Dirty Duo 25K

My relationship with running has has it's ups and downs.  The past 6 months the relationship has been pretty good.   The trails are an easy  3 min walk away and Aurora has been my running partner/motivation.  We have done some "longer" 2 hour runs and some weeks we have gotten out 2 or 3 time, overall it has been consistent.  Naturally my thoughts gravitated to some extra "umph" to the training so I signed up for a 25K trail run/race.  Shortly after the consistency took a dive.  I got sick, then it was reading week, and then Aurora (my motivation) went to Utah with Shannon.  And then it was race week! 4 Days before the race I did a 2 hour run with Aurora which included laps on the hills down to the beach.  I figured, I can pull this off for another hour or so.

It went pretty well.  A 3 hr 20 min, was a mid-range time, and I was able to walk the same day. However, I was handed some humility.  The hills I have been training on I run with Aurora in her jogger, not a good prep for the elevation gain/loss and the technicality of the trails found on Vancouver's North Shore.  Overall I had "fun" it was a good challenge and I was totally impressed with the other I ran with.  There were some folks, men and women, with 10 or 15 years on me who smoked me. 

I have/had been entertaining the whole "run my age"  thing this summer.  But this race helped me to see that to pull that off I will need to do more than go out and jog with kid.  It would mean sacrificing actual play/ski/climbing time which would make me a "runner" instead of some guy who likes to keep fit while running with his kid.