Random Thoughts

  I haven't run in well over a month. The first couple of weeks of that time period were taken up with healing a strained back. The rest of the time I have not run for no reason whatsoever, I just haven't.
   I've had plenty of opportunities to get out there but I've managed to rationalize my way out of all of them. Occasionally the weather's been iffy but even when it's been perfect I still don't run.
   Because I'm not running, the pounds are slowly creeping on, as well. I think I was up to 232 the other night.....
   Okay, no real running to blog about so I think I'm going to toss a few random thoughts out there!

1. Watching skinny people run by

   We've all seen them, their lithe bodies effortlessly gliding along the road or sidewalk, breathing easily, looking like they weigh about as much as your leg. What I would really like to do sometime is run up alongside one of them and give them a fifty pound back of cement to carry, just to even out the weight differential!

2. Being able to lose weight easily

   Knowing you can lose weight reasonably quickly and easily is a dangerous thing sometimes! Pretty well anything you want to will go in your mouth if you know that you're not going to have a problem shrinking it away later on. I actually got giddy once when I stepped on the scale and had maxed out at 235 (the heaviest I've been in years) because of the fun I was going to have losing it all again. Which is okay if that's what you actually do...

3. Falling off the vegetarian wagon

   I managed to maintain a vegetarian diet for about four months late last summer and early autumn. I was eating lots of vegetables and running consistently and actually feeling pretty good. But I was sad! It wasn't that I was craving the meat so much it was that I had somehow abandoned an important and enjoyable part of my life for what a lot of people likely thought was no good reason. It affected me in social situations where I had to be the one different guy, the guy other people had to out of their way to accommodate. When Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled around I desperately needed to be a part of what my family was doing and that's when I fell off the wagon, huge. And when that happened, I wanted every kind of meat there was, seemingly! This does disturb me, I hate the fact that animals suffer so that I can be fed food I don't need to be fed. Grrr

4. I think I'm supposed to be a sprinter instead

   Intellectually, I like to think of myself as a distance runner. My gut feeling, though, is that I just want to run fast, for about a hundred meters at a time. Any sport I've ever played has always involved short bursts of speed with an accompanying recovery time before the next burst. I have always kind of lived for this. In my twenties, on the football field, I was the guy you were going to need to make allowances for if you were going to cover me. In my sixties, on the ball hockey floor, I'm the guy who you're going to need to work a lot harder at running past than you thought, if, indeed, you can run past me...

5. I need to run in the mountains 

   I follow a lot of bloggers from out in western Canada and get to see a lot of pics of people running through forests, on mountains. I was born out west and it kind of eats me up watching runners do this. There is something about forest trails!

6. I am kind of a beast (for short periods)

   Yes, I'm a slow distance runner, at least right at the moment. I'm big and heavy but I have legs that get me where I want to go and, occasionally, they get me there quickly. This is no mean feat and sometimes they amaze me!

*******************************************************

   So there you have it, a short post of mainly random thoughts, a couple of which might have something to do with running!

Old Man Playing A Young Man's Game

   Yesterday was a run day.
   So I ran.
   My ass off.
   Up and down a warm, sweaty gym floor, chasing around (and being chased by) a bunch of young ball hockey players in their twenties and thirties, all of whom play pretty well every single week of the year. And not just running but stopping and starting, twisting, turning, reaching, sliding, and diving. Running forward, backward and sideways.

Not me last night, but me back last summer. I'm the player in red on
the far left, bending over to hopefully prevent a pass...

