Grizzly Ultra Leg 2 plus a bit :)

Today was the group run for the second leg of the Grizzly Ultra out at the Canmore Nordic Centre.  I was super excited about it, mostly because, it’s a trail run, and as I may have mentioned, I love me some trails 🙂 , I was also excited because I had missed the group run for leg 1 because I was only 10 days out from my surgery and it would have been a bad idea to try to trail run 14k at that point (believe me I was tempted!).

I wanted to run a bit longer than the group run (12 km), I had 18 km on my schedule.  Lori and I headed out to Canmore to try to get 6 km in before 10 am when the group started.  By the time we got there and had a quick bathroom break, we only had about 35 minutes, so decided that we’d just run 5 km.  We ran the first 5 km fairly fast as we picked an easy-ish paved trail and wanted to be back on time.

After a quick introduction and description of the route, we were off on the 12 km loop.  It started with approx 2 km uphill, and then leveled off.  It heads around a loop that has a lot of steep ups and downs.  One of my favorite things about trail running is that you’re automatically given permission to walk power-hike the hills.  The trails were in pretty good condition, given all the water and flooding that had occurred just over a week ago.  Some of the creek beds had washed some rocks onto the paths, which meant some tricky footing.  There was also some water on the trail, but really it was in pretty good shape.  I think there were some awesome volunteers who had spent some time on the trails this week cleaning them up!  The way back had a fair amount of downhill – that we had earned those first 2 km’s.  

As for gear – I wore my lulu Run Shorty Shorts, which I love.  They are super short, but once you get over that, they fit great, have awesome pockets on the sides, and  have these magic gripper things that your shirt sticks to when it’s pulled down over them.  I also wore my INKnBURN Phoenix Cami.  Lori was also wearing an INKnBURN top, and we even had the opportunity to gush about how much we love them.  They are so comfortable, especially in warm weather, and very well made.  I carried Gatorade in my Camelbak running hydration pack.  It’s super convenient because it holds 1.5 liters of fluid.  It does bounce around a bit though.  I’ve heard amazing things about the Nathan hydration vests, and one day I may get one and see if I like it better than the Camelbak one.  The good thing is that even though I wore a cami, I had zero chafing from the hydration pack.

Here are some happy girls, all renewed from spending a couple hours on the trails, ready (we think) to go and deal with, I mean, enjoy some time with our families 🙂

Here’s a short video that the organizer of the run shot, gives a nice view of what the paths look like from the Nordic Centre.

Terry doesn’t just run…

Today was my older daughters first day of daycamp. It’s a once a week 2 hr program that she goes to alone, without a parent. The plan is for my Mother-in-law to come and watch my younger daughter for the afternoon so that her nap schedule doesn’t get messed up driving to and from daycamp. The important thing to take away here is that every Thursday afternoon I am going to have 2 hours to myself!! Today I decided to use that time to ride my bike. I’m still trying to be a bit cautious with my running so didn’t want to run 3 days in a row.

The bike ride was brilliant. I only ended up having 45 mins or so to ride after dropping her off and doing a quick errand. I parked on highway 22x near 37th street. This is the view of what I rode towards on the way out.

I decided to ride 20 minutes and then turn back. It was a great ride out (which I realized when I turned around was because the wind was at my back). I turned back, and had to work harder, pushing uphill and into the wind. It was a beautiful sunny day though and the fields are a brilliant green from all our moisture.

I think that today’s ride has convinced me that this needs to be a weekly occurrence. I would still like to run on Thursdays, but I will either run on the treadmill in the morning, do a brick during my 2 hour window or push the girls in the stroller later.

I have a duathlon later this fall, so this is the perfect opportunity to get out on my bike. There has also been some talk about triathlons among my mom friends that has lit a spark. I’ve done one sprint, and hope that there is an Oly, HIM or even IM in my future!

I was also reminded today how amazing Alberta is. I love it here, it’s such a beautiful backdrop for so many activities.

When Mother Nature strikes!

This has been a crazy few days in Calgary. Last Wednesday night Lori and I ran by the reservoir and it was basically empty, we even commented on how it smelled like the ocean because the water was so low. We also passed a whole bunch of police officers, who we now know must have been inspecting the shoreline.

Thursday things started to go crazy, water levels in all the rivers and creeks (The Bow, Elbow and Fish Creek) started to swell. The same was true for towns south of Calgary including Okotoks (where my brother lives) and High River. I walked down to Fish Creek and took a couple of pictures. The bridges were closed and the creek was swollen but not super crazy.

By Friday, we were realizing how crazy things were. Most offices were closed and people were being asked to not travel more than they have to. There were a lot of people evacuated included approx 100,000 people in Calgary, as well as the entire town of High River and other towns in the Foothills. There was water in a lot of downtown, including the stampede grounds.

It was amazing to see this all unfold via social media. There were a ton of pictures and videos that were being shared. It was also amazing to see Calgarians pitch in in this time of need. The story is that of the 100,000 people who were displaced, only 1500 actually needed to use the evacuation centers, as friends, family, coworkers and strangers had opened their doors to the rest.

On Saturday I walked down to Fish Creek again. I wanted to scope it out to see if the path was going to be runnable. There was a bit of water on the path just east of woodbine but it wasn’t bad. Going west was another story. There were a couple locations where the creek was flowing in full force over the path.

Lori and I decided to run long at the reservoir today because we knew the path would be ok everywhere except in the weaslehead area that the Elbow river flows into The Res. It worked out great. We ran from Glenmore landing west towards weaslehead. As soon as we got down the hill into the weaslehead area we saw water on the path.

We snapped some pics and turned around to go back the other direction.

