Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Weekend Pictures





On the drive out...I was a little bored because Chad never lets me drive :)

















This was my favorite event of the competition














Chad watchin'


















Me watchin....after we weasled our way into the stands!
















Hanging out by the fire...this was shortly before the torrential down pour.

















Stopping at the border.











Self taken photos are the best...Chad directs the camera and I push the button!














So close to Montana...yet so far. One day I will make it there!














If you look really closely you can see the border sign...actually you can only see the outline of the sign :) :)












Stopping on the way back to get in some grub. It turns out when I make Chad bike with me for hours and hours he gets hungry!













Me with the largest truck in the world...which Chad had to point out to me because I missed it as we drove by! Maybe I should get my eyes checked!














Frankslide, he was tired of taking pics by this point so it is a boring one! Hee hee...









Monday, June 23, 2008

Can you pull a dump truck?

Hey all!

I apologize in advance, this is going to be a long one. You may need to grab a healthy snack, maybe some water or something before you get started!

Last Thursday I went out to Cochrane a little ahead of the group, I left at 6 and they came later at 6:30 pm. I did an easy spin on the way out, keeping my heart rate where it needed to be. This was my first time biking alone through traffic...yay me...I didn't get hit by a car!

I got out to the hill, zoomed my way down turned around and started the long climb back to the top. I started out pretty easy...trying my best to "spin"...it quickly turned into a grind rather than a spin. I chugged my way up to the top and holly crap my lower back was burning. Greg had given me hill lessons one night and said you should be engaging your core and keeping it steady. Well it was definitely engaged as it wasn't my legs that were hurting!

I got to the top and turned around and back down I went! I was half way up on my second climb when I saw the group charging down the hill. My back still burning...turning into an ache now...chug a lug up the hill.

Ahhhhh, last one, lucky number 3. I now have a new climbing goal, I want to climb hills like Andrea can. Holly crap she looked like she was taking a stroll through the park as her and Chris flew by me. Anyway, my legs were starting to hurt a little this time around. I slowly made my way to the top and headed back to the city. I must have engaged every single upper body muscle during those climbs because I was not comfortable in aero...or just holding on. Ouch ouch ouch. I made it back to my car and I was starving. Note to self...bring a gel or something next week.

When I got home Chad and I went down and got all of our camping gear out of storage. After hauling everything back upstairs we got down to business and organized ourselves for the weekend. Camping takes a lot of work!

Friday I went for a 30 min run in the afternoon. My legs were not too happy with me. The first 15 minutes was okay, after that I was having a hard time running on my jello legs. Hmmm 3 repeats of the cochrane hill took a bit out of me! Bring on number 4!

That night I went for a swim. Lately I have felt good in the water. I felt okay, but I just couldn't get my arms and legs to move fats enough. I ended up doing a lot of the sets as pull...but hey I got it done.

Saturday morning we were up at the ungodly hour of 6:00am. Two weeks in a row...this just hurts. It took me awhile to get moving. I would like to say for the record....I did not sleep in the truck AT ALL...both ways. This is pretty much unheard of...but I did it!

We made it out to Cranbrook in good time. We camped outside of town at Wasa Lake (thanks for the tip Alan!). Once we had everything set up we went into the city, found where the Strongman competition was being held, and found our peeps. We are standing there chatting away and these guys were pulling a dump truck. Not one of the little wussy dump truck but a giant ass dump truck. All I could think of is why would you want to try to pull that thing??? And I am crazy for wanting to do Ironman??? Hmmm.

The Srongman competition was really neat to watch. They went through a series of events of pulling, lifting, holding various heavy objects. My favorite was the truck pull, the one where they had to lift these giant concrete balls onto a barrel, and when they had two cars on the ramp and they had to hold them up as long as they could. If I am not making any sense see Chads blog, he knew a lot more about the events than I do! And we have pics as well...they will come later.

Both Keith and George did well in the competition, it was fun to watch some of the other athletes at the gym compete. It was also frigging HOT! It was 30 + degrees outside and I felt like I was melting. Going from 2 weeks of rain to hot sunshine was quite the change!

