Physio School & Cross Country Running

Hello World!! After taking a hiatus from blogging for several months I have decided it is time to make the return to my online diary. We have a lot of catching up to do. I spent the month of July dedicating myself to triathlon training in preparation for the Edmonton Triathlon. I was feeling the fittest I have in my life and ready to end my season on a high note. Unfortunately, the universe decided to take matters into its own hands. I ended up having some serious health problems a couple weeks out from the race. Mentally and emotionally I was a mess. I continued to pour my heart out into my training but inside I was struggling. Instead of going into Edmonton feeling strong and confident I was stressed and apprehensive. I was nowhere near in the right mind frame to compete. Nevertheless, I toed the start line, hoping I could compartmentalize and just focus on the task at hand – having a race that was reflective of all the hard work I had put into training the last year and showing just how fit I was. Long story short I had a strong swim and the bike of my life. I was in position to win the race overall but ended up dropping out just over 5km into the run. The temperature was in the low to mid 30s and the run course had zero shade. My body gave out and my mind wasn’t strong enough to make up for it. I was devastated. When you give so much of yourself, sacrifice so much, have so many people behind you and then fail so spectacularly it is tough to swallow.

Warning: this next paragraph is going to contain a rant and some harsh words. Feel free to skip ahead. One of my biggest pet peeves is people who take their bodies for granted. The human body is amazing. The way it moves and functions on a cellular and biochemical level is fascinating. The human body, for lack of better words, should be treated like a temple. Too many people take it for granted and treat it like shit. Overindulging in harmful foods and sedentary living are so harmful and put you at risk for so many chronic diseases – cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and metabolic syndrome to name a few. Normally I don’t really care what others do with their bodies – it’s your body, do what you want with it. But when healthy people, people who do everything right to reduce their risk of developing diseases and conditions end up being screwed over by genetics it is a littler hard not to be extremely bitter. Genetics are a bitch. So when people make comments about how much of a chore it is to workout, or how much they don’t enjoy it – keep in mind there are people who would do almost anything to be able to work out, to train worry free. End rant.

The Edmonton Triathlon was on a Saturday at the end of July. On the Monday I moved to Camrose to start my masters program. It is a U of A program that has 3 cohorts: 80 kids in Edmonton, 12 in Camrose at Augustana, and 18 in downtown Calgary. For the month of August we all had class at the U of A. It was an extremely stressful month. In the morning we had lectures on anatomy and then spent the afternoons in the cadaver lab. The first two weeks focused on the trunk and lower extremities with a 3hr written midterm and 1hr bell ringer cadaver test (40 x 90sec stations, 2-3 questions per station) on the Friday. The next two weeks focused on the back and upper extremities with the same examinations on the last Friday. Since I was already paying rent in Camrose I decided to drive everyday instead of renting another place to stay in Edmonton. I have scoliosis and the joints of an 80 year old so in order to spend 3 hours in a car everyday I was popping ibuprofen like candy – I almost required an intervention towards the end of the month. I ended up carpooling with another Augustana girl who has a puppy and loves food just as much as me so we are basically best friends now. My days consisted of waking up 6am, getting to the UofA by 7:30, spending an hour in the cadaver lab studying, going to lecture, eating lunch, going to the cadaver lab, getting home around 3:30, working out till supper time, then studying from 6-9pm. Fun times. I even went up a couple times on the weekend super early so I would have the cadaver lab to myself (being in a room with 6 corpses solo is slightly strange). I managed to pull off an A, which I was pretty ecstatic with until I found out the class average was also an A. Everyone is so smart and it is extremely intimidating.

Fun side story: The chemicals they use on the bodies mess with your hunger hormones so you end up feeling famished all the time. There is nothing weirder than manipulating a corpse and craving food. Not to mention the smell was extremely overpowering so I smelled it on myself 24/7 for the entire month despite showering several times a day. Going into the lab I was slightly worried how I would react to seeing the cadavers as I had only worked with cat cadavers in my undergrad (thanks RDC). It was slightly unsettling how we were all able to detach ourselves from the fact that they use to be living people. The best part of the class was when one of the TA’s did a brain extraction and I got to hold it in my hands. First off – the human brain is much bigger than I expected. It also has a very unique, strange smell. The most unsettling part of the class? The prosecutions. They had boxes full of random body parts. There was a box of lungs, hearts, hands, arms, legs, feet, and random joints with various amounts of preserved muscle/tendons/ligaments. The worst was one that consisted of a head, neck and two arms. Enough about dead bodies.

