Catching up

If you follow the little mileage counter I have in the right hand column, you'll see how far I've swam, biked and ran each year. I have an on-line that totals everything up for me, so it's not hard to keep track of.

So far this year I've run a little over 136 km. Nothing special, I know.

However, in January and February combined I ran 69 km. So far in March I've run 67.25 km. I plan on going out on Saturday to increase that total.

My bike is in the shop right now, getting the wheels trued and some spokes replaced, as well as fixing a clunk that I had in the steering column (probably a dead bearing). I should have it back soon and then I'll be cranking out those miles too.

24 C - nice.

I was sitting here at the computer and I noticed that the temperature was 23 C outside. By the time I got this post opened up, it jumped up to 24 C. And today is an off day for me! What was I thinking. Oh well, I have to work this afternoon, so there's no time to squeeze in a short run. Tomorrow is only supposed to be 18 C, I'll have to survive.

Warm weather means I can put the tights away! I think Sue is happier about that than anyone else.

Did you see the Amazing Race last night? It was, well, amazing. The teams are really spread out now, like over 24 hours between first and last. That never happens. The only unfortunate part is that the most annoying team is in first place.

First Race

Today was the first running race of the season, held by our local Running Factory. For grown-ups it is a 5 km race, for kids the offer a 1 km event and for little ones they have the Kids Dash, about 100 metres or so. Darcy came to see me run a few times last year and ever since then, she's been talking about doing a race. When I told her we could race together, she could hardly contain her excitement!

The big day was this morning, although the event is called the Spring Thaw at -5C it didn't really feel all that much like Spring. But the cold didn't dampen Darcy's spirit. She was ready to run the whole race, and she did! I don't think she's ever been this excited, she laughed the whole way down the street. Being one of the littlest little ones, she brought up the rear of the event, but that seemed to get the crowd going in her favor. I saw several people taking her pictures and heard lots more calling out to her. I heard someone say, "Look at how determined she is."

Once we crossed the finish line, she got her medal and several high-fives from the volunteers. Then she started asking for her racers treats, so I made my way over to the athletes snack table and grabbed something for her. Before her nap this afternoon she asked Mommy, "When's my next race with Daddy?" Hopefully she remembers this for a long time.

Oh, I ran the 5 km. Overall I finished in 52 place, 6 of 19 in my age group. I ran a 21:18, an improvement from last year, but I've still been unable to break the 20 minutes mark in a race. Jake ran too, blew away his PR and finished with a 19:05! That's sick. Fortunately, he got another year older and is now out of my age group, so I move up a place. Full results are here.

Close call

I've done a lot of driving in my day, 7 years doing some delivering and about 3 years working in car rentals. I haven't had an accident yet (knock on wood). That streak almost came to a brutal end last night.

We were on our way to Cambridge through some rainy weather and the closer we got, the worse the roads got. Near London the gusts of wind were moving us around pretty good and then we hit a big patch of ice that sent us into a wicked spin. Sue thinks we went around 2 1/2 times, I thought it might have only been 1 1/2. Who cares really. The point is that we were spinning out of control with traffic behind us closing in, including a tractor-trailer. Somehow we stayed in the lanes, off both shoulder, off the wall and out of the ditch. I have no doubt that my hands weren't the only ones trying to steer the car.

After the last spin we straightened out and I thought I had it fully corrected, but gave a little too much gas and we did another half spin. This sent us across the road and towards the ditch, but we were going slowly at this point and I was able to stop before going into the ditch.

It all happened so quickly that I really don't remember it all very clearly, but the one thing that I remember is that while were spinning, the tires barely squealed at all. Which tells me that we were on a pretty solid sheet of ice. I have to think that if we had been going sideways and hit a dry patch, this story would be completely different.

When we stopped, Darcy said, "Wow, what was that?!" We told her it was a big spin, she said, "I didn't like that. It scared me." Yeah, kiddo, it scared me too.

So we stopped at a hotel for the night and finished the last 30 minutes this morning. It was the right thing to do, as we saw several cars being pulled out of the ditch this morning.