   I was there at the suggestion of Charles, a young ball hockey player I've known for a few years who runs a couple of different teams in the London Ball Hockey Association. I'd been asking around for the past few weeks in an attempt to find a team to play on this summer and it was Charles who got back to me. He runs a night of pick-up ball hockey Tuesdays at a secondary school here in London and he thought it might be kind of cool if I showed up and played. This, then, would give him an opportunity to see what kind of player I was.
   The results of the evening were kind of a mixed bag. It's always a bit of a challenge to play with and against a bunch of players you weren't familiar with and and it took me some time to find my way and feel comfortable. What happens is you find out which guys have "moves" and which guys have "shots" and you either cover them more closely (if they're on the other team) or you make sure you get them the ball (if they're on your team). 
   All of this I think I did well enough at. For the life of me, though, what I couldn't do was catch up to the damn ball on one-timers. A one-timer occurs when someone passes you the ball in a good scoring position and, rather than cradling it and moving around with it, you immediately fire it at the net without even stopping it first. And this I could not do, all night long. There were probably about six separate opportunities for me to take beautiful passes and convert them to dangerous shots on net and I flubbed every single one of them. I would take this energetic wind-up and then the pass would go right through me. Prior to the game starting, I knew it might take awhile for the hand/eye co-ordination to kick in and I was prepared to whiff on a few near the beginning, I just never expected it to last the whole game!

Once again, not last night but several summers ago.

   Today, I am as sore as hell. My back and legs have stiffened right up and my knees this morning barely supported me. It was my first day back at work after a 5-day Easter weekend and, as long as I more or less kept moving, things weren't all that bad. Sitting for twenty minutes at a Timmy's was probably not a good idea but the rest of the day was go, go, go and that really helped. The other thing that wasn't a good idea was sitting down for the length of time it took to write this blog post.....
   So it is likely that I will be back playing with the same group of guys next Tuesday. Prior to the game I'll need to do a little work on one-timers, that's for sure. As well, I think I'm going to need to change the running routine a little, these leisurely 5K's I've been doing as training runs don't quite cut it on the ball hockey floor!
   

Summer Night 5K Race Recap

   This past Friday, I ran in the Summer Night 5K, one in the London Honda Road Race series. 

Just before the start of the race. One of the
course marshals said I had the best t-shirt!

   It does not get any more "summer night" than it was that evening---temp was about 26C and I'm pretty sure the humidity was at 100 per cent. It was one of those nights you could reach out and touch the air, if you know what I mean.
   I had not trained for this race. In fact, I had run only three times in the last three months. As previously explained, the last little while has been taken up with playing ball hockey a couple of nights a week and this left little room for extra running, at least for the most part. By the end of the season I was beginning to feel as if my legs might actually accommodate both kinds of running, so good for me!
   One of the cool things about the race was that my Sweetie, Doralyn, and two of my three stepsons, Callum and Quin, were there to cheer me on. They saw me off at the start line and were there waiting for me at the soggy and gasping end! The other cool thing is that this race has much more of a party atmosphere than any of the others and starts off from a bar downtown, The Barking Frog!

Me, with a bemused look and
Callum, my stepson. Don't think either
of us knew our pics were being taken...

   I basically had no plan or strategy around this race. I knew I'd be unable to run the whole thing and therefore was quite willing to incorporate walking breaks. On the last training run I'd done, I'd tried to do 10 and 1's but that had broken down after the first 10 and 1! So last night I figured I'd start with a 10 and 1 and then use shorter run and walk breaks.
   Well, this broke down as well. Essentially, I ended up running until I got tired and then I walked until I felt like I could run again. This meant a lot of walking.

A last-minute "I love You!" for Doralyn,
just before the start of the race.

   As with most races, pretty soon you end up running in a pack with runners who are relatively at the same experience or fitness level. About half a kilometer into the thing, a woman all of the sudden was running beside me as if she were attached to my left elbow. She didn't appear interested in talking or even running at a different pace, she never ran ahead and never fell behind. It occurred to me at one point that maybe she found me running at a comfortable pace for her and was happy just to use me as a pace bunny (giggle). This was more than fine with me, though. She was (and still is, I presume) a very short and compact lady and I assumed that eventually I would just pull away from her and finish ahead. As the race went on and my pace wavered from faster to slower and then back again, she would then end up either slightly behind or ahead of me. In the final kilometer, however, she was joined by a couple of non-racers who then ran with her on to the finish. At this point, she slowly pulled away and finished pretty far ahead of me. I'm thinking this was a woman who'd come to this race with a plan and some support and it had all worked out wonderfully for her. I caught up to after the race and congratulated her on a job well done!

