Early December Happenings

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I swapped my running shoes for, well, no shoes, and have been getting in the pool 2-3 times a week. I’m yet to see that “practice makes perfect”, but it sure makes for massive improvement. My first attempt at being Ian Thorpe saw me cover 750 metres in total, in the slowest possible fashion, mostly at a mere 50 metres at a time, and never more than 100 consecutive metres before needing a rest. Ok less like Ian Thorpe and more like Geoff Huegill...(not in his awesome Olympic-medal winning form but when he retired and was 138kgs a year later I mean)

But, with nowhere to go but up, I set out to do each session a little longer, or a little faster, or with a few less breaks. And like Geoff Huegill’s waistline, my performance levels increased. In my 5^th pool session I managed to cover the same 750 metres, without breaks, all in one go. In my 6^th and most recent session, I upped it to 1km, again, without a break. With perhaps time for another 6 sessions before the end of the year when we move to Australia I’ll set 1.5kms straight as a goal. Then I’ll likely swim as often as I did before this (hardly ever) and could quite possibly be 138kgs shortly afterwards.

Like Huegill, with the lack of swimming, and increased number of beers and pizzas I'll have next year, this will probably be me.

 

Speaking of swapping shoes, I got a brand spanking new pair this week…my first pair since April. I wasn’t particularly looking for a pair, but after discovering a Saucony outlet store on my way home from Toronto on Wednesday, I stopped in and pick up a pair of Saucony Peregrines, for the outlet price of $90…too good of a deal to pass up. I haven’t really owned a specific “Trail running shoe” before, but starting next year my TNF100 training will be based mostly off-road, so I thought I’d make the jump…and although I couldn’t test them out on the trail just down the road (the causeway to cross the river was flooded due to melting snow) I tried them out on the gravel roads-and they felt quite good! In fact the guy that finished 2^nd at TNF100 last year wore this shoe, so it can’t be too bad!

The new kicks

With no snow falling for a week and some not so friggin bull-bustingly freezing temperatures days of 3-6 degrees the majority of snow around town melted away enough and I was able to get a few road runs in, and I was able to avoid the dreadmill for another week. But the current 14 day forecast doesn’t have a day above 0 Celsius so I might be stuck inside more than I’d like. (I think I’m pretty hardcore, but -11 degrees isn’t exactly tanning weather). Luckily I found an alternative…

A few Snowmen died this week in Clinton...but they'll be back next week

 

From my observations, a general rule in rural small town Canada, is if your town is big enough to have a dinky little corner store, it’s also big enough to have a state of the art indoor ice-hockey arena. Which is good news for runners as there will generally be a walking/running track surrounding the ice in which to strut your stuff. Although running circles around a track is nearly in the same boredom category of a treadmill, in my town of Clinton, the track is elevated above the stadium seating, meaning not only do I have 200 metres of track to play with, but can do stair sessions by scooting up and down the seating aisles each time I round the track. With six aisles of 18 stairs for a total of 108 stairs per lap, it adds a little variety, and as I found out after my first session the other day, if I run the stairs exclusively (without rounding the track) it gets pretty tiring pretty quickly! Since it’s indoors it’s a little annoying I can’t track these runs on Strava, but a nice little bit of variety anyway.

Favourite use for Clinton Arena: Watching a hockey game with a beer in hand

Second favourite use: Running the track and stairs

 

I was at Goderich gym after my pool session this week and noticed a bloke doing pull-ups, who was maybe in his mid fifties, athletic as all hell and sported a classic yellow and blue “2009 Boston Marathon” shirt on. I thought I’d give him some props, and we had an exchange like this:

Me: “Nice shirt you got there mate”
Him: “Thanks, have you got one?”
Me: “No, but I hope to one day”. (I’m assuming he meant a Boston Marathon shirt, not just a shirt in general, since I was wearing one)
Him: “I’ve got nine of them”.

Jerk.

After clarifying that he meant nine Boston Marathon shirts, and not nine “2009” ones that he picked up in a sale after the race, but that he had actually ran the Boston Marathon nine years in a row, we got chatting about our running resumes. Well, his resume mainly. When he introduced himself as “Steve”, I realised who I was talking to. This was Steve Beasley, a Goderich local and renowned runner in these parts. I’d heard of him back in April when he came 3^rd in his age group in the Boston marathon. That’s right-not only does he qualify for and run in the iconic Boston Marathon each year, but he competes in it at a competitive level. After creeping looking up some results online, turns out his 2:49 effort this year was good enough for a finish 744^th overall, which although doesn’t sound super impressive, consider the following:

-There are around 27,000 who enter this race, the vast majority of which have to qualify to enter, therefore
-It is THE most competitive marathon in the world, attracting the world’s best runners.
-Steve is a 50-something year old bloke from Canada, not a 20 or 30 something year old Kenyan.

It sure says something. And that something is that Steve is a gun runner. I never asked what his marathon PB was, but after bitching about the cold weather to him, he mentioned he’d run in -42 degrees Celsius in Northern Ontario, which is nearly as impressive as his marathon times I reckon. It was pretty cool to swap stories with a runner of that calibre, and it certainly made me think I can suck it up and deal with the temperatures this next week anyway!