Alpacas rollerskating through "real winter"

I’ve never DNFed in a race. DNF stands for Did Not Finish (not Dinosaur Nose Flipped, which would be sweet. For the record, I’ve never Dinosaur Nose Flipped in race either). The fact that I haven’t done too many races, I’m not overly injury-prone and they haven’t been super long anyway (longest ones have been marathons) probably have something to do with that.

Yesterday morning I nearly DNFed a training run. In fact I nearly DNSed it (Did Not Start-I’m not sure that’s an official acronym but I’ll go with that anyway).

I made myself get up early to drive Michelle to work which is 20 minutes away in Goderich. There are some nice trails around there-many which I haven’t explored-and thought I’d make use of them before the “real winter” begins. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a Canadian say something along the lines of “ah this December snow is nothing eh, wait until February eh, that’s when it’s actually winter eh”.  I’d have at least two dollars. Ok, it’s not that much, BUT if you take out the exaggerated amount of “ehs” in the sentence, I’d be filthy rich. Call me crazy, but when it’s below zero, the leaves have long since fallen from the trees and there is snow covering houses, fields, and everything else…that IS winter.

So there I was, driving through Goderich to get to a nice trail north of town. When I pulled up at the ice-covered entrance, the gates were officially closed for the season, but I could still run the trails if I wished. Still dressed in my non-running clothes, I stepped out of the car to inspect the trail. Actually “stepped” isn’t the appropriate word, “glided” probably would be. And not in the Blades of Glory ice skating graceful meaning, but in an awkward, new-born-alpaca-trying-to-take-it’s-first-steps-with-rollerskates-attached-to-its-feet clumsy kind of way. Unfortunately the trail was much the same, and I decided that since it wasn’t forecast to snow for the next week or so I’d come back to this one in a few days, hoping some of the ice and snow had melted by then.

I knew I had to run, but also knew there were going to be worse winter days than this or “real winter” as I’d learned to call it, when I’d really have to resort to the dreaded treadmill, but I couldn’t bring myself to that today when there was still blue sky around. I drove to a different trail in town, a shorter one by the river that is more of a groomed walking path rather than single-track trail through the woods, in the hope that it wasn’t so icy. No luck-it was just as bad, as I found out when I exited the car in the same clumsy rollerskating alpaca fashion as the first time.

After a few minutes sitting in the car thinking about all the pros and cons of actually running, I turned on the ignition and headed home. I think every runner/cyclist/swimmer etc has those days when they could think of every possible excuse not to get on the trail/bike/pool and has talked themselves out of it. Two sayings that always come back to me in these times are “you never regret the run you do, but you regret the one’s you don’t do” and “ ‘I regret that run’-said no-one ever”. I think they are absolutely true. Unless of course you break an ankle while out for a run, or get run over by an ice-cream truck, or attacked by a grizzly bear, or...

Ok so there are some regrettable scenarios, but for 99.99% of runs, no matter how cold, no matter how tired you are, or how much you’re hurting at that particular point in time, you are going to look back on that run and be glad/proud/relieved you did it. I never look back on training weeks and think “gee I really regret going for that run I was dreading”, but I sometimes find myself looking over shorter training weeks thinking “why didn’t I just man up and go for a damn run? Now that short week looks weak!” And then I would probably think about how many words in the English language have the same sound but different spelling (like read and read-so stupid). But I digress…

It was this mindframe that finally got me to pull the car over about 10km from home in a relatively ice-free car park off the highway, change into my layers of running gear and get out of the car. It was cold, it was still kind of icy and it wasn’t immediately “fun”, but I was running. By the time I reached the highway (which is terrible for running on in winter conditions) I turned around and headed back toward the car, making it a super short 4km run and made it back to my starting point  less than 20 minutes later. I had literally spent nearly three times as long driving around, thinking about it, googling pictures of alpacas with rollerskates and getting changed than I did actually running, but in the end, I went for a run, and immediately once I stepped back into the car I was glad I did. Sure I could have done repeats of that 4km stretch to make it a longer run, but I was claiming just getting out and getting moving as a victory. I didn’t DNS-which is the main thing. Looking at it now, it was a measly little run, hardly worth the drive, it was cold, and it wasn’t exactly overly fun, but I know I’ll look back on this training week and think about just how ball-bustingly cold it was and how glad I am that I got out there and did 4km on that Thursday, rather than 0km. In fact, that’s what I think now, at 24 hours later. Do I regret being a big baby about the weather or complaining about the less than ideal (but still very runnable) conditions? Kind of, but not really! But that’s beside the point. Do I regret going for that run? Not at all.

