Six Things for Sunday

Number 1

A little while ago I decided to upgrade my TV in my living room. I had a 30-something inch Acer that had been given to me, but it used to be a demo TV and the screen has issues. So when Costco was running a deal on a 40 inch Samsung LCD, plus get a Samsung blu-ray player for an extra $100 it seemed like a good deal. But now I had four TVs. The first TV I got when I moved away from home that is upstairs in my bedroom. The upgrade to TV number one, a 27” Sony flat screen that is hanging out in my garage for trainer workouts. Plus the Acer and the new Samsung. Four TVs for one person seems a bit excessive, right?

Number 2

So I put an ad out to sell the 27” Sony last week. And here is the response I got back from someone:

“I am looking for a TV to donate to an elderly gentleman in a nursing home. As he doesn't have any family in Calgary nor does it appear he has anyone to visit him, he is always striking a conversation with people going by to find out the highlights of hockey games - for which he is very interested in and loves the game. Due to his eyesight not being what it used to be, he is unable to read the paper. Therefore, a thought was to try to find this gentleman a TV so he can enjoy watching a game and bring a little pleasure over the holiday season.”

So he came by and picked up the TV yesterday, and I’m happy that I was able to give it to someone who will get some enjoyment out of it.  The Acer is now hanging out in the garage.

Number 3

Things have been a little bit…arctic…in Calgary this week! Work (and a few fun activities too) sucked up all my time and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday wound up being rest days. Unless you count a bunch of walking that I did to get to meetings or pick up Christmas presents. It has been in the minus teens and twenties around here with snow falling off and on for what seems like about three weeks straight now. November was so beautiful that December is a bit of a shock.

Number 4

I managed to knock off a great trainer ride on Saturday morning. It involved a bunch of gear pyramids, which are always fun, and took me 55 minutes. Later in the day I dropped my bike off at Bow Cycle to have a few things adjusted – the derailleur needed to be repositioned as the chain was rubbing on it. An easy fix though. She’s also getting some new bar tape and will be cleaned and shined up.

Number 5

It would feel wrong to not run once all week, so I made it to the Y just as they were opening up at 7 am. Given that it was -28C (-18F) outside a treadmill run was really the only option. At least I got to run in shorts though! I hopped on for 30 fun filled minutes. I kept cranking up the speed as the run went along and watched the visual display show me as a little red dot running around a track. Talk about boring! You are running on a treadmill, visualizing yourself running round and around on a track…

Number 6

And reserves are coming along. Everyone keeps asking how they are going but it is really hard to quantify. The best I can say is that they HAVE to be done by December 18^th. And that I’m getting on a plane at 8 pm on December 18^th. And that I’ll most likely pass out the entire way after being so sleep deprived for so long..!!

Hope you guys had a great weekend!

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 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!

Survivor: Treadmill Island

The wicked arctic temperatures continue here in Calgary. I was supposed to have my final long run on the schedule but it was just too cold to attempt it outdoors and way too long to attempt it indoors. Coach reworked my schedule and I now had 10 km to run on Saturday and a 2 hour marathon race pace interval run for Sunday. I've never spent more than about 35 minutes on a treadmill so this was definitely going to be one exercise in treadmill survival. The question would be weather I could outwit, outplay and outlast the treadmill?
Saturday:

I slept in a bit on Saturday but was still at the gym at about 9:30 since I had somewhere to be by noon. I started off with my 10 km run on the treadmill which quickly was bargained down in to a 6 mile run. Even though there is supposed to be a 30 minute time limit on the cardio machines I was able to plug in a desired workout time of 65 minutes. I started on my merry way. I tried to focus on the music on my iPod, tried to think of anything except for the fact that I was like a little hamster running and running and going nowhere, but the time just dragged by. I hopped off after my 6 miles were up and quickly changed into my swimsuit and hit the pool. If you are looking for a time to bask in the quietness around the pool and just bust out some laps...Saturday morning is not the day to do it. There was only one lane open for lane swimming and the rest of the pool was dedicated to lessons for kids or other kids horsing around. Even with only one lane open there were only three of us swimming for most of the time so I was able to crank my laps out. I had hoped to get 2400 m in but it was going to be a stretch to make it so I decided to cut back to 2000 m. I was on my final 400 m set before a 200 m cool down and I was kicking with flippers on. All of a sudden my left calf seized up. I couldn't kick with my left leg anymore, but thank goodness for the flippers because I just kicked with my right leg to get me back to the other end of the pool. I stopped and stretched it out. Obviously it wasn't enough because half way through the next length it seized up again. Once again I kicked with my right leg down to the end and stopped to stretch. I abandoned the flippers and just decided to finish out with a pull buoy since crossing my ankles would keep my left calf in a stretch. Just at the end my right calf seized and I was so frustrated...and in so much pain! On every stroke I was pretty well just shouting expletives in my head. Thank goodness I was at 2000 m...I was done!

