What a Difference a Year Makes...

Ran the 20th Anniversary edition of the Sulphur Springs 10k Trail Run on Saturday with my 17 year old son, Graham. It was our second time there, and this was a far cry from last year's cool, damp conditions. Between another year of base-building, hitting a few more hill workouts, the dry conditions, and seeding ourselves closer to the front we really set ourselves up for success.

And what a success it turned out to be: 14th & 15th out of over 300 entrants. Not bad for a father/son team - but fully nine minutes faster than last year?! After the finish I even had to confirm with Joe Hewitt, the RD, that we took the right route at the foot of the final, killer, climb (we had.) The confusion stemmed from one runner just ahead of us who disappeared like a deer when she abruptly turned left at a ribbon we'd followed at the beginning of the run (it was a loop course.) A group of about six of us stopped in our tracks, second-guessing our judgment. We swivelled around, looking for a volunteer, an arrow pointing somewhere, a stack of rocks, anything but a ribbon from the start of the race when we were now just a kilometre from the finish! Standing still at a race: nope, never done that before...
Like a half dozen sweaty adventure tourists waiting at the wrong site for a helicopter rendezvous, we shared a few smiles and sentence fragments, "Aren't we supposed to... ?" "Do you think we should... ?" then we collectively shrugged and bolted for the hill home. This just added to the sense of the event's relative quaintness. The glorious weather, beautiful trails, and relaxed atmosphere made for a sublime running experience, one that I am looking forward to repeating next year (and perhaps at one of the longer distances, if I can just figure out how to convince Graham that extending our training runs is a really cool idea.)

a very neat participants' perk: New Balance sandals with a map of the course embossed on the soles! My son's pair is the bigger one...

Solving my #firstworldproblems One Pair of Shoes at a Time

In the whole scheme of things, I'll admit this is so trivial as to be practically embarrassing, and the day will surely come when I pray this was the greatest of my concerns. But this ain't that day - I am chuffed beyond belief, and no doubt anyone who has ever loved the feel of a pair of running shoes will be able to relate. After months of (casual! honestly!) searching I had given up hope of ever finding, anywhere in N. America, a pair of Mizuno Wave Precision 12s to replace the now-worn-out work horses that coddled my feet through their first marathon. The official word was that they were discontinued in anticipation of the June 2012 release of the Precision 13s.

Fine. I had clearly missed the boat for replacement and was doomed to train for Mont Tremblant in some other footwear; still, I hadn't felt emptiness like that since I was seven years old, when my teacher - who I had a crush on - moved away and her replacement turned out to be an old guy with stinky breath and boogers up his nostrils. My "flow" had been interrupted, and I've spent the past five months staggering through my longer runs with a variety of old shoes, rotating through them on mere whims because, really, what did it matter any more, when my favourites had gone AWOL?

Then, as luck would have it, I casually explained my ennui to Patty (my new best friend in the world, who works at my favourite LRS) and her eyes lit up, What size did you say you need? I told her, she made a beeline for the shelves, and produced what could well have been the only new pair of Precision 12s on the continent. Their Mizuno rep had swapped a batch of odds and ends with the store to balance out inventory, and I came out a winner this time, proving we should never give up hope, even if the "facts" seem to suggest otherwise.

Scheduled for a two hour run tomorrow, and can already feel the miles floating past...