Ups and Downs

The purpose of today's run was to get in some extended, fast downhill running.  With that in mind, I decided to do a loop of my own creation on the North Shore.  It was the first beautiful day of the late winter (I can only hope that it is REALLY late winter at this point), and I parked at the base of Mt. Seymour Parkway as the sun worked its way into the sky.  

I usually run my long run with podcasts of the sport and political variety, but after having sent my iPod shuffle through the washer and dryer, it wasn't up for the task (aside: after a restore this afternoon and some gentle coercing, it is back to life!).  So it was my and the road and my mind for the next 93 minutes.  I kept the run a little shorter as I did race yesterday and I didn't want to do anything too silly (especially with the amount of downhill I was hoping to do).

I made my way up Indian River Road, which is a 2.5 km climb to where the Baden Powell Trail intersects it.  From there, it is another 1km of uphill in the trails until Mt. Seymour Parkway intersects it.  From there it is a little over 2k back down to Indian River Road.  I wasn't sure how long the loop would take as it was approximately 3.5k of uphill and about 2.3k of downhill.  In the end, it was about 30 minutes per loop, which is a good time.  The uphill actually felt really good today - I am not sure if it was the lack of snowshoes or if I am getting stronger or if going controlled on the uphill helped a lot.  I also realized how much I miss the trails.  The short 1k trail section was eagerly anticipated each time and I felt so comfortable in there.  In some ways I can't wait for Boston to be done so I can put some focus back on the trails.  However, in the meantime, my legs have to get used to the pounding of the roads, especially the downhill.  Each downhill took just over 7 minutes, so it was about 21 minutes of hard downhill today.  I had the thought of adding a loop to the run every two weeks until I am doing five loops, which would be about 2:30.  I think that if I can handle that long run, then the Boston downhill should be tolerable.

The afternoon saw me and Sonja exploring Robson St. and then the fringes of Stanley Park.  We had a great walk, some hot chocolate, limited shopping and a few pictures.  A very beautiful, but still cool, afternoon.  However, I did appreciate it all the more after my mother informed me of the mess that Toronto is still in.

Duration : 1:33 - with 615m of ascent (which means I had 615m of descent as well)