In search of a little mojo

I'm not going to lie folks, this week has been a tough one. I'm getting the workouts in but I feel like they just are not going well. Life outside of training has been...interesting...this week and I'm pretty sure that it is affecting me mentally and might be contributing to me not feeling the workouts. Sometimes that can be fuel to fire me up and I'll really push through a workout, but right now it is leaving me feeling totally...meh.

Last night was a busy one. I got out of work a bit later than I planned and I had a few errands I still needed to run. I hit the grocery store, then dropped my bike off at Bow for a spring tune up. I'm coming up on the one year anniversary of owning my bike and the first tune up within the year is covered under warranty. So I needed to make sure I got it in on time. They were selling off last year's gloves for a good price so I picked up a pair, then headed off to the Y. I had a 30 minute run to get done and I didn't want to dodge snow and ice (or run in the cold) so I opted for the treadmill. I was running at a comfortable 6.0 (or 10:00/mi) but I bumped it up just a bit to see how it felt. I couldn't stop staring at the display and watching the clock tick down. Finally Welcome to the World came on and it fired me up. I changed my mind and figured I'd just run 3 mi and see if I could run a little faster. By the time I was into the last mile I was ready to keep pushing it and wound up finishing up at an 8:40ish pace. Plus I figured I might as well stretch it out to a 3.1 miler. I felt pretty good when I was done. Hopefully this can carry forward into my hill repeat run today!

I got home and finished up making dinner. I wanted to try N Her Shoes' black bean burgers. I modified things a bit by sauteing up my onions, peppers and garlic ahead of time, plus I threw in some mushrooms for good measure. I also copied the Granny Bee's Roughage salad that the Grizzly Paw in Canmore serves. Salad mix, shredded carrot, a small amount of shredded cheese, finely diced cucumber and beet and some chopped up hard boiled egg on top. I've never boiled an egg before last night. Seriously. Have you ever tried to google "how long do you boil a hard egg for"? There are a gazillion different directions and opinions out there. Who knew boiling an egg could be so tough?! Anyhow, dinner was delish, so hopefully DGB will enjoy it for lunch today. Speaking of which...I'd better head off to work!

I Love New Things

It was a ridiculous -25C this morning. Seriously, I am so over this cold weather... I had no desire to go outside at all so I bucked up $25 to park in the parkade across the street from my office building that is connected by a pedway. If I couldn't even walk a couple of blocks from my car to the office in the cold there was no way my 30 minute run was going to happen outside today. So to the Y and on the treadmill it was.

I had a couple new gizmos to try out on this treadmill run which gave me something to look forward to. I was looking at the mileage on my couple pairs of Asics Kayano 14s and I figured it might be time to break out my brand new Kayano 15s that I picked up at the WDW marathon expo. What isn't readily apparent on the picture is that they have changed up the lacing system on the shoe. The bottom of the laces are offset, so rather than centred over the toe box it is closer to the big toe. I'm not sure how this will work out when I swap out the regular laces for my Yankz, but it is an interesting concept. I guess it is supposed to help relieve pressure from...somewhere..?? I can't remember what the shoe salesman told me. Anyhow, they felt pretty comfortable so the Kayano still remains my absolute favourite shoe.

Second up, I had a brand new playlist on my iPod to listen to. And new music is definitely a good way to get fired up for the treadmill:

• Flo Rida - Right Round (I blame this song choice on this America's Best Dance Crew routine)
• Franz Ferdinand - No You Girls
• V Factory - Love Struck (I have no good excuse for this song, other than it is rather catchy. But it sounds so boy band...)
• Pitbull - I Know You Want Me (this song reminds me of when I lived in Laredo, TX for some reason)
• Kevin Rudolph - Welcome to the World

The Kevin Rudolph song is the BEST workout song ever! This got me running so quickly that I had to keep bumping the speed up to avoid running into the front of the treadmill. And yeah...I was totally lip syncing along. So if you were at one of the Y's in Calgary and saw some girl on the treadmill lip syncing like a nut and wearing gray shorts and a pink top...that was me. 3.21 miles done in 30 minutes, and it felt like I could have kept going and going...

