Komoka Provincial Park: Part Two

   The weekend before last, I made my first real running foray into nearby Komoka Provincial Park. Today I decided I would head there again, to continue my exploration.

Headed east (south?)

   In the parking lot, there was a woman and a couple of kids and two horses, just sort of mulling about. I stopped and talked to them briefly and made mention that their presence there sort of explained the piles (well, one pile anyway) of horse poop I'd encountered on my previous expedition. They smiled a little sheepishly and said they generally try and kick it off to the side. I assured them a little horse poop was the least of my worries and then headed off.

A little beaver action, just off the trail

   The parking lot on Gideon Drive is centered approximately in the middle of the park and you can either head east or west from there (it might even be north or south for all I know) and today I headed west (maybe south!)
   The trail initially takes you through some tall grasslands but then down into forest. It peters out fairly quickly and then you find yourself heading back.

The Stairs! Which take you down to.....

   The other week when I was there a couple of different people I met on the trail referred to "the stairs". I had not seen "the stairs" that day and really had no idea what they were talking about. Well, today I found "the stairs". I knew they were "the stairs" as soon as I laid eyes on the them. Happily, they took me right down to the edge of the Thames River and from there I was able to skirt the riverbank as I ran. 

...the Thames!

   I ran pretty slowly today and was using it mainly as exploration. The park was once again pretty busy with hikers but I did encounter a couple of young runners who whizzed right past me in both directions and were obviously there for the workout. To be young again!

More of the Thames

Decay=Beauty!

   Eventually, I ended up on trails that I remembered from my last trip there and these then took me back to the parking lot.
   There is a small amount of bitter-sweetness about all of this.For years now, the people of London have been coming to Komoka for free and it has just been announced that starting August 1 there will be a charge for using the park. This has a lot of regular users up in arms, some claiming they will never return. Part of the problem here is that there are so many places in and around London to run or hike for free that it will be a bit of a hard sell to get people to make a short trip out of town to somewhere where they'll actually be forced to cough up hard cash. Another issue is that there really are no amenities in this provincial park---no picnic areas, no garbage cans, no wash rooms---those kinds of things. Likely the only thing that will keep people coming is if the whole place is tremendously enhanced. At which point, it will lose much of its charm!

Proposed new pricing. Boo! (unless, of
course, it makes the park a lot nicer...)

Trail running in Komoka Provincial Park (oh...and Ron, too)

  From where I live in west London, Komoka Provincial Park is about a five minute drive and I have been eyeing it for ages as a place to do some trail running. My wife and I made an exploratory trip there last year and it seemed as though it would be good for running. We also got lost but that's another story....
   I spent some time yesterday looking at the trails on Milermeter, trying to figure out mileages and which one of the many trails to try out first and today I headed there!
   The recent heatwave has died down somewhat and things have become a little more seasonable in these parts so I was anticipating a nice little run.
   The first part of the run, the trail was very narrow and, basically, you needed to beat the bushes back with your shoulders as you ran. Farther into the forest, though, things got a little wider and it was easier to run. 
   I'm not a particularly experienced trail runner but I would describe the trails as reasonable technical, this due to root systems and rocky inclines, as much as anything else. There are a handful of boggy areas which have boardwalk spanning them and some of the boardwalk is awesome and other stretches of boardwalk are a bit of an adventure in themselves---the occasional rotted board along with sections that spring you upward.
   The scenery was awesome. The part of the trail I was on more or less follows a cliff above the Thames River and occasionally there would be an opening in the forest and you'd find yourself looking down at a beautiful river scene. In between there was simply beautiful forest to look at!
   Due to it being Sunday, the trails were quite busy. Families and couples and their dogs. I had a route set out which took me from one end of the park to the other and then back again along the same trail. Many people appeared to be doing the same thing but in the opposite direction. This meant I'd run into them one way and then about 45 minutes later I'd run into them again, going different directions. Everyone was quite pleasant and lots of banter along the way.
   The parking lot at the other end of the park was about 3 kilometers from where I started and at that point I turned around and headed back.
   Very shortly after I did this, I ran into a gentleman with an English accent who was out hiking today. We stopped and talked briefly about how tricky the trail could be at times and he went on to tell me that he'd been going to the park on a regular basis for about 20 years now, was actually a member of the London Hiking Club and was also responsible for helping to set up many of the trails throughout the park! When I found out how much he walked, I remarked on the good shape he was obviously in. At that point, he asked me if I had any idea how old he was and then he went on to tell me he was actually 87! I would have guessed maybe 67 at the most but there's a pic of him a little later on. He then went on to tell me a little of his life story and at that point I knew I wanted to include him in this blog post so I asked if I could take a pic. He was a little astounded that I would want to do this but was happy to oblige, regardless. I asked if he was on the internet at all and he replied in the negative so no real opportunity to to direct him to this blog. As we parted ways, we introduced each other and I found out his name was Ron. Maybe I'll print a copy of this post and take it with me the next time...
   I then eventually made my way back to where my car was. Somehow or other in the process I ended up returning on a different trail than the one I'd set out on. Not quite sure how that happened, will need to investigate further. 
   The following is basically a photo dump of my day in Komoka Provincial Park. You really could have stopped every 50 yards or so and taken a totally different and just as beautiful a pic

Pretty swampy here, basically up to your ankles

Pretty sure this was horse poop but I thought
of it as bear poop, made the run more interesting

Seemed like there was another trail on the
other side, if you wanted to walk across that log...