I ran 16 km’s total. It was my longest run post surgery and since the Calgary Half marathon. My legs felt great. I had taken it pretty easy this week as I think my insides are still recovering from surgery, and I think it worked out well. Hopefully I can get out at least 4 times this week and start ramping back up in prep for the SeaWheeze half in August.

After my long run, we walked down to Fish Creek again to scope things out. The water has receded a lot. West of woodbine the area that was totally covered by the stream yesterday, but now the stream is back in it’s normal banks. The path is muddy and a but damp, it’s officially closed but looks passable.

Next weekend we are supposed to be doing one of the legs of the Grizzly 50k in Canmore. Things are still crazy out there, with the highway closed and a lot of the trails at the Nordic Center damages by water and mud. Time will tell if that run goes ahead!

A new favorite thing…

I feel like I’m late to the party on this thing, but wanted to put it on my blog and share it with you all just in case any hadn’t heard of this product, or like me was all ‘Yeah, Yeah, I’m sure it’s awesome, but I’ve got stuff that basically does the same thing’.

So the back story… last Wed night Lori, Danielle and I had a date with the trails.  We were  headed up to Jumpingpound loop, a 9.xx km loop just west of Calgary.  I often do trails with my camelbak, but didn’t really feel that an evening less than 10k run really warranted a 1.5L camelbak.  I also have a handheld, but wanted to bring my phone so I could snap some pics along the way.  Big dilemma, 1st world type problem, I know.  For ages I’d heard my running friends rave about their SPIbelt’s.  I’d been thinking about buying one for ages, but just hadn’t taken the plunge.  Well on my way to Lori’s house I popped into The Running Room, a few of them were priced lower than the other’s and the deal lover that I am decided to grab the nice burnt orange one.  This is what it looks like all collapsed.

 

It expands so that you can put your iPhone, or other gadget into it as well as keys, or anything else that you want along for the ride.  Here it is with an iPhone 4 in it (it also fits my iPhone 5 no problem.)

 

I used it for my run today also because I was just running 5-6km and didn’t need my fuel belt with me, but wanted to listen to a podcast from my phone.  I put on so my phone sits on my lower back, and can’t even tell it’s there.  Lori bought one also, and put her removable Fuelbelt water bottle on it, and said it fit great and also didn’t bounce.  I’m totally sold, and can see this being a perfect solution at races also where I don’t want to carry my own water, but would like my phone so I can find my family or friends after the race.

Coming Back!!

Well yesterday was my first official day back to running after my cyst removal surgery 2 weeks ago.  In short, it.was.awesome!!  My original plan was to stick to easy 5-6km runs this week, but then Lori told me that her and Danielle were planning to go out to Jumpingpound on Wed night, and I just couldn’t resist.  I thought, what’s the worst, if I don’t feel good, I can bail and walk back to the car, the trail follows the highway the whole time, so it’s super easy to bail out early.  I ended up feeling great, and it was a beautiful night for a trail run.  Here is my dailymile link for anyone who’s interested.  Lori set the pace, and since she’s been rocking her runs lately and running faster than ever, we ran it quite a bit faster than the last time we were out.

I wanted to do something today, but also wanted to take it a bit easy since it’s my first week back and I don’t want any setbacks.  I decided to run 3 miles on the treadmill and then get on my roadbike that I have setup on the trainer.  The bike is a lot less impact, so I’m going to try to use it to get back into things.  I also have a duathlon in September so need to get in better bike shape.

 

After the bike, I was a sweaty mess!  I think the run on the treadmill got my heart going, and the bike got me sweating, it was great!

 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder…

It’s been a long time since my last post… Why?  Well 2 weeks ago tomorrow I had surgery to remove an Ovarian cyst…

Going in, I really didn’t know what exactly to expect in my recovery.  It seemed like a fairly non-evasive ‘easy’ surgery (is there such a thing??).  Well the day of, it was relatively easy.  It was my first time going “under”… dum, dum, dum…. yeah it actually was fine and not as scary as I always thought and assumed.  I woke up what seemed like an instant later feeling very groggy.  I was not puking my guts out, so bonus – anesthetic does not make me sick! YAY!

Then in recovery, I got my ‘after’ instructions… don’t do all this stuff, blah blah blah.  This included running for 2 weeks!  Ok, 2 weeks, I’ve got this… I’ve been pregnant, I’ve not run for weeks, well maybe not during my last pregnancy, but with Maiya, yeah sure, I didn’t run for over a month.  Well, when you’re on a roll, feeling good, working out 6 days a week, coming off a GREAT half, 2 weeks is hard.  HARD.  I did have a cold (and still do), so that made it easier, but yeah, I admit, I did run a little bit – not a lot, promise, but a tiny little eansy bit, once I felt good.  Don’t tell my doctor, kay?

One thing I did learn, is to never (NEVER), google ‘surgery recovery running’ or ‘laparoscopic surgery running’ or anything else regarding any medical condition.  Google sucks when it comes to all things medical.  Seriously, the only people that EVER post anything on the internet are the ones who had horrible awful complications resulting in MONTHS of time off running.  So here is my contribution to the vast internet knowledge of laparoscopic removal of an ovarian cyst.  It wasn’t too bad.  They cut two very small holes, took out the cyst that was softball sized (I KNOW!  And sorry if you didn’t want to know that much).  I was sore, it took a couple days to work out the CO2 (yes I was gassy – sorry if you didn’t want to know that either).  My pelvis was also sore for a week or so, but they probably wrenched around a bit since I was asleep and all.  Today, 2 weeks later, I feel really good.  My incision is a bit itchy, but the stitches are all dissolved.

And tomorrow… I have the official OK to run again.  I have a date tomorrow night with the trails and I couldn’t be more excited.