The New Year!

Well, I tried various novel methods of dealing with bad knees and although they were all exciting and a lot of fun, I thought I'd give denial another stab.  Like that sentence...  Stabbing denial!

Lee Anne and I spent a couple of nights up north (Orillia and Deerhurst) and I thought, 2 days with no trees to cut down, wood to chop, snow to shovel, etc., so let's try running 3 out of 4 days.  To be concise, it worked.  Lots of knee pain, but I was able to run for 50 - 60 minutes for 2 consecutive days, then 2 hours after a day off.

Today's run was fun fun fun; the trails still had 4 inches of slush and it was teeming rain for about half of the 2 hour run.  With temperatures at 4C at Mad river level and 2C on top of the Niagara escarpment, walking for long stretches was curtailed (part of my plan, once I realized running outside was bending normal) and I experienced very few hot flashes...

Well, welcome to the new year!  Here is a very brief review of 2011:

Good:  Still learning the intricacies of being a race director, but starting to see patterns and can now apply more time to inspiring and topical race details.

The CVC went smoothly (I'm going to ignore Wanda's near-death experience...) and more people now hate the race with an irrational passion.  Thanks to Sharon Z., who came up with a cute slogan for the race (I believe it was sourced from a US race):  "We are not happy until you are not happy".  I am hoping to obtain IAU bronze certification, which (thanks Lisa) actually helps the national ultra team to obtain support from the Canadian government.  If you have not run the race yet, there are actually only 4 hills, so come on by!  If you have run the race, please review the definition of a hill on the www.OUSER.org race page...

Also good:  I was able to complete all non-ultra races.

Bad:  I DNF'd my only attempt at an ultra distance (Run for the Toad 50K), so 2011 will go down in infamy as the first year since I started running ultras where I did not!

I have now come to terms with not running an ultra in 2011 and I hope to run one in 2012.  The only cloud on the horizon is an appointment with a sports doctor on January 23, 2012 to check out my good knee.  See  prior blog entry as to why I call it my good knee.

And so, 2011 is in the bag and 2012 is filled with promise and high expectations!  I will wait until after my appointment before posting my 2012 race wish list.

Dig Deep!