Managed to get outside this week, seeing as unlike last sunday, there were no tarps or bags of trash flying through the air. I did the flying instead.
In all my 3 years of running, I had never taken a tumble. I slipped and twisted my foot getting off the bus in January 2010, which took a month to recover from, but never during running itself. Running on an unshovelled sidewalk, I stepped half on the paved edge. In the space of a second, I told myself "fall now, and choose how you do it, or take a few more futile steps, fall anyway and twist your ankle." So I twisted to the left, let myself drop, pulled my right arm in and pushed out as I rolled. I ended up rolling back onto my feet as I'd had a second to plan it, utterly painless! I laughed at myself for the next couple of minutes, but had to stop as my teeth started to get cold.
It was like being a snowplough in places, more than ankle deep. My Salomons were excellent however, and kept my feet completely dry. I missed my turn in Fish Creek Park, but found the second one which took me to the same exit point. 
Close to where I had seen a coyote 2 weeks ago, I kept imagining I was being watched as I edged toward the other side of the valley. Having stumbled up to the top, there were more unshovelled paths to negociate. Next time there's this much snow, I'll stick to cleared pathways even if it means going a certain distance then doing a u-turn which is somewhat unfulfilling for a long sunday run - I don't really mind when it comes to speed and tempo runs on wednesdays and fridays.
This was more like strength training, or cross training. Having to lift my feet up so high was quite tough of the hips - a real going over. I don't think I've gone at this pace for years too, 18.7k in just over 2 hours. Still, it's the overall training effect that matters - the reward will come at race time in the spring and summer. I read somewhere that "the will to win is nothing without the will to train." Perhaps replace "win" with "get a PB" though.
No comments:
Post a Comment