T Rex, revisited, not by choice

I heard something great on the radio today as I was driving home from Red Deer. "Alberta for Newfies is like a litter box for cats. You go there to do what you've got to do, then go home." I laughed. Alberta, Calgary in particular has been home for nearly 30 years. This particular house has been home for almost that long. Clearly I don't think of it as a litter box. Yet I want to bury today's workouts in the litter box and forget them.

First I suppose I should talk about why they go in the litter box. The swim first. 2 K, 40 minutes. Almost from the very first strokes I knew it was going to be slow. It was like wearing a parachute. Several parachutes. I could not get the feel of the water at all. My catch sucked. My kick was feeble, except for a few laps in the middle. My elbows were mostly up, and my chest mostly down. I think. I hope. I shudder to think how slow I'd have been if I didn't have that much right. Picture T Rex trying to swim in the tar pit. Did another 30 minutes of deep water core.

Drove to Red Deer to pick up a wine kit. Highway 2 in the winter is interesting. This is a 2 or 3 lane highway running from Calgary to Edmonton. The speed limit is 110 Kph (68 mph), and most people set the cruise at 123 or 124 Kph (76 mph) during the summer. They get passed a lot. You'd think winter would be different, but it isn't, much. It's not like there aren't reminders. Today, I saw 4 cars that had just been driven into the ditch. You could still see the swerve marks on lanes where they lost it. One guy was backwards into the centre median in about 3 feet of snow. That van had just passed me a minute before, and I could see the sweat on the guys face. In addition, every few hundred metres there was a set of tracks heading into the ditch with varying degrees of sideways, and you could see where they had driven or been towed out. One set of tracks looked like the car rolled. These are of varying freshness, but still clearly visible. Today it was light snow, and slippery enough that my traction control came on a couple times. I spent most of the trip at or a little below 100 Kph, getting passed a lot. Including during a snow flurry with crap visibility. During one trip a few years ago, I counted more than 100 vehicles in the ditch in a 300 K stretch. About half SUV's and big 4x4 pickups, about a quarter regular pickups, and a quarter cars.

My old running form (T Rex in the tar pit) visited today. I hope it's just a visit. My tummy and chest were bouncing all over the place, and I was beginning to regret lunch, even though it was nearly 2 hours before. It took about 15 minutes to find a smooth pace, and that only lasted for 5 minutes. Then I felt my left leg beginning to cramp up, hams and calves, and shut'er down for the day. Walked another 20 minutes home. My hip feels fine, but I had no strength in my legs. No running form.

Gets out the shovel to start digging in the kitty litter.