Saturday, August 23, 2008

Now What?

Why the Half Marathon of course!!

Well, actually, it's looking more and more like I'm going to have to settle on the 10 km run that day. The way that my legs feel, it's unlikely that I'll be able to build up from my current 10 km to 22 km in 6 weeks. I'm going to try though, and I just my have to do my WWH at the end of October, or even some time in November. Won't that be lonely? :(

Not surprisingly, I've had a pretty lazy 10 days since my race, but things were very busy with my daughter's wedding last weekend, as well as getting back to school to get my classroom ready for start up on September 2nd.

I went out for an easy 28 km ride the day after the triathlon just to loosen things up. That felt really good. Then on Wednesday, I did a 3 km walk/run with Erik as he began his 'Couch to 5 km' training program so he can work towards a triathlon next year! (He's trying to start up the running really slowly so he doesn't have knee problems this time.) We ran 1 minute and walked 3 minutes. My legs definitely did not want to run any more than that, even though it was 3 days after the race.

On Thursday I went to physio and had more acupuncture and was given some strengthening exercises to do. My legs were a little sore the next day from the weight machine 'tests" I did to compare the strength of my right versus my left legs. My left is much stronger than my right by the way, something we're working to correct. It MIGHT be what's causing the shins splints in my right leg.

On Friday, I got an email saying that I had qualified for World's on the Gold Coast of Australia in September 2009!! It obviously wasn't too difficult to do since they had ten spots available in every age group - mostly a matter of doing the right race at the right time. Too bad I can't afford to fly off to Australia for a weekend... Maybe next time - World's 2010 will be in Budapest at the end of August. That would be fun to work into a vacation. It's nice to be live in a city that has the Canadian Championships - great opportunities!

I didn't do much over the weekend because I was too busy being the 'Mother of the Bride'!! Whoo hoo!! Here's a picture of the happy bride and groom.



One down, two to go. :)

On Sunday, we went on a long, hilly ride. It's probably one of the hilliest rides I've done in a long while. We rode all over East Kelowna, mostly along parts of the Sunday Ride route. 63 km and 2600' of climbing over 2-1/2 hours. My legs were tired after that. I was able to keep up with Erik most of the time although he wasn't going too hard. Interestingly, I passed him several times on short steep climbs. That really does seem to be my strength. I think I will start working on doing longer hill repeats so I can extend my endurance on the climbs because I can't seem to maintain that kind of strength for any length of time.

Today, I did my first real run from home since my race. Overall, my legs felt pretty good, especially for the first 3.5 km, then they started to hurt at the 3.7 km mark, so I stopped running and walked home 4.3 km all together. I just want to take it easy

I think I am going to buy the compression sleeves for my shins. If you haven't already voted for the colour, please do so - the poll is at the top right corner of my blog.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my...we've all deserted you. ;) Guess you'll just have to sign up for the Oliver 1/2IM next year and give us all some more inspiration following your arduous journey. :)

Kelownagurl said...

LOL, yeah, I'm all alone now that the excitement is over. No worries, there aren't too many people wh actally READ my blog anyway.

Oliver 1/2IM - that's my wish, depending on how the running goes this fall. We shall see...

Alisa said...

Look at all those goals you've already crossed out.

Awesome!

I'm enjoying your twitter updates and smacktalk on the bad runner challenge =).