Saturday

On Saturday I was up at 6:30.  I vacuumed the bedroom, dusted the furniture and started in on laundry.  Then I packaged up my empty beverage containers and put them in the car.  After gathering my swim gear it was time to go.  First a stop in at the bottle depot to drop off the empties and get my $17.55 refund.  Then on to the pool for an 1800 m pull/paddle workout.  Out of the pool, shower, change and grab a quick lunch at Good Earth.  From there on to Costco.  Yes, I braved Costco on a Saturday afternoon.  After buying more salmon, asparagus, zucchini and red peppers than one girl would know what to do with it was time to head home.  In order to make room for the Costco groceries I had to clean out the fridge, then run off to the gas station to exchange my propane cylinder for the BBQ.  All before 5 pm.

Gee, with all this time to get stuff done do you think I might be tapering?

:)

Swim/Bike/Run Thoughts for the Week

Swim:

I have not been a good little swimmer for most of June.  I didn’t realize it, but I’ve been averaging one trip to the pool a week this month.  Except for this week!  I got in all three of my swims this week – 2800 m on Wednesday, 3500 m on Friday and another 1800 m on Saturday.  The 3500 m swim was great.  I swam consistently the whole way through.  There were no drills, no pull, no paddles, no kick.  Just swim.  Surprisingly I wasn’t bored, but that may have been because I had to pee so badly I was concentrating more on making sure my bladder didn’t burst!

For Saturday’s swim I got there and the only lane with no one in it was the fast lane.  OK, well I’m not fast, but I decided to go for it anyway.  As the swim went on floaters would come in and jump into the medium speed lanes, then hang out and chat at the edge of the pool.  I guess you don’t have to be fast, but if you show up with a lot of pool toys you look serious!  Unless of course someone who is actually fast shows up…

Bike:

On Thursday I had a two hour ride to take care of.  The weather has been so crazy here in the evenings – warm and sunny during the day, showers and thunderstorms in the evening.  I was really hoping I’d be able to make it for two hours without the weather turning.  In addition some of the team was getting together for a time trial workout later in the evening.  Kelly also volunteered to keep me company for part of my ride.  I did a quick loop through Bearspaw, met up with Kelly and did another quick loop before meeting up with Angie and the team.  Their plan was to ride a time trial out 1A from the edge of Calgary to Cochrane, then coming back along some quieter country roads.  Most of the team was still warming up.  I wanted to do the route, but not the time trial, so we took off ahead of the team and vowed to try and stay ahead of them the entire time.  The winds were getting crazy!!!  We had one heck of a headwind out along 1A so I don’t know how the time trial went for everyone else out there.  If I had pedaled as hard as I could and if I had pedaled any slower I would have been going backwards!  Once we turned off of 1A we got to feel those winds as a crosswind.  Wow, I’ve never had my bike blown around so much before and it was a little scary!  We turned another corner and now we had a tail wind and just booked it!  That was fun.  Luckily I made my 2 hour ride in before the heavens opened up.

Run:

This has been a bit of a cutback week for running in anticipation of the Great White North half Iron distance triathlon next weekend.  Short with lots of intensity.  Half marathon pace intervals on Wednesday, and 1 minute hard intervals on Friday.  My calves were super tight after the Wednesday intervals and the fire drill, but luckily they felt good while running.  The 1 minute intervals went fairly well but my stomach was really acting up.  I made it through the intervals but by the time I made it to the cool down I had to walk as my stomach just couldn’t handle running.  Wow, what is up with my digestive system??  I’m hoping I can really figure this out…

Three Things Thursday

1. Why is it that when you lean forward on your bike to drink from your aero bottle that it is the perfect position for all of the snot to promptly run out of your nose?  Lets just say that I’m getting good at the farmer blow (aka snot rocket)…
2. The weather in Calgary has been conspiring against us lately.  It will be beautiful in the day, with thunderstorms rolling in just as it is time to leave work.  Fingers crossed for some nice weather this afternoon as I have a two hour ride.
3. Yesterday I ran some half marathon pace intervals over lunch.  My legs were zonked and it was so hard to hold pace.  After I was done running I was waiting at an intersection to cross and I actually had to sit down on a nearby ledge it was that hard to stand up.  Then jump to 2:00 pm where we had a fire drill at work.  And I work on the 30th floor.  If my legs weren’t unhappy before that, they sure were unhappy after that.  Very tight calves today!

