Negatives

Wow, it is January 9th and I’m still sitting here and looking at my Christmas tree.  I’ve got the boxes ready to start putting the ornaments back in, I just haven’t quite gotten around to it.  Hmm, maybe tomorrow with any luck!

Today was quite possibly the perfect Saturday.  Although my alarm went off at 6:30 I wasn’t quite ready to get up.  Finally at 9:30 I tore myself away from the covers, made some breakfast and relaxed watching the final Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  After lounging around for awhile I finally got ready to head out and tackle my workouts for the day.  Yesterday a chinook blew into town so it was a fantastic 6C out.  I decided to run downtown along the river.  It makes the most sense at this time of the year because the city is really good about clearing snow from the pathways throughout the winter.  Running around the neighbourhood can be a bit treacherous as not everyone clears the snow from their walkways (or clears very well) and often it will partially melt then ice over.

My general rule of thumb is that if we are above 0C then I aim to wear capri tights.  I threw those on, a long sleeve tech shirt, and my new favourite jacket.  My run was scheduled for 45 minutes and as soon as I got going I had a feeling it was going to be a good one.  My pace was feeling easy even though I was running into the wind.  The scenery was amazing…I really ought to take my camera with me one of these days.  All of the snow and ice on top of the Bow River is so pretty.  I hit my turn around point before I knew it, and then I was running with the wind at my back.  It must have really helped to push me along as my pace started to drop yet it still felt easy.  I managed a pretty nice negative split and all in all had an excellent run!  Gotta love those days when it actually feels almost easy…

After the run I went into the YMCA, exchanged the running gear for a swimsuit and hopped in the pool for an 1800 meter workout.  It was fairly quiet and I managed to have a lane to myself for almost my entire workout.  The workout really focused on technique as I ran through some single arm drills, finger tip drills and 6 kick roll drills.  Between each drill set I’d have a 200m swim set that I needed to try and negative split while I focused on the technique that each drill tried to teach me.  First off, I have to say that 4 x 50m of single arm…with 50m of single left, 50m of single right…I’m surprised the lifeguards didn’t come over to ask me if I was okay swimming!  Sputter, sputter…try not to drown!  But on the plus side, I managed to negative split every set that I was supposed to.  Good times!

Yup, a great day of workouts.  Hope everyone’s weekend is going well!