I <3 new bike toys!!

I fully admit it, I’m a numbers nerd.  I love my Garmin.  I don’t live by the numbers during a workout, but I do like to know how far, how fast at the end of the day.  I did have a Sigma bike computer earlier, but it went belly up back in July.  Then I picked up the Garmin cadence sensor so I could use my Forerunner 305 as my bike computer.  After all, GPS, cadence…what’s not to love?

But the battery life on the Forerunner would be sketchy during an Ironman.  Typical life is 10 hours so between the bike and the run it may be touch and go.  I was originally wowed by the flashy new 310XT.  Waterproof?  A 20 hour battery life?  Sweet!  But for a retail price of $400 Cdn it is a little tough to justify for just a bit of extra battery life.

Enter the Garmin Edge 305.  A slightly nicer price point, and it is bike specific.  It attaches to your stem or handlebars so it is easier to read and it records cadence, heart rate, speed, altitude…  Awesome!  And thanks to *cough, cough* eBay *cough, cough* I got a pretty good deal.  It arrived in the mail earlier in the week and I set it up.  Quick and easy!  Isn’t it pretty?

I really wanted to take the Edge out for a spin, but not just any old spin on the trainer.  I wanted to take it outdoors!  And since Saturday it was sunny out I decided I could brave the chilly wind and bundle up for a ride.  By the time I got going I didn’t have a ton of daylight left, but I managed just over 15.5 mi in an hour.  I haven’t ridden outdoors since maybe September but it felt so good to be outside!  Sure, the wind was chilly and seriously a bear (up to 35 kph or 22 mph).  Going up and down the hills north of my neighbourhood was a lot of fun though.

And the Edge?  I love it!  Everything I love about my Forerunner, but just better for the bike.  I need to play around with the display a little more though.  If you pick four fields to display the two on the bottom are fairly small to read, especially if one of them is cadence.

Sunday I hit up the Y to do a little strength workout.  It has probably been a year since I actually did some strength training at the Y??  It felt good to pump some iron (haha!!!).  What didn’t feel good?  Finding it next to impossible to pull up my emergency parking brake in my car this evening!!!  Hello DOMS!  Alright, it is 9:30 pm…I may have skipped swimming thanks to working late tonight, but now I need to get to bed!!

In with the new!

In keeping with my theme of “out with the old, in with the new” there are plenty of new things for me to tell you about!

Swim Lessons

I really was not enjoying my swim lessons at the Y by the time the summer was coming around.  I was going to just do swim workouts on my own, but Coach Angie pointed my in the direction of some swim classes out in Cochrane.  Richelle teaches on Monday evenings, Angie on Wednesday evenings, and there are classes on Sundays as well.  Last night was my first class and Angie was filling in for Richelle.

This was such a different class!  We spent a lot of time focusing on technique.  Angie gave me more pointers in one hour than I got through three sessions at the Y.  It was so great to focus on how to do things properly as opposed to running through a workout.  I’m really excited about this class!

Bike Gear

More team gear arrived, and I finally have a super cool Team Tri Life bike jersey to wear!  I got to wear it on our ride out in Cochrane this evening where it was an amazing 28C out!!  I cannot complain about the extended nice weather we’ve been enjoying here lately.  It was terrific to ride outside in the middle to end of September in shorts and a jersey.  No need for arm warmers, tights or jackets.  I had a great time riding with a couple of guys on our team, Joel and Scott.  Since my workouts have been a wee bit sporadic lately Angie wanted me to do some intervals and, although the guys didn’t know it, they helped to push me along when I was trying to push hard!

Garmin Gear

With my bike computer going belly up in July I knew I would need to figure out a solution before indoor training rides start.  Knowing cadence is key to really following a great indoor workout!  I picked up the Garmin cadence sensor and used it for the first time tonight.  The install was very easy, and I love the wireless solution.  Having recorded cadence data is a great perk too!  I also picked up the new, more comfortable soft heart rate monitor strap.  Wow, this strap is infinitely better!  Looking forward to trying it on my run tomorrow…

Canadians looking to buy anything Garmin related, be sure to check out GPS City and GPS Central.  Live in Calgary?  Even better as these companies are both based here.  You can pick up your items directly after ordering online instead of paying shipping and handling.  And yes, you can get the new HR strap on its own at both of these retailers in case you aren’t planning on upgrading your Garmin just yet…

Who Supports You?

