Someone New...5kms...and...WINTERLUDE!

The frozen canal, with the parliament buildings in the distance.

Joy here...Last year at this time, The Man and I decided that we needed some extra help to both survive the winter and to get (keep?) our fitness on track, and so we started weekly sessions with a strength trainer, which I wrote about on this blog under the heading "Something New."  Well, this week our regular trainer (The Trainer, who has featured on this blog in many different posts and who is now a good friend), was at the doctor's so my "Something New" training session was rather a "Someone New" training session.  The Man is sick, and so he stayed at home, curled up under the covers on the couch, while I got myself out the door on Thursday afternoon (after a Thursday morning 1 hour spin class where we did an endurance ride).  I went over to the gym to meet up with our "Someone New," substitute trainer (who also happens to be our neighbour; yes, despite having around 1million inhabitants, Ottawa is still very small-townish in many ways).  Having me all to herself meant that she was able to focus all her attention on me, and she gave me one heck of a workout!  We did max reps for all the activities - so instead of doing two sets of repeats, I just lifted weights and did body weight movements and lunges until I couldn't do them any more.  And between each of these max rep sets, I then had to jump rope for 1 minute.  Let me tell you, my shoulders and arms were literally shaking after all this.

Some of the Winterlude ice sculptures.

The next day was scheduled as a run day, so with my thighs killing me in the aftermath of my "Someone New" workout, I got all ready and headed out the door.

Now Friday is also the official start of Ottawa's annual winter festival, Winterlude.  One thing I can say about this city, is that while the winter drives me nuts and makes me want to run away for good, the city itself puts on a pretty good winter show.  People really get into winter here, and there's lots that is done to make winter fun.  One of the key things is the opening and maintenance of the canal as a skate way.  People actually commute to work on ice skates down the canal!  And for two weeks in February each year, the city buffs up its ice, piles up its snow, and hauls out its treats to put on a great show of winter spirt and fun - Winterlude.

I had plans to meet up with a friend of mine, the friend who is battling breast cancer right now and for whom I ran the Run for the Cure in honour of back in October, and so I figured that my run would be shorter than I had originally planned, because I didn't want to be late (and my aching muscles from Thursday's double workout were thanking me for that decision to cut things a little short anyway).

So I ran a shorter loop along the canal, huffing and puffing as I went, keeping my eye on my watch so that I wouldn't be late, and then I met up with my amazing friend (whose hair is growing back after 4 rounds of chemo), and we headed out into the winter evening to celebrate the start of Winterlude, and also just to enjoy being friends, enjoy where we live, enjoy winter, and celebrate being silly girls out there on a Friday night under the snowy skies and the bright stars.

And that, my friends, is worth shortening a run for any day!

The musical fireworks!

Friday's truncated run sats are:
Ran for 28:40:49 for a distance of 5kms with an average pace of 5:44min/km.

Over and out,
Joy