I had another cool gizmo I was trying out, but I'll tell you about that later once I've played with it more.

After the run was done I ran through some abs, foam rolling and stretching. I think the foam in the rollers at the gym have lost a little bit of structural integrity. I'm guessing this is the case because I didn't want to whimper like a little puppy while I was rolling my IT band tonight and I'm sure it hasn't gotten that much better.

Alright, time for me to head to bed since I have a 4:30 wake up and a 5:30 date at the pool in the morning!

I Hate The Track

I hate the track. Or rather, my ass hates the track. But I’ll get back to this later.

I had a three miler on the schedule today. The weather forecast was –7C (19F) and snow in the afternoon. I was sitting in a meeting at about 11 am and my coworker looks out the window and comments on the amount of snow coming down. It was almost like whiteout conditions. The meeting finished up and I hummed and hawed about whether I really wanted to go out or not. The sidewalks were looking pretty gross and I just was not up for it. So, the treadmill after work it would be.

I was ready to go all Brad Pitt on the treadmill in Burn After Reading. I had my playlist loaded with up T-Pain and Beyonce, and thanks to all of you guys, I realized that I was missing Britney Spears. I rectified that situation before heading out, so now I’d be able to hear Britney tell her to give her more while I was running on the treadmill.

As soon as I pulled into the parking lot at the Y I knew the treadmill situation would be tough. It was full… And indeed, all of the treadmills were taken. Bummer, I would have to start out on the track. I just wanted to get this run over and done with. I could do anything for 45 laps, right? As soon as I started running around the highly banked track my piriformis was hurting. These were going to be 45 long laps if it was going to feel like I had a fork jabbed right in middle of my piriformis the entire time. The first mile clicked off in 9:43, which at the time I was disappointed about. I had kind of thought I was going to be faster. Just then I noticed that a treadmill had opened up, thank goodness! I ran over there to snag it. Who would have ever thought I would be so excited about an empty treadmill?

I wound up next to some body builder guy who was just about to get started on his run, just as soon as he got off of his cell phone to make plans to meet his buddies at the bar later. I’m guessing he was a body builder because he was wearing his weight lifting gloves. On the treadmill. If you read Missy’s blog, all of a sudden I thought I was a part of this episode. I had my Disney Marathon shirt on and cranked the treadmill up to 6.5. Maybe a little fast, but like I mentioned, I was a little disappointed that my first mile was a bit slow and I was ready to make up for it.

As I got going I looked over at Mr. Bodybuilder next to me. He was running at a 5.0 pace. Nothing wrong with that. He kept glancing over at my treadmill though, to see what I was doing. It was almost like he didn’t want to get chicked on the treadmill. He was running along, but every once in awhile he would grab on to the bars on the side. Then he glanced over at my treadmill and pumped it up to 6.0. Now he’s running, reaching for the bars, catching up, then trying to hang on to the console in front of him. He looks over at me and bumps the treadmill up to 6.5. He’s struggling and dropping back. Next thing I know he’s gone off the back. He gets back on the treadmill but shortly after that he calls it a day. 6 minutes in. Poor guy.

The rest of my run was uneventful. I finished it up and spent a good amount of time stretching it out, but my piriformis still hurts. Sigh…time for some more ART I think…

Back on the Treadmill

The weather here right now is amazing. As we hover around the freezing mark it feels like such a nice reprieve from all of the cold temperatures. If I ran outside today I think I could have considered running in shorts! There is still an absolutely crazy amount of snow on the ground though...