After we had dinner we went back out to the campground...I needed to get some training done! Originally I was supposed to bike/run on Sat and run/swim on Sunday. I forgot to ask if I could change them before Greg left...sorry Greg! When I had done this in the past it was okay, so I went ahead and changed it up. Chad was trying to convince me to swim first...there were boats in the water, no roped off area....and I was tired and cranky from being in the sun all day so the last thing I wanted was to battle with my wetsuit!

I opted to do my 60 min run. After a little grumbling I was off. I ran around Wasa lake....I kept to the roads instead of the trail because I wanted to check out the pavement on the highway for our ride the next day! It was still 30 degrees outside, but there was cloud cover now and I was able to keep my heart rate down! Whooo hooooo. I figured I would be having a battle with my ticker for sure due to the heat, but not so much. I was feeling pretty tired and crappy before I ran but surprisingly it turned out to be a good run.

We were staying in the provincial park...where they didn't have any showers....ewww. After being outside in the heat all day and running I went and hopped in the lake! It was surprisingly warm. I tried to get Chad to come, but the whole hating swimming must have kicked in because he was having none of it. And plus this way I could tease him that was stinky!

That night it POURED and POURED and POURED. We were able to get the fire out and get into the tent before it got really bad. The rain was coming down so hard throughout the night it kept waking us up. The plan was to get up at 7:30 so we could bike somewhere and still have enough time to get home. Well, the alarm went off...it was still raining hard...so we both rolled over and went back to sleep without saying a word!

The rain finally stopped around 9:30 and we rolled out of our extremely soggy tent at 10. The sun was out for the time being but there were some pretty dark clouds around. We got packed up and hummed and hawed about where we should bike. Should we chance the rain??? Should we go back and bike in Longview on the way home? What about highway 95 north??? This went on and on. We finally left Cranbrook, and I was looking at the map for roads to bike on and there was highway 95 south going down to the border. After some continued deliberation we decided that we were going to bike in Longview, as we drove by the highway I pointed it out, and we continued on. All of the sudden Chad pulls over....we chatted about what to do...the consensus was to try the highway. We parked along a pullout in Elko??? It was like 1:30 in the afternoon by now, so we got a move on and prepped our bikes!

Good decision by us! The road was beautiful, smooth, no rocks...nice! The only down side is that the wind was a blowin'! It was quite the battle on the way out and we made it to Montana! We had only been riding for 1 hr and 40 min and I needed to do at least 2 hrs before we turned around...but we ran out of road! It occurred to us much later that we both had our ID and we could have crossed the border and kept going! Whoops. Next time.

When we got back to the truck I threw on my running and went back out on the highway. My legs felt...Good!!! Again I was surprised. I don't know why I keep thinking I am going to hurt more than I actually do?? Preparing for the worst perhaps.

Oh, on a side note. On Sat night I was running along and there was a elk about 8 feet away from me. I gingerly carried along my way praying that it would charge me! Then when we were biking on Sunday 5 elk ran along beside us for about 1 km in the ditch. At one point they started turning towards us, good thing Chad had his trusty bike bell!

Back to the end of my run on Sunday, I got back to the truck, had a water bottle shower and we headed home. My bike wasn't as long as it was supposed to be, but hey we had fun!

Today I am fairly tired...sleepy tired. But my friend Lisa is in town and we are going to have dinner and go for a swim tonight. She is an awesome swimmer and swim coach so I think she is going to give me a little push. Chad is supposed to come too, hopefully his hate for swimming doesn't get the best of him!

I will update with biking and such pics later, and Chad will have the strongman info and pics when he updates his later!

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Last couple of days

Hey all!

I am sooooo very happy that summer is finally here :) :)

Monday night I waited for Chad to come home from work and we did a quick ride through the city, it ended up being about 40 min. Most of all it is good for me to be learning how to ride in traffic, I have to say I am getting much better at it and I am a lot calmer! I still don't think I would ride through downtown during rush hour or anything...but hey I am getting there!

Tuesday was my scheduled day off and as per usual I tried to catch up on stuff around the house.

