A Wet Weekend, and a Run

It has been a really strange and wet weekend, and I don't even know where to start. We were out of town for Owen's baseball tournament in Ancaster, but staying about a half-hours drive away (for some strange and inexplicable reason the coach chose this location) in Burlington. We arrived Friday afternoon, and I skipped my usual tempo run since my right calf still felt like someone had punched it repeatedly. I wasn't too optimistic about running at all during the weekend either.

We had a nice time Friday evening, with the kids of the team and many of the adults (including myself) swimming in the hotel pool and generally having fun just hanging out. We'd also gone out to dinner as a team and I had to stop the kids after they'd each consumed numerous packets of sugar and got really hyped up. Let's just say that getting mine to sleep was not easy.

We woke up the next morning for our first game and came outside to find that our car had become the personal toilet for what seemed like hundreds of birds, all of which had come down with some sort of intestinal ailment all at the same time:

Then we played our first game, and unfortunately due to one bad defensive inning by our guys we ended up losing. Here's a shot of the team in the dugout:



We then returned to the hotel since our second game was not to happen until 3pm (the first was at 9am). In the end it never happened at all since the skies opened up and it just rained and rained and rained. Again the kids and adults played in the hotel pool and such, with yours truly taking full advantage of the sauna and hot tub on account of the calf cramp. By the time the evening rolled around we were all totally tuckered out.

I decided to try and run this morning and woke up to find my calf was not feeling too tight. I also found my boys in this sleepy state:



I then headed off to revisit a familiar site: the spit of land that surrounds Hamilton Harbour that all racers taking part in the famous Around the Bay 30k have to cross. It was a beautiful day for running, but I found the going rather tough right from the start. It was going to be a battle, and I decided to just go nice and slow. Here's a picture I took from the drawbridge that's made of that corrugated iron stuff one can look through to the water below, with Hamilton off in the background: (when running across this thing back in March it was really slick on account of the rain, but today I just used the sidewalk.)



Then I snapped another one at the halfway point from the beach looking back towards Burlington from whence I had come:



In the end I ran a total of 21km in 2:06:29 for an average pace of 6:01/km (9:40/mile). It was really easy cardio wise, but my legs felt super tight and sluggish. I was just happy that my calf held up OK. Now it feels a bit tighter than I'd hoped it would, but I am not planning on running again until Wednesday. Entering the last nine weeks of marathon training I am really hoping that this calf is the only and last setback I will have to face.

Unfortunately for the kids, the entire tournament ended up being rained out and we headed home having only played one game. There is talk of a makeup day sometime in August though. At least the kids got to play together a lot and hopefully they bonded as a team.

Garmin don't lie.