Onward and upward !

The holidays are still rolling along as well as the running. My latest adventure puts me in PEI for a few days as we visit my daughter Stephanie. She lives close to the Confederation Trail which winds from one end of the Island to the other and is one of my favorite running places. No matter the weather, from good sunny conditions to rain or even cold winter with snow and wind I always enjoy my runs here.

The running is going reasonably well as I try to follow "The Plan" that I've put in front of myself to build for a fall marathon. I'm still working my way back to the old normal, slowly increasing the distances for all my runs and working at reducing the walking breaks as well.
This past Sunday I got together with Andrew for a Boyden run, which was the 1st one we've had since way back in April. We did 13.5 miles which was the longest since my operation but I needed short walk breaks every 10 minutes to allow me to go the distance. My endurance just isn't there yet but it will come. The breaks were only about 1 minute long to let my heartrate get down to about 130 or 70% of max and really seemed to throw poor Andrew off his game. Hopefully, we'll get back to continuous runs before too long. I'll be aiming for 15 minutes running this weekend for our long run.

Here on PEI I took a timeout today for a pose during today's birthday run of 4 miles. I'm 54 years young and will be celebrating with a nice family supper here in Charlottetown tonite. I'm also looking forward to running in a 5k race on Saturday morning. It'll just be another fun run for me as I'm a long ways from being ready to race yet. Since it's a nice flat race in the downtown core my chances of improving on the previous race time should be good but again, I'm 'not' racing!

Have a nice weekend!

Holiday Adventures

Busy, busy and no time to blog with sporadic access to internet and so there has been a certain lack of updates here. Still running on most days and trying to follow my marathon training plan which first is a simple build back to regular running and long runs. My current fitness is obviously much reduced with the 6 week layoff but it's slowly coming back.
My 1st fitness test was a 5k run (race) on Canada Day, July 1st in nearby Grand Bay/Westfield near Saint John, NB. You can see my time above and the 10 year old that I nipped at the line! It was a hard run for me and required a couple of walk breaks (can you believe?) in order to finish without collapsing in a heap. Results for the race are here and some pictures here. Followed by a visit to my bro's for a nice brunch and BBQ.
The next day we headed for Vermont to stay at a bed and breakfast which was located right on the Vermont Green Mountain marathon course. With support from my co-pilot I ran/walked the 1st 1/2 of this out and back course while taking pictures and videos. Still haven't had time to edit them into anything worthwhile but you can see the route and pictures here. If you have Google Earth this site also has a cool feature so you can see my trip in 3d and also see the 'Street View' pictures with 360 degree views along part of the route. Very cool!
On to Ontario and Ottawa where I just love running along the Rideau canal and the many nice paths and trails that they have. I'd be tempted to move here just for the running... When I took this particular picture a couple of walkers commented on how I was able to 'multitask'. My reply was "No, I just like any excuse to take walk breaks". These little breaks have been a great way to extend my distances run and are a very welcome respite that allows my heartrate to return to a reasonable level. I'm now doing 1 minute or less breaks every 10 minutes of running and restarting when the heartrate is down to 130 (75%) or less.
Latest run this morning of 10 miles (with the short walk breaks every 10 minutes) went really well. I was only attacked by a protective red winged blackbird and had a coyote encounter that was kind of interesting. He crossed my path along the highway and then could be seen in a nearby field poking his head up watching me before taking off. No chance at a picture though.

So, a few more days in Ontario with family before heading back east. Planning to do a longer Boyden run next weekend with Andrew which will be a nice change of pace. I just hope that he can get used to my little breaks but he knows my camera is always at the ready in any case.

Take care and have a nice week!