Sunday:

On Sunday there was no alarm, I just let my body wake up when it wanted to. Which was somewhere just after 10 am. Unfortunately I stumbled out of bed feeling like I had a tennis ball in each calf after yesterday's cramping in the pool incident though. I had stuff I needed to accomplish around the house and finally made it out to the Y just before 3 pm. Since this was going to be a fairly long run I hauled some nutrition along with me. This week I got a great little stocking stuffer in the mail from the wonderful folks at nuun that I couldn't wait to try out. They sent me some u to try out, and I had my choice between tangerine ginger, goji berry green tea and lemon chai. I went with the lemon chai and brought along a lemon sublime Gu to go with it.

Since this was going to be a two hour run in warm temperatures (inside) I figured this would be a good opportunity to try out my marathon race outfit. It is going to be great for running down in Disney World, but I felt a bit goofy looking at the Y... Oh well! I realized that once I got there I had forgotten to bring any Body Glide along. Gulp!

Outwit:

Yesterday I had no problems plugging in a 65 minute run, but the first treadmill I jumped on wouldn't accept anything more than a 30 minute run. Luckily yesterday's treadmill was open so I moved over and lo and behold, it took a 120 minute workout like a charm!

Outplay:

My workout called for a 2 hour run, with 3 x 20:00 at marathon race pace with 10:00 aerobic running between race pace efforts. About 15 minutes in I had to hit the bathroom. I tried to wait it out, but there was going to be no way I was going to last the full two hours. I made it to 30 minutes, hit pause and hoped that my bottle of nuun and my Gu would be enough to hold my treadmill... Ultimately I think taking that quick break at 30 minutes in helped me to break the workout up a bit. I was feeling pretty good on the intervals and my heart rate climbed nicely through zone 3 and into zone 4 throughout them. Having these different chunks of workouts also helped to break the run up so the 2 hours didn't seem like near the drag I was expecting it to be.

Outlast:

There was a bit of a question as to whether the skin on the inside of my thighs would outlast my two hour run. Seriously...must not forget Body Glide in the future... Surprisingly enough it hurt less when I was running fast then when I was running slow. Thankfully the calves held up during the run, but the left one was pretty tight after I was done. And yes...I finished 2 hours on the treadmill! I couldn't believe it, I outlasted every other treadmill opponent and won...!!

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.

Final Tuesday Night Group Ride

Just when things were getting started from a group ride perspective, now they are over. Last night was our final Tuesday night ride out at Horse Creek as we now move indoors in anticipation of the changing weather. We were rewarded with a pretty fabulous night last night though. It was 26 deg out...amazing! There was no plan, but I rode hard and attempted to play catch up with the group in front of me. I pushed the uphills and flew down the other side of them. I was on my own for most of the ride until the very end, when LA caught up to me. We had a sprint war for the final few minutes to see if we could catch the folks in front of us. It was absolutely exhilarating. Average speed for the ride? 18.6 mph, or 30 km/h. My out and back speeds were so close that I know I'm really improving on my uphills. Before I flew a lot faster on the way back than the way out.

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This morning's run? Boring. I needed to get it done in the am, and truthfully, it is so dark in the mornings now that I didn't want to run in my neighborhood. So I headed to the Y for 3 music filled miles on the treadmill. I'm all about music-less running outside, but on the treadmill I need the distraction!

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.