Back from Vacation

Well, my vacation is over. I had a great time in Arizona. I haven’t run quite as much as I’d hoped but I still managed to squeeze in a few good ones. The main reason I’ve been so busy is that we were looking for a vacation property here in Sedona and that consumed an amazing amount of time and mental energy. We did find something so expect to see more posts and pictures from here in the next few years. I just love running the trails here and I’m really looking forward to doing a lot more of it.

Sweet trail

Last weekend, Thanksgiving weekend, the kids flew in and spent the weekend with us. We went to see the Grand Canyon on Sunday. It’s big. It also reminded me of the Rim-2-Rim-2-Rim (r2r2r) trip that a few Ontario ultra runners did this September. Looking at this gigantic crack in the Earth, it’s hard to believe that anyone could go down, climb up the other side and then do the whole thing in the opposite direction, all that in the same day. My wife was not impressed when I told her that I really wanted to do that next Fall. I’m going to have to work on my climbing. 

To the other side and back?

Hopefully, other like-minded runners will be interested and we can make this a team expedition. I’m not sure I would attempt this all by myself. I believe there are already two of us. Let me know if you’re interested!

Another big decision I made is that I’m not going back to Susitna this year. There, I’ve said it. That breaks my heart but I just can’t contemplate the training right now. I need some down time where I can just run for the fun of it without having to worry about squeezing in 5+ hour long runs on the weekend, plus travel time if I need to find snow. I believe that the fact that I can’t even think about the training tells me that I need a break, so I’m taking it. We're going to try to spend as much time as we can at our new "cottage" and I'm going to enjoy my runs there, that's a for-sure. I'm going to call it hill training for r2r2r.

Our new garden. Looking forward to a few beers.

I’ve been taking things pretty slow since Haliburton, running about every other day for 45 to 60 minutes. My pace varies according to my mood and the terrain. I’ve been eating like crazy so I haven’t stepped on the scale since the race. I’ve started teaching another Learn to Run clinic at the Running Room. I’ve got 27 people signed up and yesterday I met them for the first time. Much harder to go out with so many people. Still fun though.

So this is it. No race in the immediate future. That feels weird. I’ve been training for one race or another for a couple of years now and it’s going to take some getting used to. Mind you, Seaton is only 6 months away. 50 miler this time? Some people never learn.