Recovery? Ride

After the Chinook Olympic race on Saturday it was time to keep rolling on the road to Ironman.  That meant that a recovery ride was on the schedule!  How about a nice, easy 4 hour ride?  We rode out Highway 8 to Bragg Creek, then out towards Elbow Falls, aiming for a 100K ride.  My legs were feeling great!  Had I really raced the day before?  The last time I rode this route my legs were yelling at me on every uphill, this time I barely noticed those uphills.  Perhaps part of the reason for that was the great tail wind we had on the uphill out of town?

For this ride I carried my Infinit bike formula plus I also carried some sandwich wraps.  Kelly has turned me on to this concept – sandwich meat (turkey, ham), some cheddar cheese, all rolled in a corn tortilla.  We stopped in Bragg Creek an hour in and I had my sandwich.  We also ran into Angie out there so I was able to chat with her a bit about my race quickly.

The ride out to Elbow Falls was busy.  It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon so there were plenty of drivers on the road.  After we turned around the road got even busier with massive RVs as they vacated the campgrounds.  Some of them were so large and there were some crazy drafts off of them as they blew past us.

We also managed to see some great sights along the way – a deer and a group of wild horses including two foals!  Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me though.  At first I thought they were horses that had gotten loose and were crossing the highway, but the girls later confirmed that they were wild.

The head wind on the way back was wicked…  I was really tightening up between my shoulder blades.  I had to stop and stretch it out, but otherwise the ride went well.  Thanks to the wind our 100K ride was a bit short of the 4 hour goal, but we called it good for the day.

After the race I started noticing that I had some painful spots on my neck that were turning really red.  Check this one out: Wetsuit bite from Saturday’s race?

Chinook Olympic Triathlon – Race Report

So if you read the prelude to my race report for the Chinook Olympic Triathlon you may be discovering what the word of the day is: crap!!!!  So without further ado, let’s talk about the race!

The Swim: 1500 m

We crossed the timing mats and stood on the beach, waiting for go time.  I seeded myself about 3/4 of the way back, just behind some men.  9:15 came and it was time to go!I took a few steps into the water, then started swimming right away.  For all my worries about the cold water, race adrenalin is a pretty amazing thing.  I didn’t feel cold.  I was able to put my face in the water and breathe normally.  I tried to stay within a pack, swimming and popping my head up every once in awhile to sight.  We were swimming to yellow buoys, but there were some further out orange buoys from the half Iron distance swim.  The yellow buoys were a bit smaller and I was having trouble seeing them.  We were swimming in a triangle, two laps of 750 meters.  As I rounded the second buoy heading back to the shore I realized I was right next to my friend Tara.  She moved in front of me and I decided to just slip in behind her and hang on to her feet.  All of a sudden I was back at the shore.  I ran out on to the beach, around the buoy and got in for lap number two.  Let’s get this done!  I was amazed that I was still within a pack of people on the second lap.  I tried to hang on to feet.  On the final lap I realized I’d better hurry up and pee on the swim so I worked hard on that.  Peeing on the swim is important to me, especially in Ironman!  It is free pee time, right? :)

Anyhow, all of a sudden, the swim was over.  I was close to the shore and people were standing up around me and walking in from there.  I waited until I could grab sand in both handfuls.  I stood up, grabbed the neck of my wetsuit as I stood up to let water in and tried to start getting that wetsuit unzipped.  Over the timing mats.  All done with part one!

1500 meter swim: 36:17 (172 out of 247)

Transition:

I tried to get my arms out of my wetsuit and have it around my waist before I got to the wetsuit strippers.  All the strippers were busy though and myself and a lady got to a guy to strip at the same time.  She hadn’t unzipped at all and he started helping her right away.  Argh!  So I just pulled off the wetsuit down to my ankles, sat down and someone came over to pull the suit off.  Let’s go!I ran down the pathway and into transition, put the bike gear on and got ready to ride!

The Bike: 40 km

It was crowded coming out of transition and the adrenalin was pumping.  I really wanted to have a great ride.  The traffic was really heavy as we turned on to Highway 22X.  The drivers didn’t really have a clue what was going on and I almost had to come to a stop as I was trying to merge on to the shoulder and a driver was trying to merge on to 22X.  The ride is a fairly rolly out and back.  I played leap frog with a few people, passed a few people and a few people passed me.  It was a slight uphill on the way out so I really wanted to push it on the slight downhill back.

I decided to try something different on the ride given that this was an Olympic distance race.  I recently made up a new formula of Infinit for my long training runs.  It doesn’t have any protein in it and I decided to drink my calories instead of go for water and gels.  200 calories on the bike, just like at Oliver.

All that pushing it and I was back to transition.

