Oh, the ups and downs of running! It’s winter in Edmonton and keeping motivated to run in the cold (COLD!), snow, ice and darkness can be quite the mental challenge. Since the beginning of 2014 this is a challenge I’ve been working on. An indoor run here, and outdoor run there, a cancelled run due to -35 Celsius windchill… Keeping consistent is hard!

I thought the answer to my fear of commitment would be to register for a race. Forced commitment! So as mentioned in my last post, I registered for the Calgary St. Patrick’s day 5k. And well… It worked!

In the week that followed, I logged about 42km, mostly outside. Temps in the -20′s be damned, I was getting those runs in. And earlier this week I had time to squeeze in a short 6.5 km run and I nailed it! If you’re reading this and you’re a runner, you know the feeling – you’re pushing hard but rather than getting fatigued or sore like you usually do, you feel like you can just keep going. You’re breathing hard, but it’s not a problem. The legs are doing what you want them to do and even if it hurts they’re going to keep going. It just clicks.

The feeling of fitness returning is a great feeling. You’re reminded of past accomplishments and times when you thought to yourself, “I’m in the best shape of my life”. Even though you might not be there yet, you remember the feeling and you know you’re on your way.

And then it happens. A twinge in your knee, or a dull ache in your ankle, or a deep pain in your hip that forces you to limp and eventually abandon your workout. For me, it was my back. I’ve never really had back problems, but boy did I mess something up last week. It was painful to start, then subsided, then came back with such a vengeance that I could barely move my body above the waist. Whatever caused it, I’ll get it sorted out, but the point is that my training was starting to pay dividends and then a stupid injury screwed things up!

It’s not the end of the world. I went to my chiro and it’s just a muscular problem that can be solved with ice, rolling and stretching. I could even start running again this weekend. As a matter of fact, I just ran on the indoor track for the good part of an hour and my back felt just fine.

It’s hard to think that it’s -34 right now and I’m registered to run a road race in two weeks. I’ll make the most of my time between now and then. As long as I really do have this back problem sorted out, I’ll try to make it to the track three times this week coming up. None of coach Glen’s workouts are easy, and doing three of them in one week would probably benefit me a lot.

So I guess there are always hurdles to overcome. Whether they be injuries, work commitments, family commitments, miserable weather or life in general you just need to roll with it and do what needs to be done.

Now, I did say before that I was going to try to do a bit about food in each of my posts. I don’t have anything terribly exciting to talk about this time, but we did try a very tasty kale salad recently (apparently kale is “trendy” now-a-days). Trendy or not, this was tasty enough that we made it twice this week. The recipe is here, and a picture of how it turned out is below. Healthy isn’t always boring!

Okay, here’s to a big running week. St. Paddy’s day is coming up soon and 20 minutes is looking like a very daunting goal the closer the date gets! Early morning to the track tomorrow. Cheers!