Random bits and pieces for the week so far

On Sunday the family all went out to Bolero, a Brazilian churascurria here in town. $35 gets you a parade of seemingly endless young men past your table carrying swords with big hunks of meat on it (although they do have some grilled pineapple that comes by from time to time as well). It is good times! On Monday we all got together at my brother's to celebrate Avery's actual birthday with some good Hungarian food. Truthfully I'm not sure if I'm eating to get ready for my marathon or if I'm preparing for hibernation.

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Apparently NBC didn't broadcast the men's triathlon, but CBC up in Canada did and my family was nice enough to let me watch the event after dinner on Monday. I have to say...what a race! If you want to see the highlights go here, then flick through the list of clips to page 10 of 30 to watch it. The commentator was interesting. He kept exclaiming that he didn't like how Simon Whitfield looked, how he was going to be the first to drop off of the pack in the run. He was kind of negative... Two of my favourite lines from the night included:

1. "They look like cyclists just going out for a run..." (commenting on how the two lead guys off of the bike didn't have very good running form)
2. "These two guys are going to be cannon fodder in about another two and a half to three minutes." (once the next 40 men or so ran out of T2)

Congratulations to Simon Whitfield on his silver medal and a fantastic performance from his teammate Colin Jenkins. My brother and I were jumping up and down, yelling at the TV and cheering Simon on across the finish line. It was thrilling!

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I got in 1500m at the pool yesterday morning. I was on deck at about 5:45 and the place was busy! All three roped lanes had 2 people in each lane already, plus the unroped area had 3 folks swimming up and down as well. No one in the unroped area wanted to share swimming space. Am I missing something on pool etiquette? Do you not swim circles if the lane is not roped off? I managed to carve out a bit of space and swam some really good strong laps. Last night was a cardio intensive night at boot camp and we lucked out with some slightly less warm temperatures and some cloud cover. There was a fair bit of running involved and I tried out a heart rate monitor for the first time. I asked my mom if we could swap Garmins (since she had the 305 and I had the 205 but she wasn't using the heart rate monitor). I'm interested to see if I learn anything from tracking my heart rate. I won't wear it during the marathon though since I think I may need to tweak the fit a bit more. It was pressing against my breast bone and is kind of sore in the area now and I really don't need that to happen for 26.2 miles on Sunday. I thought about running this morning as well, but at the end of the day I decided to sleep in, all in the name of the taper. Tonight I'm taking my mom to Corteo so it will be a full on rest day!