Weekly (actually training) report

It's been another nice long week of vacation with plenty of home tasks to keep me busy (or not). I've started work on the retaining wall and Jo spent most of her efforts in moving some of the pond plumbing further into the trees. My job was mainly that of being Mike the plumber and routing the piping to meet the barrel at it's new location, almost out of sight.
Another exploit, from just yesterday, was my participation in a course on race course measurement which was put on by Run New Brunswick for interested race directors. Our instructor Bernie Conway, is the Chief Certifier for Canada and a member of AIMS which works in support of race course certification. It was a pretty cool introduction to the nitty gritty details of the hows and whys with lots of hands on practical stuff. I took lots of pictures which are now posted here and will be getting my Grade C certificate which allows me to measure local and regional courses and apply for final certification of these courses.

Here we are using a steel tape to accurately lay out and measure our calibration course of 300m which was then used to calibrate our bicycles with a Jones counter. All the details are on the AIMS website if you're so inclined.

Running? Training? Oh yeah, time for plenty of that too and was able to get all the planned workouts and runs per the MDI training schedule.

Monday - rest day, slept in a bit and took it easy with some light gardening with Jo

Tues - workout of 8 miles at marathon pace over a 10 mile run which went very well. After a 1 mi warm up I did a 3 mile cutdown in pace at 30sec, 20sec and 10sec slower than MP before doing 5 miles at MP. Average pace of 7:17 and heartrate of 151 which was right on target. The hilly course that I did this test on had an effect on the pace but the effort was OK and I felt that I could have managed a few more without much problem.

Weds - just an easy 60 minutes in the early morning with perfect cool temperature of 14C and plenty of fog and mist to add to the air conditioned effect

Thurs - 2hr run with about 15 miles covered at an easy pace with the heartrate in the easy zone (<135) . Again great weather conditions were the order of the day. (16C with fog and mist)

Friday - 9 miles with a total of 15 minutes of hard effort on this fartlek run. After an easy warmup I put in efforts of 1, 2 or 3 minutes with similar breaks between. I rather look forward to and enjoy this kind of semi-unstructured running which is done entirely by effort while running through various roads and trails. The run went well but there were some complaints from my hamstrings and butt which are a bit tight and sore.

Sat - up early at 6am after staying over with my sister in Saint John so I wouldn't have to travel so far for the measurement course. Ended up doing a 6 mile loop which was a bit longer than expected and barely got back in time for a quick shower before heading out to the course.

Weekly total of 65 miles in 8hr 48min and avg pace of 8:10 for all runs.

Sunday - the new week starts and today I was able to run with Andrew once again at Boyden Lake. It's been quite a while since we've been able to hook up here due to conflicting schedules mostly. The last time we ran here it was the incident of the Ticking Time Bomb but this time around there was less damage done and the run has been named the Zany Zones run by my running compatriot.

The goal today was to take it 'easy' and for the most part we managed to meet this goal. However, 21 miles is still a long way and it takes a long time at our slower than normal pace and my body was complaining mightily by the end for it to be over. Total of 2 hr 53 minute and avg heartrate of 129 by my watch. It was great to catch up with Andrew and to finally be able to congratulate him in person on his big race win earlier in the month. Besides the hills, most of my hr peaks in the graph above are due to the many jokes Andrew was telling. More running, less jokes? Not a chance! However, it was good to finish and I've spent most of the rest of the day collapsed on the couch enjoying the FIFA under 20 soccer and Tour de France.

It was a good day. Have a great week!