April 15 – 3 days to go, packed up and off to airport

April 15: Scheduled – 4km at marathon pace, despite other experts who recommend easy pace at least 1 minute slower than target pace.

Actual – took 2km to get loose, ran 4.2km (2.6 miles) in 19min30sec.

As I said in some semi-lucid rambling several weeks ago in one of my blogs, training for a spring marathon in Calgary, which means training during a Canadian winter, is not the easiest path. Quite frankly, it sucks! After running into several elite runners from Newfoundland once in Boston, I of course realized that perhaps it’s what bonds us as Canadians, bad weather; and as they said, training in absolute crap conditions during the winter was good training psychologically and will make a New England spring day seem glorious!

However, heading out the door this morning into the fairly fresh -5C air and dancing (ok, more like manoeuvring stiffly) over frozen slush piles and patches of ice, I sensed I had a slight grin on my face as I knew that it was going to be less than half an hour and the last ‘snow-run’ until at least next winter...possibly July. Off down the park path, fortunately clear of snow and ice, a brilliantly quick jack rabbit flashed in front of me. The size of a small dog, I’m pretty sure it was a jack rabbit that they modelled the Easter bunny after. He certainly looked like he could carry a basket of treats on his back! Oh to have that kind of speed, then again, the parable of the tortoise and hare seems appropriate heading into a marathon.

The 4km seemed very comfortable at 4min 40sec pace, at least after the first 2km to warm-up and loosen up the cranky old ankle and right Achilles. All good, especially when you consider that the 4km is the same distance that the Titanic rests beneath the North Atlantic waves, a long, long ways down to the bottom. (99 years since the Titantic sank on April 15, 1912, just in case you were wondering about reference.) Quick shower; finish packing-up; drive out to YYC (Calgary airport); bumped from Montreal (YUL) direct flight so routed through Toronto (YYZ); arrived at hotel in Montreal at 20h30; dinner at 9h30pm; emails; and hit pillow after midnight after setting alarm for 04h15. Seems the toughest part of my life is still simply getting there. Saturday would prove to another exhilarating but exhausting day!