Day 17: Of Mists and Mellow Runs

Banook in Mist (Sesshu 1420-1506)

Woke up yesterday to thick fog – so thick you could see the granules of moisture floating in the air. Forecast said it might rain in the afternoon, so I laced up for a morning recovery run. I’ve got a 10k route that winds through Sullivan’s Pond, along the Lake Banook boardwalk, along the Shubie trail by Lake Micmac, around a wee loop and back. The conditions were amazing.

It’s that time of year again: season of mists and mellow fruitfulness... and marathons (can you picture Keats cranking out mile 26 in a frilly shirt?). The fog was obscuring everything – casting its veil of unfamiliarity over a running route I’ve done hundreds of times. I couldn’t see the far shore of Banook –as I ran the boardwalk, a canoeist emerged from the void. I’m a sucker for the Canadian aesthetic – flawless paddle stroke on a silent, foggy lake – the boat’s V wake vanishing into the mist.

With all the moisture in the air, the night spider webs were heavy with water beads. Along the Shubie trail there were hundreds or normally hidden webs revealed in the tall grass. I couldn’t help but thinking how much flying insects must love the fog – while it obscures the landscape, it reveals fatal dangers for them. I can’t imagine life is easy for flying insects generally – nice for them to get an easy day.

And I was having an easy day too – after punishing myself with an overly quick threshold run on Wed, I needed to make sure my recovery was not too fast. I tend to run my recoveries needlessly quick. I read once that the best way to make sure you run slowly on recoveries is to make your workouts especially difficult – that way you’ll be so broken on off days that you won’t be able to do anything but run slowly. I must admit, I’m both attracted to and repulsed by this kind of bravado – but it served me well yesterday... my recovery run was barely faster than 5:00/k – a great pace for recovery (for me). I doubt, however, that continuous flogging in workouts will become a training method for me – I’m not 20 anymore; I don’t recover quickly. And I don’t have the discipline (or fanaticism) to push that hard in every workout!

I’ll take today off – let the micro tears knit themselves – and then crank ‘er up again tomorrow.

Day 15: Threshold Failure

Random Photo of My Beautiful City

You’d think by now I’d have this down. At this point in my running life, it’s not like the concept or execution of a good threshold run is difficult. How many of these things have I done? And yet, and yet... it’s the same old thing: I go out too fast, exceed my threshold, leak too much evil lactic juice into my system, and die.

The frustrating thing, though, is that “going out too fast” was actually slower than I expected. Here’s the tale of my 8k flop by the numbers (k splits): 3:44, 3:39, 3:44, 3:35, 3:47, 3:51, 3:43, 3:52. The back half hurt. Part of my problem is that I never seem to be able to adjust for the heat (29 with the humidex) and the terrain (quite hilly on Waverly Rd.) – and I always have this pie in the sky idea that, all of a sudden, I’m going to be the fittest ever.

Never happens.

Oh well. No injury, no biggie. I’ll just recover and then try again on Sat to find where my threshold is these days.

As for the march toward Toronto, I’m on my own for about a week. Alex is now in Cork, Ireland attending the Cork International Short Story Festival where they hand out the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. 

It’s a big deal – it’s given to the best collection of short stories in English on the planet. Alex is one of the five finalists this year. Go running buddy!

Day 14: Checking In on My (Virtual) Cross-Country Run

My mileage has started to pile up again. Last week was 93k. The week before was 86k. My hip still bothers me a little bit, but it isn’t enough to stop the mileage or the workouts. Now that Alex and I are full on for the T-dot marathon, I feel like my training has direction and purpose again... so bring on the miles!

With the last two weeks of good numbers, I’m curious to see where I am now on my virtual run across Canada. So where does 2818km get me? Oddly enough, it puts me just outside Marathon, Ontario!

Of all the places to be!

Alas, though. This town is named less in honour of the start line of Pheidippides’ brave run to Athens and more for the Marathon pulp and paper company from Wisconsin that built a mill here in the 40s and grew a town of 35 to over 3,000.

But there’s more than just a mill here, there’s also gold! There are three mines relatively nearby, so the town also hosts a contingent of mine workers. The town motto aptly captures the raison d’etre of Marathon: “Built on paper – laced with gold!”

Sadly, it’s not, “Run a lot, then run some more!” I was secretly hoping that this town was Canada’s answer to Kenya’s training compounds – a whole town devoted to three-a-days and pushing beyond the 2:10 barrier. But it’s not – there’s no secret government running training program. Not in Canada.

But like everywhere else along the stretch of highway that arches high across the northern shore of Superior, the place is beautiful. I found a site that has a bunch of spectacular photos from the area – all the photos posted here are from that site – I thought I would share a few of the ones that stood out for me. I hope the photographers don’t mind sharing!

I tried to find some curious facts about the place, but not a whole lot came up. There’s a large mall – and a Canadian Tire, which makes it the most important town between the Soo and Thunder Bay. There’s a spectacular pebble beach and a river with a long history of Ojibway occupation. But, to be honest, it didn’t look like there was a whole lot going on. It's a resource town, after all.

Here’s an interesting fact: in 2006, the mean annual household income for Marathon was over $80,000. There may not be a lot of cosmopolitan amenities, but the land is beautiful and most of the folks aren’t hurting for cash.

Looking at the pictures on the photo-sharing site has made me wistful for travel and for putting boots on trail. My summer life used to be mostly in the woods – now it’s mostly on asphalt. But the time will come to walk the trails again... for now, I run.