Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

It's now less than one week before I toe the line at the Sinister 50 miler, and I am certainly getting excited! Unfortunately I don't feel as it nor as strong as I was hoping for, but after today's run out on the Devon trails, I am feeling more confident that it won't be a complete flop for me. This past couple of weeks, I have felt extremely sluggish, stressed, and just not feeling the love for my running. I'm not sure why, but even my easy runs were feeling tedious, boring, and I was certainly lacking in motivation. I personally think that work has been stressing me far more than I thought, and my usual positive, happy go lucky attitude that I adopt for all aspects of my life was being replaced with a feeling of blah! 10 miles every day was getting boring, and I was feeling that things really needed mixing up if there was any hope of getting my mojo back. I did head out to Devon a couple of weeks ago for a 25km trail run, and I felt far more motivated for that. It...

I wasn't intending to do Survivorfest this year, but having put my name down to marshal from 5pm until 11pm, I thought it would be good practice for The Divide 200 if I signed up to run the 6 hour event, but starting at 2am Sunday morning. One may ask how 6 hours on a track could possibly prepare me for a 200 mile trail race in the mountains of Southern Alberta, but this time it wasn't about the terrain, nor even running long or fast. No, this time it was practicing being on my feet all day, and then having a couple of hours sleep before waking up and making my body run through the night, when it very likely would much prefer to be resting in a comfortable bed! I arrived at the Strathcona Athletics Park mid afternoon on the Saturday, and having set up my own aid station for later on, I settled down for the remainder of the afternoon, and watched some incredible athletes churning out mile after mile, as they took part in the 24 hour event. At 30°c, it was certainly a warm day fo...

May has always seemed like such a long month for me, and yet this year, it's whizzed by and I can't believe how quickly we are speeding towards the month of June, and the height of mid-summer! Things have certainly been summery here in Alberta, and for several days this month, we have encountered extreme heat in the 30 degrees Celsius range and minimal rainfall. With such dry conditions and lack of rain, combined with some very windy days, the wildfire season started early and there have been several fires burning which has created horrendously smoky conditions for many areas, including our neck of the woods. The air quality has been at a +10 which is very poor, and there's no doubt that this has had an impact on many people that spend a lot of time outdoors. The sad thing is hearing about all the people that have had to be evacuated, and this really hit home when Leduc County itself became affected by the fires, and we at work were being asked of we could help out at the e...

With less than two weeks until my next race, my focus has been on increasing the miles and chasing some vert, and there have certainly been some good long runs creeping into my running schedule. A week after Hill of a Race, we found ourselves in southern Alberta as we travelled down to the Crowsnest Pass area for the Easter weekend. We had booked the campground for a couple of nights with the intention of spending a full day exploring and getting familiar with the area, as this is where both Sinister 7 and The Divide 200 will take place. We arrived on Good Friday and pitched our tent, but the wind was horrendous and kept us awake most of the night as we lay in our sleeping bags wondering how long it would be before everything took flight! The following morning wasn’t much better, and when the sides of the tent collapsed under the strength of the wind, we contemplated leaving early and just heading home. We managed to stick it out until lunch time, the wind getting ever stronger, and on...

Last weekend saw me taking part in my first race of the season – Hill of a Race (HOAR) – which involved running up, down and around the ski slopes at nearby Rabbit Hill Ski Resort. This race wasn’t an A race for me but rather a good training session for getting in some elevation in preparation for my mountain ultras over the coming months. My training for the past couple of months has included 4 hour hilly trail runs on the weekends which I think benefited me at HOAR last weekend, but at the same time, I did feel that I hadn’t really done enough hills nor hill repeats prior to this race that would enable me to be as competitive as I would normally like to be. Knowing that there was going to be a strong contingent of competitive lady runners taking part, I personally felt that I was unlikely to be anywhere near the front of the field, which in some ways reduced the amount of pressure on my performance, and I was able to go to the race focused on my own individual goals rather than feeli...

Things had been going so well with my running. I'd been doing speedwork once a week - 5 x 800m repeats since you ask - and had been hitting an average of 6.30 miling despite sometimes snowy, icy or windy conditions. When things started to warm up, my easy mid-week runs became faster, and I was comfortably running sub 8s again, which started to give me the confidence that my running really was going in the right direction.  My training schedule recently has included 4 hour hilly trail runs on a weekend, and for the past few weeks, I've been pretty consistent in getting out to the local trails to get those runs in. Unfortunately, when least expected, the husband got called away from work at the last minute. It was only meant to be for a couple of days, but ended up being two weeks, and this inevitably had a huge impact on what, where and when I was able to run. Working full time, plus trying to train at a fairly decent level, and then having three pups that need lots of exercise,...