I love trail running. Love, love, love. I pretend to traipse through the forest with speed and ease.
Am I fast at trail running?
No.
Do I care?
Also, no.
Glass ankles, a fear of breaking my face and a general sense of “it so does not matter” adequately describes my lack of desire to push for speed on the trails. I think of Gary Robbins leaping down rooty mountain faces and admire his bravery whilst I hold on to trees, picking my own way down. I watch my friends bound from rock to rock and envy their dexterity. I try to bring my heart rate down as those around me chatter on effortlessly.
And yet.
I can finally accept that I’ll never lead the pack in a trail race. And the very best part of coming to this realization/acceptance that I kinda suck is that I just. don’t. care. And it’s delightful! How liberating! How good for my ankles!
True acceptance of personal suckiness can lead to happiness. That, my friends, is the hot tip of the day.
Before the trail traipsing.
Traipsing locale.
If not for this girl, I would have walked the whole way.
After! It’s about as warm as Robin looks.
LC: Baby smuggler.
Edit: this in no way reflects on the trail capabilities of those around me during said race. In fact, you folks are the only reason I don’t walk off the course at the first available trailhead. Onwards!
Spring has truly sprung here… 32C last weekend?! A little early for scorchers, but I’ll take it. June-uary will be here soon enough to remind me not to put away the puffy coats so soon.
With everything greening up around here, it means I’ve been able to explore the trails more than the roads… which also means Season 2 of CITS has kicked off. Well, sort of. There’s been an early season modification. Since the usual “C” in the ITS refer to my running girls who both happen to be avec bébé right now, I needed new partners to kick off the season.
Dry, warm and haven’t left the driveway.
Insert Children here.
Will and I had planned to run the Mosquito Lake trail run for a while (we’d even been “training”) but when Rory heard that he wasn’t included, plans had to change – pronto. It wouldn’t do to be left out. When you run with a 4 and 7 year old, you re-evaluate your race goals: from trying to run yourself into the ground to win to making sure no one goes head-first into a tree. It’s the little things…
So despite pouring rain, cold temps and having never run before, he powered through (most) of the 6K route, with a little help from Dad, some encouragement from Will and incessant annoying photography from me. Will ran the 10K route in a little over 1:20! Proud moment. He’s been asking when our next one will be.
Is it too soon to ask him to pace me at the Squamish 50?
Last week, Jen and I, accompanied by 30 friends/strangers ran the Rubble Creek Classic . Chicks in the Sticks go racing! We’ve been wanting to do this run for years and we finally committed; or rather, I signed Jen and I up whether she liked it or not. Neither of us have gotten in much quality training of late but the day was spectacular and well worth the effort of getting up early and running 24K.
About 8 km of climbing, a random number of kms of flats around the base of Black Tusk and then 10 painful kms of down, down, down… I felt that run for days.
It was mostly worth it because I had the most spectacular nap that afternoon.
Fact
“If you want something done, give it to the busiest person you know”. Truer words were never spoken – to me, anyway. I’ve been “retired” for about 3 weeks now and I am struggling to relax and feeling the need to fill my days with tasks and projects. I’m afraid that if I slow down, I’ll never get going again.
Fall
It’s Fall now, pretty much officially. Shorter days, cold mountain mornings. I love the leaves, the light, the change. I don’t love having to layer the kids in clothing. I’m counting the days till the can dress themselves intelligently to head into the cold outdoors.
Early runs now start in the dark… harder to pry oneself out of bed, that’s for sure. This morning’s CITS run was the 2nd Annual-Earn-That-Turkey-Dinner-run through the Mosquito Lake trails. The sunrise made it special, as did the fact that we were done by 8:45am.
Thankful
There is much to be thankful for this year. Despite the loss of my mother a few weeks ago, I am thankful for being surrounded by such good friends, ridiculous children, a close-knit family and some pretty nice physical surroundings. Frankly, there isn’t much I can complain about.
Ed: is it thankful FOR or thankful that I? See? Told you I wasn’t a writer.
QOTD
Anja and I fly to Quebec tomorrow to prepare for Mum’s celebration of life. She is very excited about prospect of “fwying on da aiyapwane”. Little does she know that flying is basically like sitting in a car for 5 hours, but with a bathroom. I can’t bring myself to burst her bubble. I have, however, drilled the notion of sky martials into their towheads. Scream and the “sky martian” is allowed to open the door at the back of the plane and “fwow you out!”
Parenting 101. Fear and mild skepticism.
Rubble Creek Classic
Before it started going up, up, up
up, up, up
I love this shot
We’ll be back
It has occurred to me that we’d probably go faster if I didn’t take pictures of everything, but where’s the fun in that?!
Thanks Dave, for spending the night up there just to get this shot of us.
Retirement has its perks
There’s a good story with this. For another time, let’s just say.
Pemberton sunrise. I’ll take it.
7:15am, somewhere up there.
CITS
Even nicer.
Captain Underpants
Happy Thanksgiving… 23 degrees and sunny. I have no idea what this “global warming” that y’all are worried about.
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