Last night I went for a run, 70 minutes. I felt AWESOME the entire time and when I finished I felt as though I could continue for about an hour at least! That's a good thing! I could feel the humidity in the air last night, which is good because I need to get used to training in the heat!

Tonight is the group ride....I am off work really early today so I might get a head start on everyone. That way I will meet up with them out at the hill instead of trying to chase them down!

Tonight I will need the extra time because we are going to Cranbrook this weekend for the strongman competition AND we are CAMPING!!! YEAH! I need to go through our camping gear and get organised! This will be our first camping trip of the year so it should be fun. The hard part will be fitting our bikes and gear into the truck! We know a couple of the competitors so we thought it would be fun to get out of the city for a weekend and cheer them on!

Tomorrow I am going to go for a run and swim (I haven't swam since the race on Sunday!). I want to spend as much time as I can outside this weekend! I promise I will take a lot of pics and post when we get home.

Have a good weekend everyone! Happy training.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Pictures!!!

First of all a BIG CONGRATS goes out to Allan and Karen Gallant and a HUGE welcome to baby Allison! She's absolutely beautiful!

Okay back to triathlon...

Here is a pic of me coming out of the freezing cold swim....at least I'm not blue :) :) :)






Here is a pic of Chad out on the bike course rippin it up with the Red Baron.






Me....still on my bike!!!!!



Luanne running along....






And last but not least here is team "Powered Up" at the finish line, great work guys!






Started out good, ended bad

Arbour Lake triathlon was yesterday morning. I was feeling good, feeling ready, a little tired, but hey it was 6:00 in the morning! Laura came over (she swam for Chads relay team) and we were off.

We got there, met up with Luanne (the runner for the relay) and then we had to walk for what seemed like forever to make it to transition. Most people were there already so I had to find myself some space. I was super organised this time around and it only took me a couple of minutes to get set up in transition. The sun was out and shinning away the wind however was bloody cold! We ran into a few more people we knew and chatted with them for a bit while we got ready (Nolan, Lauren, and Richelle from the tech shop put in a team too).

We headed over to get numbered up and collect our race chips. I wiggled my way into my wetsuit while I tried to hear what was going on with the pre race meeting. I forgot how much work it is to get into my wetsuit! The water was a balmy 14 degrees, I got in before the race started to try and acclimatise to the frosty lake. Pins and needles were going through my feet and we were off.

The first part of the swim was tough because I could hardly breathe! I thought I was hyperventilating, but it was due to the water being soooo cold! I forced myself to relax and slow down a bit until I got used to it. Once I got into my groove I was fine. The rest of the swim went really well, I did forget how much my shoulders burn when I swim in a wetsuit. So much so that I am sore today! I didn't have a problem sighting and I swam really straight!

Out of the water I getting out of my wetsuit and was putting on the necessary gear and Darryl was there getting ready for the swim. He asked how the water was, and I said "oh its a little cold but not too bad." WHAT??? I must have temporarily forgotten the extremely hard time I had breathing at the beginning...maybe my head was still numb?? Sorry Darryl, I didn't think about what I had said until after the race...it was freaking cold at first AND THEN it wasn't too bad! Once I was ready to roll I was off on the bike and I was feeling good, even passed a few people. I was most concerned about Chad passing me, so I was giviner. Up and down the hill I went, it was 4 loops of 10 km course. I was half way done my third lap when my front tire sounded like it exploded. That's when Chad zoomed by me and he could hear me saying some not very nice words.

I am going to go a little off topic here. When I was out on Thursday with the group I blew a tube in my front tire as well. I took it apart again on Saturday and looked closely at my tire so I would get a flat during the race. I didn't find anything so I out it back on and pumped it up again.

Okay, back to race day. I got off my bike getting ready to change out the tube and that is when I saw it, there was a rip in my tire. There were a few more expletives to be said when I discovered this. I was done. I then started the walk back to transition...in my bike shoes. Grrrrr. I was pretty mad, but I realize that is part of the sport. The worst part is that I was having such a good race and I thought I could do really well. Why don't you ever get a flat when you are having a crappy race??? It is always on the good ones!

