Geese pics

I saw these lil guys on my ride this last weekend. I stopped to take their picture as they looked too cute to just ride by. The mother goose showed her displeasure by hissing at me.

Cycling

Hey,

This weekend's training was awsome!!! I can feel the effect in my legs, they feel absolutely trashed. I did 145km on saturday, then did another 90km on sunday with a 8.5k run after. The run was tough since I was feeling both days cycling but it definatly made me confident I can run on tired legs. There was never any thought of walking. After that great combo, I want to make this my big cycling week. The weather looks good, it may even get close to 30 degrees later on in the week. I'm gonna try to get on the bike every day if I can. Sunday I'll definatly get out to Golden to ride with Cam. I'm looking forward to that. Maybe we can do a run after and maybe even a swim before, we'll see.

Bloated and Peeing

Hey,

I thought that would get your attention. Two of the most important things while racing ironman would be nutrition, and pacing. I read somthing in Gordo's blog that really hit home, made me think. I always had problems with nutrition while exercising so it's definatly food for thought for me.

"If I'm bloated and peeing I stop hydrating, if I'm bloated and not peeing I slow down"

Notice he says this in the first person like it's advice he follows as a professional. It basically means that if the nutrition isn't being digested, your body is probably working too hard sending O2 too other muscles and cannnot digest simply because the effort is too high. Time to back off so that the proper nutrition can be obsorbed. It shows how closely related the two are. If one is not done right it'll probably affect the other. I hope that makes sense, it does for me.

Pics

Another pic from my chestermere route. This one's taken from the south eastern side of the lake. I loop the lake, then ride home on the same path you saw earlier. Like I said, great path and the whole route is about 62km. I do it twice for a lot of my longer rides.

Pics

Sorry I just found out I can put more then one pic on a post. The second pic here is in the bowness area of calgary. The first is along my favorite path heading to chestermere, (I think heading home from chestermere in this case). It's a great little bike path that obviously has no car traffic on it, just roller bladers/cyclists/runners. Although they're spaced out so I can really hammer if I want. It's also in the shape of a horseshoe kinda, so I never get headwinds the whole way.

Pics

Also in the bowness area. Curtis would probably recognize the areas. Sorry no pics of me in spandex. :P

Riding pics

Hey,

Here are some random pics that I took while riding. I take my phone which doubles as a camera in case of mechanical problems. It can be a life saver if you're far from home.

This one's in the bowness area

CRAPPY WEATHER

Heya,

As you could imagine I'm not doing too well. I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEED to ride, and the weather is crap. I'm gonna ride the exercise bike at the gym today, and swim. Oh well at least I've had a good recovery. Things could be worse, I could be injured after my 5 hours of running in a span of 3 days. That was a bit risky, but how could I turn down a run with my good buddy Curtis, and Cam in town. It turned out perfect, couldn't have asked for better weather that day!! Is there anything better in this world, then running when you're fit with two buddies who share the same love for the sport??? I think not!!! We sat down after and talked and talked after.

Yesterday sucked. I left work really tired, hung out with Lisa for a bit(the sunshine in the day) then I went to Purilator to get my infinit. Well I was there over an hour. If there is any advice I can give anyone about picking up parcels it is this; please please please remember your tracking number! I had a horrible time calling work and having someone hack my computer to find an email that had the WRONG tracking number. Then Purilator couldn't even find it at first. It was not good, stuff like that tires me out more then a 60km ride. I went home and went to bed(I'm lacking sleep). Then slept through my alarm so I missed my swim that night too. Well I said screw it, I could have gone to the gym to get a crappy work out in, but I chose to scrap the whole day. :(

Sooo from the weather reports it looks like one more crappy day and it's supposed to get better. I'm hoping for awhile so I can put in a couple weeks of solid riding. I'm really confident with my run, and ok with my swim(although it could use some more too) but the riding I def'n need more. As I've said before I'm really impatient, always thinking I'm not doing enough. I feel super guilty about taking a day off.