Every once in a while, you popped out into a meadow!

One of the more reliable boardwalk sections.

Made it all the way to the other side, and then I....

...ran into Ron, the 87-year-old Englishman!

The Thames River, peeking through!

And back to my car!

On The Way To The Hills (Pretty Little Pictures Of My Neighbourhood)

   What day is it today? Oh yeah...Thursday. Have been on holidays for a week and a half and have totally lost track of what day it is! What a great problem to have!
   So if it's Thursday today that means on Tuesday I set out on a little trip to the ever-reliable (and close) Warbler Woods to do some hill repeats. Most of Eastern Canada is in the middle of a drought and heat epidemic and London is no different. Because of this I had this conversation with myself on the way to the woods as to whether I should even be venturing outside. It was about 33C (91F) and the humidex was through the roof and I thought that these really were not the ideal conditions to be running in, particularly hill repeats. The headline "Runner Found Collapsed in the Woods" kept passing through my mind. In my defence, however, I have always been someone who was able to carry on performing strenuous activities in high heat. I also knew that the hill repeats would be, for the most part, in the shade of the woods.

   I walked briskly to the woods (in deference to the heat, I didn't run) and this was just under 2K. Along the way, I took some pics of my neighbourhood!

A quick walk to the end of my street
where I then...

...turn left and head up the long incline toward the Woods.

The hill just goes up until you get to....

...Holy Moses! Bullrushes!

Then, MORE bullrushes,  this time on the
left. Beyond the bullrushes, you can see...

...Warbler Woods, an environmentally
significant area!

Aahhh....shade at last!

The first (and worst) hill! Hard to tell
but it's about a 45 degree angle and
about twenty yards long with a
twist to the right at the top of this pic.

From the top, looking back down.
Pic is slightly fuzzy due to
my physical distress at the time! lol

   There were another four or five hills which were almost as tough as the first one but I managed to get out alive just fine! Basically I ran the hills and walked briskly the rest of the time (occasionally, not quite so briskly) until I exited on the far side of the woods. From there, about another kilometer back to my house, and re-hydration!
   

Trying Not To Get My Butt Kicked

   Last night, someone on social media threatened to come to my front door and kick my butt if I didn't get off it and go for a run and so, today, I did just that!
  I decided that I would just do a nice, easy run and maybe tack on an extra kilometer while I was at it. Currently, my "training" regimen involves nothing much more than getting out there and running the same 5K course over and over, with the occasional hill repeat session thrown in. This meant that today I would be doing a whole 6K! Woo hoo!

   The plan was fairly straightforward---I would run 3K in one direction and then turn around and run back. I left open the option of stopping after 5K but knew that I really didn't want to do that. I headed off in the opposite direction of what I usually do (so daring) and this meant that, thankfully, I was running more or less downhill for the first couple of kilometers. I got to the halfway mark feeling pretty comfortable, had a quick swig from the water bottle and then headed back. I hit the 5K mark with no real desire to stop and so kept on running. At this point, my slowly evolving plan now included a walk through Warbler Woods and perhaps some hill repeats therein. I estimated that running that final kilometer would have me reach the woods at the end of it and this was the way it more or less worked out. The final half a kilometer was a killer though and I knew there would be no running of the hills in Warbler.

For your perusal,  what  Warbler
Woods is all about.

I think coyotes come, hoping
to feed on old people....

   As it was, walking the hills in Warbler almost did me in. There is a series of about six hills, all of which seem to go straight up and twisting at the same time, not to mention the rocks and root systems along the way. Being a Saturday, I ran into a couple of other sets of walkers who all agreed that we were in the middle of a true cardio experience. About two thirds of the way through, things seem to level off a little and become a little more like a "walk in the woods". I couldn't help but think that there should be warning signs at either end of the forest just to warn people what they're up against. Especially old people. Like me.

Did I mention the treacherous root systems?

   Once out of the woods, it was another almost kilometer to get me back home where lunch and re-hydration awaited. My plan (why do I make plans?) is to gradually up the mileage on the weekends and try to get in a couple of shorter runs throughout the week.

Same spot, today.

My wife and I took this pic back
in the Spring.....

   So you know how some people have a running playlist of tunes, helping them kill time and/or motivate themselves on long runs? Well, today I had a blogging playlist---songs I listened to while coming up with this gem of a blog post. It will definitely "date" me but here it is anyway!

Cat Stevens-18th Avenue
Cat Stevens-Monad's Anthem
Paul Simon-Duncan
Richard Harris-MacArthur Park
Moody Blues-Thursday Afternoon
John Williams-Jurassic Park
Simon and Garfunkel-The Boxer
Miklos Rosza-King of Kings
Paul Stookey-There Is Love
Leonard Cohen-Show Me The Place
Tori Amos-Crucify
Nena-99 Red Balloons
Richard Shindell-Transit
Gary Jules-Mad World
Damion Rice-Moody Monday
Chumbawumba-Tubthumping
Tove Lo-Habits (Stay High)
Melanie-Stoneground Words

   Did I mention it might date me??

