Sunday, April 15, 2012

An outside type of weekend

When the weather gets good I feel obligated to get outside and chase the sunshine.

This weekend was filled with numerous outdoor pursuits all geared towards chasing the sun and feeling good. I started the weekend off with a nice 10k trail run in my local playground. It was only my second run in the two weeks since my big win in the Seymour 10k trail race. I have been nursing a strained calf muscle back to health. The run felt good and my calf is 80% healthy.

The lake at the top of our hike. Not my picture though, I forgot my camera.


Capilano River. Where I spent my Saturday.
Saturday was one the most gorgeous blue-bird sky days that only Vancouver can get. After my run I went downtown and picked up my race package for the Sun Run on Sunday (today) and then met a friend and proceeded to go hiking and sun chasing for 5 hours in the rainforest.

Then we walked along the West Vancouver seawall and caught the sunset and watched people fish for crab. Amazing!

Today was the real test of how my calf muscle was doing. I ran the Sun Run today. This is a massive 60,000 person event held in Vancouver. This would be my second year running it. I planned to run slow to make sure my calf could handle the strain. I also hate running on cement and this is my only road race of the year.



As soon as the gun sounded, I hauled ass out of the start to gain space and but soon I quickly settled down in a nice relaxed pace. I figured I would finish in 45:00 and that it wold be leisurely but I looked at my watch for the first time at 3km and I realized I was going faster than I planned. I said fuck it and decided to maintain that pace and make this race my own. After 10 gruelling kilometres of pounding pavement I crossed the line in 40:34 which is fast for an ultra marathon man such as myself. My fastest time is 39:37, so I was not quite there. But not bad for being dehydrated, overdressed and having already ran 10k to the race that morning.

The race was fun and it was good running it with my buddy Travis. He also put up a blistering time after shooting out of the starting gates super fast.

So, my weekend was filled with time spent outdoors and that to me is a perfect weekend. But now I have to get to work and begin marking my students tests.




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