The Calgary Quintuple.....a winter racing binge.

Today, I did five races, with five friends, for forty five bucks, in January.

It all started with my crazy friend, Jen, suggesting this silly idea a week ago.  "Heck yeah", I said!  And before I knew it Alan, Del, (the machine) and Joanna decided to join the insanity as well.


We began at Edworthy Park with the MEC 10 km hot chocolate run.  It was my first 10 km race since July 2008 and despite NO speed work, being sick all week, negative 10 degree temperatures, and my disdain for running in the city, I was quite chuffed with a 45:43 and 3rd place. Nothing close to my PB, but it was better than expected. I also surprised myself with how much I enjoyed running 10 km on the icy pavement.  I won back most of the entry fees for the entire day in MEC bucks and they served whipped cream on the hot chocolate, so the day started off well.

Next we headed up the hill to Tuscany for the Calgary Road Runners 8 km race in the 12-Mile Coulee.  It was a spectacular 2-loop course with plenty of hills and snowy gulleys and good times.  The second loop hurt, but the sun was out, it warmed up and I had a big smile on my face. There are a lot of very good people involved in the CRR and it was great to catch up with friends.  The soup and dessert are also a big hit with me. Thanks to Adam and Kim for putting on a great race.   

There wasn't many people in this "race"!

FINISHED!

From there, we kept driving west to Cochrane for the Winterfest 3 km, 5 km and 10 km races. We did all three, back-to-back. This was more of a fun run than a race, and with 18 fast kilometers already in our legs, our pace lacked its earlier bounce. I like to think of it as an 18 km cool-down.  It was a one kilometer loop around and across the rodeo grounds which included slogging through deep snow on the baseball diamond, up a very steep hill to the sidewalk, along a busy street, down a ridiculously icy access road, and finally dodging the hay ride tractor to finish the loop.  Eighteen times!  It helped that you could steal a great look at the mountains as the sun was setting each time around. 

And finally, we went bee-lined straight to the pub for the last event of the day......BEER!