I had a 1:30 run to do this weekend. Yesterday we decided to head down south towards Oliver for the day, so I just went out for a quick 30+ min run around the neighborhood. No issues with dizziness on this day, mind you, I had a much better breakfast which I'm sure helped. I strapped the Yak Trax on again and they worked really well. No slippage and I even booted it down a few hills to test them out. After that we headed off to Oliver to have lunch at the amazing Burrowing Owl winery and stopped in to pick up some wine that I had pre-ordered at Tinhorn Creek. There is a triathlon I am hoping to do here in May so I kept looking around to try and figure out what lake the swim is in, but I'm still not sure that I've figured it out. I know we drove around part of the bike course though!

Today it became a question of scheduling with my long run. My 1:30 run was another Marathoner`s Special - 20 minutes at a warm up pace, 30 min at a steady state pace, followed by 4 x 5:00 tempo intervals and 2:00 intervals at a steady state pace. Since I had to focus on pace so much I didn`t really want to run outside in the snow. Even with the Yak Trax on I`m still a fare bit slower than usual. So...treadmill at the Y it would be. The Y in Kelowna is only open from 10:00 to 5:00 and is about a half an hour away and my folks were keen to go for brunch at Quails` Gate winery. I couldn`t see getting the run done early enough for brunch so I figured I`d just run after eating. I had the most amazing West Coast eggs Benedicts:
Poached egg, smoked salmon, tomato, and spinach all on a potato rosti and topped with hollondaise. Yummy... Washed down with some Chardonnay. Talk about a fantastic brunch, but I wasn`t too sure about this being a pre-long run meal! After digesting to headed off to the Y and figured I would try my luck...

The Y in Kelowna has some pretty nifty treadmills. You can plug your iPod in and it has a very nifty screen that you can change to show you where you would be if you were running around a track, or if you were running a 5K course in the boonies. I found one of this treadmills to hop on. It wouldn`t let me set a time goal for more than 30 minutes, so I set it for 20 minutes - the amount I needed to warm up - and started running. I was right in front of a window looking down in to the pool so I was kind of neat to be staring at something else besides the folks in the weight room. I started fooling around with the goal settings on the treadmill and tried changing my goal to a 10 mi run. Ah ha, that will fool it past the 30 minute setting. Until the treadmill promptly announced at 25 minutes that my workout was up. Oops. I started back up again but all of a sudden I had to hit the bathroom...sigh...time for a break. The nifty treadmill was in use afterwards so I went back to one of the older models and this one didn`t seem to have the same time commitment issues so I set it up for a 60 minute run. There was a sticker just above the emergency stop button. ``Emergency stop strap use is mandatory.`` Oops. I was running along at my tempo pace trying to clip the thing on to my shirt because I was already breaking a time limit rule on the treadmill, I didn`t want to be breaking the emergency stop rule as well. The intervals made the time fly by on the treadmill. When I was on my second interval I was running along at a good clip, not really paying attention, and my hand snagged the emergency stop strap and all of a sudden my workout was up. Gah... I started the treadmill back up again but this time I left the emergency stop strap off. Anyhow, 1:30 run done...on the treadmill...and I didn`t even suffer from any GI issues from brunch!

Nearly There

Wow...I am absolutely knackered. I have logged 49 hours of overtime working on reserves so far, most of it within the last week. Finally I had the "there's a light at the end of the tunnel" moment today at about 2:30. That isn't to say that all of my work is done - not even close - but I can fathom finishing everything in time for my Friday deadline. I am so happy that Finlay is at his grandparents' right now. I definitely made the right decision.

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On the running front I kind of felt like a wuss this weekend as I heard that a bunch of people I knew ran outside. I was freezing on just a 5 minute walk to the mall yesterday so serious kudos to my friends who braved the cold weather here. However, in my defense, I had a 45 minute run with strides to do, and who wants to run strides on a snowy, slippery surface? So I hoofed it to my Y to run inside instead (feeling ever so grateful that I did decide to join a gym this year). The track at my Y is pretty tiny...15 laps equals 1 mile. I got a little dizzy after running 71 laps yesterday. I ran at a warm up pace for 10 minutes, then ran a 30 second stride followed by 4:30 of regular ol' easy running to finish out the 45 minutes. I loved the striding part. I felt so speedy and I definitely got the heart working.

