Winter's Arrival!

It's been another hectic week with barely any time to take a breath at work and then crazy evenings trying to catch up with things when I get home. The good news is that I'm still making time for all the things I enjoy doing - walking the pups, making my videos, and of course my running. 

The pups tend to go for at least three walks a day, one of which is early morning before I head into work. I love these early morning walks as they set me up for the day and always put a smile of my face before a busy day in the office. The weather has started to turn much cooler in the mornings, so Tillie tends to stay home snuggled up in her bed rather than wandering around in the dark with me, Wilson and April, but I will admit that I do miss her not joining us on those morning walks. Thankfully though she is always keen for her afternoon visit to the dog park, and I get to spend that special time with all three of them for a good hour or so every evening when I get home. 

Dog park fun with the pups :)

Dog walks make me very happy :)

The other morning, we encountered the most beautiful sunrise, and the sky was looking resplendent with all the different shades of red. I captured a couple of pictures as such picturesque views are usually short lived, and sure enough, the magnificent scene soon changed as the colours faded and the sun rose higher in the sky. Having been treated to splendid displays of the Northern Lights recently and of course, the recent full moon, Mother Nature has certainly been showing off her beauty, and I certainly have no problems with that whatsoever. 

Beautiful sunrises :)

My other passion of course is my running, and with the dark nights now here, I'm back to running by the street lights and somewhat restricted on the routes I can take given that the city we live in is fairly small. Tuesday night was a negative split run and I set off all fired up for what I knew was going to be a good one. I was about five minutes into my run, admiring yet another beautiful evening sky, when I tripped on some uneven pavement and fell flat on my face. My poor right knee took yet another battering - seriously, there is so much scar tissue on that knee, I really don't know if it can take anymore - and of course my right hand and right arm also bore the brunt of the fall. I was sore and bruised and contemplated heading back home, but I was feeling good and didn't want to give up on my run. Despite the scrapes and bruises, I was able to have a fairly decent run with the second half of the run being done around 3 minutes quicker - result! 

Bruised and sore, but had a great negative split run!

I may have already mentioned that I am doing a marathon again next year, so at present, I am trying to get back some of that speed endurance I used to have as a road runner. My coach gave me a half marathon to do on Saturday which was meant to have been done on the trails. Unfortunately life gets in the way sometimes, and so I did the run around town on the roads. I felt a little pressured to maintain the pace and did find it a little tough at times, but I was very happy to maintain a relatively comfortable 7.40 minute miling, giving me a half marathon time of 1 hour 40 minutes. That is definitely far from my best, but I was still happy as I never thought I would be able to keep that kind of pace going any time soon, and it bodes well for the marathon given I still have a good six months before I actually do it :) 

Today's session was just 10 miles easy and I was hoping to hit the trails, but winter finally arrived and we had light snow for a couple of hours this morning and it was pretty slick outside. I did drive to Edmonton with every intention of running there, but having got to the hill that would take me down to the parking lot, the police were turning people around as the road was too slippery and dangerous, and people were struggling to get up the hill in their vehicles. I was disappointed, and given that I hadn't got a contingency plan, I headed back home and ended up running local again. The run turned out to be lots of fun, although I had forgotten how running in the snow makes my hips ache due to having to grip on the slippery sections. But it was a recovery run, so I really wasn't too concerned, and it was nice to take things easy. 

First snow of the winter :)

I don't have any races planned for quite a few weeks right now, although I did sign up for a couple of virtual events which will hopefully keep me motivated into the new year. Sinister Sports, organisers of the Canadian Death Race, have a couple of events - Rununka and an Advent Run leading up to the festive season. I've signed up for both simply because the swag includes an ugly Christmas running shirt, and I really do like Christmas jumpers. I'll also be doing a video vlog of both of them, so if you follow my YouTube channel, please do look out for them to see how things go and what the events are all about. 

Talking of videos, I have some ideas and will be making the videos over the coming weeks. There is going to be one celebrating the 50th River Valley Park Run, I'll be doing a head to head on head torches to see which is the best one for trail running and all things outdoors, I'll be sharing some tips about winter running and the things you need to keep you safe for running during the darker nights, we have another winter camping trip planned, and of course, there will be something special for Christmas. If you've not yet checked out my channel, you can find it here.

So that's the week in a nutshell - work, dog walking, running and videos, winter's arrival and more snow in the forecast - I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever :)