Sunday, August 10, 2008

Try a Trail #2

Race Day News

From: http://trailrunmanitoba.com/

9 August 2008 - Wow, what a day it was. The sun was shining, the wind was calm and the mosquitoes were in the woods waiting. Then the start, and the one missed turn by the lead runners and off into the hinterlands everyone went. After some ferocious riding on the mountain bike, we managed to find everyone and get them turned around, but we have decided not to post results on this race but rather treat it as a 'Pancake Run'. I will e-mail results to everyone who took part this morning, but only you will know your distance ran. Thank you for all your kind words this morning. It was odd to go back and pull the course markings knowing that only three of you saw them in the right order today :-) (Dwayne Sandall, 9 August 2008)

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What a day to be out though. It was a pristine day in high summer on the prairie. Tyler and Trish came out. Tyler might have won the thing if we had run the course, but it wasn't to be.

I was properly sick on Monday and had a bit of a resurrection of whatever bug knocked me down last night so I wasn't particularly strong today anyway so it was fun to be light heart ed about the disastrous organization and enjoy the day. Gratitude is the attitude as some say.

T & T are out for dinner on Monday and I'm looking forward to feeding them. Half Pints issued their new Grewsome Scotch Ale today. I'd never been to the brewery before so I stopped to pick up some faves to share on Monday.

As Monty Python might have said, "It's a beer for lying down and avoiding" but that's not the case here, I just like saying that. Normally Scotch Ales are so much like drinking straight from the ketchup bottle that they hurt me. Half Pints issued this Grewsome Scotch Ale to celebrate two years in business in Winnipeg and the brew master focused his attention in a much more balanced brew than I was anticipating. Mind you, I've only had a sample from a tiny little plastic cup, so maybe I'll change my tune when I get a full mouthful of the stuff. No matter, I love this brewery and it's commitment to making big bold real ales, more akin to bread than what I grew up thinking of when the word beer comes up.

I'm not fussy though, I'll take that celebration in almost any format, but particularly with things that involve the senses like food and this brewery produces beer that qualifies as food I think. Michael Pollan might agree I expect.

I just finished his book In Defense of Food and enjoyed it quite a bit. I grew up with a lot of real food and both PU and I enjoy cooking. I think I'll make up some fresh pasta for Monday night. Yum! I finally figured out, or I should say that Boo figured out that I hadn't been cooking it quite enough and now it's so much better. The down side of this discovery is that the window of opportunity to get it cooked perfectly is tiny. In the time it takes to serve it I find it can get too soft. I'm loving the new challenges much better than the old ones in this particular game much more though.

Tonight we were out to friends that were camping in St. Malo. PU teaches in the school that Niki is working as a TA. They have become very close friends over the last few years and I find their simple pleasures in life predictable and consistent enough that I can relax and enjoy being social. I'm normally so hyper aware of group dynamics that it nearly kills me to be out having "fun" like that. We laughed a lot and their kids are young and unsophisticated while being brilliant intellectually. We ate, we drank and we laughed a lot. Niki's parents were there and although her dad is slowed up with a stroke it was a pleasure to have their humour and culture to stir the pot well. It's high summer and today was rich in many things.

I spent the afternoon attending to vehicle maintenance. I was crabby as a billy goat while I was at it, but soon figured I was short of calories and went off to get Niki to feed me and all was well again. I suppose I'll never learn how to cover all the bases and that's probably a good thing anyway.

I set up a new fish tank upstairs. It's a 100 liter narrow tall display tank which is new for me. I've always kept lab style tanks previously. To get the biology going and settled as quickly as possible I released about 300 guppies of various sizes into the almost virgin water and a week later the job is almost complete. The babies were obviously lacking some cover because I have a lot less of them now than I did when I first put them all in there. I picked up a heater for the smaller tank and I'll cull out the best of the guppies and keep them breeding for feeders when I move the others to the 100 liter tank. I haven't finished the landscaping, but Boo brought home some wonderful rocks she had found while she was breaching a beaver dam last week. Beavers are amazing, but I suppose anything in the natural world is if you look closely enough to appreciate it. If all goes well I should be the owner of a 6' boa next weekend. The price was right as my Dad would say. From all reports, this snake is a peach. More will be revealed, no doubt.

As part of the race kit today there was a new Canadian adventure racing magazine. The story that brought our evolution to my mind was one of a fellow racing the West Coast Trail and the Juan de Fuca trails, along with the bit of highway that separates them, back to back in under 24 hours.

Pam came out this week for dinner again. She's gearing up for her little sell the farm travel the world for a year adventure. The latest addition is an experiment with a tiny little computer called an eeepc surf running a Linux distribution (Xandros). What a gal! She was excited to know I was a Linux enthusiast and that lead to some wireless questions that I think we've solved already and I haven't even had the pleasure of playing with the darn thing yet. Go Pam!

Running is going really well. I've been so careful to allow plenty of time to adapt even the slowest body systems and it's paying off. This summer I have been able to sustain 20 mile weeks without much trouble. Go me!

OK, sleep now. My gut is still boiling. I'm amazed I had any run time today at all that didn't end up with a fast dash off the trail and and emergency deposit. Life could be worse.
One of many

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