40K bike: 1:14:24
40K bike + transitions: 1:18:48 (84 out of 247)

Transition:

I made it to the mount line, got off my bike and ran the bike into transition.  I flubbed a bit trying to push the bike by the seat, the front wheel whipped off to the side and I almost tripped over my bike.  Oops!  I racked my bike, changed out shoes, grabbed my hat, fuel belt, Garmin and booted it out of there.

Run: 10K

I decided I wanted to try something different, I was going to run with a fuel belt.  I wanted to know how it felt in case I wanted to use one at Great White North or at Ironman.  They were also serving Heed on the race course, of which I’m not a fan, so I decided to run with Infinit instead.  I struggled to put the fuel belt on, turn my race number around and I hadn’t even put my Garmin on yet.As I tried to move the race number around it came off.  Crap!!  Two races in a row with race number issues.   I folded the number up and put it in my back pocket.  As I put my Garmin on I looked down.  What on earth?  I had it set in “Other” sport mode from my open water swim on Thursday and I had forgotten to set it back to “Run” mode.  Crap!  I wouldn’t know my average pace for the entire run, but oh well…

I also discovered as I forged on was that my legs were dead.  Hmm, maybe I had biked too hard?  I slowed it down hoping that my legs would come around, but the feeling never changed.

My nervous stomach from earlier in the morning also reared its ugly head.  Ugh.  Stomach problems, seriously?  Crap!!  It was one slow 10K run.  There would be no sub-1 hour run today.  Thank goodness for the finish line.  Someone yelled at me that there was a girl right on my heels so I managed to find a second gear to hold her off.  Good thing too, as she was in my age group!10K run: 1:04:14 (207 out of 247) sigh….

Final results: 2:59:18 (happy to squeak in under 3 hours)
Overall: 158 out of 247
Women 30-39: 21 out of 31

Lessons Learned:

• I hate running with a fuel belt.  If I could have ditched it and gone back to pick it up later I would have.  It bounced around and it just drove me nuts.
• Stomach problems…again?  Ugh…  There are a few possible culprits.  My heart rate was really high on the bike – like run rate high.  Did my stomach shut down thanks to that?  My stomach was already having issues long before the race, before I ate breakfast…  And then I remembered the carbo load and the meat lasagne I ate.  Ugh oh….beef and I are not good friends when I eat it the night before a race.  Sigh…  Who knows, maybe it was a combination of many factors?
• More important than bike splits and run splits are bike + run splits.  Going hard on the bike can wreck a run…
• SPF 30 is just not nearly enough SPF for me.

I’m not disappointed in my race though.  I think I learned some important lessons, and 2 out of 3 isn’t bad, right?  After the race I was chatting with friends, I reach up around my neck and realized my chain was funny.  It turns out the chain broke during the race and I lost my RoadID tag.  I have a new one ordered already though.

So that’s it for the short races.  The Great White North Half Iron distance triathlon is coming up in less than two weeks!  Thanks for all of your great comments!!

Chinook Olympic – The Prelude

I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately about not making it to a race on time.  Needless worry?  Premonition? 

Well on Saturday, it just about came true!  I had been stressing about the set up of this week for awhile.  On Thursday at 7:30 I had a practice swim at Lake Midnapore (the lake we would be racing in) booked.  On Friday we were all supposed to attend a pre-race meeting/carbo load way down south, on the other side of town from where I live, at 6 pm.  Then our race started, way down south, early Saturday morning.  Transition opened at 7 am and all bikes had to be in transition by 8 am.  Between all of this there seemed like very little time to actually pull my gear together and get ready for the race.

The carbo load was pretty fun.  I was able to run into some old friends I haven’t seen for awhile.  Dawn was there, as she was racing her first Olympic tri.  I also ran into an old co-worker who first told me about Angie and Team Tri Life and he now coaches too.  Martin Parnell was also there to talk to us about his quest to run 250 marathons this year.  But I was getting stressed.  As we approached 8 pm the meeting was still going on and I still needed to get my gear in order.  After listening to the talk about the swim, the bike course and the rules I decided to head home so I could pack up.

All of that stress made me wired and I finally rolled into bed around 11 or so I think.  Needless to say when the alarm went off at 5:30 I barely remember registering it.  All of a sudden my eyes snapped open at it was 6:30.  Crap!!!!!  I bolted out of bed, hurried up to get ready, took my breakfast to go and started the drive to the race site.  Thank goodness for minimal traffic as the drive only took half an hour.

