Oh, Hello Winter...back so soon?

Sigh....

Winter storm warning for
City of Calgary issued

Intermittent rain changing to snow by Thursday morning. Snowfall amounts of 10 to 20 centimetres by Thursday evening in most localities.

Oh my...why did all of us Calgarians think we were in the clear after the last couple of months of fabulous springlike weather? Winter always comes back to bite us in the ass...when will we ever learn?!

lovely view from my office window

Wednesday has begun with cold weather and pouring rain...and then I guess it'll change to snow later and into tomorrow. I'll take another pic tomorrow to see if we really did get what they called for. At any rate, i've got a date with the treadmill again at lunch. Fun times.

This weather likely changes any running plans I may have had for the weekend...but perhaps in a good way. If we're going to be getting this snow in Calgary, we'd better be getting a load of it in Banff so I can get one final and fabulous ski day in this year. Then I promise to do a longish run on Sunday! I've got to get out of this 10-12km safe zone i've been running in and test my foot out on some longer stuff...otherwise maybe i'll be resorting to only 5 or 10km races all summer!

Less than a month to go and i'm heading to San Francisco with Andrew for a little vacay. Most of it will be spent in Yosemite camping and hiking, wahoo!! I'm sure we can fit in a little trailrunning as well :)

Banff Weekend Adventures!

I love Banff. Yup, I need to move to a mountain town...that's all there is to it! It was hard to leave today after a fun weekend in the mountains! Thank goodness I live only an hour away so it's easy to enjoy an adventure whenever I like!

Earlier in the week I had emailed Leslie's husband Keith...friends I met at Transrockies last year...and asked him if I could join them on a trail run this weekend if they weren't doing anything too intense. Leslie is training for a 100 miler in June so she had a 7 hour run planned on saturday, while Keith is training for Transrockies Bike AND Transrockies Run again (with Leslie as his partner) that are both in August. Whoa that sounds pretty intense eh? Anyhow, he said Sunday was a good day for a run with them...i'm not up to their level of training so I was hoping for something at the max of 2 hours.

What was originally just to be just a trail run on sunday...turned out to me being invited to ski tour with Keith on saturday, stay for dinner and the night at their place that night, and then go running on sunday! How sweet is that? I love Leslie and Keith...they're good people...my kind of people!

I met Keith at Sunshine resort at 8:30 where he told me we were going to be in fact resort skiing today instead of ski touring. He had brought the wrong skis and while he could really go home and get them pretty easily decided the avalanche danger was pretty crazy anyway! Apparently the report literally said "a good day to stay home and garden". Ha! I didn't mind either way, just happy to be out there and going skiing! Keith has been skiing for 30 years and lucky for me used to be a certified ski instructor. It was pretty much his mission to teach me how to ski properly...my own private instructor, wahoo!! It was great and by the end of the day he had me doing stuff I've been trying to do or having trouble with all season! I don't know if I stopped smiling the whole day! :)

Another beautiful day at Sunshine!

By lunchtime it was getting super warm...probably 15 degrees on the hill I'd say. The snow was changing to soft slushy stuff and we quickly began sticking on and slowing down almost instantly even on steeper stuff. It was frustrating and I was getting annoyed. Keither had an idea to take his lip balm and rub it into the bottom of his skis with a papertowel. I was surprised when it worked like a charm! It allowed us to get in maybe another 4 or 5 runs!

Lip balming the skis!

Lip balm ski wax magic!

After our day of skiing Keith and I went back to their place to eat our "1st dinner" around 4pm while we waited for Leslie to get back from her running adventure. After "2nd dinner", we decided to go for a walk up Tunnel Mountain. I've never been and it was awesome! It was only about 20 mins to walk there from their doorstep and another 30 mins to the top.

Check out 3 pairs of sweet sweet Saloman shoes!

After a great day all around and a nice evening hike, we decided to reward ourselves with some mini eggs and Ben & Jerry's before bed. Hello Cherry Garcia! Why have I never had that before? OMG! What a great day! Needless to say I slept like a rock last night!

This morning after a little sleep in and a great breakfast, Leslie took me trailrunning! My first trail run of the season...sigh...it was fabulous! I can't believe I haven't been trailrunning since October. I briefly felt like a newbie again but that quickly changed and we were rolling along some fun trails!

Johnson Lake

Leslie - really...the girl ran 7 hours yesterday...you'd never know it!

Care for a swing?

So yeah, this was a great weekend....sad that it was potentially my last ski day of the season (yet ending it on a really great note)...but super pumped for my first trailrun of the season!!! Huge thanks to Les and Keith for showing me an awesome time!

it's amazing what a little run can do!

Isn't it funny how going for a run can completely turn your whole day around? I was having a pretty awful morning and didn't get a great sleep last night either so I wasn't sure how i'd feel at lunch on my run. I checked the weather before I left to change...9 degrees and sunny! You know what that means...shorts! We haven't had sun in what feels like a week...winter made a brief appearance the past week and all of a sudden I had been covering up the pasty whites again.

As soon as I stepped outside I already felt energized and right away I could tell this would probably be a fast run as my warm up was unusually faster than I normally run it. What feels like all of a sudden, i'm flying down along the Bow river...and of course I couldn't resist checking to see what my pace was...under 4:20min/kms! Clearly I had some venting to do after my morning and decided to take it out on my run! I'm glad I did cuz it felt great and i'm feeling pretty darn happy and relaxed right now!

