Back in training!

I did it!  Two weeks ago, I signed up for the MOMAR, which stands for Mind Over Mountain Adventure Race: a 50 km off-road race which includes sea-kayaking, mountain biking, and navigational trail running.  So, I’m back in training.

I wrote in a recent post how I am actually in really good shape right now, in spite of not having done any deliberate “exercise” or “training” for about three months (and very little in the last year, even), all because of my active lifestyle: growing and gathering my own food, and getting around by bike.  Well, now that I have plunged back into “training”, I am truly amazed at how keeping active really has kept my fitness up.

I’ve done a few swims, both in the pool in Port Alberni, and in Sproat Lake (outside of Port Alberni) and Kennedy Lake (outside of Tofino – where I got swimmer’s itch!).  If my arms were strong before – well, they are even stronger now!

I’ve done a few short trail runs, too, but am saving myself for next week, when I will accompany Canadian adventure racing phenom Jen Segger for most of a day on the first part of her West Coast Trail run – just one section of her 750 km non-stop expedition running and biking the length of Vancouver Island.  (I am hoping that my “fresh” pace will be fast enough to stick with Jen’s “haven’t-slept-for-48-hrs-and still-have-200km-to-go” pace).  Look for more info about Vancouver Island Quest here at the end of this month.

And the bike commuting definitely does a lot for my all-round fitness – even though the distances I commute are short (usually no more than 4-5 km per trip), the fact that I am on and off my bike all day, most days, makes a huge difference.  I couldn’t believe it at first – but last year, when my training partner Jeannie convinced me to get a road bike and start actual cycle-training, we were both shocked to find out that I was faster than her on the bike!  Even though she is way faster than me in both running and swimming.  She and I did our first long ride together this week – an 82 km trip from Ucluelet to Tofino and back, a lovely thing to do on a summer day (in spite of the crazy RVs on the road).

And tomorrow, I am riding my bike another 82 km, from Port Alberni to Nanaimo, to…  buy my first car!  I am both excited and nervous about this major development in my life.    Now that I am a book distributor (my First Nations book is self-distributed) I cannot do that by bike – and it is not so easy to cart boxes of books around when hitching rides or even travelling by bus, either.  So, at age 45, it seems time to finally take this step (buying an old Honda Civic from a friend…I don’t actually even know what year it is).

I just hope that now, with a car sitting in my driveway, I will continue to live what I believe, and keep travelling by bike as much as possible – rather than succumb to convenience.  And I also hope that I won’t get fat!

OK, I have digressed from my original thread…  writing about adventure racing.  I’ll write more about the MOMAR (which is for individuals as well as for teams of 2 or 4 and takes place this Sept. 26th in Cumberland, Vancouver Island) and about the amazing sport of adventure racing, in future posts.  When I do, I’ll link to them here.