the clouds keep rolling on in

It’s been one month since I raced the marathon and I now have my fourth workout under my belt.  The next six weeks will be devoted to 10km cross country training.  My second workout back was a long tempo and that went well, god knows I’ve done a lot of those workouts in the past few months.  A couple of days later I did 7 X 5 minutes which was a bit slow, but not bad.  Today I did 1km, 1.5km, 2km, 1.5km, 1km with the group in Guelph.  Today’s workout was a little uncomfortable but seeing that it’s been a while since I’ve been in that zone I would say things are coming along just fine.  I’m glad I don’t have to race Matt ‘the Champ’ Brunsting in the next few weeks as he was rolling over the XC course today.

Last week when I was doing the tempo I kept stepping on stones right on the ball of my left foot.  I was running beside Destroyer and I would let out a little yelp when it hit the ‘sweet spot’.  I think my foot is bruised (don’t think it’s anything worse) so I’m going to run in a more cushioned shoe than I’m used to for a couple of weeks.  I’ll also up the pool running a bit and cut back slightly with my mileage.

On Sunday (24th) I participated in the Audi Best Buddies 10km road race in Toronto.  This race has a lot of potential, for the innaugural event the race was quite impressive.  The Shops at Don Mills is a great venue, the organization was top notch and the course is nice with a couple of challenging hills.  I ran with one of the corporate sponsors from Audi for the 10km and came in with a 48:46.  Scott Moir (45min) ran with us for the first 5km and then sped ahead to make sure he beat Mike Weir (50min), they had some all-in-good-fun-trash-talk beforehand.

Here’s a shot after the race, a very positive group of people.

I’m really looking forward to watching the NYC marathon on November 7th.  Kimbia has a cool series on Bairu, Nelson and Flanagan who are all debuting in the marathon.  I’m still trying to figure out the best way to watch the race.

Next up for me is a XC race this Sunday at Sunnybrook park.  It’s an 8km masters race with a team component.  I’ll be racing with some of my friends and I’ll be the young guy on the team which is a fun change from being the ‘vet’ on the Speed River team.  Two weeks later I will be running the Casablanca road race in Grimsby and hopefully by then I should be able to go reasonably hard and set-up Nationals XC.