The car was parked at 7:30, everything unloaded, and then a short walk to transition.  Wow, all the bike racks were pretty full…  I found a few teammates and made some space for myself on the rack.  I’m sorry, but you do not need to be laying a big huge beach towel out on the ground to save a bunch of room for yourself in transition.  I gently moved the edge of the big huge beach towel in, hung the bike on the rack and started setting up.  Friends were finding me to say hi and I was just one big bundle of nerves.  But my bike had made it into transition by 8 am so I was in good shape, right?

Then the race director came by with a big megaphone informing us that transition would be closing in 15 minutes.  Crap!!!!!!  There is also a half Iron distance race that starts at 8 am.  Our swim wouldn’t start until 9:15 am, but we still had to be out.  Panic!!  I laid out my bike gear and run gear, kept all of my dry clothes, wetsuit and swim gear in my bag and headed out of transition.  I sure I hope I hadn’t forgotten anything!

After the stress of getting to the race site and getting set up in transition, it was now just time to hang out and wait.  We watched the half Iron athletes start their swim and we cheered them on as they would come out of the water, finishing their first lap and jumping in for lap two.  There was one poor guy who cramped up right away and had to be helped up the beach.  He tried to work it out, got back in the water again, but after swimming maybe 250 meters his day was over and he got a ride back to the beach.

As we hung out I realized I’d better hit the bathrooms before wriggling into my wetsuit.  I was actually trying to save myself for peeing in the wetsuit, but uh oh, my stomach was getting nervous.  Darn it…  Visit to the bathrooms done, it was time for the wetsuit.  Luckily some folks form Tri-It were on hand to help us with adjustments.Then it was time for a gel and a warm up swim.  Wow, the water was still really cold.  I was having trouble putting my face in the water so this may be interesting…By the way, I forgot to mention our timing chips.  Check that thing out!  I wasn’t sure if it was a timing chip or Lindsay Lohan’s alcohol monitoring ankle strap…Before I knew it we were being called out of the water and back on to the beach where we had to cross the timing mats first.  It was time to race…

Where are we?

I feel as though somehow in the middle of the night, someone picked up Calgary and put it back down at the exact latitude and longitude of Vancouver.  The weather has been uncharacteristic here this June as it has been mostly grey, rainy and cool.  More like Vancouver!  It really feels as though the ELF’s post On Success has been the theme for this week!

Yesterday the rain and wind continued, but there was speed work on the schedule.  Time to suck it up and get out there in the rain!  I threw on capris, a long sleeve tech shirt, a rain jacket and a hat and met up with Kelly over the lunch hour.  For interval work I’m a big fan of setting up a workout in my Garmin so that it will beep at me at the appropriate times as opposed to me watching the time.  Finally the Garmin caught satellites and it was time to go.  The rain was nice and soft as we got started on our ten minute warm up.  I then had 8 intervals of 2:00 hard, 2:00 recovery.  The first interval felt pretty good and then I slowed it down for the recovery.  All of a sudden the recovery was over.  Was that really two minutes?  I wasn’t paying attention.  I ran through the second 2:00, then looked down when it was over.  Oops!  I had accidently set the recovery time for 1:00, not for 2:00.  Oh well, less recovery, who cares?

The intervals in the rain felt good, but as we finished up our last interval the rain was starting to get heavier and heavier.  Good timing to be done!

On Thursday night I had a practice swim at Lake Midnapore for my Chinook Olympic Triathlon on Saturday.  As I’ve mentioned, it has been grey and rainy all week.  I was a little scared of how the water would feel.  I struggled into my wetsuit, but luckily Brian from Tri-It showed up for his practice swim and he was offering to help people with getting wetsuits on and adjusted.  It is amazing the little tweaks you can make to the comfort of a wetsuit by pulling it up properly around your arms, shoulders and neck.  Luckily the good folks at Tri-It will be on hand race morning to help us out with wetsuit adjustments!

Ok, now the wetsuit was on it was time to suck it up and get into the lake.  It was supposed to be 18C…maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t?  Wow, I don’t know if I’ve ever been in water that cold.  My feet went numb within a minute.  A few brave souls dunked and started swimming right away but I wasn’t sure if I could get my head underwater.  I doggy paddled it for a bit, but that wasn’t going to help me at all.  Time to just go for it and dunk! 

BRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I started swimming I kept my breathing to one side as it seemed like my face didn’t have to get as wet that way, then eventually I was able to start bilateral breathing.  I swam along the edge of the lake for a bit, then picked a spot across the lake to swim to and practice sighting.

Once I got to that spot I decided that was good enough for me.  I had gotten in my wetsuit, gotten in the water and practiced swimming and sighting.  Staying in the cold water with the wind blowing wouldn’t help me too much more, so time to swim back.   It was good enough for 600 m or so.