One of the race organizers is just to my right
in this pic. We had just exchanged a sweaty
high five at the end of the race and I think he's
wondering if he needs to call medical staff...lol

   As for myself and my own performance, I will blame the heat and humidity and I will blame the lack of training and I will also (at least a little) blame ball hockey. 
   Now, though, there are no extra sports to sap my energy and I can get down to the business of really training. My time for this race (I am sad and embarrassed to say) was 41:26. I now have 41:26 to beat the next time I am out on a run. My plan will be to continue with trying to implement timed walking and running intervals and then slowly change the length of them until I get back to the point of being able to run a whole 5K all at once. Which I was able to do not all that long ago! Wish me luck!

Back at it again!

      Okay, I'm back again! Who knows for how long I'll be back but I do promise to try and do a better job of this run-blogging thing from here on in!
   By my calculations, I've run once in the last three months! As explained in earlier blog posts, I hooked up with a ball hockey team at the end of Spring and have had my hands full with doing that kind of running, as opposed to any other kind. The ball hockey season (at least for my team boo-hoo) ended a couple of nights ago so now I have the opportunity to re-focus just a touch. 
   Which is good because I have a race in six days!
   A race I obviously haven't trained for!
   Thank goodness it's only a 5K race here in London and thank goodness I've at least been doing some kind of running, in the interim.

That's me in the red shirt on the left, bending
over to take away a pass. There was WAY too much of this lol!

   My team played a couple of nights a week and the kind of running I did there likely mostly equates to speed work or hill repeats for all you regular runners out there. It will be interesting to see the kind of effect this might have had on my ability to run a 5K race. I do plan on getting out today for a run and then hopefully a couple times more before next Friday's Summer Night race.
   This race is one of my favourites on the London Honda Road Race series. It is the only evening race in the series and is an out and back kind of affair which starts of from the Barking Frog bar here in London, wends its way down near the Thames River and then back again. The race has more of a party feel to it and is one of the races where we're also not all bundled up so it's quite enjoyable. There is a slight forecast of rain so fingers crossed but then again running in a warm rain ain't all that bad either!
   So I'm headed out shortly and we'll see where my legs take me. And how fast they take me there! Let you know later on!

Hellacious Hills

   In my last post, I sort of described why I hadn't been either doing much running or blogging about it. Due to the sudden insertion of ball hockey into my life, the legs lately just haven't had the oomph required to get me out there.

Entrance to Warbler Woods

   This does not mean, though, that I have been at home simply sitting on my butt. A couple of times lately I have headed out for long walks through nearby Warbler Woods, in an effort to keep the legs moving and, perhaps even more importantly, enjoy the arrival of Spring! Yay! We're now at the point where things have actually dried up enough to make a walk through the woods an enjoyable experience. This time of year, as well, the leaves haven't blossomed yet and you can see deep into the forest, which is kind of cool.
   On these trips, I began by following the same path I take when I'm on a run. I leave my house and am at the woods in about a kilometer. There's a two kilometer stretch through the woods, I come out on the other side and then another two kilometers on pavement to get back to my place.
   I changed things up a bit though the last two times by foregoing the the final 2K on pavement and simply darting back into the woods after I popped out of them and taking a different route back through.

SNAKE! (upper right-hand corner...)

 
   Okay, this different route back through is hellacious. Warbler Woods is somewhat bowl-shaped insofar as you go down into them and climb back up out of them. My normal route has me encountering one really nasty hill but then I end up running around the upper rim of the bowl without descending into its depths. Going down into the depths brings you face-to-face with at least six hellacious hills, all of which are even more hellacious than the one hellacious hill I was already (kinda) used to.
   I was exhausted several times and, mind you, I was just walking. I can't imagine running these things. They were all pretty well straight up with bendy curves in them and it wasn't even all that easy going down the backsides of them, due to their steepness.
   

A fine example of a Carolinian forest!!

