Things have been rolling along these past couple of weeks other than a little pneumonia set back that caused me to miss about a week of training.
Spent the Thanksgiving weekend on Manitoulin Island with my sister and her family at their cottage and although sick during that time manged to get out for a nice bike ride.
On the Thanksgiving Monday I was registered to run in the last of 6 races in the Sudbury Fitness Challenge a 8km cross country run. I was leading the overall points race going into the final race but with being sick I knew I was going to have have a good race to be close enough to keep my lead. Race started and right away I could feel it in my lungs and about half a dozen guys got a away from me on a very wet and muddy course. At about 3km's I started to feel better and felt like I could actually breath again and I started running quite a bit faster and started to pick off a couple of guys who got away from me at the start. At about 4km's I felt the chain around my neck drop down the inside of my shirt. Right away I made the decision to stop and find it. I was hoping I could just grab it and keep going. Unfortunately it feel in a big long section of wood chips. The chain has quite a bit of importance as it is one of the only things I have left that my dad gave me but it also had a pendant on the chain from my sister that was very significant to me. It turned out I found the chain fairly quick but the pendant must have come off and was no where to be found. I spent the next couple hours searching for it with no luck. Needless to say I didn't finish the race and that meant I didn't win the overall title but sometimes in life there are things that are more important than winning a race. I did win my age group so for this year that will have to be good enough. Next year is another year.
Swimming has been going really good and I'm happy I made the decision to swim with the Master's team this year. Although there's still no one that can really push me at least there are others to swim with and a coach on deck that will hold you accountable. This mornings 2:11 from push 200 at the end of practice is a good example that it's been working as I haven't swam that fast in practice in 10+ years. Hopefully this will continue and will translate into some decent times at my first Master's swim meet November 16th in Toronto.
Probably even a bigger change for me training wise was deciding to get a personal trainer at the gym. It's kind of a weird concept for me as I spent almost 6 years as a personal trainer and at least 10 years coaching sports but even the best athletes in the world work with trainers and what not so it shouldn't be any different for me. I haven't done much strength training in quite a while and it really kicked my butt the first time but it's getting better now and I'm hoping it will help to eliminate some nagging injuries I've delt with in the past.
Last week I had the opportunity to get Kelly and I a ride in a little plane up around the North end of Sudbury over the lake I grew up on. It was nice to see some of the tail end of the fall colors but what was most interesting was listening to the pilot communicate with the air traffic controllers as that was something dad did for 30 years.
This past weekend I was able to get to Ottawa and was able to visit my grandma for a little bit. Got a swim in on Saturday morning and then went for a run along the river on Sunday morning. What a difference running in Ottawa vs Sudbury. I saw more people on my one run in Ottawa out running than I would if I was to go running every single day in Sudbury for easy 2-3 weeks. Very different culture and atmosphere in Ottawa. For someone who enjoys being active Sudbury sure makes it hard!
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