May 19 - 25

Monday (workout - 14km total)
A pretty good workout out at Mother Teresa. Smaller group tonight - Nathan, Rob, and Jamie were with us for the whole thing, some of the high school guys fit in for a couple of repeats. We did 5x300m in 1500 pace (I was 47.5-49 for each) with 90 seconds rest, then 3x1k (3:11/3:12/3:09) with 90 seconds rest between. I did not help with any of the work into the wind on the 300s - it was into our face for the first 100m in the 300s, and again from 300-400 and 700-800 in the k's. The faster guys were bouncing around with the pace a fair bit because a woman was doing laps on the inside of lane 2. I was pleased with my k's. I helped keep the pace strong on the final kilometre, though by this point the hay was in the barn. Short warmup and cooldown. My calves felt really sore from three moderately hard days, but I worked through it.

Tuesday (13km)
50 minutes with Nathan and Rich. Chris did not show up on time, so we ran without him. This was a really slow pace. I am including some k's from the ultimate frisbee game I played afterwards. I need to be careful with frisbee - I injured my knee quite badly last year.

Wednesday (workout - 17km total)
A pretty good workout for me. It was cool (8C) and rainy for the whole workout. I had a 10 minute threshold-pace interval to start, then 6x a short hill, and a farlek pyramid of 1/2/3/2/1 minutes with 1 minute jog for recovery. Rob Watson and Chris Nagle looked great. They put a lot of distance on me in the longer fartlek intervals. The hills were good quality, and I was able to blast through the final minuter.

Thursday (12km)
Probably longer than 12k, but I will round down. Ran with Chris on the Brescia trails. It had rained a lot the day before, so the path was slippery. We came back on the roads, crossing paths with Mike McIntosh and Steve Weiler.

Friday (10km)
It took me about 15 minutes of running to convince my legs that they wanted to do this. I went for 45 minutes total, and I was hoping to get out for some more in the PM. I went down to Springbank.

Saturday (19km)
Steve had me down for a long run yesterday that I did not do. I made up for it with a fairly easy 19k (80 minutes) today. Joined Chris for about 35 minutes of this. It was a nice day. I sprinted in to finish, then did 4x~100m strides to get some more speed in. It has been a long while since I last went to the gym. My membership expired at Goodlife, so I am going to go to the UCC tomorrow. I do not want to do weights today - Saturday weights usually means a bad Sunday run.

Sunday (17km)
A pretty disappointing run with Ben. I did a 4k warmup with Ben. My legs felt good, but I sensed a little tightness in my shoulders. We hung around the cars for a bit - Nathan pointed out a large white bird to me that I (oddly) identified as a turkey at first, and later realized it was a peahen (female version of the peacock). Strange to see one out there. I ran 5k still feeling good, though I felt as though I was working really hard up the hills. I had to loosen up my shoulders a bit, and shortly after 6k, my shoulders were really tight. I had trouble pushing my legs forward because of the tightness. I quit at about 6.5k, turned around and had a long, slow jog back. This was my first bad workout in a couple of weeks. Was I due? I had a tough week the week before, but three full days to recover before this one. I was left concluding that my troubles were the result of the way I slept, and it was not anything to worry about.
I did some weights in the afternoon. My shoulders were already sore, why not go for broke? It was my first time in the UCC weightroom since 2001. It sucks. I'll use it for the rest of the week, then renew my membership at Goodlife after my field season ends.

Total - 102km. Finally broke into three digits! Aside from Sunday's run, this was a really good week. I am happy with how I handled four hard days out of 5 (from last Saturday through Wednesday). It might have caught up to me by Sunday, but I now have two more easy days before Wednesday, so I should be ready to go. Shore-to-Shore next weekend.