So there we go….now time to race on Saturday!  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Suck It Up Buttercup!

I read a terrific blog post the other day – On Success.  I highly recommend you read the post.  Go read it, and come back.

Or if you are strapped for time, here’s a part of the post the really resonated with me:

Successful athletes step up – to the challenge, to the race, to the competition. The race director says no wetsuit, they say no problem. It’s just another obstacle to overcome on race day. They are confident they can overcome anything because they are prepared both mentally and physically. Many athletes show up to race day physically prepared. Few are mentally prepared. Perhaps because they don’t step up in training. It’s raining, I’ll run on the treadmill. So, will the race be on the treadmill too? It’s windy, I’ll ride the trainer. Will they cancel the bike if the wind exceeds 10 mph? Step up so you are physically prepared and so you can learn to be mentally prepared for dealing with whatever is thrown your way. 

The weather in June has been less than ideal.  Last week our Tuesday night ride was called due to rain.  Big, fat drops of rain.  This week the skies were cloudy, grey and nasty.  Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I pulled into my garage after work those big, fat drops of rain started to fall again.  Sheesh!  The rain drops fell off and on during the 30-45 minutes I had at home before my bike workout.  I thought there might be a chance the rain would end so I changed and loaded my gear and my bike into the car.  As I put the bike on the bike rack I noticed that I still had quite a bit of dust on my bike.  It picked up a bunch of dust as we drove away from our campground in Highwood a couple of weeks ago.  Hmm.  Must remember to clean that off….

Then as I pulled out of the garage I realized that there was all this stuff falling on the car.  Rain!  Drat!  Our meeting spot was only 10 minutes away from my house so I knew that the situation wouldn’t be any better on the bike.  The car had been loaded up though, and I had a few friends I needed to see at the workout so I forged on. 

As soon as I parked the car I was told to just hurry up and go, don’t stop to talk!  Wow, it was wet.  And kind of cold too.  On the plus side it was knocking off all that dust on my bike!

The workout was supposed to be bike/run repeats.  One 5K loop on the bike, a quick run, then repeat.  I set off on the bike and realized that there is a fundamental problem with wearing glasses while riding in the rain.  It is hard to see!  Oh well, suck it up Buttercup!  What if it is raining at the race on Saturday?  I can do this…  I rode fairly tentatively as I didn’t want to wipe out on a corner on the slick road.  Wow, seriously, this rain was getting intense!  Then….what??  Is that hail???

Yikes!  I made it back to my car, changed from bike shoes to run shoes and got running.  The rain was most definitely not letting up.  Where is the line between sucking it up and knowing when to call it quits?  I think we were there.  Luckily Angie felt that way too, so one bike/run repeat it was.  On my short drive home I felt like I was hacking up a lung.  Oh well, it was definitely a learning experience and character builder out in the monsoon and hail today!

Mental Health Day

I woke up around 7 on Sunday morning.  The sun was streaming through the blinds and I could tell it was beautiful out.  A quick check of the temperature on my iPhone confirmed it.  It was already 10C out.  I shuffled downstairs and started to get rolling on making coffee.  I was almost out of ground coffee so I grabbed the coffee grinder and the beans in the freezer.  Peet’s Coffee – Major Dickason’s Blend – best stuff ever that I picked up in Seattle.  As I shook some beans out of the bag and into the grinder a big clump came out, splattering beans on the countertop and on the floor.  Oh no, not my precious Peet’s coffee!!  I bent down to clean up the beans off the floor and then I saw it.  I saw it all. 

Salt, dust, itty bitty pieces of food.  Yuck.

Then I stood up and saw the mess on the countertop.

That was it.  I just couldn’t deal with it anymore.  The coffee spilling on the floor was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Sure, originally I was planning on doing my 2 hour long run, but I felt like this took precedent.  I needed to clean for my sanity as I was tired of feeling overwhelmed by how dirty my place felt to me.  So instead of running I vacuumed, mopped, cleaned the carpet on the landing (thanks Finlay for making that polka dot for me!), dishes, shredded some of the piles of paper that were piling up on my desk, cleaned the bathroom.  And when it was done I had a moment to breathe a sigh of relief, then it was off to meet Kelly to see SATC2.

So was it a good training day?  No.  But at least it lifted a weight off my shoulders.  I came home from work today and knocked out that 2 hour run today instead.  It was actually about perfect out.  It was overcast and about 13C with a slight breeze.  Perfect for running long!  I took the run fairly slow – I am racing on Saturday after all!  That’s right, the Chinook Olympic Triathlon is almost here!