These woods are quite popular with hikers and casual walkers but I couldn't help but think that there should be some sort of disclaimer posted at the entrance, indicating the degree of difficulty. Or maybe it's just me...
    I remember thinking a couple of times at the summit of the latest hill that I was just as winded as if I'd been running. At the time, I thought of this as a good thing, figured I was at least out there getting exercise if I wasn't actually running.
   Also, the first time I did this new route, I stopped several times to rest. The second time, I vowed I would just plow on through, which is what I did.

Part of the trail

   Toward the end of my second walk, things started to catch up to me. At one point, I snagged my toe on a root as I was descending one of these hills. Nothing major that wouldn't normally have been handled by a bit of a hop and a skip but I discovered my legs would not do that hop and a skip for me. It seemed like the legs would not bend at the knee and all of the sudden it felt like I was walking on stilts instead of legs and I envisioned tumbling head first onto the trail and just rolling and rolling and...but I caught myself, thank goodness. It was then that I started to realize the toll all this ball hockey and walking had taken on my legs! I managed to get out of the forest the second time and was left with about a kilometer on

Bit of a boardwalk through
the boggier portions.

pavement to get me back home. Walking on flat pavement was not an issue, it seemed. Back at home, though, I was faced with the four steps of my wooden porch. Normally, I can spring up them. Not the other day. I pretty well needed to crawl up them and afterwards, sitting on the newly-conquered porch, I resolved to give my legs a couple of days off. No running, no ball hockey, no walking. I compromised a little by doing some yardwork the following day but even that was not pretty.
   In the midst of all this, I was ironically invited to do a squat challenge, by Crystal, intrepid leader of the Canuck Running Bloggers. Ha ha ha, I can't even really sit on the toilet or get dressed properly, let alone do a squat challenge!! Did I mention that I think I might have overdone it??
   I am pretty sure that I will return to these Hellacious Hills, however. It occurred to me as I was walking them that they would be perfect for hill repeats. They're evenly spaced enough that recovery time would be accommodated and they're different from each other, so you wouldn't get bored either! If you survived... 

What I've Been Up To!

   Okay, my stats are WAY, way down and my blog is rife with referrer spam so I guess this means I haven't been posting regularly...??
   Well, I haven't been posting because I haven't been running. And I haven't been running because...well...I've been running. My ass off, to be more specific!
   I finally managed to land myself on a ball hockey team for the first time in the last two and a half years. This means I've been spending the last two weeks chasing twenty- and thirty-somethings (did I mention that I'm sixty-two?) around a rink, twisting and turning, stopping and starting, diving, kneeling, blocking shots and, generally, running into people. And my legs are paying for it!
   Before, when I wasn't playing, it was quite easy to schedule my running and run as much as I wanted, when I wanted. Not so anymore. 

Yes, I play for the Outlaws. Cuz I'm badass.

   Right at the moment, I am on someone else's schedule and I run whenever I have to, not whenever I want to. This means that the kind of running I generally blog about has taken quite the hit, so much so that I can't even really remember the last time I did run any kind of distance.
   There have been days when I thought I maybe should have been out there on a run but my legs were so sore that I simply couldn't imagine doing so. And so I didn't. By the time maybe a couple of days had passed and my legs were feeling better then the next ball hockey game rolled around. So I didn't run. Again.
   I'm hoping and believing that eventually the running and the ball hockey will sort themselves out, once my body becomes more accustomed to the new routine. It would actually be interesting to try and compute just how many kilometers I might actually be running when I play ball hockey. Who knows, maybe I actually run farther!
   

My Non-Forrest Moment and a Strange Click in My Hip!

   Yesterday afternoon, I played my first game of ball hockey in about two and a half years. Because it's been so long, there was a fair amount of trepidation on my part as to how I would perform and how my body might react.
   I was pleasantly surprised!
   In my last blog post, I described my concern that, at full speed in the midst of a game, my body might disintegrate. I've been doing lots of running over the last couple of years but none of it has been at full speed and I was worried that parts of me might actually fall off, a la Forrest Gump's leg braces, if I ever actually got up to full speed.
   Well, there were a handful of times yesterday that I at least almost obtained full speed and nothing really bad happened, it pretty well felt like any other time in my life when I've run hard. My other concern was that perhaps my hand/eye coordination might be off as well but even it didn't seem too bad.