After using up 3 years of collegiate cross country eligibility with Red Deer College I still had 2 years leftover. My program is two and half years (the last half year is a 12 week placement) so this worked out perfectly. Augustana has amazing coaches and a good group of runners so I was pretty excited to become a Viking. The x-country ski club and running team are basically the same thing so apparently I will also be skiing this winter. Seeing as how I have never skied before this should be super entertaining for everyone else watching. Camrose is in a valley so it has an amazing set of cross country trails and a decent amount of hilly paved trails. It takes 5min to walk to campus from my house and the trails are behind the school so I’m basically set. The rec center is a 10min walk from my house and they are in the process of building a brand new state of the art pool which will be ready next September. In the mean time it is a 20min drive to Wetaskiwin which also has a brand new pool that reminds me of the Talisman (I refuse to call it Respol). The cross country trails are great for mountain biking and the secondary highways have good shoulders for road biking. I have even found a couple roads with decent hills. Everyone local I’ve talked to has warned me that these highways are “busy” and not good for cycling. Compared to riding in Springbank – host of the angriest drivers – these highways are essentially dead. So I’ve been pretty content. At school the physio kids have their own part of campus, keys to the doors so we have access to the lab/equipment 24/7, and parking is free everywhere. If Camrose had some mountains and a Miss Sadie I would never leave.

Back to running. The first Grand Prix was Sept 8 in Edmonton at Gold Bar Park. The course consisted of a 1km flat loop and 2km hilly loop which you had to do twice to equal 6km. This was my first cross country race since 2013. I had no idea what to expect, no idea how to pace, and no idea how I would place. The ACAC Grand Prix are combined with the Running Room Grand Prix series so you end up having half college kids and half elite/pro runners. I ended up going out with the elites and sprinting the first km. I attempted to reign it in but I was feeling so good and fresh that I continued on at a blazing pace. In cross country you cannot screw up your pacing and go out too fast as you will suffer later on. And suffering on a cross country course is much more detrimental than on the road. I ended up imploding at 4km. A bunch of girls passed me and I had nothing in my legs to retaliate. It was super frustrating. My splits for this race were so bad they were funny. I managed to hold on for 6th.

The second Grand Prix was the following weekend in Calgary at STMU. The course consisted of a 2km loop around the campus. I was not a huge fan of this course. STMU overlooks Fish Creek and it seemed like such a waste to be running around a university when there were such better trails within sight. Also the grass was full of gopher holes and super treacherous. The campus is rather small so in order to make a 2km loop they had us zig zagging all over the place and my ankles took a beating. My foot that struggled with posterior tibialis tendonitis a couple years ago was not impressed. Oh the joys of getting old. I went into this race with the goal of working on my pacing. I went out much slower this time and stuck with a couple of girls who had beat me at the last race. The first two laps felt strong. I went into the last lap hoping to negative split and have a strong kick. Unfortunately I just didn’t have the legs that day. I finished strong but wasn’t able to execute any moves in placement. I ended up finishing 11thas Lethbridge’s team is fricken stacked. I was really happy with how I executed the first half of this race but knew I should have been stronger in the last half. Impatient me was told by my coaches that it is better to peak at Provincials rather than an early race after a high volume week. Impatient me is attempting to be less impatient.

The third Grand Prix was last weekend in Grand Prairie. I was super excited as I have never been to Grand Prairie. I’m pretty sure the farthest north I have travelled in St. Albert. I was not excited to get woken up by my alarm at 4:45am. I was even less excited when I had to dig my car out from the dump of snow we got overnight. Even better was the 6hour car ride. For those of you who don’t know I am basically a gramma and (a) struggle with sitting in a car for more than an hour and (b) pee every hour. Augustana has a weird 3 week block followed by an 11 week block so all of the students had Thursday to Sunday off. It ended up being just me and a bunch of the boys. I’m sure they were thrilled with all of the bathroom breaks I forced us to take. The valley right before Grand Prairie was super pretty and I really wanted to bike through all the hills. Grand Prairie itself is alright. The course was a bit chaotic – they had us run a 1km zig zaggy loop, 2 x 2km loops and then a 1km straight away to the finish. The major issue I had with this course was that we had to cross a lot of pavement and they didn’t put down carpet – my poor spikes. It was sunny but only 4 degrees. In Calgary it had been 8 degrees and I wore shorts and a singlet and was on the verge of hypothermia. So today I decided to add a headband and gloves to my singlet and short combo. Sometimes I make dumb decisions. Thankfully I have smart coaches who forcibly told me to at least put on arm sleeves. They combined the women’s race with the high school boys. This was also the first race for the Grand Prairie team so I had no idea what to expect from them. Before the race I was advised by my coaches several times to go out almost too easy and have a super strong kick. Guess what I didn’t do. The gun went off and the Grand Prairie team and high school boys took off like rockets. My ego took over and I decided I did not want anyone ahead of me, especially silly high school boys. I ended up running the first km over 20sec faster than what my coaches wanted. Oops. As soon as we finished the first km all of the Grand Prairie girls died. I decided I was going to slow down my pace but a Concordia runner caught up and I decided to stick with her. Before the race I had been mistakenly told that this was the girl who outsprinted me at the last race. In reality she ended up being one of the top runners at the last race and I was nowhere near her. Silly me didn’t know this and I stuck with her – ignoring common sense and the knowledge that I had no business running this fast. I stuck with her until we had just under a mile left. She accelerated and my gas tank was running on fumes. At this point I could only hope to hold off other runners. The last km was ridiculously ugly but I managed to hold on for second. My pacing was a disaster but I was over 90 seconds faster than last weekend so I was pretty pleased with myself.

Tomorrow I race in Vermilion which will also be the host for Provincials at the end of October.