Friday, August 10, 2007

Make Up Miles, BBC #10 and a Camelbak Review

Since I didn't run on Wednesday I wanted to get my miles in on Thursday prior to BBC. Unfortunately I wound up leaving the house too late, and it took me a bit longer to get to Confederation Park than I figured, so I fit 3 miles in while I was originally hoping for 4. Summer has momentarily disappeared from Calgary and it was 55F (12C), overcast and drizzling out while I was running. The first mile felt...terrible...my rear hurt, my right shin hurt, my right ankle hurt. What was I thinking? I was still going to have to run at BBC and this felt...gross. After a mile it was like some sort of magic and everything disappeared. Oh right, this is why I love running! The pathway through Confederation Park continues through Queen's Park Cemetery. Talk about an eerie run, especially with the rain and all. I finished with 3.13 mi just in time to start BBC.
---
As soon as Instructor S saw me she called me out for bailing on speed work on Wednesday and said that exercise would have helped to work it out. *Guilt* *Guilt* *Guilt* This session would involve running through the park and stopping at various intervals for different exercises. We required no equipment except some resistance tubing and our water. We ran to the first park bench where we stopped for push ups, tricep dips and jumping squats. At the end of the session we had done some grade 7 dance, slow motion lunges with resistance tubing, rhomboid pinches, walking twisting lunges, and some fun (but tough) horse and buggy exercises. The horse and buggy involves you and a partner and some resistance tubing. One person is the horse, the buggy driver holds on to resistance tubing that circles the horse's waist, and the horse works like crazy to run while the driver provides resistance on the tubing. All said and done we got some great exercises in, plus I tallied another 1.5 mi for the day. For most of the running portions I was either chasing my friend DGB or running with her. This girl is speedy! We are running the Iron Girl in Seattle together next month and I think she just might be able to push me to a PR for that one. Fingers crossed anyways..!!
---
I finally gave the ol' Camelbak Flashflo a try last night and it wasn't too bad. It has a bladder that holds 45 oz, so by far this carries the most liquid of all my hydration pack options. Initially on the run while it was still pretty full I had some issues with the waist straps loosening. I loved how easy it was to drink out of, and thanks to a little bit of diluted Gatorade in the bladder there was no worry about a plastic taste. Plus there is lots of room for gels, Shot Bloks, Sharkies...keys...you name it. So while I think my Fuel Belt is still my number one choice at the moment, I think the Flashflo may be a better option for my 15 to 20 mile runs thanks to the extra storage capacity (liquid and stuff-wise) over my Fuel Belt.

2 comments:

TNTcoach Ken said...

Thanks for the review, although I'm still old school (hide water and run).

elev8 said...

Sports is very amazing and fun at the same time, it can really help maintain a good health and stability of your body.sporting goods stores