The Egg Nog Jog - Sunday Dec 12 2010

So this race was an interesting one. The distance was 10.8 km and by no means a long race by general long distance standards. It was located in Terra Cotta, which is just north of Caledon Ontario and for those who don't know this area - this is hill country.

A few weeks earlier, I was shut out of this race because it had sold out. Today was different, many people, including people from the group, had chosen last minute to sit out. The roads were bad and it was raining at this point but the conditions were manageable. I managed to get in under someone elses name. As it turned out, many people were not registered, making it really easy to just run without a bib.

The first 2km out of the Terra Cotta conservation area were straight downhill down Winston Churchill towards King. I took off like a bolt hoping to get some time on Rob and Liz, who always seem to put me through the paces. I think I may have even broken eight minutes. Unfortunately that was the were all of the easy running ended. From 2 to 3km, things flattened out and then from 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 were all relentless and very rolling hills. What made it worse was that many roads were icy and semi snow covered making it really tough to get any sort of footing. I remember at one point climbing one of the many hills looking down at my Garmin and seeing my pace at 8:30pkm and thinking - Oh god this is tough. I didn't walk though and kept moving.

Sure enough Rob caught me somewhere around 8km and he was looking fresh and full of legs. We stayed together for most of the rest until he realized that Steve - Another from our group, was just ahead. We charged ahead and he took off.

My official finishing time was 53:11 and I was really pleased with a sub 5 min pace on such a hilly route.

We'll definitely be back on that route later in the year as Lake Placid gets closer.

I know that that route was tough since my legs don't normally get sore have actually been sore for two days now. They're starting to come back today but I can still feel a little rock like in them.

What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger

December is already here and I'm feeling like training has really begun.

NYAC tri swim has been back for almost 3 weeks now and I keep telling myself that I made a great decision going back to this swim squad. It was super expensive but I now know that keeping with it will only help me in the long run.

"What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger" is a line that I keep repeating to myself. The big thing about the new swim coach Brent is that he is big on technique and even bigger on kicking drills. In the last three weeks, we haven't piled on the meters - in fact it's been quite the opposite. Very few meters, but a tone of kicking drills. Here are a few..

head up, hand over hand just kicking - don't scull
right arm out - just kick
left arm out - just kick
one arm swim - focus on the kick
hold the board and one arm swim - focus on kick
hold the board at bottom face in the water and breath while kicking
hold the board at the top and kick hard
one arm swim with other hand on back - breath on hand on back side - focus on not dropping elbow to breath

As you can see there has been a tremendous amount of kicking. As a "non kicker" there were and still are tough. However, we did 50 yards hard today and I broke a min at 55sec. I even passed people, which I have never done either. I know this will make me a better swimmer getting me closer to that 1:00 -1:05 goal for the swim.

Brent has also been very vocal about the amount of meters we'll be doing in the winter months. He's said the goal will be to improve the swims by 2-4000m in the workouts. On monday we did 9x100 on 2:00 and today we did 12x100 on 2:00. We're getting anywhere between 20-30 sec rest which is great for this point.

Keep going, it'll only make you stronger....