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So...the bad news is this cold snap seems to have no end in sight. Temperatures for the weekend aren't looking like much of an improvement. Coach has told me that it is downright insanity to run 35 km (or 21.75 miles) indoors. Thank goodness, because I would have a hard time trying to mentally suck it up for 155 laps (or 326 laps depending on which track I went to). And I'm not even sure if I could run and count that high. If I can't run outdoors then I'll most likely aim to run on December 24th when I'm in Kelowna. So if anyone in Kelowna can suggest a nice 35 km route for me, I am all ears. I looked at the running route maps on the Running Room website, but it sends me through the park on the same route that I got lost on this summer. So apparently I need something that is extraordinarily simple - i.e. doesn't involve veering off on to trails.

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I'm not one to make an official announcement about anything until I've financially committed to it, but it seems like everyone wants to know what I meant about Lake Stevens being good prep for my future plans. It's true, I want to race Ironman Canada in 2010. The seed was planted in my head way back in June. I met and chatted with Ray Fateaux at the Footstock race expo. He's the author of Ironstruck and we talked about his decision to go from zero fitness to racing an Ironman. At this point in time I was still throwing around the idea of just entering my first triathlon! I specifically started looking for a coach because I wanted to go from 70.3 next year to 140.6 in 2010. I almost signed up for IMC in 2009 when I heard that spots were opening up for online entry...but I knew 2009 was not the year to attempt it. I will be in Penticton in 2009 though, cheering on my friends and teammates and getting ready to commit to 2010. While Penticton is a tough course (with plenty of hills), it is supposed to be one of the most amazing. The entire town really supports the race. It isn't too far from where my folks live so it helps out with logistics, plus they will be able to come cheer me on when I toe the line. So there we go folks, I have a plan all of the way until August 2010. This is definitely one evolution...

Struggles and Gains

I've talked a bit about this before, but I thought it may be worth revisiting. Ever since university I've struggled with my weight. I know I can pin point it to my fall work term after second year. I was working in Rocky Mountain House, AB which is a pretty small town. I know I was frequenting fast food establishments on a very regular basis and that was when I learned that my metabolism just wasn't what it used to be. I lost some of the weight before leaving school, but then once I started working it became a struggle again. I was probably at my heaviest in the spring of 2006. Around that time I started to keep track of my weight and had a little notebook that I wrote my measurements down in, all in the name of tracking progress. The scale has gone down and come back up, but for the first time in a long time I think those days of yo-yoing are over. Last night as I was getting ready to head to the gym I was curious to see just what the difference is. Twenty pounds and many inches later, here's the difference:

March 2006

October 2008

Much better glasses now too, wouldn't you say? Anyhow, it is still a work in progress, but I know a big part of the change has been incorporating swimming and biking in to the mix. And nutrition...that is definitely still a work in progress...

Otherwise, last night it was off the Y. I'm not sure what has happened to me. Despite the weather being not too bad outside I opted for the treadmill to get my 30 min run in. I had weights to do afterwards and somehow it seemed like it would all get done quicker if I just ran on the tready. Seriously though...I hate the treadmill and last night was just not a good run. My shins were hurting so I tried to dial back the pace a bit but that didn't help either. And I was just watching the clock, watching the minutes tick down to 30. I finally paused the treadmill to stretch my lower legs out and it was like a major revelation, finally my legs felt good to go! I bumped the speed back up. When I hit 30 min I was just short of 3 mi and I really wanted to get 3 mi done so I kept at it. Afterwards I took a spin around the weight floor, got some core work in and called it a night.