I made it back to transition a while later, racked my bike, met up with everyone, and had to explain why I was walking my bike in not riding it:( I went and handed in my race chip and was a little bitter about it for the rest of the day. I retrospect this is the second race I had DNFed and I think I dealt with it a lot better this time that the last. We won't get into the sobbing details of how I reacted last time!

Chad finished up his biking leg of the race and passed the chip over to Luanne and she started the run. I had to rub it in to Chad that technically he didn't pass me out on the bike course because I was done biking by the time he went by:) Ha ha...you can't catch me!

Laura, Chad and I went to cheer on the rest of the people we knew in the race. Nolan was finishing up the run course by this time, Darryl was out on the bike and Luanne was somewhere making her way up the hill on her first lap! We cheered nice and loud for everyone to hear! Luanne was having a tough time, not feeling too well so we stepped it up and each one of us went with her for a loop of the course to cheer her on! I did cross the finish line, even though it was unofficial!

Once the race was finished we collected all of our gear and went out for lunch. After lunch I had to go and get another tire, so we stopped by Speed Theory on the way home.

I am surprisingly a little sore today, which means I was working pretty hard on the part of the race I completed yesterday! My shoulders and glute med ( a little bum muscle under the big bum muscle) are sore today. I am either going to do an easy ride tonight or swim...maybe a will so a shorter training session of each...we'll see! Laura got some pics of us out there so I will get them from Chad and post them later.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Easing into it

Since I have a race on Sunday I have been easing my way back into training. On Monday I went for a 30 min run and it wasn't too bad. It felt good to be outside even if it was in the rain! I am having a little trouble controlling my heart rate this week, mostly due to getting over a cold I think.

Later on that evening I went for a swim, which went pretty smooth. If I remember correctly my main set was 15x100m with 30 sec rest?? I think that's right. I also did some kick at the end of the workout. I have been sharing a lane with the same guy lately and it is great because he isn't too chatty, we are both the same pace, it is a beautiful thing! I can get in and get my swim done without any interruptions :)

Tuesday was my scheduled day off...I thought about going to arbour lake for a swim with Darryl, but I opted out of freezing my butt off! Maybe on Friday!

Last night I went for a run, Wednesdays are my long run days. Lately Greg has been throwing some new stuff at me to do during my long runs which is a nice change from running the same pace! Last night I had to incorporate 2 x 8 min in upper zone 3 with 4 minutes easy in between, which means I had to work harder than I usually do! I had a hard time keeping my heart rate down again, but I am still coughing a lot soooo I don't know what the deal is.

Tonight I am going to ride with the group and if my spidey senses are correct I think we may be doing some hills. They are going to swim first, I was trying to figure out how I could make it there in time. My only option would be to get into my wetsuit at work and see my remaining clients in my wetsuit! My boss is a pretty easy going guy, he can deal with the biking and running gear everywhere....I don't think I could get away with seeing my clients in a wetsuit though :)

Tomorrow I want to get in an open water swim...I am not very good at sighting and I would like to work on that!

Happy training :)

Monday, June 9, 2008

Feeling Better

I am still fighting off the last remnants of my cold, it seems to be holding on for dear life! I think I will be back to full training for the week, I am getting a little bored with not being able to do anything.

On Friday I went for a 35 min run and it was okay. I was still coughing up my lungs a bit, but I made it through and it gave me some peace of mind to do some training since I hadn't trained since Monday!

I got off work early to attend a wedding with Chad (his client Mark and Ashley)! Chad posted some pics on his blog if you want to check them out. I loaded my purse up with Halls and tissues so I wouldn't be making noise during the ceremony and speeches! We didn't head home until around midnight and by that time I was wiped.

And then I slept and slept and slept. I woke up on Saturday feeling worse than the day before (not good:). I had slept for about 14 hours and moved from my bed to the couch...where I may have had another nap later on in the day. That night we went for dinner and made a trip to wally world. Chalk up another day of no training for me! I thought at one point about trying to go for a run...Chad wisely talked me out of it and at the same time talked me out of trying to ride outside in the rain on Sunday! I am not very good at this not training thing, I feel like I am missing out on something.

