Zoo Run - check!

The morning of the zoo run, I woke up at 5am to the sight of heavy, pouring, bucketing rain outside of my window, and frost growing on my poor plant on the balcony.  I peeled myself out of the warm, bundley goodness of my thick comforter, ate a small breakfast, and pulled on my running shoes.  Rain or not, I was running the zoo.

And... I did!  By the time I got to the finish line, the sun was up, the giraffes were out roaming, wolves howling at passing runners (kind of creepy, actually), and monkeys staring at us in wonder.  "You evolved from us... into THIS?  Fools. *continues munching breakfast while sitting comfortably in their tree*"

I wasn't expecting a PB to come out of the zoo run from the very beginning, because I had been told that it was very hilly (my PB came from the Sporting Life 10K, which is almost entirely downhill).  Also my performance at the Yonge St 10K was rather abysmal, and I didn't have very high expectations following that.  Especially once I got onto MapMyRun.com and mapped out the route for the zoo run.  This was the elevation that popped out:

 

 

Hooray?

Things that weren't so condusive to having a good run this day included the fact that it was rainy, making the road slippery and trails muddy.  Oh, and that I somehow blew out my knee somewhere around 7.5km and was unable to go up hills without searing agony afterward.  Interestingly, though, when I checked my time at the 5k line, I was actually faster than my pace for my target (I was hoping for 1:17:00, or a 38:30 5km; I crossed the 5k line at about 37:30 according to iPod)



But get this...




My time for the zoo was faster than the Yonge St 10K.



You know, that all-downhill run that I did in April?



And how this one was all hills and mud?


FASTER!!!!


When I stopped my iPod and checked out my time, I actually cried.  I was injured and hobbling, soaking wet and my shoes slick with mud.  But I ran this thing FASTER!!!!!!!!!

My official time was 1:18:55 (Yonge St was over 1:20:28).  I'm happy!  I took a minute and a half off my last 10k time, on a very hilly course, and a knee injury! 

The strange thing though, is that both on MapMyRun and on my iPod (which notoriously underestimates my distance since it isn't GPS), the distance was actually longer than 10K.  And not just by like, 0.02k or something, it was almost a full half km longer (iPod tracked me at 10.35km, and MapMyRun was just a bit longer).  According to the iPod, I crossed 10km at 1:16:20.  I'm happy!!

My friend Tracy was standing by the finish line to cheer me through and take this fabulous shot (note - that time is the gun time, but since I was 4 corrals in, my chip time is obviously a lot lower than that :P)  I'm hoping that the photographer got more, so I'll post some up when they have been processed.

Less than a week to go...

So it's nearly that time.  The Oasis Zoo Run is creeping up real quickly.  Who's ready for it???? *shyly sneaks into a corner to hide*

No, I didn't fall completely off the bandwagon and quit my training plan alltogether.  But no, I also didn't follow through and do what I said I would do and ensure that I was adequately trained for this one.  Mind you, I have been doing lots of extra crosstraining in order to better strengthen and build my body, which has helped my running a lot (!!!), but it's not the same thing as actually training in running shoes.


Here's the scoop.


Over the summer, I worked three part time jobs (totalling 20 hours per week), volunteered in three different hospitals (totalling 20 hours per week), and took FOUR summer courses.  People told me I was crazy.  Maybe I was.  But hey, I did it :)  At the same time, I had planned a fabulous training program to prepare me for the zoo run in September, including building up my speed gradually and including hill and interval training, because the zoo run is fraught with hilly roads and extra challenges. It turns out that working/learning for 50-60 hours a week makes it really difficult to keep a rigid training schedule.  And there were many, many times that I either had to cut runs short due to lack of time, or had to cancel them altogether.  Long story short, I wasn't able to keep that program, and had to make a lot of alterations along the way.  Boyfriend and I also signed up with a Groupon for a bootcamp at that time, and wanting to get the most out of it, started going 3-4 times per week.  Great for getting exercise, not so great if you also need to get mileage in to train for a 10k.

Then a couple of months ago, I found out that I might not actually even be in town on the day of the zoo run.  My dad is currently on a cross-Canada bike tour (he's volunteering, not riding, but still very cool), and their last day is in Halifax on the same day as the zoo run.  He was really eager to get my mom and I out there to see them at the finish line and get a couple of days in Halifax while we were at it.  Well.  There went my zoo run.  As much as I wanted to run the zoo, supporting my dad is way more important to me, obviously.

The plan was to fly out on the Thursday night or Friday morning.  I didn't have my school schedule yet, so I had to wait to find out whether I'd even be able to go on that day or not, or at least if I did have a class on Friday, would I be able to leave early enough in the afternoon to make it worthwhile.  Class schedules came out in mid-August.  Wouldn't you know it --- I did get a class on Friday.  And it ends at 3pm.  And I have something due that day, so I can't even skip.  Seriously?  With the only available flight out leaving in the evening, it wouldn't be worth it for me to fly all the way there for only 24 hours in Halifax.  Which means that I'll actually be home that weekend anyway and -- oh look! Now I'm back into the zoo run.

Oh right.  All that running that I didn't do because I thought I wasn't going to be here.  Hmm.

On the plus side, I had still been exercising A LOT thanks to that bootcamp.  So it's not like I stopped exercise altogether and gave up, I have still been doing a lot of strength training and high intensity cardio work.  Which is awesome, because in early September when I finally got myself together and started running more seriously again, I was able to pump out 5k with interval sprints and felt like I could have done more.  A month earlier when I last tied up my running shoes, that wasn't possible.  So, I'm feeling ok about it.  I've since been doing longer distances and adding hills, and it hasn't killed me yet.