Thursday

First off, Thursday... Ugh. My parents drove in on Wednesday night and we were still out for dinner after 10 pm. Since I swam Wednesday and it was such a late night I bailed on swim class on Thursday. I also had a 45 minutes run with strides planned for Thursday over lunch. As soon as I got outside and turned my Garmin on it beeped at me. Low Battery. Bugger. I've had my Garmin last for 45 minutes after getting a low battery warning so I opted to risk it, rather than turning back around and grabbing my Timex. About half way into my 10 minute warm up I looked at my Garmin and it was dead. Oops. Things were also hurting from my right knee down. I was not enjoying this run. Since I had no way of timing strides and I was hurting I figured I'd just run. It wound up being about 2.4 miles. Oops...

Friday

Amanda wrote a good post asking about support from family members - who supports you, and what do they do to support you?

I dropped my folks off at the airport, then headed home. I had a 45 minute spin on the schedule - RPM endurance. I left the door to the garage open and Finlay came downstairs to hang out and watch me spin. Sometimes he sat by the car...Sometimes he came closer and sat near my front wheel... And sometimes he curled up near the TV. When I got off the bike he spun around in circles and was really excited. Almost like he was congratulating me on a great spin! I think I'll set up a little doggie bed in the garage for him in case he wants to keep me company while spinning in the future. Then he doesn't have to curl up on the cold concrete floor.
After that Maggie snuggled in next to me on the couch, rubbing her face on my leg and congratulating me in her own way.
After that I threw together a quick salad - spinach, carrots, cucumber, sugar snap peas, goat cheese and some sliced up terriyaki sirloin left over from my mom's dinner on Wednesday night.
Support comes in different ways from our family and friends, but sometimes your supporters might just surprise you!

A Lunch Time Combo

Today's scheduled run? A tempo run/hill repeat combo. Warm up, run 3 x 1:00 hill repeats, run 15:00 at a tempo pace, then run 3 more 1:00 hill repeats, cool down. Sounds like good times, eh? It was 2°C and nice and sunny out over lunch, so there was a part of me that contemplated running in capris. Ultimately I wussed out and went with the running tights, which was probably the smarter option.

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Last night I spent a good amount of time setting up my workouts in the Garmin Training Center for the next three weeks, plus inputting pace ranges for steady state and tempo runs. Except I only altered a couple of pace zones and left a few of the default ones in there. This would cause some issues later...

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I ran for 15 minutes to warm up and I sort of forgot that for the next five minutes I was supposed to alternate 1 minute of hard running with 2 minutes of easy running. I completely forgot about it and started running hill repeats. That is what happens when you don't look at your Garmin when it beeps at you... So I accidentally got in two bonus hill repeats. My first -- five -- hill repeats were good. I pushed hard and was ready for my 15 minutes at a tempo pace. When I started running Garmin said I was at an easy jog and kept telling me to slow down. Apparently an easy jog to Garmin means anywhere between a 8:00 - 10:00/mi pace. My tempo pace is somewhere between 9:17 - 9:45...apparently. And the way my Garmin is set up it doesn't actually tell me my pace per lap, so I had no idea where I was falling in this range. But I knew that if I slowed down it would be too easy so I just ran at what I thought was a hard pace and tried to ignore Garmin frantically beeping at me for 15 minutes telling me to slow down. I got back to the hill for my remaining three hill repeats and my legs were feeling it on that first repeat. I was slow... For the second repeat there were two ladies in front of me a bit, and I imagined that I tied a rope around them and that they were pulling me up the hill. I used this technique on the third repeat and it is amazing how much it helps! I ran at a very easy pace to cool down. Once I was done I found a bench that I could use for my strength workout - 3 x 0:45 each of step ups, lunges, squats, and tricep dips. I normally add in hamstring curls on a ball (but alas, no ball today) and push ups, but it was a bit cold for those so I fit those in later. Otherwise, here are the details:

• Accidental hill repeat #1: 10:13/mi
• Accidental hill repeat #2: 9:47/mi
• Hill repeat #1: 9:32/mi
• Hill repeat #2: 10:35/mi
• Hill repeat #3: 9:59/mi
• Tempo run: 15:00 at 9:00/mi
• Hill repeat #4: 10:46/mi
• Hill repeat #5: 10:03/mi
• Hill repeat #6: 10:18/mi

