Canada Day Weekend

What an incredible Canada Day Long Weekend. Lots of races to follow, good weather and good fun!

A couple of congrats to some SHA runners who competed in the past week. JD survived a very hot day at the Creemore Vertical Challenge 50km. From all counts, the only thing that was tougher than the relentless hills on the course was the brutal heat. EJ also had a very busy period of racing with her debut at the Limestone Mile in a great time of 6:29 on a windy day on Thursday, then following it up by winning the women’s race (3rd overall) at the Sydenham Lakeside 5km on her home turf in a very solid time of 21:46. Great job guys!

Aside from another weekend of searching out race results, we enjoyed a relaxing time hanging out at our home. We find it interesting that for some weekends when we have thought that we’d like to go camping, we usually end up just staying at our own little ‘cabin in the woods’. For two of the nights we stayed out late by campfire; cooking dinner by open flame, enjoying a few beer and just hanging out with the dawgs. Doesn’t get any better than that. We are very fortunate to have this at our disposal on our property and take full advantage of it. No real reason to go away to camp. To add to this, we are also lucky to have a pretty great trail system we can connect to that is only 2kms down our dirt road to hook onto. I guess this is always why we feel that whenever we are at home, it truly feels like we are on holidays. That was certainly the case this weekend.

We didn’t even have to go out to get any fresh fruit over the weekend as we have a huge crop of wild blackberries (or blackcaps in ‘Fitchettese’) this season. It is incredible how many berries we have been able to pick as each day there are loads more that are ripe. Yum!

Our only venture into the outside world over the weekend was going to Sara’s sister-in-law, Heather’s surprise 40th party in Chaffey’s Lock. Heather seemed very surprised and it was great to see Jeff, Heather and the boys again after their recent trip to Australia. One of the highlights of the evening was listening to some great new music provided by Paul Langlois of the Tragically Hip accompanied by Sara’s brother Jeff. Most of the songs were new material written by Paul that will hopefully be coming out in a solo album at some point. Being a harsh critic of music that is currently being put out, I would definitely say that this was by far the best new music I have heard in a long, long time and it was a real treat to hear it in this setting. Can’t wait for the CD.

Running-wise, it’s been great to see Sara feel stronger in her training and being able to put a consistent period of healthy running weeks together. I’m still feeling some nigglies with my knee and achilles, but they seem to be feeling better each day. I’m confident that I’m heading in the right direction and will be able to cautiously increase over the next few weeks and start getting some good long runs in again soon. Yesterday’s 90 minute run felt awesome, but I awoke to some stiffness again today. I had another ART session with Tom this morning and it does seem like my psoas is beginning to loosen up a bit more which is good. Onward and upward.

Training Summary:
Total # of hours last week: 6:28
Total # of hours this year: 290:23
Streak (# of consecutive days of running): 7,496
Training Details of the week