Long Tuesday

With this weekend's upcoming Richmond Race, I had to schedule my long run during the week. Tuesday after work, I put my running gear on and headed home. There's a bit of insanity to winter running that makes the experience a bit more extraordinary. I don't know if it's the braving the element aspect of it or just the crisp air that brings on this feeling, but there's a part of me that really enjoys it.

The training schedule called for 30km for my long run this week so I took a bit of a detour and kept going on Carling until there was no more visible sidewalks. I headed down Moodie where I had a total surreal experience. If you want to feel randomly out of place, try running by the side of the road at 6pm on Moodie while wearing a headlamp.
One of the most memorable moments of this training run happened on Moodie. If you are a long distance runner, you will know that when you are pushing the body hard enough, the brain starts to go a bit wonky. A little bit after my 16th kilometer, I looked at my Garmin and got a revelation type of moment. My big revelation was that in about 20 minutes, I would have only 10km to go. I'm not sure why that was such a good thing but I felt encouraged beyond belief. In every run there's a moment where you know whether it will be a good run or not. Sometimes that happens early on, this time it happened at about half way through.

I kept plugging away and defended myself against an attacking dog and dodged cars to reach the most difficult point for the evening. I was about 1.5km from home but only had clocked 25km so I had to keep going past the easy route and go all the way around palladium drive to do a loop at the palladium auto park.

The pace for the first 2 hours is surprisingly even
That must have contributed to my overall pace of 5:54. I wasn't feeling the cold until I started slowing down. My hydration backpack didn't freeze since I kept the backpack and long straw under my jacket.

Running for 3 hours makes for a lot of room in the mix with Yann Perreau's Un serpent sous les fleurs, Garou's Gentleman Cambrioleur and Mark Allen's Inventive Steps.

I was really happy get home.