Tie a red ribbon...

After my painful fall on the ice last week, I decided to be proactive and make sure it did not happen again. Actually, I was having a beer with a friend of mine who runs on the same trails, while we were at a fund raiser for another runner who has joined Team Diabetes to participate in Ironman Canada, and he said he was going to do this, so I just stole the idea.

So last Sunday, I took a whole bunch of bright red trail marking ribbons, and went down to the ice-infested trail, and carefully marked off all the icy patches, by tying the ribbon to trees. Used up some 28 pieces in total.

Today we had another inch of snow or so, about the same as when I fell, and this time was able to negotiate around the buried icy patches, by running in the weeds next to the path, or going very slowly in the centre of the path, and avoiding most of it. The ribbons do their job. Now with the snow and the weeds, I am not worrying much about my time, as it will be slower than in optimum conditions. So what? I am still running.

Today was a a glorious day; about -8 Celsius, not much wind, sun coming up, and I saw four deer, the most ever at one time. Two crossed the path just in front of me, and the other two were waiting off to the left for me to pass. I stopped and called to them, but they just stood there and refused to come over. "No, deer".

When I got home, the sore shoulder had healed enough to do all my core strengthening exercises, biceps curls, pushups etc. Wielding that green marker on my calendar was great. Tonight I sent off an email to my fellow blogger Lara, telling her to get her butt out there and run, if she is going to do the Flying Pig marathon next year.