Sunday Grinding

August 20, 2012

Sunday Grinding

I took this picture more for the scenic mountain view than the tourists watching the lumberjack show

Hello everyone, how are you doing?

Mondays are usually known as being a weekly grind but I decided to be extra hardcore yesterday and make my Sunday, the biblical day of rest, into a literal grind. While I consider myself to be a fitness aficionado, the Grouse Grind Trail has never been my favorite way to sweat it out. I know exercising with an incline is good for you but I usually like to keep it at maximum grade 4 while running at speed 10-ish on a treadmill. Not walk up extremely steep steps hewn out of rock and tree roots for almost an hour. I never take photos of the way up because I'm much too occupied with putting one foot above the other to make the next step. Also, I try to avoid stopping or I will want to stop forever.

For those who don't know much about the Grouse Grind Trail, it is located in North Vancouver, B.C., at the base of the Grouse Mountain Resort ski area. It is begins at the 300-metre-elevation and climbs to 1,100 metres over a distance of approximately 2.9 kilometres. I can tell you that those mere 2.9 km feel more like 10+ km!! It opens at 6:15am and closes 7pm. I have heard of crazies who have climbed it multiple times in one day, including a dude who climbed it 10 times in one day for a charity. I also know many people who have season passes and go at least once a week. Insanity, I say.

The few positive things I can really say about my hike yesterday was than I blasted my old time of 53 minutes from last year and made it into a decent 48 minutes and 40 seconds. Also, I beat my 15 year old competitor E.T. who beat me by 2 or 3 minutes last summer! Muahahaha. This might have been because there were less people on the trail and the weather was overcast and cool, which made heat exhaustion much less imminent. Last summer, I nearly died of heat stroke but luckily was saved by my boyfriend, who miraculously managed to catch up with me and hand me his Gatorade right before I passed out!

Since I saw that my fit friends have made times of 46 minutes up the grind, my next goal is to make it up 45 minutes next year. Since your Sun Run 10km time is supposed to match your grind time, I think if I had stayed in that kind of shape I could have made it!

My stretching companions

The red flag was a makeshift fly-swatter; flies are crazy up there! :(

FLIES in my face!!

Kung Fu Grizzly

Is it me or are 85% of outdoorsy jobs in the Vancouver/Whistler occupied by Aussies? Two of the lumberjack show performers were Australian and I remember that there are a ton of Aussies at Whistler! Interesting.