Great way to spend a Saturday!

Yesterday was the third race of the season in the Calgary Roadrunners x-country series, Edworthy park, and I was really looking forward to getting back into some hard training. After killing myself in bike class on thursday, doing a nice easy 3k swim on friday, I wanted to get in a hard running effort. Hard was an understatment of the effort I put in that day! The course starts out fairly easy with a little 1km flat section then there is a steep, twisting downhill section where one of my spikes caught a rock or a tree root and sent me tumbling. Ouch! Great start to the race, my hands were covered in mud and thorns and I had a couple scrapes on my right arm and leg. Oh well, time to get up and get back to the race.

I managed to not lose too much ground, only one guy passed me, and then I hit the big hill. After the first 150m my legs were burning and anyone who's ever run that hill knows that it seems like it's never going to end. I tried to keep driving up at a steady pace but there were times when it was faster to just walk with some long strides. At the top of the hill my legs felt like there was nothing left, but there was still one more lap. I negotiated the downhill the second time without any issues and by the time I hit the uphill the second time I had to walk a lot of the really steep sections. The final stretch back to the start/finish seems like it is going to take forever and it was like I was jogging slowly at that point. I finally saw the finish and I could hear someone coming up on me really quickly, knowing that there were still some really fast guys right behind me I gave it one last sprint for the line. I finished in 29:43 and 4th overall and in my age category. I was happy with my effort but I'm looking for some improvement over the winter as AD and I start back into some run focused training, preparing for the Boston marathon in April.

Amber had a great race as well, finishing 2rd in her very strong age group. She didn't feel up to the swim on friday but a good meal and night's rest and she was ready to race. The next race is Okotoks on December 1st, we missed that one last year so I want to give it another "lung busting" effort.