High Intensity Hills

Yesterday I had my first round of high intensity hills on the schedule. Warm up for 15 minutes, getting in to zone 3 just at the end, then six to eight 30 second sprints up a hill, with one minute of recovery in between. Cool down for 15 minutes. When I got home I set up my workout in Garmin Training Center. I figured I'd automatically aim for eight repeats. I have to say I love these workouts that you can set up in Garmin. I just run, let the watch beep at me when it is time to switch it up, and not think about time or anything else. Anyhow...once the workout was set up I took Finlay out for a quick walk before setting out. Just as we headed outside white stuff started flying around in the air. That's right folks, it was SNOWING! Last week I was talking about our amazing weather in the high 20s (Celsius), this week we have snow swirling around in the air. Being the chicken that I am I bundled up in a heavier top and grabbed my running gloves. Wouldn't you know it that as soon as I set out the snow was done. Five minutes in I was wondering why I thought I needed my gloves. If you can say one thing about Calgary, the weather here is unpredictable... Once it was time to get my heart rate in to zone 3 I was running downhill and I just couldn't get it there. Close enough though. I ran my 30 second intervals like mad, pushing hard up the hill. My legs were burning and it felt really good. I wound up with 4.1 mi in 42 min and felt like I put a really good effort in. If one thing is for sure, fall is here and it won't be too long before winter pushes its way through...

Wine Festival Weekend

This weekend I was in the Okanagan visiting my parents and partaking in a few of the Fall Wine Festival festivities. When I was in the Okanagan this summer I signed up for Tinhorn Creek's Crush Club. If you commit to buying a mixed case of wine from them each year then you get 15% off of wine from their shop, plus special invites to a few events. This weekend was the pick up party for my half a case of red, so I figured it would be worth a trip out there. Of course, also a bonus was a chance to see my favourite Scottish Terrier again, Maggie.I caught the final flight out of Calgary on Friday night and arrived in time to have dinner with my parents and then called it a night. Because we had to drive down to Oliver in time for the pick up party on Saturday I didn't really have a chance to get my long run in. Oh well, it was raining when I woke up, so I wasn't too upset about it. Once we parked at Tinhorn we were warned that we shouldn't be wandering around the vines on our own too much...

The party was a good time. I got my wine, and then we were all treated to a lunch of burgers (being cooked by the winery owner himself), some assorted salads, and two glasses of wine of our choice. Delicious! There was also a band and some draw prizes, so it was quite the event. The afternoon was spent tasting at a couple of different wineries, and then in the evening it was on to Sumac Ridge for a special dinner with the winemaker. Sumac was one of the first wineries in the Okanagan to make a sparkling wine and they were offering a five course dinner to be paired with various new and library releases of their sparklers. It was pretty fantastic stuff...
So that took care of Saturday, and then I needed to get my run in on Sunday. I might have been a wee bit dehydrated (cough, cough), so I was fully prepared for disaster. On the schedule? An hour and a half run with three - 10 minute steady state intervals to be run in upper HR zone 2 to lower HR zone 3. Interesting... I had set the workout up on Garmin Training Center and I knew as soon as I got started that I had made a mistake. I was supposed to warm up in zone 2 and I'd made that a goal in my workout. Because of all of the hills around where I was running (and I started off running downhill) I was having a tough time getting into zone 2. Having my Garmin beep at me continuously telling me that my heart rate was too low? Annoying... Finally my warm up was over and I hit the first interval. I poured the speed on for a bit, then hit some hills that helped to keep my heart rate up. Running to heart rate was interesting. Because of all of the hilliness I found it hard to really hit my stride since if I tried to keep my pace going up the hill I skyrocketed out of zone 3. By the time interval number two came around I smartened up and managed to run on fairly level terrain for most of it. I was feeling good, which was totally unexpected! I decided to run somewhat of a loop from winery to winery. I headed off to Mount Boucherie, ran past Quails Gate, then ran up the big hill to Mission Hill. I finished up with 8.5 very hilly miles for my hour and a half run.
After the run it was time to head off to See Ya Later Ranch for their annual pig roast. The event was amazing! Fantastic food, and there was quite the amount of wine available for consumption (cough, cough).
After the pig roast it was time to head back to Kelowna so I could catch the last flight out to Calgary for the evening. It was a short, fairly whirlwind trip, but I had a great time seeing my parents, enjoying the festivities, and I even got a terrific run in!

