The word for the day is NO!

Hello Kids. This blog posting is brought to you by the word No and its close affiliate can’t. Side effects of this post may include crying, whining, bitching, loss of motivation and hair loss. Do not try to read this posting while operating heavy machinery.

NO – I did not get into Massanutten via the lottery; neither did JD so I will not be pacing either. On the brighter side I will put my name on the waiting list and have compiled a short list of late May / early June non lottery based Ultras that I am interested in. Will pick one sometime over the winter.

NO – There is no race report for the Egg Nog Jog. Running this race seemed doomed from the start. First friend (and ride) Gregoire could not go as he had to go to Paris France for a job interview. That’s a good thing although I am jealous that he keeps getting to go to Paris. Then we found out that Kim’s dad was able to come for a visit from out west that weekend. This is also a good thing as we don’t get to see him very often. So we shelved the race but had a much better time with family anyway. I would tell you all about it but is very hush hush.

NO – I didn’t get my full training miles in last week. I ended up too hung over after the Longboat Christmas party to run doubles on Thursday. Thanks to John and Toni for hosting again this year and to Roger for buying me extra beers, which was just what I needed. I find training in December very difficult but still managed to get 100k in last week. I will be happy with that.

NO – I didn’t win the lottery (the kind that they give you cash as a prize), I didn’t find a bag of money walking home and didn’t fart diamonds (I did fart however…. Lots). Opps to much information.

BAH HUMBUG

lottery whining... next .... lets try that again ... revising race history

Okay so I am not going to whine about the lottery for Western States. I didn't get in and since JD didn't get in either I will not be pacing it. It was a long shot and I knew going in that it was not likely the first time around. No problem I will keep putting my name in every year until they get sick of seeing it and I get lucky enough to get my ticket pulled. Turns out that I am only luck in love not in lotteries.

As a fall back both JD and I have put our name into the Massanutten Mountain Trail 100 lottery. The drawn is this coming weekend. I hear that its kind of hilly and rocky so just about perfect. I have much better odds of getting in and its a really damn good alternative to WS. I am also making a short list of non lottery alternatives for the spring. Suggestions? The one downfalls of this one is it will mess with my Toronto Marathon plans so if I do get in it will be an earlier marathon for me in the spring.

Last weeks training went really well as I built my long run up to 33km and got 113k in for the week. This week is a much needed and deserved mileage reduction week which works out perfectly with the Egg Nog Jog this weekend.

Speaking of which memory is such a fickle and funny thing. In my last blog I lamented on how I had a bad race at the Jog last year and had not planned to run it again. Strange because when I went back and read my race review from last year I said that "I would run this race again anytime". Weird... this is your brain .... this is your brain on running. Its a good thing I am writing this stuff down because it appears that I might be going senile already.

4000K in the bank ... Last Months Training, Egg Nog Jog coming up.

I officially surpassed 4000k, 2500 miles for you non metric people last Sunday. That pushes me past my running totals for last year with still a month to go. Not as many miles as I had hoped but I lost some time due to injuries so I am very happy with it.

November ended up being a decent training month for me. That in spite of my super cement legs and crunchy ankle….. mmmm… crunchy. I slowly have been building my mileage back up from scratch and ended up getting in 400k for the month. More importantly I am finally starting to feel somewhat normal again with most of my easy runs starting to fall back into my regular pace. Not quite there yet but instead of one good run a week its becoming 3 or 4. I am looking forward to putting some harder workouts back into the mix in the coming weeks.

November was tough for me. Behaving myself is not one of my strong suits. I managed to not race in November. That’s right you heard me, NO racing in November. You have to go back to February 2009 to find the last month I went raceless. Don’t worry though that’s not going to last. Next weekend it will be off to Terra Cotta for the Egg Nog Jog. It will be hilly, it will be cold and we will race the ever popular 10.8 distance because as you all know 10k is just too damn short.

Last year after I finished this race I swore I would never run it again. We ran in horrible weather conditions and the course was, well lets just say it was challenging. Okay actually it was kind of the winter version of hell. You know the saying when hell freezes over? Well it did last year in Terra Cotta. Besides that it was a great race. I bitched and moaned about never doing it again but then in the end all it took was my friend Gregoire telling me he had registered and asking me if I was running it to “convince me” to sign up. Thanks Gregoire? I decided to spread the misery around by getting Kim to sign up as well. Should be a blast, I noticed its sold out again this year.

Ankle is still not right but slowly getting better. Its rarely an issue during runs but I do feel it when I get up over 25k if I am running a hilly route. So of course I have been sure to do all my long runs on the Boston Special route in order to get in as many hills as possible.

There is less then a month left of coaching the Running Room Marathon clinic at Rosedale. I will be hauling my ass over to the High Park Running Room to start doing a marathon clinic there at the end of January. With this location being right in my normal running hood I am going to be able to bring all kinds of torturous workouts and routes to these unsuspecting runners. Crap maybe I shouldn’t put that on my blog some of them might notice. Yeah that’s the ticket, don’t be afraid kiddies sign up now.

Tonight I will be headed out to High Park to run with Longboat as we start up the new training cycle. It’s the return of the every popular Frisky Fridays. I have a feeling this one is going hurt. I expect its going to involve some hard running and me with no fast twitch muscle fibers left after a season of ultra running.

I will be glued to my computer tomorrow morning watching to see if my name gets pulled from the lottery for Western States. I think the email they sent me said I have like a 1 in a gazillion chance. I have made a side deal with JD that I will pace him if he gets in and he will do the same for me. Keep those fingers crossed.