Hopefully I can ride with Cam this weekend. I got the go ahead from the boss(my better half) but I was checking the weather for Golden and it looks crappy for sunday. Oh well we'll see, weather forcasts can change.

Laterz

Customer Service / Weekend training

Hey,

Customer Service:
I'm hoping my wetsuit comes in on tuesday and that it fits!! I ordered it from Xterra about a month ago now. They let me know three weeks after I ordered it that they didn't have my size so I had to change from the vengeance to the vortex. The thing that ticked me off was that they waited 3 weeks to tell me. Anyways I complained about it on some forum(slowtwitch) and the president saw it and is sending it out for tuesday. I'm also getting 50% off my next purchase. I kinda feel bad about having to complain. I know I was right to do it, but I don know it's just my personality, I feel bad even if I'm justified.

Training:
The weekend went well considering the weather. We had rain/snow in Calgary the whole weekend pretty much. I managed to squeak my long ride in Saturday. I'm so glad I didn't quit, it was sooooo windy again, 40km+. I do a two out and back course usually and I had the option to quit at 60km, which I sooooo wanted to do. But, I re-fueled and headed out again. I'm glad I did because the wind calmed down and I was able to get very close to 5 hours in. 133km I believe. Here's an example to show you how windy it was. I ride around lake chestermere, around the back side. The waves were so big that some fishing boat had to tie up near shore because they couldn't make it back against the waves. They were sitting sheltered against a dike. I said, "Too windy?". "Just a little bit" was the reply. You had to be there, I got a chuckle out of it. It was raining sunday and monday, so I did my long run on monday(2.5 hours). This was a bit close to my last long run on thursday, but I couldn't train outdoors and this way I get to ride hard all week with out having to worry about it midweek. Curtis if you're reading this I'll just do a loop on wed. and thurs.

Marathon PB (pic)

Chicago 1998. Seems like so long ago. :P

Lessons in ironman pacing

Hey,

I'm very analytical about my training/racing. If somthing goes wrong I want to know why and fix it. My bad ride on Saturday left me knowing that I was doing somthing very wrong. I knew it was my pacing and that my preparation(nutrition) wasn't great either. I still didn't have the confidence and was dreading my next longer ride. Anyways yesterday I read a bunch of stuff off Gordo's site and also heard a very very good ironmantalk interview with Gordo. He talked mostly about power but also touched on some ironman pacing stuff. So I went home later and went out for my ride as usual. I wore the heart rate monitor since I can't afford more expensive electronics that measure my output and somthing hit me while I was riding. I never realized how hard it was to keep a steady heart rate. I know I tend to try and keep in a certain gear when I'm bucking wind and will not shift down till I absolutely have to. This ride I noticed my heart rate go up and I shifted down accordingly. I saved energy, kept my cadence up, also kept in the zone. This may seem rather trivual, you shift down and your heart rate goes down. Well I found the opposite isn't quite as easy to do. When I turn and get a tail wind. I'd shift up as normal, but when I'd check the heart rate, it would still be too low. So I'd shift up some more and get wayyyy more benefit out of the tail wind while keeping my heart rate in the zone. Sorry for the long winded explanation, here's my summary.

I need to shift more to keep my heart rate/effort steady. Don't be afraid to shift down for a head wind, as well as shift up for a tail wind.

Anyways yesterday was a confidence builder. I did a 62km bike ride feeling great the whole way(although the wind was good to me for a change) followed by a 38.5 min run. This saturday the plan is to ride 5.5-6 hours. I will wear my monitor and the goal is to keep at 130-135 bpm the entire ride. GG

ups n' downs

The weekend started off terrible but ended off great. It's weird how training can go up and down even one day to the next. I just wish I could get some kind of warning for the downs so I could prepare myself. Maybe put some cushioning out. Anyways my ride on saturday was a disaster. I'm not sure what could have made it worse, maybe some mechanical(knock on wood). Anways I made some rookie mistakes, starting out too hard, no carb loading. Anyways it started out as a beautiful day, sun, no wind. This all changed later on, not sure why but the wind always picks up, later on it was up at 45 km p/h again. Crazy anyway I cracked, and cracked big time(not to be confused with bonked, I had plenty of infinit) but I just ran out of gas. My feet and neck were also killing me and I just had to stop, several times in the last 30km, it was not pretty. I remember thinking how I was going to get home. Anyways I'd just as soon forget about that ride and move on so I won't talk about it anymore, I got the 5 hours 135km done like I wanted that's all that matters.

