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The Goal: 12 buckles in 12 months in 2012 - to celebrate the milestone of my 50th year!

Tuesday 14 February 2012

Ready, Set....Go, I mean drive to Florida, then Go

Good  Afternoon:

Well it's Tuesday February 14th, Happy Valentines Day everyone. I hope you have someone special to share you day with.

I am getting excited and ready to leave on Thursday afternoon for the Iron Horse 100 in Florahome Florida. It will be a world win trip for sure. Ken and I will be leaving on Thursday after work and it will be a non stop trip in order to make it there for the mandatory meeting Friday night at 6:00 and a pasta dinner. Then to bed early on Friday night and up and ready for a 7:00 am race start. According to the weather networks it looks like a low of 9 degrees and a high of 16 degrees with a 30% chance of rain on Saturday and Sunday so I think I"m ready for a wet race. That's ok with me, it will be 16 degrees, aka, shorts and a t shirt :)

This past month has been a good training month but hasn't come without its small victories and defeats. I took 6 days off after Beast and felt pretty sluggish during my first two recovery runs. It wasn't until late in the first run that after each of my previous 5 - 100 milers and 2 - 24 hour events, I generally took almost a month and even 3 months once after a 100 miler so no wonder 6 days felt a little odd. I set a training goal of between 160 and 180 kms of training in the three weeks leading up to Florahome. I think as of today I"m at 160 so short term goal reached and we'll see how this sets me up on Saturday. The small defeat was signing up for the February Challenge on Facebook. My month got off to a good start but only took 11 days to come to a crashing hault. More on that next.

I posted on Facebook that my Challenge came to a end after a visit to the hospital. Here is why I felt rather foolish during my 6 hour visit to the hospital with some chest pain:
My company participates in a variety of different staff events throughout the year, these activities range from golf, baseball, curling, skiing etc. and this month we decided to play hockey at a rink in Guelph near our office. Twenty Two of our staff suited up in what was a great one hour of shinny hockey that made everyone's cheeks sore from laughing at great goals, good moves and even a few awkward falls, trips and the occasional water bottle spray. Needless to say, on the return trip to Barrie I started to feel some chest pain and by the time I got to highway 9 and the 400 I was rather uncomfortable and feeling a bit nervous. I decided to go into Newmarket to Southlake Hospital to get this looked at. After being treated like a king and moved to the front of the line I felt much better once i was lying on a bed and relaxed. So I laid there for 6 hours, took three tylenol because they made me and then two childrens aspirins (they made me take those too but they were chewables and I must admit, tasted like candy). At the end of the day and 6 hours of testing turns out I'm just old and pulling a few muscles in my chest trying to keep up to a bunch of 25 year olds who play hockey a few times a week isn't such a good idea. So the rest of this week, rest, daily visits to the chripractor and a heating pad to try to get all the muscles relaxed before spending 22 hours in a car and hopefully 22 hours running a 100 miler in Florida....did i mention 16 degrees yet?

My goal for this weekend, see if I can break the 23 hour barrier. By all accounts the course looks pretty flat and with temperatures warmer than we are having now and hopefully no snow we'll see how it goes.

Thanks again (to both of you) for reading this mindless banter. I look forward to putting together another short video for my web site when we get back and updating my blog page as well.

Special thanks to Michelle for her exceptional orgainizational skills and taking care of everything else so I only have to worry about running, thanks to Ken for coming along, putting up with me on the trails and not pushing to hard, not to mention driving 22 hours with me.

Until next week my friends, happy trails.

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