A return trip to Jericho Beach – By Aly Howisey

The weddings are wrapping up, the babies have been popped and Maria and TD are ENGAGED.  Change is in the air so I reached back deep into my closet through the cobwebs and pulled out the shoe box full of flats, spikes, extra spikes, more cobwebs.  A year of training and here we are again with diminishing daylight, crunchy leaves, and mud..lots of mud.  Much of the year is solo race planning but Fall – Fall is team, capped off with a trip to San Francisco for Nationals.

AK, Maria and I headed to Jericho Beach to kick off the season with the Vancouver Spirit Run this past weekend.  A year ago we were here for Canadian Nationals in too little clothing and a too long 8k.  The ice chunks and shoe sucking mud sent us home shivering with nightmares of Celsius to Fahrenheit miscalculations and hypothermia.  Sunday presented a 6k race, 3 laps in the opposite direction of the Nationals course.  We previewed it in our warm up and 30 minutes later the gun went off.  We hit the tangents, even if it meant getting whipped in the face by branches, we battled the fierce wind that nearly blew us over along the shoreline in the unprotected open, we chugged up the steep gravel hill and we cruised down through the grass and roots to the finish.  Maria ran away with the win and her blue check blended into the blue background of English Bay.  AK posted a huge PR with a negative split and placed 5th.  And me?  I laid a consistent foundation for the rest of the season, ran smart and did exactly what I intended for 6th place.  And my fingers didn’t fall off and I could feel my face so I was beyond thrilled.

We sped off to a local bar called Local to catch the second half of the Hawks game, feast on the food, and analyze analyze with TD.  You know it’s early season when you can still wear the flats and you’re coughing up rust in the first lap. You especially know it’s early season when you see TD’s photos and beg him to Photoshop.  You know you’re at Jericho Beach when there’s extreme cold, extreme mud or extreme wind.  And you know XC is here when you get to toe the start line with friends like these.  If you’re like me, you know there’s no better time of year.

Happy training and racing.  Love, Aly