Raising the bat in an freakish ice storm

In 2 days it’s Christmas. In 4 days I’m flying out of Toronto and heading (eventually) back home to Sydney for at least a year. What does all this mean? Life is pretty sweet! But it also means that there’s been of errands and organising and tying of loose ends to be done. Moving out of our apartment, selling possessions online, getting as much study done as humanly possible, driving to Toronto (twice) to get Chinese VISAs, organising Christmas presents, etc etc. It’s been a busy time! I realise someone like me who is currently unemployed complaining about being too busy is kind of like listening to a supermodel complain that she’s a fatty, but whatever, it’s all relative. (That is probably the first and last time I will ever compare myself to a supermodel by the way).

In short, it’s made my training/exercise/gym/running activities go the way of the dinosaurs- big and scary non-existent. Up to last week I had a fairly regular routine of doing a weights/gym session on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and doing some form of cardio on Tuesdays, Thursdays and generally Saturdays. In the blink of an eye I missed one day with moving out, missed another having to drive 6 hours and run errands in Toronto (running errands doesn’t count as running), and missed countless runs due to weather (ok, and a couple of hangovers).

I then realised that I was stuck on 99 runs for the year, and had been for the past 11 days of this mini-slump. Like a batsmen stuck nervously at the crease, I couldn’t get to 100 and raise the bat as easily as it had been to get to 99. But luckily I’m more of a Matty Hayden than a choking Shane Watson-type, and finally Sunday morning came around with no plans until a family Christmas that afternoon-perfect time for a run! Only problem was, there had been freezing rain falling all throughout Saturday night, resulting in one of the worst ice storms in recent history, and EVERYTHING outside was covered in 1-2cms of hard ice.

I nearly reconsidered heading out, but with a power outage and everyone reminded me how much I’d been bitching to go ice-skating all month (for the record, I still haven’t been) they said if I went for a run in these conditions, it’d be basically like ice-skating anyway.

So out I went, with the temperature a surprisingly warm 1 degree. Every branch of every tree was covered in ice. The powerlines, the cars, everything. Snow covering everything in winter is perfectly normal, but ice covering everything is rare (although I’ve seen it twice this year-the other time back in April). I can’t explain the science behind it, but I can scientifically confirm that every Canadian freaks out about it. No one drives on the roads, everyone stocks up on food and water and any plans they had get cancelled, as they are scared of the ice boogey man, or something like that. I guess some of it is warranted-we are still without power and don’t expect it back for 3-4 days.

I started my jog down the dirt road, now a mix of dirt, gravel and slushy ice. With the temperature rising, the ice was slowly but surely melting, and therefore breaking off violently in golf-ball sized chunks from every large tree I passed under. The more trees I passed, I realised how much damage the storm had caused-branches up to 20 feet long snapped off, and some trees fallen entirely, due to the extra weight of the ice they were now bearing. Although no powerlines were downed like in the last storm, I could hear the hum of a tractor idling at each and every house I passed, as the tractor had been hooked up to their back up generator. I only passed 5 houses, but still, 5 for 5 is pretty good.

Turning onto a sealed road, the ice became less dangerous underfoot, but was still keeping my eyes peeled above me. Even in treeless stretches I heard the crashing of ice onto the snow beside me, and couldn’t quite work out the reason. I then noticed the powerlines running parallel to the road-they were covered in a layer of ice as well, and when the wind picked up it would send long barbs of ice down below, some up to 4 foot long. So my choice was to run on the left side of the road and avoid the golf ball sized chunks falling non-stop from the trees, or run down the right hand side and avoid the long spears falling less frequently from the powerlines. Who said running wasn’t a contact sport?

Well on this morning it wasn’t…I managed a 10km out-and-back run and somehow managed to avoid getting hit. Considering it was my first run in forever I wasn’t setting any goals, and with the conditions (and lack of fitness) I was slower than Oprah to a salad bar, but I considered it an achievement to amazingly not get hit by any ice.

It was one of the more surreal runs out of the 100 I’ve done this year, and getting out and admiring this strange winter wonderland was definitely the right choice rather than staying indoors.

Ice Ice baby

Behind that thick, manly beard you'll see a tree bending due to the weight of the ice

Trees ready to unleash ice on anyone who passes them

Frozen car (even the antenna)

Wind the window down, and you still have a window. Freaky

 

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!

 

 

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.