Canadian Mountain Running Championships report and video

The Canadian Mountain Running Championships were held on June 13 in beautiful Canmore, Alberta...

Race report and video (Video credit: Phil Villeneuve) >>

Week Ending June 14 (18:21)

I was very pleased to get another solid week of training in. Back to back 18+ hour weeks have left me feeling strong and confident in my ability to recover right now. I had a couple of longer runs including a 3:38 run with Bryon Powell on Friday. Aside from the volume, I've also been very happy with how some of the quality workouts have felt recently. My uphill treadmill workout on Tuesday felt good as did a 40min flat tempo run on Saturday. I expect my daily volume will be a bit less this coming week, but planning to do a longer run on Friday, so it will average out somewhat.

Training Log Summary:
Total # of hours this week: 18:21
Total # of runs this week: 13
2009 total # of hours: 264:25
2009 total # of days: 171
2009 total # of runs: 213
Streak: 7,111 days in a row
Training Log Details: click here

Canadian Mountain Running Championships

The Canadian Mountain Running Championships will be held this Saturday in beautiful Canmore, Alberta. The top finishers will qualify to represent Canada at the inaugural IAAF World Mountain Running Championship, NACAC Mountain Running Championships and Commonwealth Games Mountain Running Championships.

The mens field looks to be stacked with many veteran trail, xc and mountain runners, as well as a few newcomers to the mountain running scene.

Taking a quick look at the confirmed entry list, it's a good bet that the eventual mens winner will probably be one of the following...
Joel Bourgeois
Trevor Caldwell
Adam Campbell
Adrian Lambert
Lanny Mann
Taylor Murphy
Phil Villeneuve

As for the womens field, it looks to be a little more wide open. If anyone has any thoughts on either race, please feel free to comment.

Good luck to all!

Feed me now!

With running fairly high mileage comes with it the added joy, burden and sometimes annoyance of craving any and all food non-stop. Finish one meal or snack and start thinking about what else is in the house to devour next.

I consider the basics of my/our diet to be fairly good. While I don’t eat meat of any kind, I do get a very well rounded diet including lots of fruits, veggies, beans, tofu, etc…

Sometimes though, you just start craving all these things that you wouldn’t normally touch. ‘Feed me now and feed me often’ is becoming my mantra during the day and I don’t give a rats ass what it is….including a rats ass (except I guess that would be considered meat).

Kraft Dinner (KD) is a case in point. I hadn’t really thought about it in years; however during a run with Taylor Murphy last week, he planted it in my head as being his favourite food to have while camping.

So, finally yesterday we hit the groc store and picked up some good old KD for dinner for after our evening run. My stomach was growling with anticipation during the whole run, and wasn’t disappointed.

The White Cheddar KD rocks!...especially when extra cheese, Diana sauce, hot peppers and our secret ‘Freeman Spice’ is added.

The whole bowl of KD only lasted for about 30secs, but was pure joy. This, of course, was followed up appropriately enough with the biggest bowl of Rolo ice cream ever scooped.

Hmmmm….Is it lunch time yet?

Week Ending June 7 (18:48)

I was very pleased with the week. Good overall volume, strong uphill tempo on Tuesday and pleased with 50km long run on Thursday. Also quite a bit of running in Five Fingers; which is making my legs feel very strong. On top of all this, I feel like I am recovering extremely well from my runs right now and always looking forward to the next run. Nice to get back out for a longer run with Sara this past weekend too at Frontenac Park.

Training Log Details:
Total # of hours this week: 18:48
Total # of runs this week: 13
2009 total # of hours: 246:04
2009 total # of days: 164
2009 total # of runs: 200
Streak: 7,104 days in a row

Summer Fun

With the colder than normal weather we’ve been having it’s not quite summer yet, but we’ve still been quite busy having lots of summertime outdoor fun.

Frontenac Provincial Park Camping Trip:
Last weekend, Brennan, Heather, Sara and I camped at Frontenac Provincial Park. We canoed into campsite #4 on Big Salmon Lake. A bit of a tailwind got us there in good time. It's just a beautiful site that’s very remote. The weather was looking a little questionable, but it didn’t start to rain until after we had called it a night, so we got off lucky.

It was so nice just hanging out around the campsite, relaxing, chatting, exploring trails and eating by campfire. It’s funny, as these are many of the things that we regularly do in our backyard, but they always seem that much more special when you get away. We saw lots of wildlife during our weekend including deer, a beaver that swam near our campsite, the biggest black rat snake I have ever seen (over 4ft long), a loon that popped up next to our canoe and our friendly campsite chipmunk named ‘Dizzy’.

A couple of happy campers...
Housekeeping...
Getting ready for the feast...
Tents with extra tarp for the potential storm brewing... Okay, that's HOT!!!...
Fine dining...
'Dizzy' our dinner guest...

Black Rat Snake...
Beaver...

"Are you sure you remembered the coffee?"...

Soccer:
Heather's soccer season is in full swing now. She has a great team and coach. Everyone plays well together and is improving weekly. They currently have a record of 3wins and 1 loss.



Track:
Heather also had her regional track meet yesterday and competed in the 100meters, long jump and 4 x 100m relay. Heather had a great day with some solid long jumps. She also just missed making the finals in the 100m, but then closed out the day by finishing second as part of the 4 x 100m relay. So, the relay team will go on and compete in the area meet next week.

Video of the Odessa Tigers 4x100m Bantam Girls 2nd place finish...

Brennan has also been busy building new mountain bike trails around our property and once they have been completed, I’ll post some video of him riding them.