Banff National Park Long Ride

We are now entering new territory….longest bike rides ever! This weekend called for 140K (87 mi). Phew….that’s a long way! Kelly, Tara and I met up in Harvie Heights, just between Canmore and the border of Banff National Park on Saturday morning. The plan was to ride along Highway 1, past Banff, then out on to the Bow Valley Parkway toward Lake Louise. Then ride back!

It looked liked it would be a gentle climb with some good uphills at points along the way out, then downhill on the way back. The weather has been off most of this week, with plenty of rain. Luckily by the time Saturday rolled around the sun was out. It was warm without a cloud in the sky. The sky was the most amazing blue ever. We were definitely lucking out on the weather!

The ride out from Harvie Heights to the turnoff for the Bow Valley Parkway was gently rolling and I loved the ride. Even though we were riding on Highway 1 the shoulder was definitely generous. I was surprised that it took us 26K to get to the Bow Valley Parkway. Had it really been that long? From there on out the bigger climbs started. Predictably I wasn’t able to keep with the girls on the climbs. Sigh…I know the girls are strong climbers but it started to get to me that I couldn’t keep up.

The original plan was to ride all the way to Lake Louise but it was becoming readily apparent that my calculations were just slightly off. We were about 7K from Lake Louise when we hit 70K on our ride. Somehow or other 140K was enough to wrap our brains around, but 154K seemed like just a bit too long. Plus we had to be back in Calgary by 5:30 pm and the timing was starting to get tight on that. I also expected the ride back to feel a bit easier than it actually did. Wasn’t this supposed to be downhill? On the plus side we got to see some wildlife! We passed a deer, plus some elk!

The last 20K of the ride was tough. I was so ready to be off my bike! I was tensing up between my shoulder blades and my lower back was starting to ache. Were we there yet? I know my legs could go further but the mental aspect is mostly what seems to get to me. I’m really going to have to work on this…

Finally we were at the gates to the park…just a couple more kilometres to go! 5 hours and 142.5K later and we were done! Unfortunately we were out of time though and had to head back to Calgary right away, so no opportunity for a brick run. This bike was a good learning experience though:

• While a ride may take 5 hours of active time, you are actually out there for much longer. Today it took about 6.5 hours including stops!
• While I do like drinking Infinit on my rides I need to bring along some solid food as my stomach starts to get growly. Kelly carries sandwiches of turkey and cheese rolled in a corn tortilla. I think I may try something similar.
• I may not be a fierce climber but I am learning that my power comes on the flats. We all have our strengths and weaknesses!
• Ironman training really is a roller coaster…

Exhausted

Exhausted…with a capital E!  When the alarm went off at 4:30 am for my swim I barely acknowledged it and fell right back asleep.  Ugh…

All day long of been drinking tea and water like it is going out of style.

As I drove home from work the exhaustion continued.  I could barely handle the thought of making dinner, let alone going home to sit on my bike for up to an hour.  Then it clicked.  My throat had been sore when I woke up.  There is a reason I’m feeling so exhausted….and I don’t like where this has the possibility of going.  I decided a rest day was in order as I’m worried I’m on the verge of getting sick.  I’ve heard rumblings of friends having some buggy stuff and I want no part of it!  I’ve had my behind parked on the couch all night, relaxing and drinking water.  Hopefully I’ll be able to jump out of bed tomorrow at 4:30 for that swim, but we’ll see how it goes!

Oh, and as an aside, I have had at least three triathlon related dreams in the last four nights.  The common theme seems to be forgetting about the race until the last minute.  The race is about to start and I haven’t even set up transition yet.  Think I may be a little preoccupied??

Highwood Pass

After our 110K ride on Friday it was time to pack up and hit the road!  The Boyfriend and I were joining Kelly and her husband camping that weekend.  The plan was to camp about 45 km west of Longview out in Kananaskis, on the south side of Highwood Pass.

At an elevation of 2206 metres, Highwood Pass is the highest point in Canada that can be reached by paved highway.  The highway is also closed from November/December through the middle of June.  The closure is for the elk, big horn sheep, deer and moose that do their spring grazing during that time.  The closure is only to motorized vehicles only though, and it is a popular route for cycling just before the pass opens to vehicles.

Last year I was supposed to ride the Pass the weekend before it opened but a massive snow storm blew into town.  Then I went out to ride it last July and 13 miles in my chain broke.  Fail!

