Monday, March 26, 2012

Why Do You Keep Banging Your Head Against The Wall ?

"Because it feels so good when I stop!" goes the joke. Well, this weekend I felt like the joke was on me. My volume has been steadily increasing and I've come to the point where I'm wondering whether I'm running just because it feels so good when I don't.

For a long time now, I've been running long on Sunday and resting on Monday. This week, I ran long on Sunday (5 hours in the snow in Sedona, see pictures), ran again on Monday because I was traveling during the week then did a b2b Saturday(3:30)/Sunday(2:05). I was supposed to go longer (2:30) on Sunday but even though my legs felt fresher than they had any right to be, my brain was fried. I wasn't 10 minutes into the run and I was already fantasizing about stopping the run short.

Epic Snow Run in Sedona


Basically, my body felt like I had betrayed it. WHAT? I carry you up and down those friggin' hills for 3 and a half hours on Saturday and I don't get to sit around and drink beer the following day? What kind of bullshit is that? And indeed, I betrayed it because by the time I got home and had a shower, it was 5:05PM. I went to open a beer and I WAS OUT. Shuffled to the Beer Store and IT WAS CLOSED! With a sick feeling to my stomach, I power-walked to the Liquor Store a few doors down and dammit, it was closed as well.

I had to drink white wine, left-over from my wife's Book Club meeting a few weeks ago. Now that's sad.

Ontario must be the last place on Earth where you can't get beer at the corner store. I was going to go on a rant about the inability of our provincial government to make any kind of decision, but this is a running blog so I'll skip it. But Beer Stores, Liquor Stores and the public Catholic school board are all leftovers from days long gone that Ontario cannot seem to be able to shake. I want to be able to buy beer on a Sunday at 6PM, is that too much to ask in 2012? I guess I did go on a rant.

Back to running. I've been looking into running Pick Your Poison and/or Seaton, but I don't think I will be able to run either. Those two races are only 2 weeks apart, with Bear Mountain 50 miler smack in between. I think Bear Mountain will be hard enough as it is, I don't think I need to make it harder by running 50K the week before. Maybe 29km at Seaton? Volunteer? I need to talk to Derrick about this.

7 comments:

slowrunner said...

suck it up princess !

Sara Montgomery said...

Next time, beer in your hydration pack. All problems solved!

Carlos said...

It was sunny in Toronto, while you had a snow storm over there!

Derrick said...

The joy of rural Ontario is that you CAN get beer at some convenience stores. Thank gawd for Newburgh, Ontario!!

JD said...

What are you talking about? That's SO unfair! I live 2 minutes from the center of the universe (Yonge and Bloor), I can't get beer and you can? Blasphemy!

chris mcpeake said...

PYP and Seaton to close to beer mountain?
Last year I did PYP, Bear and TO marathon in 3 weeks and only really limped through half of TO.

I believe a 50k and 50 miler in B2B weekends were the perfect taper for TO.

Your goal race isnt until august. What the heck are you saving yourself for?

I am with Kendra .... suck it up princess!!

Morgan said...

I'm in the same boat, trying to decide. Ideally, I'd do PYP then Seaton 50mile 2 weeks later, but I have a schedule conflict and it's looking like PYP and Bear Mountain! Maybe do PYP and take it easy? I say that now, but wait until the race starts...