Sunday went super well. I thought I'd still be really sore but I seemed fine. I had planned to run with Curtis some time today, it didn't happen but I still had a good day. I went to the Talisman centre in the early afternoon. Decided to do a long timed swim, so I swam 3k in 55:42. Which I was quite pleased with, especially since it didn't seem hard, just boring (120 laps!!!!) Anyways I wasn't even that sore after and was able to still push in the last 20 laps of the swim. Ran 45 min after that. BTW the weather was crappy all day, rainy and overcast and chilly. So anyways I went out to the res. in the evening like planned, Curtis couldn't make it so I went out anyways(I'm really stubborn at times). and ran the loop. Felt great, had no problems. I had the heart rate monitor on and I kept it at around 135-145 the whole way. It sneaked up occastionally to 150 on the hills. Anyways I didn't seem too sore after that, I'm feeling it this morning, but I'm glad I could end off the weekend on a good note.

I realize I wrote quite a bit, I know I'm long winded.

PS: That's me at work, in case you were wondering

Long Run (with my good buddy Curtis)

Did somthing last night that I haven't done in a long time. I ran with my good buddy Curtis. Now this may sound a bit gay/corny but we have lots of memories/adventures on our long runs. It was great to get out again and run long with someone. The original plan was for me to do two loops of the res. and have him join me for one of them. Well it didn't quite work out that way as my legs were aching and we found the low areas around the water to be quite chilly. Anyways we still ran 2:21 and the aching was there but didn't get too too bad and Curtis stuck with me the whole time. He has a bit of an injury that's been nagging him for a little bit now. I'm sure with some rest and maybe some ART, or w/e it's called he'll be back soon. I'm feeling great, like I was saying to Curtis last night I'm not particularly fast but I feel really strong mentally.

Anyways looks like I may be biking long tomorrow on my own. We'll see how that goes, I hope the wind cooperates with me. We tend not to get a long too good lately. Although what ever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger right? I think the plan was for Cam and I to hook up maybe next weekend? I have to confirm with him, I'm looking forward to riding with him.

Cheers

ironman thoughts

Sooooooo very tired. If I'm not dead tired I feel like I'm not doing enough. Today I'm wasted and it's a dilemma, do I take the day off like I should? Or do I push through it and put in some easy hours today. Meh, I'll probably go easy, however the wind is gusting over 50km today. Sounds fun, plus I'm running long tomorrow with Curtis, then the long ride on saturday. All making sure I get enough hours done in the week. I'm training on fear, fear of the heat, fear that I won't have done everything I can do to be ready on race day. I can rest next month, this month is all about miles.

People ask me all the time what my goal times are in the race. I'll avoid the question for a bit and then eventually tell them what my "ideal" times are. However, my main goal is simply to runnnnnnnn the marathon. No matter how fast my swim and bike are it won't matter if I have to walk most of the run. If I am forced to walk I'll feel like I gave up.

Picture

That's me!!! I'm just testing out the picture posting. Hmmm maybe I should do some work.

First Post

This is really just a test post. I got the idea to start a Blog from a buddy Cam in Golden B.C. He ran the Vancouver Marathon this weekend in a time of 3:08. I think he's run that before in Edmonton, but either way a solid time. He's doing CDA with me in a month and a half aprox. and we hope to do some rides together. I did a long one this weekend already, 140 km. I'm quite happy with that, the conditions were really bad outside of the city. I was in my lowest gear at times fighting the 40km + wind out there. Oh well, awsome training and I hope it makes me tough as nails. Especially since I did the toughest part all on my own. Curtis and I will hopefully hit a long run this week. Things are looking really good so far, the training is awsome. I can't remember being this fit(it's been a long time).