The trail I turned my back on...ice + melting snow + cold = ideal conditions for making a tit out of myself

Among all the pointless crap on the internet, unfortunately a hilarious picture of an alpaca on rollerskates is not one of them. Fortunately, I got my alpaca fix with an even more hilarious photo of an alpaca riding a surfboard. Hahaha AN ALPACA RIDING A SURFBOARD!! Golden.

There was a picture of an elephant on rollerskates (which is pretty neat), but he actually looks way more in control and steady than I was hopping out of the car onto ice.

 

Found a nice stretch of quiet road with no snow/ice/slush to run on. :)

 

 

 

Winter = Running like a mouse

Yesterday was the first snow of the season here in Clinton, Ontario. And Mother Nature decided not to ease us into this by just dropping a few little snowflakes on the ground, but rather to bring the house and dump an ungodly amount on day 1.

Being an Australian who rarely sees the stuff, it’s still kind of a novelty. Now instead of the usual distractions available to me (TV, internet, food) while I’m meant to be studying, there was a new one on the list-staring out the window. It’s like I’m a kid in the 1930’s-I find myself just staring out the window, watching the white stuff fall from the sky and accumulate on the ground. I don’t know what that has to do with a kid in the 1930’s…probably nothing…but regardless, I am sure kids have been doing it for centuries (well at least as far back as we invented windows to stare out of).

The worst part about all of this was that I’d scheduled a run in for yesterday. The fact Canadian winters are 5000% colder than Australian winters, I decided that slipping around on freshly fallen snow and freezing my tits off for an hour was pretty undesirable. More undesirable than a boring treadmill run at the gym? Yep. That’s what it had come to…for once, I was itching to run on a treadmill.

Treadmill running to me is still running, but something’s not right. It’s like a Diet Coke version of running. There are no trails to discover, no trees to run under, no poop to step in, no anything. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. Ok so maybe no poop to step in is a good thing, but I’d rather run that risk running over various poop-covered terrain than running in a tedious poop-free indoor environment.

I slipped, slided and nearly crashed the car in the snow drove myself to the gym and instead of finding myself feeling slightly out of place in the weights area with the boys, I found myself still feeling slightly out of place going there solely for the treadmill with the girls.

As I started pounding the pavement (rubber?) I stared directly in front of me. Not at an ever changing environment with trees, or fields, or animals, but at the same thing. Out the window that separates the gym from the hockey rink at the YMCA. Every few minutes another parent would drop their kid off to hockey training and look through the window to see a sexy sweaty man (me) boring myself slowly to death on this treadmill. I can only imagine the looks I was getting, were the same looks mice get as one wanders the pet store and sees them running fruitlessly on their little mouse wheel. The difference was no one was making fun of my tail I had access to many other avenues of enjoyment (TV, internet) whereas the mice in the pet store, the mouse wheel is the top of the entertainment food chain. I guess I was starting to feel better about myself after all.

Anyway after what I guessed was 10kms on the treadmill (it was measured in miles, so my calculation of 6.2 miles was bang on-thank you nerdy genes!) I stepped away and left the gym. On my way out I said to the girl at the desk “well I guess I’ll see you next time it snows”. Her reply was disheartening…”We’ll see you tomorrow then”. Mother Nature 1, Nick 0.

 

I should probably get talking to the gym manager about perhaps changing this one to a regular treadmill

 

Or you are a turtle without a watch

 

 

Perhaps the most awesome use of treadmills ever. Note: You get strange looks when you attempt to recreate this at the gym by yourself.