We drove out to our campsite after work on Friday, the Boy and I set up our tent and Kelly and her hubs set up their trailer.  After getting a campfire going it was time to chow down on smokies and S’mores for a little post/pre-ride fuel.  After a fun night around the fire it was time to get some rest.  We woke up in the morning to some breakfast sandwiches with ham, cheese, egg, tomato and cucumber on a bun with some bacon on the side.  It was gourmet camping!  After breakfast some friends from Calgary arrived, we loaded up our bikes and hit the road to start our ride.  There were a ton of cars just outside the gates – there would be a bunch of cyclists on the pass!  You might be able to spot the gate faintly there, and right after the gate the road starts to climb, up and up.  And it keeps climbing for about 40K with only the odd bit of flat or downhill in between.  The plan was to ride for about 2 hours or 60K.

Riding on a highway completely closed to traffic was a pretty amazing experience.  It felt almost…private!  The scenery was fantastic.Also fantastic?  How my legs were feeling!  The day before my legs were screaming on any little hill.  Today I was climbing and feeling strong with no hint of the 110K that had happened the day before.  Part way up the hill Kelly and I looked at each other and decided we wanted to try and go a bit further to reach the summit.From there the ride turned epic!  At the 30K mark we rode through an ice pellet storm.  Thankfully it didn’t last long, but those little pellet/hail things really stung when they hit!  Plus I haven’t mentioned that we were riding into the wind as we went uphill.  Oh, and we had really only brought enough nutrition for a 2 hour ride.  As we kept forging on, surely the summit was right around the next corner, right?

I thought we would only have a couple of kilometres left, but then the bonk started.  My legs felt instantly weaker.  My arms were getting shaky.  All I could think of was my desire to eat something and that sounded a lot better than pedalling forward.  We stopped at the entrance to Peter Lougheed Provincial Park.  I had four Honey Stinger chews in my bento box.  I scarfed them down.  After that I only had half a bottle of Infinit left.  We were just over two hours into our ride and Kelly had as much nutrition with her as I did.We stopped at the sign, checked out the map and tried to figure out how far we were from the summit.  At that moment some guys on mountain bikes rode down past us.  They told us we had about 30 minutes left to go.  Um…yeah…I did not have 30 minutes of climbing left in my legs.  We decided to head down.  When I got home and mapped the ride I think we were only about 4K…at the most…off of the summit.  Sigh…Oh well, time to descend!  We figured we’d fly down as hopefully that headwind would turn into a tail wind.  It was also a great opportunity to practice descending (thanks Ally for those great tips!).  The ride down was a blast!  We even saw a few deer.Strangely enough the tail wind didn’t last too long and we battled a cross wind and a head wind on the way back.  Despite that, what took over 2 hours to climb took just over 1 hour to descend.  All in all, 71K ridden, about 730 meters of climbing.  Despite the bonk it felt like a really successful ride and it was so much fun!

Thanks to everyone for a fun weekend of camping and some amazing riding.  I couldn’t have asked for more!

Going Long

Thursday was my long run day – 2 hours!  My number one favourite thing to do for long runs is to run from my house into work.  It is about 12.5 miles in and it helps me to get that long run out of the way nice and early.  I dropped a bag of clothes and toiletries off at the office on Wednesday.  In the evening I prepped my nutrition.  I’ve tested out Infinit’s single serving Run formula before and it works pretty well.  I just drink that and don’t worry about hauling gels with me.  I fill up a Camelbak with the Infinit and left it in the fridge.

Thursday morning my alarm rang bright and early.  I hopped out of bed, checked the weather (11C – warm!) and put my run gear on.  My route from home to work is hilly.  244 feet of climbing, 536 feet of descending.  The majority of the climbing seems to happen in the first few miles of the run and it took a good 4 miles before my legs actually realized that we were supposed to be running.  They just weren’t getting into the groove and they were tired.  Then things were good until about 1.5 hours and then my legs were just ready for this run to be over.  The only way for the run to be over was to get to work though, and I wasn’t walking….so trudge, trudge, onwards to work.  Painfully slow.  But the run got done!  I made it into work, grabbed my bag of clothes and a guest pass to the gym in the basement of my office and that was it.  It felt good to have the run done.  Shortly after getting to the office it started to rain, so I was definitely happy that I missed the rain!

On Friday I took the day off of work to meet up with my IMC partners in crime, Tara and Kelly.  Tara was racing a sprint on Saturday and had instructions to ride 120K the day before.  Kelly and I both offered to take the day off of work to keep her company.  We decided to ride from Calgary out west and then south towards Bragg Creek, then on to Elbow Falls.  The route is mostly flat until after Bragg Creek with just the occasional hill.  Every single baby hill my legs were screaming at me.  I felt good on the flats but the hills were just draining.  And apparently my brain wasn’t capable of doing math either.  For some reason or other I kept thinking I was riding 62 miles (100K), but I really needed to go for 74 miles.  I was so wrong on where I thought our turnaround point ought to be. 

