Life: Puppy & Stuff

I would seem odd to mention our interest in getting a trailer for traveling in a post about Ursa, but it does have a connection.

Our major consideration is how do we travel with a large dog. A Kia Spectra5 isn't the biggest car in the world. So we thought about getting a car top carrier. I have a number of issues with this. Security and aerodymanic profile are my two big ones. I'm not sold on how you would keep things secured. Since we car camp we're pretty much stuck with reloading the car with a lot of our gear just to go somewhere other than the campsite. Any large enough to carry what we need would make the car significantly top heavy and high profile. This is on top of the relatively low cargo capacity of the axles when fully loaded. We'd likely still need space in the car, and then there's the matter of fitting Ursa in there too.

Thus, we come to the trailer option. While more expensive up front I think we do better for space and cargo capacity for the reduction in fuel efficiency. There is also the plus that the trailer we're considering is all aluminum construction. It will hold up pretty well over the long haul so long as we continue with vehicles that have a trailer hitch. We do need a trailer hitch for the car, but that is a relatively minor thing overall. A car top carrier may or may not work down the road, and, frankly, the construction is nothing by comparison to the trailer. I'm sure that Meg and Geoff could also get some use out of it too.

As for Ursa's arrival we have a tentative date of June 2 with departure on June 1. Exact times and cost are to be determined. This means we can hold off on a few final decisions (trailer, dog stuff) for another week. We will make the trip to Edmonton to volunteer at the Blackfoot Ultra without having to worry about Ursa. Our first official trip with Ursa will come in June when we go camping at Dinosaur Provincial Park.

Running: Back in the Groove

I've been trying to get this blog written all week. It's about time I actually finished it.

It's been a month and a half since I did my run analysis. I'm very happy to report that it is really paying off for me. The strength and form are doing well from what I can tell on my end. My running pace has improved significantly without an increase in perceived effort. My runs have gone from an average pace with walk breaks of around 11:30/mile to 10:00/mile. When I'm actually running it's closer to 9:00/mile. And the really cool part is that my hill running has greatly improved. I can sustain the uphill much longer and go much faster on the downhill.

Last weekend I finally got in a run around the Glenmore Reservoir. Half-way around it started to drizzle and snow, and it kept up until I finished 9.45 miles after 1hr 35min. It was too cold with the wet and wind to take walk breaks on the second half, so I just kept plugging away. I felt really good through most of the run after some early tummy complaints. At the end I was very happy with this run. I'll certainly go back for more since it's a lot more interesting than the trail along the river valley in my locale.

It will be a few more weeks before I venture across the river to run on the escarpment again. The snow and ice on the trail will take some time yet to melt enough to be safe to run on. Or I might just go anyway with my crampons again - I just don't want to be constantly switching them on/off.

The arrival of June will herald weekends in the mountains for training runs. I hope to be out there every couple weekends. I need to sit down with a trail book for a bit to figure out where I want to actually go.

One thing I'm going to try is less frequent runs, but higher mileage per run. This deviates from what most training regimes would recommend, but for me it's a matter of getting in my miles in a way that I can enjoy. Usually the first 45 to 60 minutes has never been the best part of a run, but once I get past that I feel much more relaxed and ready to put on the miles. So I'll try this for a few weeks to see how things work for me and my body. In between I'll continue the core and strength training.