Running for the Hills

I can admit it, most of my runs have pretty well all been the same. Get out there, put the distance in, maybe there are some hills along the route or maybe not, and every run is close to the same pace. Last year I was running hill repeats pretty consistently in preparation for the Nike Women's Half in San Francisco, but since then I've stopped running them. It is time to shake things up a bit. On the training plan for yesterday were hill repeats. Here was the deal:

• Warm up with 15 minutes of easy running to the hill.
• Between 15 and 20 minutes run 10 second accelerations up the hill, then 50 seconds of easy running.
• 4 x 2:00 hill climbs, recovery is the run back down to the bottom.
• Cool down for 10 minutes.

As it was pretty warm when I got home (at least for around here) I waited before going out for the run. I had a Banana Manna Fruit and Nut Bar (I got a whole slew of these for free at the Quebec marathon expo), hung out with my dog, and caught a few minutes of ANTM (I got suckered in by it being the makeover episode). By 7:00 I figured I was good to head out. I live in a pretty hilly neighborhood, but I picked the biggest hill I knew of, which was quite luckily a 15 minute run away. As I didn't want to be staring at my Garmin the entire time I created a workout in the Garmin Training Center and uploaded it. (I tried to create it in Sport Tracks, which is a way nicer piece of software, but I couldn't quite figure out how to upload it to the device. I could only export the workout to somewhere on my computer. If you use Sport Tracks and know how to do this, please let me know!) The workout program worked well as I liked it beeping at me to let me know my repeat up the hill was done. I'm pretty sure I started too fast on the first repeat, then each repeat was successively slower by just a bit. It was a good run though. I didn't get home until 8:00 and I didn't want to put dinner off too much longer so I skipped out on my strength workout. I'll try to fit it in another day this week though...

Next week I've got 5 hill climbs on the schedule, so that should be fun!

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!

Unwired Running

Yesterday I really wanted to get a 5 miler in over lunch. As I was heading out a coworker in the elevator asked me what was on my wrist.

"Ah, that's my GPS. It tells me how far I've run and how fast. It really suits my type A engineering personality that wants to know all the little details of everything."

Whatever I said must have offended my dear Garmin because after that it refused to cooperate. Getting a signal downtown is always a pain thanks to all the tall buildings, but after standing around waiting for a signal with no luck I was getting impatient. Not to mention that there were some pretty ominous looking clouds off in the distance that I was hoping to avoid. My Garmin always catches a signal the fastest while it is sitting on my dashboard and I am zooming down the highway. I thought I should try and apply the same principal so I started zooming down the pathway. Still acquiring... Finally it gave up and asked me if I was indoors. No... Have you moved more than 100 m since you turned the unit on? Um, I hope so....busted. After that I gave up, but out of habit I kept glancing down every once in awhile to see that despite all the running I had been doing I had still moved 0 feet. My shins were complaining. I wasn't really a happy camper. As I hit the pedestrian bridge at Crowchild the rain drops started to fall. Luckily it wasn't an all out downpour and the falling rain actually felt really nice. My shins decided to get on board with the rest of my body and they stopped hurting. I stopped taking walk breaks. Finally the run was feeling good! I just kept going and finished up in 51 minutes on a route that I knew was 5 miles (later confirmed with Gmaps). I even made it back to the office without looking like too much of a drowned rat. Success!

BBC - Spring Session - Class #8

Last night I kind of hummed and hawed for a few minutes on whether I should round out my midweek mileage as planned and get the remaining 2.25 mi in. I decided to go for it and I took the short run at a fairly good, recovery type pace. I didn't want to push too hard! Boot camp was supposed to be a night of plyometrics, but I guess there was a change in plans. Instead we ran through a total body circuit (abs, push ups, triceps, biceps, planks, shoulder presses, hamstring work), then followed it up with speed intervals. Intervals? Guess I didn't need that pre-boot camp run after all! I got a bonus 1.99 miles in. (Yes, I did wear my Garmin during the workout... I am a bit obsessive on knowing my numbers!)

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Speaking of my Garmin, I had a minor freak out this morning when my Garmin wouldn't power up after charging all night long. It turns out that your unit can lock up during charging. Thanks to the FAQ section on Garmin's website I found out that holding down the "mode" and "reset" buttons simultaneously for 10 seconds, then releasing and powering on is all you need. Phew! As much as I love the look of the new Forerunner 405 I'm not itching to drop the cash on it just yet.