Day 4 for B and 3 for Kyle: Nose Hill Park

So Friday came and this was the last day that Robbie's parents would be in town. They left Saturday morning for their winter move down to Arizona, so I took the day off of work and we took advantage of the babysitting to have a run. My heel was feeling better and I thought I would see how it would go to run with it. Things didn't turn out quite how we expected things to go though.

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We got into our running gear, including our base layers as it was about 4 C outside and headed out. For those who don't live in Calgary, Nose Hill is a huge natural area in town. It's at the top of the river valley so you get some nice views. Standing in the middle of the park it's sometimes hard to believe that you're still in the city. Of course it is quite hilly, but we are no strangers to hills and thought this would be fun to do. We parked at one of the lots on the east and started running up the hill in our Vibrams.

View looking up Nose Hill

Robbie looking happy, but still a little chilled

My foot was feeling good and things were great. We stopped a couple times going up the hill due to my wife's asthma (she was on new medication and it wasn't at full strength yet).

B running up the hill.

 

Felt great to be running again. Plus I love hills.

Got to the top of the hill and enjoyed the view before we headed out on the trails.

Calgary

The trails on Nose hill we found out are either just trails beaten into the grass, or gravel pathways. The trails were fun to run on, but there were instances of rocks along the trails and of course we got the requisite number of rocks into specific area of our feet. For some reason I always get rocks in the middle of my right foot pad. Ouch

The trails along Nose Hill. Fun and pretty easy to run on.

We got about a mile into our run and then came upon the gravel pathway. Robbie and I decided to take off our shoes to see how it felt to run barefoot on this stuff. We probably got about 10 m before we decided that we weren't quite ready for gravel yet. Sensory overload and hurt a little too much so we didn't want to be stupid about it.

Gravel Pathway. We made it about 10 m.

And back on went the Vibrams. :)

Running along the gravel in our Vibrams felt great. It's amazing how much better the gravel feels in Vibrams and also how much better it feels now than 3 months ago for me. We did various form checks as we went. Cadence good, hips in, feet below us, and lift our feet. Light, smooth and easy. Well we tried all that at least. Wonder if we had the Video Analysis thing done how bad our forms would end up being. We were feeling pretty good at this point. My heel was a little sore, but no worse than before and Robbie had a slightly sore calf. No big deal at this point. Oh and we each had tender spots on our feet from the rocks. We were going at about a 9:30-10 minute mile pace and we decided to try going a little faster. Robbie wanted me to go my normal pace and she would keep up. So we started going about 8:15 minute mile and it was great. Robbie was amazed that she could go that fast and not feel like she was exerting herself that much more. Awesome! And that's when the pain really started. Robbie's calf decided it didn't want to run anymore. She got a really bad cramp and literally hopped on one foot to a stop.

Choking back bad words. Very frustrating.

It hurt to run, even hurt to walk. Frustrated and upset we started walking back to the van. Not a great way to end up a run. I was glad to at least have the time with Robbie, but I know Robbie was upset and felt like the day was wasted. Definitely not how we expected the run to go. Oh and by this point my left knee was a little sore too. even though my heel was feeling better my body was still compensating in how I ran so I must have put a little extra strain on my left knee.

We got home and iced it up. Couldn't drown our sorrows in chocolate and ice cream as we still want to be slim and trim. Robbie looked up her injury and found out that it was her Soleus muscle that was injured and it was due to us running up the hill without warming up first. We will not be doing that again. So now we are resting up and giving things more time before we run. And when we run next, it definitely will not be up and down strenuous hills with unpaved trails.