A Mini-Vacation from Running

After last weekend's disheartening performance at the Peace Arch Rotary Half-Marathon, my running advisor, John Ellis, took pity on me and essentially gave me the week off.  My only task was to get in 4 good workouts. 

On Monday and Tuesday I rested, and on Wednesday I decided to try to swim 2000m nonstop.  I completed this workout at the Vancouver Aquatic Center during one of the busiest times of the day (5:30-6:30pm).  It was SO crowded you really had to pay attention to avoid crashing into people passing other swimmers!  I alternated between breaststroke and frontcrawl and completed the swim in about 52 minutes.

Thursday I rested again and on Friday I decided to go for a 5K run and see how fast I could do it.  I ran the first mile in 8 minutes, but then I hit some kind of wall and needed a walk break to catch my breath and get my heart to stop pounding in my ears.  I ran the second mile in about 10:30 and the last in close to 11:00.  There was a lot of walking in there.  I just felt like I couldn't run!  It was not very nice.

On Saturday I went for a really fun mountain bike ride with Ian on the Valley Trail in Whistler.  I didn't wear a watch or HR monitor, all I know is we went for an hour and a half and there were some big hills in there, here are a couple of pictures:

Ian ahead of me on the trail

Here I am on my rented Giant Reign Mountain bike

Here's a bit of trail that I WALKED my bike on (chicken!)

Here's Ian checking the map

On Sunday I ran the Whistler Spirit Run in the Whistler Olympic Park.  It's the venue for the 2010 Winter Olympic Nordic Skiing, Biathlon, and Ski Jumping.  The point of the race from my perspective was to:

1. FINISH a race

2. Have fun running in a race

3. Get a good workout

The setting was absolutely stunning, check out the pictures we took:

I don't know the name of this mountain but it sure is pretty

This is the Olympic Ski Jump.  Crazy.

First race I've been to with a Jumbotron

I'm in there somewhere

This is near the end, probably less than a mile from the finish

Here's me making a strong finish!

My final time was around 1:01.  I am pretty happy with it because there were some WICKED hils on this run!  I'm also happy because it was my first trail race ever, so in a way it's kind of like a new PR....

Onwards and upwards, this week I'm going to do the best I can and take it as it comes (no races planned for a while!)