Thanksgiving Weekend - Day 3

My body was apparently really tired all weekend because I just wanted to sleep in until 8 am every day. And yesterday was no exception. I had a tough time getting motivated to get in my workout yesterday, but by the time I finally arrived at the Y I didn't have nearly enough time to get everything in. I started running on the treadmill and I expected my legs to feel awful, but surprisingly they wanted me to keep speeding up. I was torn between running my entire 3 miles, or cutting the run short to get some weights in. I opted to cut the run short. Maybe I should have gone with the entire run since it was going so well. The weights... Not so much... I could tell immediately that my legs were still feeling the effects of my long run and bike from the day before and I couldn't lift anywhere near as much as I did on Thursday. I cruised through the weights then hurriedly showered and changed, but then found out that I wasn't needed to babysit my niece that afternoon. So I grabbed some lunch, went home, then fell asleep watching Pleasantville on TV and woke up to a ringing phone and Mean Girls on instead. Yeah...apparently I was tired. In the evening I went to hang out with my brother and sister-in-law where we closed out Thanksgiving weekend with some grilled turkey and cranberry sausages. Yum. All in all, it was a great weekend.

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As a total aside, today I swam 600 m with flippers on for the first time. Wow! Do you feel like a speed demon with those on!!

Afraid of Melting

Last night I had an easy 30 minute run on tap. It had to wait until the end of the work day, and as luck would have it, some ridiculously dark clouds rolled in on my way home. At first it looked like just a few sprinkles, but it turned slightly more monsoon-ish as I pulled into my neighborhood. I hummed and hawed... I didn't want to run outside (because I was feeling like wuss), so what could I do indoors? Should I do some strength? Finally the light bulb went off that I could use my membership to the Y for more than just the pool and that I could run on the treadmill. Gasp. Shudder... That seemed like a better option rather than waiting out the storm, so I took off to the Y. The parking lot was packed! It looks like the pool was the place to be as I think the kids had some swimming lessons going on and there were a whole bunch of parents crammed into the viewing area. Upstairs in the gym it wasn't too bad. I found an empty treadmill and set the timer to 30 minutes and speed to a 6 mph, cranked up the iPod and just went. I wore my Garmin just to monitor my heart rate, but otherwise it was a pretty uneventful run. The time went by a lot faster than I expected. I think I used to hate the treadmill so much because I couldn't run continuously on it for longer than 5 minutes. I'm not saying that I love the treadmill though! I'd still rather run outdoors, but at least I know I have options for days when I just can't drag myself out in inclement weather.

Checking Out The Y

This morning I got my behind to the YMCA bright and early...I was signing in at 5:40 am! I jammed my stuff in a locker and headed into the pool. They had three lanes open for swimming and it was so quiet. I shared my lane with only one other person the entire time. It felt so peaceful...and so different from the city pool on Tuesday when I kept passing some slow pokes on every other lap in the medium speed lane. My favourite thing about the Y? They have this snazzy centrifuge thing that wrings all of the water out of your swimsuit. I got 1250m in before heading to work this morning.

At A Crossroads

Yesterday morning I had an e-mail reminding me that fall registration for boot camp was now open. I love boot camp - I think the cross training I get is terrific. But when I registered for my summer session of boot camp I hadn't quite realized that biking, swimming (and hopefully yoga) would become so important to me. And well, I'm training for a marathon so running is just a given. I had to sit down and think about what I want to accomplish over the next few months once boot camp is over, and if it still figures into the equation.

• I'm really enjoying swimming, and I know I could use some instruction to make sure I'm doing it properly and effectively. We'll see how the Strathmore Women's Tri goes, but I'm pretty sure this is something I may want to pursue further. Both the City of Calgary and the YMCA offer tri specific swimming classes in the fall. I think this is just what I need.
• While the weather holds up I really want to take advantage of riding into work as much as possible. And riding + boot camp + possibly running = one very tired Leana.

So last night I went to check out the Y. I have said it over and over again, I am not a gym person. But the Y has a pool with lane swimming available almost all day, starting at 5:30 am all the way to 10:00 pm. Plus they offer that tri swimming class and triathlon cycle training. And if I really miss a good weight workout I can get that there too. I think I know what the answer is... They gave me a couple of guest passes so I can check the facility out, so perhaps tomorrow I'll go see what the pool looks like at 5:30 or 6:00 am...