Part way through the ride I made a big decision….

I changed my Garmin Edge from miles into kilometres.  All my rides are given in distances and it is getting a little tiring converting back and forth.  So into kilometres we go!  Kelly welcomed me to Canada when I made that little change over. :)

We wanted to avoid the big climb to Elbow Falls so we turned around a bit early, making for a total ride distance of 110K.  We were all pretty knackered so no one had the desire to tack on those extra 10K.  We did trudge through a pretty painful brick run afterward though.

There we go, two more long workouts in the bank for IMC.  Thankfully there were some fun things in store for the weekend!

A Premium

Time.  During Ironman training time is a premium. 

Initially you sign up for Ironman and it is a year away…you still have a lot of time.  Now my countdown timer is telling me that it is less than 90 days away.  Is it really June already?

It is now starting to feel like there is less and less time in the day.  I come home, look at my house and sigh.  My house needs a vacuum and I am slowly working my way through laundry.  Earlier this week I actually contemplated the idea of taking a day off of work so I could just stay home and clean my house up.  I truly admire people that train for an Ironman with spouses and families.

In order to give myself a bit more time in the evening I’m trying to get back in the groove of early morning workouts.  This morning I was up…somewhere around 4:40 am.  At the pool and in the water at 5:45 am.  I ran through a 2000 meter set and still made it into work before 8 am.  Tomorrow I have a 2 hour long run planned.  It sounds like the perfect opportunity for a 12.5 mile run from my house to the office.  Hopefully I’ll get into a groove and have more time and energy in the evening to keep things a little tidier around the house!  Of course part of the process does involve realizing that I can’t do everything so I may just wind up making friends with the dust bunnies around my place…

Hills, hills, glorious hills…

I totally dropped the ball on the cookie story at Yellow Lake.  Ally and I were riding to the top of Yellow Lake for cookies.  Imagine our disappointment when the place we were looking for wasn’t at the top!  Apparently the good cookies are at the start of the climb… Disappointing!  So when you ride the IMC bike course look for the Bear fruit stand on the left just outside Keremeos.  Apparently the cookies are amazing.

Last week was all about hills.  Hill repeats on the bike on Tuesday.  It started raining while we were out there and I kept hearing a squeak, squeak, squeak.  Angie heard it and tried to replicate the sound which only seemed to happen when someone was riding the bike.  Turns out it was my rear wheel that had slid forward slightly and was rubbing on the bike frame.  It is a lot easier to ride up hills when your rear wheel isn’t rubbing.  It also turns out that I am a complete scaredy cat riding downhill in the rain.

On Thursday I had a 90 min run with 3 x 2:00 hill repeats with 1:00 of squats at the top.  I wanted to knock the run out early as it was supposed to cool off and rain later in the day.  My run went fairly well.  At one point I looked down at my Garmin though and I saw that my heart rate was reading 240 bpm.  Seriously?  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be running so well if my heart rate was that high.  After reading through a few forums this seems to be a common problem with the new soft strap.  I’m not keen on the idea of going back to the old strap as it causes some really bad chaffing, but if the heart rate data is so erroneous there isn’t much point in wearing the strap.  Despite that one thing the rest of the run was good.  I picked a tough hill for my hill repeats and my legs were mad at me…

On Friday I had my longest swim ever…3500 meters.  Welcome to Ironman training!  It was long, kind of boring, but it went well.  I was reminded by Ryan to just take it stroke by stroke and that I would make it.  It actually wound up being my best swim this week.

On Saturday the plan was to ride 110K but we woke up to snow.  Snow at the end of May!!  I guess it really wouldn’t be Calgary is it didn’t snow at some point in May.  There would be no riding outside on this day.  I swept out the garage, cued up a DVD of the IMC bike course and Tara and Ally came over to knock out a 2.5 hour ride on the trainer.  2.5 hours is a long time on the trainer, but thanks to great company, great conversation and some good tunes it actually flew by.  Thanks for coming over ladies!

Thankfully the snow stopped and I managed to get in a fairly pleasant run on Sunday morning – a 60 min hilly run around my neighbourhood.  All of these hills!  My legs were toast but I still managed to feel strong and steady.  I found some good hills to run too…

And so that was last week in a nutshell!  This week?  We are bringing back the early morning workouts…

Oh, and go check out Rainmaker, he’s giving away a very fancy scale!