If this was the Yonge St 10k, I'd be feeling relatively confident at this point.  But because it's not a nice downhill and/or flat course, I'm not.  The thing about the zoo is that there are a LOAD OF CRAZY HILLS.  And though I've been doing hill training over the last week to try to amp myself back up and get prepared for the epic hilly challenge ahead, I'm not so confident about this.

But you know what?

I'm doing it anyway.

Come hell or high water, I will run the zoo.  If I have to crawl up the hills and roll my broken-down body across the finish line, I will do it.  Because I made a commitment to myself many months ago when I signed up for this.  I'm not expecting a personal best to come out of this (and I said that right from the get-go), but I am expecting that I will do the best that I can, and not bail out simply because I couldn't commit to the full training schedule that I had set.

I know that I haven't exactly been the most motivating running blogger out there.  In fact, I've been a pretty craptastic exercise blogger.  But I hope that if nothing else, the fact that I'm not just going to stop will motivate some of you out there to keep going.  Even when it seems like there's no point in doing your event or continuing your training because you haven't been able to keep your commitment, you can still do the best that you can with the time and resources that you have available.  Doing your best is all you can do.  No one is expecting you to break a world record (unless you happen to be Usain Bolt or something, in which case, thanks for reading my blog :D!), so just do your best.  And the most important thing is to enjoy it, because if you aren't enjoying it, then why do it at all??

No matter what the outcome, I will be posting my results of the zoo run here.  Even if it takes three hours.  Even if an escaped tiger attacks me along the way and mauls me to bits.  You'll know about it.

Vegetable of the Month

It's that time again!  Drumroll please.






drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........

Yum yum yummmm!

Beets!!!

Beets have a bad reputation with many people, and I have to admit, I was one of them.  I hated beets.  With a passion.  For no good reason at all really, simply because I had a bad childhood memory of once eating some of my mom's favourite thing - pickled beets.  And they were horrific.  I didn't touch beets again for like 20 years, and didn't want anything to do with them.

That changed a couple of years ago when I came to nutrition school, and one of our assignments was to prepare ----- wait for it ---- PICKLED BEETS!  Really????

So I boiled and peeled and chopped and pickled my beets.  Decided to be brave and taste test it.  Huh.  Not as bad as I remembered it being.  In fact... they were kind of delicious.  I wondered what other delicious beety goodness I was missing out on.  I started trying roasted beets, grated beets, pickled beets, and all kinds of beets.  Did you know that there are tons of different varieties of beets, and each of them has a special taste and colour?

Here's some nifty things about beets according to the Canadian Nutrient File.  For one raw beet, you get:

• Only 35 calories!
• 1.6g of fibre
• 266mg of potassium
• about 23% of a woman's vitamin A needs (18% if you're a man)
• 22% of a woman's folate needs
• 20mg of plant sterol, which have been suggested to help lower cholesterol

How did I spend so long ignoring these little gems?!

Tell me more!

Beets can be enjoyed in many ways.  Raw beets can be peeled and grated to toss into salads, for example, or beets can be boiled and sliced and devoured.  My favourite way, though, is roasting beets.  Wash your beets well, keep the skin on, and rub it all over with olive or canola oil.  Cook it in the oven in a roasting pan or baking dish at 400 F for about 45 minutes, till the beet is fork-tender (depends on the size of your beets/power of your oven).  Bring it out of the oven, and wait till it cools enough to be handled.  Use a paper towel and rub the outside of the beet -- the skin should come off fairly easily!  

And FYI, if you want to prevent your hands and cutting board from getting all red-stained and unusable, rub your fingers and plastic (NOT WOOD!) cutting board with oil first.  The redness won't soak through and will wash off easily :)

I mentioned earlier that there are lots of different kinds of beets.  Check out this link to thenibble and see how many you can find in your farmer's market!  Red beets are the most common kind, but I have also had the pleasure of seeing (and eating!) golden beets and candy-cane beets. The flavour is similar, though the golden ones are a bit milder and the candy canes are a bit sweeter.

And don't discount the greens that come with the beets in some stores/markets -- they're edible too!  Just make sure to eat them the day of or maybe the day after, as they won't last very long :(

Enough already!  Give me a recipe!

I made this salad months ago on a whim, and it turned out to be amazing.

Roasted Beet, Apple, and Celery Salad with Horseradish dressing and walnuts

Serves 4

3 beets, roasted as described above and sliced

2 Tbsp vegetable oil or olive oil

1 Tbsp cider vinegar

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp prepared horseradish

1/2 tsp salt

1 apple (any variety, but Granny Smith and honeycrisp seem to be good ones), cored and sliced thin

1-2 stalks celery, thinly sliced on the bias (to make it fancy :) )

1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion

1/4 cup walnut pieces (option - replace walnuts with pumpkin seeds! mmm)

Roast beets as described earlier.

In a bowl, combine oil, vinegar, sugar, horseradish and salt.  Toss beets with 1 Tbsp of dressing.

Toss the apple, celery and onion with remaining dressing.  Add the beets.  Sprinkle with walnuts/seeds. 

Eat!

mmmmmmmm.....

Beet salads can be really simple - such as simply combining a handful of mixed greens with sliced roasted beets and maybe topped with some goat cheese.  Or, grate up a beet and serve in a chef salad with chopped cucumber, tomatoes, and maybe shredded carrots (because they too are deeeeelish!)

What's your favourite way to enjoy beets?