johnsjar

Today’s 11 km run puts me at 735 kilometers since January 1st. It was hot (but not by southern standards) and sunny. My pace was 7:25 and it took me 1:21:40. Again, I used Runkeeper Pro on my iPhone and it worked quite well. Still, it almost always shorts me by several hundred meters because it occasionally loses signal in our heavy tree cover. This time I think it was out by about 700 meters or so.

I’m still on track for losing weight, starting out this morning at 177 pounds. My goal is 160 pounds which will put me in my healthy weight range. I’m pretty sure I’ll do it this time. I’ve been maintaining an average of 185 pounds since I began running well over five years ago, starting out at 210 pounds at the turn of the century eight years ago. I quickly dropped to 185 but I could never lose any more. The problem was that I thought I could continue eating as usual and exercise my way out of it. I’ve known for a long time now that I was consuming as much as I was burning. I was not gaining weight but I wasn’t losing it either. It’s taken a lot of tries but now I think I’m finally on the home stretch to achieving my goal.

The moral of the story is, never give up. I’m losing an average of a pound a week. Theoretically I should reach my goal in about twenty weeks.

I’m also having to change my running days since karate summer classes are being held on different days so my runs will be moving to Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Then comes the winter class schedule and I will have to change my running days again. I plan to train for a spring marathon again this winter and I need to find a better way to not freeze my butt off. Meanwhile my next race is July 25th and is just over a 16 kilometer trail run. Karate does not start up again until Monday.

My first run since my 5Peaks race last June 13th and my second since the marathon May 31st went not too badly but certainly below par. I started out pretty good but tired very quickly. I guess I have not yet recovered completely from my last two races, not to mention that rather difficult grading I went through to get my blue belt in karate last Saturday. All in all I’ve been pretty tough on myself, not letting myself heal up from those events before just diving into more.

It was a hot and windy run. The water levels at the bird sanctuary were very low. Most of the ponds were bone dry. The geese and other water birds are not very happy about it. When we first moved here 20 or so years ago there was water everywhere, lapping at the banks of the local country roads, even! Since then a long dry couple of decades has pretty much wiped out the wetlands and shrubs and trees have moved into the once too wet areas. Some old timers say it has happened before and they think it’s just part of a cycle and that the water will return to its former level, but I’m not sure about that. On the plus side there are not many mosquitoes, but on the negative side there aren’t many dragonflies either.

Still, I’m happy to be back running again. I will give myself a chance to heal by reducing my pace drastically for the next few training runs. My next race is July 25 in the Chickakoo Lake Recreational area north of Stony Plain. It is heavily wooded with hill/hole pairs of glacial lakes in an Aspen-Spruce-Pine parkland setting. From what I remember it is not as difficult as the Devon race in terms of the difficulty of the terrain, but it still has some pretty wicked hills. I will be running it once before the race but I don’t know exactly when yet. It’s close enough to home that I don’t have to worry about it.

My next training run is Saturday.

We had a lot of fun today, beginning with a warm up then we did some x patterns. After this we celebrated the last class of the “winter/spring” season by dividing up into teams and we played Calvinball. There were two balls and no rules except that we were not allowed to cross the center line into the opposing team’s domain. If we did we had to drop and do push ups while the game went on. The balls could not be caught but always had to remain in play. We were to use karate kicks, blocks, and punches to keep the balls in motion.

There were no winners or losers, and it was quite an aerobic workout and a lot of fun. We then all quit class a little early so we could all go to the local Dairy Queen for an end of season treat together.

Next class begins the relatively short summer season and is on July 6th. Classes will be Mondays and Wednesdays from 7 PM to 9 PM at the Devon Community Hall instead of our regular school. The summer season is when we focus a lot on weapons. We will again take up the Bo and the Tonfa, and possibly some other weapons as well.

Until then, it’s back to running for me.

Before, I had my Green Belt of Adequacy, now I have been awarded my Blue Belt of Mediocrity.

The grading got on my nerves even before I started. MM and I were the only ones grading today so we had to be up front only 10 feet from the judges. It started out well enough but in spite of my efforts to not tense up until it counts, and to relax at all other points, the sweat was just pouring off me like Niagara Falls. It was hot. I really got lost on the shutos and cat stance, but in other basics I think I did pretty well. It seems that the more tired I get, the stupider I get.

Nevertheless, I still managed to hang on until a short break happened. I was pretty low on blood sugar by that time so I was grateful for the break. In the second half we did kata, kumite, and yakushoku. Agian the more tired I got, the stupider I got, nevertheless I did not too bad. At the end I got punched in yakushoku and kicked hard in the ribs during free sparring, and they are pretty sore right now.

So I am black and blue. Black from the bruises and from getting the snot kicked out of me, and blue from the new belt I earned. The belt will be presented in our next and final class of the season.

It hurts to be back. Oh my aching quads! I’ll tell you running up all those hills in my last trail race was hard work and my quads are still really sore. But after I got warmed up a bit the heat dulled the pain so I could do what I had to do. Which is practice my kata and also yakushoku for the grading this Saturday. I’m not planning on running again until after the grading. I think I will succeed in this grading after all. My concern was that I did not remember all the kumite and yakushoku I am supposed to know and it has been a struggle to catch up. I still need to review these frequently on a daily basis until the time comes, but I am not as worried now as I was before.

I think I look better in blue than green anyway. Ha ha.

Here we go! 14.3 kilometers of hill climbing in boiling, sweltering, muggy conditions. This year’s Devon race course is new and totally awesome. It begins innocently enough, on the flat. But only for a half kilometer or so. After that it’s up hill for I don’t know, 3 kilometers? These aren’t nice hills. They are blood sucking evil vampire demon hills from hell. The sports class only had to suffer those hills once. We suckers in the Enduro class had to suffer them twice since we had to do two laps. But once you were past the hills the rest was a long downhill lark and very enjoyable. Elevation changes totaled 450 meters and you can get the race details here. You can view the map and elevation profile here.

I had the option of starting 40 minutes sooner than the elite Enduro runners, who started at 10 AM, so I chose to start at 9:20 AM because I knew I would need the extra time. I managed the first lap in about 56 minutes, and the second in about 1:14 or so for a total time of 2:09:16 which gives a 9 minute pace on average. Pretty slow for a flat road race, but for me it was really a tough course. I am quite happy that I did as well as I did though!

5Peaks did an awesome job with the course extremely well marked and I took advantage of all the water stops, where I drank Refresh and also water. On the second lap, after going through those uphill climbs for the second time, I began to feel pretty overheated and so I poured a few cups of cold water over my back and front at one of the water stops. My eyes were stinging from the salty sweat because I think I scratched one of my eyelids.

All in all I am very happy about it and had no problems at all. Now I’m looking forward to the next 5Peaks installment in Chickakoo in a months time.

I was working in the yard today and also maintaining the trails I have throughout my property. I never noticed this while I was mowing the trail, but MM and I found a dead fawn while walking the trails this evening. I don’t know why it died. It seems in rather good condition, other than the fact that it is quite dead. It does not look like predation, besides, a predator would have finished this tasty snack in no time. The carcass is not even bloated so it can’t have been dead for more than a day. It was not still born because there is no evidence of a placenta or any other signs of a recent birth.

It is a mystery why this fawn died just off our beaten path. It looks like it just lay down for a nap and never got up again. We will be leaving it there for coyotes or badgers to find and consume. Don’t worry, there are hundreds of deer in our area, so this won’t make an impact on the population.

MM discovers the crime scene: About 500 meters south of our home on our trails.

MM looks for signs of foul play.

Poor thing passed away very recently. MM's hand for scale.

It's a mystery...