Training

cycling, hiking, aqua jogging, pilates, baking

With fingers crossed

Dear PoP friends, I must confess. I haven’t been entirely honest with you all. I haven’t been lying either, but I’ve also not been offering up full disclosure. And some of you have noticed. I’ve fielded more than a few inquiries lately as to whether I’ve taken a running hiatus, whether I’m now leaning more towards cycling… it seems you guys notice when I write about running and when I don’t 😉 Well friends, I am now writing to assure you that I am not giving up on my running, not taking a break from it, not even thinking of such a thing. It was just a momentary rest is all. A few weeks ago, on the last stretch of an hour long run (seriously, 5 minutes from home!) I was motoring down a hill, in the zone, had Lady Gaga telling me baby, I was born this way, when […]

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My Birthday: National Running Day

I have long believed June 5 was the greatest day of all. Forget Christmas. Forget Valentine’s. June 5 is all about me. One hundred per cent me. And well, I kind of love me 😀 so obviously I love this day and I always will regardless of the new age that approaches. Thirty five for those keeping track! But the thing is, this year I had to share my birthday with another super special day: National Running Day. (Held on the first Wednesday of June.) I’m no stranger to sharing my birthday; with my brothers’ birthdays 3 and 10 days apart from mine, we’ve shared our celebrations for as long as I can remember, and I’ve always loved it that way. And so, when I discovered National Running Day would this year land on my birthday, I didn’t cry about it, I didn’t gripe about it, I didn’t shun it.

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I will conquer you!!!

So yesterday, I got the biggest, dustiest, slice of humble pie handed to me by Big Ring and his bike; admittedly, I kind of deserved it. I wanted to show Big Ring how awesome Holly Goquickly was on the hills. And I could have shown him respectfully, but no, that’s not me and my silly competitive way. In the first 5 km of the 60 km ride, on the second giant hill of the day, I was coming up quickly on his heels. In good fun, I shouted out “Come on pokey, what’s the hold up?” The next hill, I got up on my pedals and kicked them into overdrive. As I swept past Big Ring and Lapierre, I shouted out “Eat my dust sucker!!!” Big Ring eating my dust 😉 But the thing is, you don’t challenge Big Ring in his element and expect not to be challenged back.

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Tire repair… or not

So apparently a bike tire isn’t the same as a bike wheel – who knew? Big Ring. For years that dear, semi-patient husband of mine has been correcting me every time I talk about the bike tire when I should be referring to the bike wheel and vice versa. What do you mean it’s not a tire, I’d say, it looks like a tire, how could it not be a tire? But he kept saying wheel, wheel, wheel. And I kept getting more, more, more confused. He tried explaining it. He tried visuals. He tried analogies. He tried separating the parts into a pie chart of tire, wheel, tube and some other rubbery thingy. None of it stuck. And so, I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when I told him one of my favourite running chicks was hosting a tire repair session at her house, he practically bounced

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No quitting allowed

I thought for sure when I set out on my run yesterday morning, I’d be leading this post off with a big fat ugly “Ugh!” By all accounts this run should have been a disaster. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong… that is, except for the run itself 😀 Because I was scheduled to run 45 minutes, I decided Saturday evening that this run would be a practice run for next Sunday’s race. I had intended to wake up at 5:15 a.m. (not as early as I’ll have to next week, but early nonetheless), down a Z-bar and some water, and be on the road by 6 a.m.. I had intended on getting a great night sleep. And I had intended on running with perfect blood sugars. None of that happened. I had a horribly crummy sleep, waking up every hour from 10:30 to 2:30 fighting an over-active

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