I am Falling way behind in Minneapolis

I'm falling behind. I'm behind in my travel/work schedule and I'm way behind in my running schedule. In point of fact, I haven't even set up a marathon training schedule, yet. I am having some mental block about doing so until my marathon of motorcycle riding is over. Because of my fear of getting injured again, and the increased likelihood of that happening when doing a shortened training schedule, I am planning a two- or three-runs-per-week schedule, max. My Wednesday runs really have been working out well (when I'm actually in town), and my weekends should have enough time to put in the really long runs. My theory is that while I won't be building speed, I will be building endurance - and giving my body plenty of rest in between runs.

I'm doing my therapy right now in another crappy motel room in another crappy town. I just finished two miles of run. It's 78 degrees outside, not too bad, but with a humidity of 75%. This is right at the edge of my ability to endure while running and I just felt like I had no energy. So I ran a whopping two miles, though they were nice and continuous, with short rests only at traffic lights. Actually, if I hadn't put in 650 miles yesterday, I'd probably have had the energy to go longer and certainly hope to Wednesday morning.

OK, let me back up a bit and say that I got into Minneapolis last night about 7 p.m. after a shade over 2500 miles in four and a half days. Not easy to do, especially this time of year with the bugs, heat, and humidity prevalent in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.



After scouting for a UPS store (I'm going to ship my camping gear home today), I got food, watched the new Harry Potter movie, started working on my write-up about this whole trip, and fell asleep about 3 a.m. I didn't wake up 'til 11 and then only because housekeeping was calling about whether I wanted service for my room. I never heard my watch go off, though I know it did at 9. I am using today as a rest day because for the next two days, I'll be teaching at Walker Art Center here in Minneapolis and I need to be in top form.

To wrap up the story of these last few days: I got out of Whitehorse finally at 1:30 on Wednesday and put in nearly 500 miles to get to Liard Hotsprings Provincial Park. They have a fantastic natural hotsprings there, I highly recommend going if you ever get the chance. Unfortunately, as a camping experience, it wasn't great: lots of mosquitos, loudly-snoring campers, and rain in the morning. Due to the snorers, I was up just as it began raining and went back to the hotsprings and had it all to myself from about 5:30 to 6 a.m. So I went skinny-dipping. :)

The next night was spent in Dawson Creek, then Friday night in Lloydminister, SK. This town is actually split down the middle by the BC/SK border, marked by huge orange pylons that can probably be seen from space. I did a lot of miles Saturday (now that the route was flat and boring), and reached Winnipeg. The border crossing into the US yesterday took almost an hour; all but two minutes of that spent waiting in the 90-degree heat in the sun.

Frankly, I am getting tired and cranky. Hopefully, these two days of teaching will reset my biker-switch and I'll be able to press on toward the Long Reach Long Riders ride. To be perfectly honest, that ride needs to be fantastic, or else my group riding days are permanently over, charity or no.

By the way, I just found out about the Google Transit feature, for planning mass transit trips in major cities. New York isn't in there yet, but this looks like it's in the building phase.