The Great Outdoors

Gorgeous weekend. Blue skies not a cloud in the skies. Moderate temperature. A plus double good in the weather department.

On Saturday I ran a few K in the Oakville ravine trail system nice and easy with Jen. I am no where near ready for the Flying Pig Marathon. We saw some women with rubber gloves and Garbage Bags and realized it was Earth Day (or was it the day before Earth Day?) so we ended up picking up garbage for twenty minutes. Hopefully we'll get some more running in before two weeks from now.

I'm really nervous about the Combat Launch this week as well. Along with the Marathon, I'm worried that skating will be taking a back seat for two up to three weeks (as I recover from the Flying Pig Marathon). Hopefully I can get out and at least get my legs moving on the trails without burning myself out physically. Injury is my greatest concern this early in the season and I think I'm going to be pushing the bounderies a little bit.

I haven't been doing weights this week or as much as I should the past few weeks.

This morning (Sunday) felt like a pretty good skate. A good group moderate skate out in the Hamilton Trail. Nice to get back out there. It's my favourite stretch of trail to skate on, even if it takes a while to get out there when the Gardiner is closed. Didn't push the tempo up to the red line until close to the end, but we did do about 28K up and down the Hamilton trail at a pretty moderate pace. Managed to keep up with Kevin at the very last end of the lap after everyone else dropped back, but then I realized when he opened up at the end that he was taking it easy on me. I think I have a long way to go still to get back up to speed despite the winter training. I tried to be concscious of trying to bring my toe in on the recovery. Carolyn said my tempo was way too high when I was pulling her for the first lap... I actually don't know what that means relatively to everything else. Too fast for her, or should I actually be slowing down my cadence and doing longer recovery? She's much more technically minded than I am, and I don't know if too much thinking really works for me. I'm not very musical, but skating always seemed very musical to me in terms of the way folks skate together in a pack. Whether you are purposefully picking up the rythm in front of you of a better skater, or going counter to it and going "off rythm" because the person in front of you doesn't quite have their technique down... particularly if the accordian effect is happening where they let the gap open up, push hard to catch up and then let it go again.

I tried to slow down my cadence relative to everyone else in the pack today. I'm trying to keep in mind the "feel" of skating behind Leo or Camilo last season, there was a certain rythm that they had that I could pick up on after one and a half outdoor seasons skating with them.

Other things I was trying to be mindful of, last few skates I've had a sore lower back and it's because I'm hunched too far forward and not down low enough. I tried to be mindful of bending the knees more and saving my back, and also trying to get a nice full push out of it. Hard to break old habits.

If it's as nice as today, then it will be a pleasure to be skating outdoors this season. Here's hoping we have plenty of days like today.

WHAT I ATE TODAY
Flax Bagel with light cream cheese, apple, banana, gatorade, 2 double junior whoppers,