Tired

First, I was taken entirely and totally out of context by Andrew once again. The smallest comment made gets blown entirely out of proportion and I'm left defenceless. And yes, he did choke on his water and it serves him right!

re: Mile 7 comment "My wife wore me out yesterday." - I was raking leaves for several hours and then spent the afternoon cleaning up the garage so we can accommodate up to 2 cars, a motorcycle, power tools and a new snow blower. I spent the evening lying exhausted on the couch and then went to bed early so I could get up early to run with you know who!

re: Mile 8.5 comment "That dog reminds me of my daughter."- I saw a German Shepard dog which reminded me that my daughter is waiting for her new puppy which will be weaned in the next few weeks and is very excited

re: Mile 11.5 comment "I'm glad I kept my pants on."- A very low blow and he really did choke on this. It was a cool morning at about 0C/32F at the start and the light breeze during the return miles made me comment that I was glad I hadn't worn just shorts. Sheesh!



But seriously, it was a good thing that Andrew was with me today or I would have stopped the run after only a mile or two. For whatever reason (and I can think of several but none are obvious to me) it was just not my day today, feeling very lethargic and tired. Despite Andrew's great stories and bad jokes we still ended up cutting the planned 17 miler short to only 12. The chicken jokes as bad as they were deserved retelling at least on poor Ewen's behalf.

Chicken Joke #1:
Why did the chicken cross the playground?

Umm, why?

Because it wanted to get to the other slide!

Ouch, shoulda seen that coming.

Chicken Joke #2:
Why did the chicken cross the basketball court?

Hmmm, should know this. OK, why?

Because it heard the referee call fowl!

Double ouch, groan!!

Chicken Joke #3 will not be retold because I still don't get the punch line.

That's about it, it's been a slow week as I had to take several days off due to the dentist having a go at me once again. The details are too gory to go into, suffice to say that 4 days later my jaw is still sore. Hopefully next week will be better and I can slowly start building my base mileage up in preparation to start training for Big Sur.

Take care, have a nice week and make sure your dog wears their hunter orange when they go outdoors!

Back at it

Can you believe it?
And I didn't even get a chance to have 2nd thoughts about bowing out. There goes my streak after running this race for the last 10 years.

But at least my Plan B was already in the works and I'd registered for Big Sur a few weeks ago, just to be sure to get in. They have a 4500 runner limit for the marathon and are already near the 50% mark. I already know my bib number of 1981 which is a number I should be able to remember for certain personal reasons.
"If we were told that we could run only one marathon in our lifetime, Big Sur would have to be it." Bart Yasso, Runner's World

I've had a nice little holiday from running and blogging over the last several weeks as I had been out of communication while on a research survey aboard a chartered boat. We worked the waters of the Bay of Fundy for 2 weeks, doing tows with fine mesh nets for just hatched herring larvae as well as the other plankton in the water. Here's a shot of the boat safely tied to a dock but we spent more time bouncing around on the water with little opportunity to run. There was also very little inclination to do so because when I did hit the land it was harder than normal walking a straight line with my 'sealegs' not coverting to 'landlegs' very readily.
I couldn't resist throwing in this shot of a purse seine fishing boat passing by on a not so nice evening which made for a pretty picture at least.Anyway, I'm now back on land for the better part of a week and have put in a couple of short 4-5 mile runs in preparation for today's longer run with Andrew. We did the Boyden Lake loop today for a total of 13 miles and it was really nice to get back into action with my good friend. It was a nice day for a run despite the steady rain with temperature around 12C.


Andrew is now touting a new (conservative!) running plan that will only do base-building work through the winter and then morph into race preparation in the early spring once he decides on a target race. Myself, I'll be along for the ride on Sundays as we do the long runs together. Today's run went surprisingly well for me and we even tossed in some (5 or 6) 20-30sec striders over the last 3 miles. I told Andrew it was good for his fast twitch muscles and he went along with me or at least humoured me and jogged along as I tried to run fast.

That's it! Have a nice week and stay healthy out there!