Summer running

Now that the days are longer, and supposedly warmer, my training program will focus on morning runs to avoid the humidity and late day sun and heat… and even at 5am it is light enough that I don’t have to carry a light (but do to be safe).

My morning run consists of a simple 6+km loop down the hill, and through town, returning uphill to finish off… from here I can add a small paved path run to add on 2km or depending on time of day and add significantly more distance as required.  Ideally I like to run the loop 3x a week and then at least one long weekend run.

I have recently begun running around the lake on a trail and if running this as part of a loop I can significantly add both mileage and difficulty to a simple road run…and if I drop the boys off at the skate park I can do an “out and back” on the trail as part of a 15+km run in under 90min.

The addition of the trail run has been great as it has helped me to train for The North Face Endurance Challenge Half Marathon trail run in July. This race is taking place at Blue Mountain, near Collingwood ON, and I am so looking forward to the experience. This event sounds more fun than Warrior Dash and Tough Mudder, both of which I have previously run. I love the idea of trail runs and am looking at making them a staple in my annual running calendar.

The training plan has merely been a continuation of the half marathon training I did for Mississauga in May, with the trail runs added on to give me more of a feel for what is in store in a couple of weeks. The thought of running up the ski hill is still daunting, but having completed a few obstacle races I am sure it is something that I can handle…

This year my race calendar is full – 7 planned races with the gem being the Chicago Marathon in Oct, but the actual highlight has been my 13yr old son asking to run with me, and to date he has completed a 15k race and today we signed up to run the Oasis Zoo Run 10k at the Toronto Zoo in Sept. He has trained with me in Florida over the holidays and has run with me in evenings and on weekends and his desire to spend time with me and keep active is what is keeping me going.

Having a training buddy is great, it motivates me, and hopefully inspires both of us to remain active and healthy. We are working on healthy eating – gluten-free where possible and have eliminated most processed foods to keep clean. We also fuel our runs with ENERGYbits and PocketFuel as needed. I am beginning to think that Kris runs just so he can have a smoothie to recover when we get home… but I am not going to argue….

So as the summer begins and kids are out of school, I hope to keep going – I set a goal for 1500km in 2014 and am almost halfway there, so with the marathon training kicking into gear, it should be achievable and having my son there to run with me and cheer me on, I am looking forward to the next run….