Starting All Over All Over Again (And Random Bowling Pins)

   Well, I guess I'm not totally starting all over again but when you run as sporadically as I do it never feels as though you really have a base to run on. It's only when I remember what the running used to be like back in the olden days that I realize I actually do have a bit of a base going on there....

The street, without me

   It was hot today, scheduled for a high of 31C (88F) and I don't know why I didn't either head out first thing this morning or wait until this evening but, NO, I went running mid-day! This has never really bothered me in the past and I've been in all sorts of environments where I was forced into heavy physical exertion under hot conditions so I headed out anyway.
   Once again, my plan was to run 5K as slow as I could. This was dictated only slightly by the weather and probably more so by the lack of recent running.

The street, with me

   My legs felt pretty good (lots of rest!) and soon after I headed out I decided that I would try and run the whole way without a break. Half way through the run, I knew this wouldn't be an issue, even in the heat. I finished with a goshawful time of 48:35 (not sure why I even just told you that) and I knew at the end of the run that I could have really stepped things up, speed-wise, but I very much wanted to stick to the plan, such as it was. My arrival back at the house pretty much co-incided with the arrival of Duncan, a neighbour's Scotch (Scottish?) terrier and I had his master (whose name I don't even know) snap a pic of me, up against our "Leaning Linden" tree. I look happy in the pic but my eyes were full of sweat and stinging terribly. A couple of hours later and I am still replacing fluids!
   Okay enough about the run because in the blog title I think I also mentioned something about random bowling pins, didn't I?
   On Thursday of this week, I was rummaging through  the shed of someone I know and found a cardboard box full of bowling pins! I talked to the gentleman who had left them there and he said he had randomly found them in an alleyway in downtown London and had brought them home. Each pin had been signed by members of the 2015-16 London Knights, the local junior hockey team. Last week, the Knights won the Memorial Cup which actually makes them the best junior hockey team in Canada (and possibly the world) but the significance of this was lost on the gentleman, who is not a sports fan and did not look at the pins really closely. I attempted to explain both the significance and value of the find to him and convinced him that they really should be returned to the team or at least let the team know about it. He was happy enough to let me take them with me and I, for my part, have contacted the Knights and am waiting to hear back from them. The weird things you find!

The bowling pins. Hockey players these
days really need to learn to sign legibly!

Giving It Another Go

   According to my Garmin, the last time I ran in earnest was March 27. So, give or take a day or two, I have not run in two whole months.
   The hardest part about this realization is that I had very few reasons not to. A couple of little physical hiccups kept me off the road for what only needed to be brief periods of time but the reality of it is that I have simply not felt like running and nothing much was really going to force me to get out there. Yes, I have been feeling guilty about this.
   So today I got out and ran. Technically you could call it running only because it didn't fit the "walking" definition. I ran as slow as I possibly could because the only goal for today was to run. A dedicated speedwalker would have passed me.
   About half a kilometer into it, I developed a sharp pain in my right knee. This kind of popped up out of nowhere and I was a little perplexed as to its cause. Then I remembered---the infamous "falling down the stairs" episode about a week ago. You can read about it here, chronicled in my "other" blog. It had nothing to do with running so that's where it went. At the rate I have been falling down the stairs lately, I could probably start my own blog dedicated to falling down, but that's a whole other story.
   Because of the knee pain, my run at least momentarily turned into a walk. After a short walk, the pain seemed to have disappeared and I returned to slow running.
   It was a beautiful and sunny day today, temps around 25C (77F) and was the warmest weather I'd been running in since last summer. My original plan had been to run the usual 5K route I'm accustomed to but, because of the knee pain, I changed my plans and decided instead to head for Warbler Woods and maybe shorten things up a bit.

Love all the little flowers lining the trail.

   The last time I'd been in the woods was early Spring and none of the leaves were out yet. Today, however, nothing but greenery! Really should have taken a few more pics but at this point I was more in survival mode. I was forcing myself to run up the hills in the woods and there are a fair amount of them.
   At one point I ran into a woman who was hiking who said she was having a hard time handling the hills walking, she couldn't imagine running up them. Told her I'd be walking again in a minute and she'd probably catch up to me.
   Unfortunately, the people who run the parks here in London have closed off the section of trail I normally run on, so that it can "regenerate". I guess this is good for  Warbler in the long run but it does kind of screw me up....

New boardwalks!

   Before I knew it, I was out of the woods and back to sidewalks again and back home again for a 4K run/walk.

This was obviously a checkpoint...

   It always feels like starting all over again every time I'm away from running for an extended period and then start up again. It's times like these that I find myself remembering what it was like back in the old "Learn To Run" days, when I could barely run for two minutes straight. This makes me feel a little better...
   Hopefully, I'll be able to get out a little more regularly now and not spend so much time procrastinating and rationalizing. As hard as the work was today, it sure felt good! 

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!

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