When Sunday rolled around I was feeling better and I managed to get 2 hours of biking done and also ran a bunch of errands. The bike was okay...not bad...not great. I was just happy to be working up a sweat.

Today is much better. It is lingering, but I am well enough to train and I am fairly certain it won't come back if I do. Tonight I have a run after work and a swim later on. I am kind of excited to get into the pool. This rarely happens so hopefully it doesn't pass by the time I have to go swimming later :)

This weekend is Arbour lake triathlon...it is going to be fun. I am ready to bring on the hills! I think this is going to be a great training race for me. Chad is doing the team event and Darryl is racing as well so there will be a few of us out there!

Friday, June 6, 2008

Not so good

Hey All,

I have been sick for the past few days, the kind of sick that you can't still train through. I have a chest cold...so needless to say I can't breathe very well and I am coughing up my lungs. So I haven't done anything since Monday. Everyday I leave work for a few hours in the afternoon just to go home and rest and do the same after work.

The cold has moved into my head a bit more, so I am going to try to run today and see how I feel. I think Chad is secretly hoping that I am sick enough that I won't drag him out on a 4-5 hour ride this weekend:) We'll see how it goes!

On another note I have a question. It appears that I have really absorbent skin or something because I can not get chain grease off of my legs. Chads comes off easily....me I have been scrubbing since the weekend and it is still there. The only thing I haven't tried is nail polish remover which I may try soon! Even when I get marker on my skin I have a hell of a time getting it off. Weird I know....just wondering if I am the only weird one!

Anyway, enjoy your weekend everyone. Best of luck with the race this weekend Lisa...just giver!

Monday, June 2, 2008

Biking in Banff


Hmmm, what does this remind you of ???? This was the grease mark on my leg after biking on Thursday!

Well I am glad to say that I did not get hit by lightening on last Thursdays ride. Actually it was sunny and nice, but all around us you could see the dark clouds and where it was raining! We rode out on the Cochrane road and did some intervals down in aero. This was my first ride outside with the group, I got dropped right away and I am okay with that. I chatted with Chad after that I would rather ride with people who are faster than me because that is how I am going to get better...it gives me an extra push!


On Friday I snuck out from work to get a run in. It was really warm and sunny outside which was a nice change from running in the rain. That night I also went for a swim, which turned out to be less of a internal battle than usual to get myself to the pool! I had a good swim, I felt really comfortable in the water. Unlike biking and running I find that if I don't think about what I am supposed to be doing I swim much better!

Saturday morning I was up at the ungodly hour of 7 am to go to work for a few hours. Chad was getting ready to head out to Banff when I got home and we were off shortly after that. Once we got out to Banff it was beautiful and sunny outside. Chad was full of piss and vinegar for the first 90 min of the ride....then he was not too happy. Turns out from Banff to Lake Louise it is a constant climb. We were climbing up and up and up, everytime we thought we might be done climbing we would come around the corner and see yet another hill....from behing me I would here phrases such as "aaawwww f@#$%$#@" or "my legs are burning!"

We headed into Lake Louise and found the Petro Canada and fueled up. I think that Chad learned that he has to eat a lot more to make it through 4 hours of biking! Once we were fed and happy we headed back up the hill. The way back to Banff was a lot more fun due to going downhill for awhile on the way back!

Needless to say Chad didn't opt to do a brick workout with me when we got back to the truck. He looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if he would like to come! Guess not. Anyway off I went and left him to sit and enjoy the feeling of dead legs! I ran for 25 min and decided to call it quits on the last 5 min of the run. My asthma was really starting to act up by the end of the bike and it only got worse on the run. I have never had that happen before....maybe it was because we were in the mountains?? I'm not sure.
I was good and tired when I woke up yesterday and I felt like doing nothing! I eventually got up and went for my run, clean the house, do the laundry...other than that I was very lazy! It was awesome! Anyway gotta go to bed, bye!