Well...it was to HIM anyway!

   I'm on a team called the Outlaws and it seems to be a whole bunch of guys who've never played together before. And they're almost all young, so young in fact that a few of them could technically be my grandchildren (though perhaps not realistically).
   This is not a new situation for me, I'm the oldest player in the league and pretty well always have been. You can look like and be the oldest player in the league but the trick is to not play like you are. I kind of think I held my own today, not sure what the other guys were thinking.
   So I felt okay yesterday and I felt okay last night but I'm kinda feeling it this morning. One thing I did learn yesterday is that a lot of distance running is not necessarily going to prepare you for the stopping and starting, twisting and turning, and bumping into guys at high speed you experience playing ball hockey.
   On top of it all, my hip now clicks.
   I got home and showered after the game and then sat and watched T.V. for a bit. The first time I stood up and walked across the room after that, my left hip was clicking. It didn't hurt and but I could feel it and it was loud enough that Doralyn could hear it as well (and it kind of grossed her out!)
I immediately went to Google, typed in my symptoms, and it appears as though my IT band is snapping across my hip bone, to dumb it down a little bit. At least the description of this exactly matched what I've been feeling and hearing. I will let this go for a little bit (my usual way of dealing with physical ailments) but if it continues for too long I may seek medical advice, or at least check in with Zeinin, my chiropractor.
   This was obviously my first time playing with this team but I have pretty good feelings about it. The talent level seems to be there but what I appreciated even more than that was they seem like good guys. This is always more important to me than how much talent there might be. I've played on some extremely talented teams in my day that were awful to play on simply because of nasty personalities and over-inflated egos but, so far, this doesn't seem to be the case with this team. The next game is tomorrow and I hope things have loosened up by then---I can't imagine having to play again today! So we'll see how it goes and I'll let you know!
   

My Possible Forrest Gump Moment

   I'm a little worried that I might have a "Forrest Gump" kind of moment this Sunday afternoon.
   I've managed to land myself on a ball hockey team for the summer, after about two and a half years of non-playing (but gazing longingly from the sidelines). We have our first exhibition game this Sunday and here's what I'm worried about.
   I haven't run hard in that same two and a half years.
   I've done a hell of a lot of running but I haven't run hard, as in all-out-like-you-were-being-chased-by-a-mountain-lion hard. So I don't know what might happen on Sunday the first time I need to turn it up a notch (or ten).

Will this happen to me?

   Remember that scene from "Forrest Gump", when a young Forrest, with all his leg braces, starts to run as hard as he can from all those bullies? And, in the midst of doing that, the braces begin to shatter and break and fall off ?
   Well, that's kinda my fear for Sunday, that I'm going to be running as hard as I possibly can and things will simply start to fall off. Or seize up. Or tear. Or disintegrate.
   We shall see.

"224"

   Just got back in from a 5K run about an hour ago. The snow was falling as I ran and I was really wishing I'd brought my cap along, instead of a toque, as it would have kept the snow off my face and glasses. I realized my error in judgement in this regard about nine or ten houses away from my place but, at that point, the thought of stopping and returning for my cap was more than I thought I could handle. I'm one of those guys who, on a long car trip, would rather just drive til he got there, rest stops be damned. So on I ran!

The sidewalk in front of my house.
It's under there somewhere!

   It had lightly snowed overnight as well and there was about an inch and a half of the fresh stuff today. This didn't bother me too much as I would much rather run on fresh snow than ice. The only problematic part of the run was along the major roadways, as the snowplows had come along and done their thing which, in turn, had caused debris to topple over the edge of the snowbanks and down onto the sidewalk. Which meant I had to run around (or through) it.
   At this point of the winter, I am really looking forward to seeing pavement and bare trails again. In the snow, it seems as though every time your foot plants and plows forward it also slips sideways maybe half an inch. Multiply that half an inch by a few thousand footfalls and we're running way farther than we need to!
   

