Training Log Archive: xc-racer5

Should I have taken all morning away from doing schoolwork to go running? probably not, but it was also a beautiful day, I wanted to get off campus, and I'd never been to the top of Spion Kop, so I did. Hopped on a bus to Lake Country at 8:50am, hopped off at Oceola and Okanagan Centre and started running up Spion Kop. The first 1.5km were an absolute grind, straight up a road with about 100m of climb. I never actually found the trailhead, instead I found a trail leading into the woods that didn't have any signs telling me not to take, and started running up it. I think I started out on some unofficial trails, but eventually got onto whatever the main traversing trail is, and took it over to Lupine. There is supposed to be a north overlook there, but I never found it, which was slightly disappointing. Also, there is a whole bunch of firesmarting going on over there, so there are a bunch of roads and trails through the woods and it's very hard to tell where the official trail goes. I made it around Lupine Loop, and then went up the summit trail, all the way up to the summit (oddly enough, that's where the summit trail goes...). I got up to the summit, and it was really warm and sunny, so I stopped, paused my watch, and just sat down on the rocks for 20 minutes. There are really nice views from up there. Eventually, I decided that since the bus only runs every hour, I should catch the one in half an hour, instead of making my run 3 hours long, so I started going down the mountain. I definitely wasn't on an official trail for most of the way down, I ended up on some really steep sandy trail that just sent it straight down the mountain, and so did I. I somehow missed the trailhead on the way out too, I'm pretty sure I popped out onto a road on the other side of the trailhead from where I entered, but I'm not sure. I then just ran down through the subdivision, assuming that down the hill was the right way to go, and it was, I got back to the bus stop 10 minutes before the bus arrived.
Wasn't running super fast on the way up, I walked all the steep uphills after the first few killed my legs. Was running really fast on the way back down, the trail was too steep to stop, so I just sent it and hoped that the trail didn't have any swithbacks (it didn't). Overall, a very nice run, good views, excellent weather, and lots of hills (which my legs didn't like, but they need to get used to it). Now I have even more work piling up, but over the past few days, my training log felt like it had been a story of "how long can I force myself to study for before I give up and go running", today it was run before studying, so hopefully I'll get some done tonight.

As another note, this is day three drinking black tea instead of coffee, just for fun, and to see if I can stop drinking coffee. No caffeine headache, which is nice, but I haven't been falling asleep at the right time for the past few nights. I wonder if my body is used to using the caffeine drop-off as it's trigger for bedtime, and that's why I always want to go to be at 7pm, and have to force myself to stay awake for longer. The past few nights, I haven't fallen asleep until 1130. I guess we'll see how this experiment goes, with the amount of work I have over this next week, it might be a short lived experiment, we'll see.

Late evening run with Gilbert. He briefly mentioned that he wanted to go running with me earlier in the day, so I asked if he wanted to go running in the evening, after I had spent an hour or two trying to work in the library, and he was like, yeah sure, I guess, so we went running at 9pm. I completely forgot that it was St Patrick's day weekend, and was very confused why there were drunk people all over campus, but I figured it out. Fortunately, we didn't run into anybody on our run. We went out and around my normal 5km trail loop around academy, it was quite nice out, and I could actually see the stars, which was really nice. And, I still got to bed by 10:30, which was pretty good.

Playing pretty well, actually hit a drop shot or two, which is rare. Based on the amount of work I have to do, I'm not sure I should have gone, but it was fun.

Evening run in the dark. Wasn't planning on going running today, but I went to the library after dinner to do some work, did most of my calc assignment,I was like, I don't want to do calc anymore, so I switched over to 3d modelling. I got a solid few minutes of work in before my brain was like, I'm not concentrating on anything anymore, good luck getting your work done tho. So after a few minutes of trying to work with absolutely no will to be there, I got up and left. I didn't really have a plan for what I was going to do, it was around 730, so too early to go to bed. I was kind of thinking about just lying on the field and staring at the sky for a while, but then on my way back to my dorm, I ran into Zoe, and being the complaining person that I am, complained that it was too early to go to bed, but I didn't want to do more work. I got told I should go running, and since I had nothing better to I decided why not. I almost forgot to grab my headlight, but I didn't quite make it outside before I remember it, not that I ever used it. I started out running down past EME and past whatever the foundations of that new building are. I then hopped onto the rail trail, and took the underpass under the highway and along the trail back towards the airport. I'd never run along the trail there, it is dead boring, completely flat and straight, probably won't go back, at least not anytime soon. I then popped up to the highway, caught the light at the perfect time, I didn't even have to wait at all. Once I was across the highway, I saw Nester's and was like, I wonder if they're still open?, so then I went to check, and they were, and since I left my candy at home last weekend and I was craving sugar, I decided to replenish my stash. so then I took a quick break from my run (I paused my watch, so that it wouldn't mess up my time). I bought some candy, and then as I was checking out, I got offered some free roses that were too dead for them to sell anymore, and since it was the end of the day, they were just giving them away. Unfortunately I didn't have a good way of getting them back to my room, so I don't have dead roses in my room for decoration. Kinda wish I had grabbed them and run back trying to hold onto a bunch of roses, its not everyday one gets offered free roses, even if they are dying. The rest of my run was quite uneventful, other than the discomfort of having a thing of swedish berries and a toblerone stuffed into my running belt. All in all, a reasonably enjoyable run, never used my headlight once, and actually got to see the moon and a few stars, which was nice. Unfortunately, I now have even more work piled up for me to do tomorrow, the next day, the weekend, and next week, but oh well, not much point in trying to do work when you can't concentrate anyways.

Nice chill run today, still slightly sore from the weekend, but not too bad. Went up across the bridge and onto the trail down below Aberdeen Hall, and then up the weird valley between the two parts of Academy. I started out running pretty fast, but just past the little marsh in the saddle I met a group of 5 deer. Since I don't usually meet deer, I let myself get very distracted, and just stopped and watched the deer for a few minutes until they meandered of out of view. Then I kept running, but slower, because I didn't really feel like running fast anymore. I then wound my way across the road and into the other chunk of forest on academy (on the highway side of the road). Running along the top, I once again got very distracted, this time by the first flowers of spring poking out of the dead grass. I'm pretty sure they were buttercups, but I'm also not a botanist, so no guarantees I'm right. Once I was at least slightly finished being distracted by the flowers, I kept running and just went pretty much straight back to the university. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything else to distract me on the way back, so I kind of sped up for the last part of my run again, which wasn't really intentional, but oh well.