5 minutes between sets. In the meantime, Sean, Little Eric and Dave did 400s. I really focused on staying relaxed today, not pushing at all. I ran [4:06-2:42-78-76] [4:03-2:41-76-75]. Not stellar times but I felt I ran the wo in control and in a good zone. My energy was good but not great. Still, it was a really fun wo! Prancy did three sets as she is marathon training. Chops and I hopped into a couple of 400s to help her finish the last set. We all went down to Willow’s afterwards and iced which felt incredible afterwards!

Monday, August 4, 2008

Dave J and I met at Beckwith park this afternoon to do a drill circuit. I did a ten minute warm-up and then we did 15 minutes worth of drills and strides. We didn’t want to overdo it on the first time around and even felt that 15 minutes was tough! I did another 20 minutes afterwards running Dave part-way home.

Juice and I went downtown to listen to some of the live music down near the inner harbour. After a few incoherent cell calls to Lis’ and Paul who were somewhere in the crowd of 103,000 people (we were sure we would see Paul’s shaved head…yeah, right) we went up the street and got some gelato…my fave!!

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Lis’ organized a big group of us to go to WildPlay park for a day of zip-lining and other fun. We congregated at a coffee shop just outside of Mill Bay to get a last shot of espresso . Little did we know that the adrenaline rush we were going to get from this adventure an hour later would be more than enough! What a blast we had!

After getting harnessed up, we were given a quick safety lesson and then a chance to test our understanding of how to hook ourselves safely at all times to the safety lines on a mini version of the two-hour long course. Not long into the test, Shan was sent to remedial version of the beginner course until she could prove she would not end up strung up in a Douglas Fir or worse! She was hilarious making groanings about being sent back to do the training course again. Sorry Shan but I couldn’t resist!! It was a bit unnerving at first. It was hard to believe that two thin wires would hold your weight if you slipped! The course got more challenging as went along. We climbed higher and higher and the zip-lines became longer and the obstacles trickier.

We had a lot of laughs and I think we were all surprised at just how much fun it was. The course took us about two hours to get through and was pretty physically demanding. Al then decided he wanted to bungee jump so he signed up and got in line. We watched him swan dive off the bridge which was nuts enough but he also asked to get dunked to make the trip even more terrifying so in he went, waist deep!

Jen and Trev had to scoot up island but the rest of us drove to Nanaimo and had a late lunch at a pub next to the ocean.

I still had my long run to do and thankfully, I had made plans to meet Sean at 7pm which held me accountable! We got back to town with 30 minutes to spare…believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was run. Juice and I showed up to the place where Sean was house sitting for the week so our run started from there near Mackenzie and Carey St. Juice ran the first 10 minutes with us then did his own route for 90 minutes on the trails while Sean and I did a route that started off tamely, running through Layritz Park and the Centennial trails but then hills sprouted up here and thereas we ran along Viaduct and to Propect Lake Rd and then finally up a monster hill on Petworth Rd. to the top. There, we turned around, went back down but this time took a left on Prospect Lake Rd, a right on Goward to Interurban then followed the trails back, retracing our steps from there. When I hit 90 minutes, I was done! We covered just over 20km at 4:34 average pace. Not bad considering the hilly terrain but man, I was beat when I got home!

Saturday, August 2, 2008

My brother Al was sleeping soundly while we snuck out this morning. Juice dropped me off at Lochside school since he had a meeting to go to. Prancy, Chops and Buddy and I ran from there to Mount Doug where we met OCal and Little Eric for a fun session of hills. Paddy wasted no time giving a couple of us his mucky signature paw prints on our chests as a friendly greeting. OCal has him so well-trained, it’s astounding, really! haha! We did four km hill repeats today. The warm-up felt tough for some reason. I felt I was breathing harder than usual but figured I would be fine if I started the repeats relaxed. I ended up feeling pretty good during the wo. I wore my Garmin watch and HR monitor. I have NO idea what my HR max is. I figured today would give me a good idea. I remember doing one-minute hill repeats a few years back with short recoveries and I think I got up to 165 and that was giving it all I had. When I got home and downloaded the run, I was amazed that three of the four repeats were exactly a km in distance (my last one read 1.2 but that’s because I forgot to hit the lap button at the end and had moved a bit before realizing it). My repeats today were: 4:36-4:36-4:33-4:3? but guessing close to 4:31. My HR maxes in the repeats were 141-149-152-152…this Garmin watch is very neat!Prancy and Buddy and I ran as a group while Little Eric an Chops were a pair.  Poor OCal had a few wisdom teeth taken out so he was feeling a bit poorly but still managed to call out words of encouragement. Chops, Eric and I grabbed a cup of Joe afterwards as a treat. I won’t mention bloody quickly Eric ran the hills…geeze!!

I spent the rest of the day hanging with Al at Willow’s while Joey did his tempo run at the lakes…way to go Juicey! I got a good ten minute icing in while I was there. I am still a bit sore from Big Al showing me a few combat moves yesterday at the gym…nothing like being a guinea pig victom for your 200 lb brother!

Al was craving Sushi and a movie so we headed downtown and caught an early show. We wanted to see the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight but it was sold out so we saw Hancock instead…it was pretty bad.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Juice and I met Glenn and Syl at CH for a very easy run this morning. I was pretty beat so I ran about as slow as I could go. Syl brought Cherry who was chasing small dogs and scaring them to death. We were coming up to an owner who was walking a tiny poodle. Cheery started to dart after the poor thing but luckily she was on a lead so Syl could hold her back but the poodle ran to the owner in a total panic and was jumping up and down at her feet looking up desperately as if it were saying, pick me up, pick me up woman, noooow!!!! Cheery is actually a sweet thing…just looks like she could devour a small dog in one gulp.

My brother Al arrived last night. He was in Thailand vacationing/writing a book and spent an hour a day in the gym during his two month stay getting fit. I told him I had a membership at the UVic gym so he was excited to go there after breakfast. We were there a good hour. While I did my usual routine, he did some crazy circuit he does with very large weights. He is in incredible shape right now, especially for a 55 year old! I have to be so careful about doing too much stuff with weights. I put on muscle easily and that’s not the best for a runner.

We spent the evening in, eating homemade spaghetti that Al made and brought to share…his first ever time making spaghetti sauce and it was really good! He was pretty proud of himself! I showed him how to use a garlic press and make garlic bread (he has been a bachelor for too long)!