The semi-tunnel leading up to our front steps

Okay, remember my first line up at the top of this post where I talk about just having gotten back from a 5K run? Well, that was yesterday people and, yes, this post has taken a little longer than I originally planned, obviously. The bonus, though, is that I can tell you I feel fine after yesterday's run and am even maybe planning on another one today. And it's rare when I run two days in a row anymore, so wish me luck!
   Oh, and about the title---"224". I used that as a gentle reminder of how much I weighed yesterday. I try to be as little "weight-centered" as possible and concentrate more on how I actually feel but I've decided that I simply don't want to weigh more than 224. So I will do my damnedest not to get above that. If I do something that gets me way down below that, then that's all fine and dandy. If I stay there, then that's kinda fine and dandy too, no probs. But I won't go above it. Nope.

Post-run, foggy-glasses pic.

   The nice thing about this weekend was that it was way warmer than last weekend. Eastern Canada was in the midst of a brutal deep freeze a week ago which made running outside more of a survival exercise than a training one, with windchill temps close to -40C. This weekend, the temps are a lot more seasonal at around -7C and it actually seems freakin' balmy out. Break out the windbreakers!
   Finally, one more post-run pic from yesterday. As we all know, layers are the way to go this time of year and in this pic I've got four of them on. A tech layer on the bottom, a cotton layer and then two more "tech" layers. By "tech" layer, I mean "hockey jersey"---a long-sleeved jersey underneath another jersey with cut-off sleeves. All of this in homage to my ball hockey days which, hopefully, will resume this summer!
   

Totally photobombed by Squeaker,
one of our four cats (think she
was waiting for a hug....)

Okay, time for another run!

Part of what motivates me

   Today marked the sixth day in a row I've either gone for a run or headed to the gym. Now, you need to understand that this is somewhat unheard of in my life. I've gone through periods where I've run on a pretty regular schedule but I've never really included any form of cross-training at the same time.
   New stuff always scares me a touch and when I decided on the run one day/cross-train the next schedule I was a little apprehensive as to my ability to keep at it. Most of the apprehension centred around the gym component--I've never been a gym-goer before and wasn't sure how I would like it.
   Well...I like it!
   Doralyn and I have been to the gym three days out of the last six and I have used her as a little bit of motivation to keep me going. There was once or twice when I looked over at her and asked, "So...we going to the gym today?" Her answer invariably was "Well, we really should, don't you think?" And then we go. If she had replied any differently, we might not have. So kudos to my cutie!
   At the Goodlife Fitness we attend, there is a double row of machines down the center of the gym floor which basically separates the cardio machines from the free weight area. These are the machines I use.
   They are part of what Goodlife calls its 20-Minute Fit Fix and are designed to very quickly run you through most of your major muscle groups. Right at the moment, this is what I'm mainly interested in. Particularly, I'm mostly interested in increasing my upper body strength. This has always been a bit of a weak point with me, especially when it comes to sports. My legs have always gotten me to where I needed to go with plenty of time to spare but, when I got there, I didn't have the upper body strength I needed to help complete the task at hand. Well, that's gonna change.


Me, on the ball hockey floor.

   One of my resolutions for the New Year is to get back to playing ball hockey, this along with a couple of other running ones. I've now gone a whole year without playing and I'm itching to get back at it. I haven't been playing primarily due to last year's bout of PF which has now healed forever (right?) and I can think of no reason not to play anymore. Part of the problem, though, is finding a team that's willing to take on a 61-year-old. I've been playing in a league of 20-and 30-year-olds and it's a bit of a hard sell; unless you have some history with a team, then its players kind of look at you and more or less write you off, at first glance. So I really need to be in better shape!
   As I mentioned above, I'm liking the gym. I'm liking it so much that I'm going to miss it tomorrow, due to it being a run day. Hmmm....could I possibly do both?