Ahhh...it feels good...and I'm starting to remember what it feels like to run fast again...instead of what has been feeling like slow jogs for a long time now. Anyhow...the run felt great...my foot didn't complain...and my hamstring cooperated.... How do I feel now? Fantastic! The weekend is almost here and i've got some fun plans in the mountains with my two favorite Banffites...Sunshine Girl and her hubby! Stay tuned :)

Have a great weekend!

Spring skiing at its finest!

About a month ago a few of us at work planned on Saturday as being the best day for us all to get together to go skiing at Sunshine! And we couldn't have picked a better day! After the hill getting a ton of snow this week, I knew it was going to be a good day for skiing...and it just happened to be blue bird skies to boot! Here are a few pics I managed to get with my iphone...

Maria, Scott, Miro, John

Me...thinking i'm taking a pic of everyone but only getting myself lol

I think this is at the top of Goat's Eye Mountain

Maria and Miro at lunch chillin on the patio

After a long day of skiing I was pretty tired and spent a nice evening watching movies and cuddling with Logan on the couch! I wrestled with the idea of running on Sunday but after getting 4 good consecutive days of running in last week, I decided to take a day off. I slept in....enjoyed some fun girl time over a late breakfast and a little shopping...and then the rest of my afternoon with this guy...

Logan on the bridge to Edworthy Park, overlooking the Bow River

On the mend...

I haven't been the best blogger lately and I think part of it is that I'd rather not write sometimes than having this turn into me just being negative all the time about running. I've just been very frustrated lately and it seems like my progress will be moving along nicely and then bam! something else happens and I feel like i'm back at square one again. Everything else has been great lately...it's just this running stuff. Argh.

I think the last time I wrote, I was talking about my migraines and neck/back issues. It eventually went away after a straight week of them...funny, this is exactly what happened to me for about a week last summer while training for Transrockies. Anyhow...because of all the pain I was in I didn't run for 9 days which is not really a big deal. So then last week I managed to get 2 easy runs in and another cardio day but I was having serious issues with my left hamstring that i pulled/tweaked over a month ago during hill repeats. It was so bad/tight/sore last week that I couldn't jog across the street to get the bus! After that I was just fed up and took another 4 or 5 days off from running.

Easter Sunday rolled around and Andrew and I got up at 4:30am...with maybe 3.5 hours sleep...and left Calgary by 5:30 for a day ski trip to Revelstoke...yup, you heard me correctly...for. the. day. For those of you that don't know...Revy is a 4 hour drive from Calgary (and yeah, it was actually worth it!!). We had wanted to camp or stay with a friend of his that lives there but there was the issue of putting Logan somewhere. If you don't plan things well in advance, there's no way you'll get a vacancy at a kennel on a long weekend! We actually ended up getting there about an hour early because we forgot about the time change. Anyhow, it was a really fun day and we found some amazing powder in the back bowls. I of course, had no idea what I was doing and took quite a few spills in the fluffy stuff! I'm not used to skiing in quite so much powder and not being able to see your skis at all lol. Plus Andrew tells me i'm not going fast enough to get through it which is another huge problem of mine...going fast...freaks me out. But what can I say...i'm still 10x a better skier than I was at the start of the season so at least i'm improving!

After enjoying some beer on the patio at the end of the day with Andrew's friend, we left around 4:30 for the long drive home. The worst part about driving back is the time difference makes you get home even later than you'd like. We were back to Calgary by 9:30pm and in bed within the hour. Poor Andrew had to get up and go to work the next day while I did not. I'm not really sure what the deal is with "Easter Monday" anyway but i'll take the holiday!

Needless to say...monday I was exhausted. When I got up, I actually looked like I had gotten punched...both eyes were puffy as heck and I just looked all around like crap! I ended up eating breakfast, walking Logan, and then back to bed till noon. By then I looked a lot more like myself. The rest of the day was spent relaxing with Logan and catching up on mounds of laundry, chores etc.

That brings us to the rest of my week...and back to some kind of running routine...finally. I have run the past 3 days in a row...easy runs of course...with each day feeling a little better than the next. My body actually feels like it's forgotten what it's like to run so much...even though "so much" is really not that much compared to what i've gotten used to over the past year. My hamstring was super duper tight and sore on tuesday but i've just allowed myself to stop and stretch every couple of kms which helps and then stretch and roll it after the run. Today I only had to stop and stretch it once and it finally feels like it's getting better.

And you know what's the best part? My foot is turning out to be a rockstar. I think all of this other rediculous time off i've had to take has helped and all of a sudden i'm running 3 x 9-10km runs in a row with zero foot pain...and virtually no pain after the run. Today as I was running along I kept thinking...wow, I had actually forgot what it felt like to run on two good feet...freaking awesome is what it was.

I'm sad to say that I won't be doing the Police half marathon in a few weeks...but as long as i'm running pain free then i'm just happy to get out there for a run no matter how long or short or fast or slow it is. The Seattle marathon will also be iffy so we'll see over the next month how I feel about still doing that. Again, i won't mind bailing on that race either if it means I can trail run and hike all summer long!

Anyhow, that's about it for me! I have another long weekend this weekend which i'm pumped about. Lucky Andrew is headed off on a cruise on saturday for a friend's wedding...while I'm headed off to Sunshine for a day of skiing with some work friends. It will likely be my last day of skiing this season so i'm going to soak it up!

Have a great weekend!