PBs and Passes
Minimalism Update and Mindfulness
As far as minimalism goes, I’ve been doing fairly well, but the mindfulness not as great.
I did make a purchase that was NOT on my approved list, but was something I have been thinking about for the last 6 months or so and neglected to put it on. After 3 years of dragging my laundry a KM to the laundromat every week, I bought a small apartment sized washing machine. I estimated that I was spending $300-$350 a year at the laundromat – not to mention my time. That means in the last three years I’ve spent about $1000 at the laundromat. Since the beginning of the year, getting to the laundromat was becoming even more cumbersome than usual. My schedule has been pretty full and I found myself only having one down evening a week – and that down evening, was me having to drag myself to laundromat because it was the only night available. In addition, I’ve been going through a lot of running/workout clothing every week. Although this was not on my list, this was THE best thing I think I could have done for myself, my time and my sanity.
As for everything else –I’m still purchase free. I’ve definitely been tempted, but have managed to hold it together. It really comes down to habits – particularly when I am having a down day, or a stressful day. I definitely have used shopping and ‘buying things’ as a band-aid for when I’m feeling blue or stressed. With this ban however, I have noticed that I tend to find myself browsing around the grocery store more often, or popping into the LCBO on the way home to try a new porter or a different bottle of wine. This is why I feel like I’ve failed a bit on the mindfulness side of things. The point of this ban was not to displace my buying or band-aiding to other categories under my allowable purchases – but really examine what I value and examine my own behaviour. Since recognizing that I am doing this, I need to focus on changing this habit. I recently read a great blog post about this exact thing called ‘Treating yourself is not the answer’ linked here if you are interested (this blog is also where I got the idea to try this whole shopping ban).
Chilly Half Marathon (21.1K) – First Race of 2017!
This is my third year in a row running the Chilly Half Marathon in Burlington. It’s a bit of a bittersweet race for me. This was my first half marathon after moving back home. I also finished this race in 2015 to find out that we had lost my Aunt Lynne to ALS. She will always be on my mind every time I run this race. This year, with my “goal” race being in July (Mount Hood 50K), my coach thought it would be a good idea to ‘race’ Chilly. For those of you who don’t know, I don’t ‘race’ every race I run. I actually only ‘race’ a select few. And by ‘race’, I mean I compete against no one but myself and the clock. Although my training this year has been going quite well, of course leading into Chilly I started to get some aches and pains which left me skeptical of my ability to actually ‘race’ it. Honestly, up until a few kilometers into the race, I had still not made my decision. I had a plan and a pace band – but needed to see how I was feeling. Luckily, I ended up feeling great. As the kilometres clicked by, we were consistently a minute to a minute and a half ahead of pace. At the turn around point just after 13K, we started to pick up the pace. At around KM 17 on our walk break (we were doing 10 and 1s), I looked at Kate – who was only planning on using Chilly as a regular fun training run – and said “Are you going to bring this in with me?” The long and short of it is, she stuck it out with me and we continued to pick up the pace for the final kilometres. We both finished with a PB (personal best) time at the half marathon distance! We even found Frank at KM 18 and all stuck together till the end! During the last few uncomfortable kilometres, a lot of thoughts went through my mind as I searched for one to keep me moving. My Aunt inevitable crossed my mind, and I thought about what she went through fighting ALS – but as I felt my chest tightening and tears sting my eyes. I knew if I kept thinking about her, I wouldn’t be able to breathe, let alone run. Instead, I started equating the distance left, to how many “Tuesday night tempo loops” it equaled. I knew I could get through 2 more loops at this pace because I’d done it before, 1 more loop, half a loop … and that brought me across the finish line with over a 4 minute PB. It also gave me the confidence that I can do better. Peter ran out to us in the last KM of the race (after having an amazing race himself) and ran us in a few hundred metres with words of encouragement which I really needed. It was really amazing to cross the finish line to see so many friends who had ran the 5K and waited around to watch us finish. My parents had also come all the way down too! Nothing is better than lots of post-race high fives, hugs, and ... nose wipes.
Finding Balance and Focusing on the Big Goal
Balance has been on my mind the last few days. Mostly because I’ve not been adhering to it very well over the past few weeks. It came into my mind on the Wednesday after my race. That day I was feeling discombobulated for not completing anywhere close to my Tuesday night hill workout after Chilly. I starting feeling down on myself for not going to spinning at 630AM on Wednesday morning although I had decided to take the day totally off as recovery. When I actually reflected… I ran on Saturday, raced on Sunday, had strength training on Monday, ran on Tuesday … then proceeded to beat myself up on Wednesday for taking the day off after my poor Tuesday night workout. But, wait a minute. I worked out for 4 days in a row AND got a PB at race. My legs are lead. I’m limping from whatever it is in my leg that’s burning up. Yet I cannot seem to forgive myself for taking a day. My mind is constantly filled with “Am I doing too much? Am I doing too little?” …. When it came down to it, I had to really stop and think about my goals. With my leg still giving me issues, I decided to take a pass at the Achilles 5K this past weekend and take a solid 4 days off running (which is making me super antsy by the way). My 50K race is my main goal – and a 5K isn’t worth me missing my important workouts and long runs for. As Lisa posted – ‘If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan - but never the goal.’ Of course, I still went to the Achilles and watched my friend’s race. They all had strong races - a few PBs in there too!
50K Training – It’s Time to Ramp Up
With the Chilly Half Marathon out of the way, and recovery week over – this signals the beginning of our mileage ramp up for the 50K. Vanessa and my schedule now flips to number of hours rather than number of kilometres. For example: 3 hours Saturday/1 hour Sunday. I’ve never trained in this way, so it’s going to be an interesting mental shift for me. I know both Vanessa and I are eager to get out on the trails if winter would just give up already. Hopefully by April, most of our long weekend runs will be on various trails out of the city … with my GoPro and drone accompanying us. Our flights to Pittsburgh (for the marathon) and Oregon are all booked - it makes everything a little more real!
Ragnar Trail Warrior
One of my goals this year was to become a race ambassador. I’m happy to announce that I will be an ambassador or 'Ragnar Trail Warrior' for the Ragnar Cottage Country Trail Relay to be held at Hardwood Hills September 8th and 9th. Get your team together - 8 friends, 3 trails, 1 billion stars, overnight, camping trail relay. How awesome does that all sound??? I will write a separate post about this – but for more information, feel free to check out the website HERE.
Other fun things that happened over the last month ...
Lots of great RunTOBeer events. Going to the track to watch Cathy and Michelle race. A JP's Team run which really just turned out to be an awesome photo shoot with the talented Edison Yao interspersed with bits of running. (Two of the pictures on my home page are courtesy of Edison.) I had brunch with a few of my Oiselle sisters. And bowling for Cathy and Melly's birthday!
