Saw a big hairy beaver today, no not that kind you pervert!

Hey blogger buddies,

Sorry I've been away from the blog for a bit, I just haven't felt like posting although I've still been reading everyone else's and even leaving some comments. Last week I was sick most of the week so I had some extra time off.

I believe saturday's long ride was my first workout back and it was a rough one. My hr was a lil high, at first I got really frustrated as I wanted to keep to the 5/10 lower z2/upper z2 but I just couldn't keep the hr down so eventually I just ignored it and rode on feeling. So I did most of the ride with a hr that was too high. Recipe for disaster right? Well I made it ok, but it really hurt at the end. I think all parts of my poor legs and my crotch were hurting again by the time we hit crow child. We did Susi's horse creek road / lochend road loop. Which was great for gettin out of the city and the high traffic high ways. It was absolutely georgeous at times, loads of horses, one donkey, a dog that gave Curtis's face a tongue bath, and some incredible views. The only downer was that the roads were quite rough, some of the down hills I was afraid to even giver on cause I thought my bike would rattle apart. I seem to have had a bad experience coming down one big hill named Richter so I was abit paranoid about stuff like that. We even got a bit of rain towards the end of the ride, which I didn't mind it was only a couple drops. Well we got back to COP, our starting point and headed out on a quick 20 min run. We were both hurting bad, but it was still good to get a run in and get used to running with tired legs.

I really dreaded sunday cause I think Greg really wanted to kill me. The day after a 130km ride he wants me to do what??? A full race simulation including 45min swim 3 hours bike(some of it hard) then a hour run. Well I guess it's partly my fault, I should have gone EASIER the day before. I'm so stubborn somtimes, lol. Anyways I had doubts about being able to complete this days' workouts. I went to the pool and swam with Curtis, we did mostly pull since our legs were sore and we figured we deserved it after yesterday's hard effort. I think we did 4x300, then 500 for our main set. Not too bad, it was maybe 50 min worth of swimming. Man I was sooooo hungry after this. I went to subway on the way home and ate a footlong, drank a ton, then went home. I tryed to prepare for the bike, but I had doubts, my hamstring was bugging me a bit from the day before. Oh well I lubed up(did I mention my crotch was very tender?), put on a ton of chamois cream and headed out the door. I nearly didn't make it, I was sooooo tired still I just wanted to go to sleep. Oh well I told myself to start the workout, get on the bike spin for an hour, then decide if I was going to keep going. The ride for today was 3 hours, first hour ez warmup(which it took me the whole friggen hour to warmup properly and loosen up the hamstring) then the second hour at IM pace, and the last hour at half IM pace. My heart rate was normal today. After the first hour I felt ok @ 125-130 hr, so I decided to push on into IM pace @ 130-135hr. This went ok and my hamstring wasn't bothering me much anymore. I had ridden out on the trans can to strathmore. This has turned out to be one of my fav. roads I have no idea why. Had some good days on the road here I guess. Oh well I bought a drink at the gas station and headed back. It's exactly 45km and I got there in 1:33. I always aim for 1:30 which would be 30 km ph pace. The wind was from the SE so I'd get a tail wind on the way back and was absolutely flying. I soon got into the 3rd hour so I thought I'd try to pick up the pace even more. My hr was in the low 140s and it felt good to let it rip, looking down at my rear gears I only had 3 gears left and I was on the flats so I was movin. The wind changed on me at the end a bit so it hit me from the side, but it was fine. I finished the ride and took a shower thinking I'd be going out with Lisa so I'd have to do the run later. Well I couldn't get a hold of her so eventually I ended up going for the hour run. It was really hard getting going as I had stopped for maybe 30 min. Either way after a hard bike doing that hour run felt soo rewarding. My legs were sooo trashed, then to run on them and be able to run easy for an hour was sooooo epic. :D

I saw it in Penticton and I saw it again this last weekend. It's amazing how tired your legs can be, but then somehow loosen up through a long warmup and end up being able to have such a good ride on tired legs. It's taken a few days to recover this week, oh well with all the rain we've had it hasn't been too difficult there. I was supposed to do MAP intervals on monday, but with the rain and my hamstring complaining, plus my cold still not quite gone I decided to pull the plug on that. I tryed to go out on the bike yesterday but that fell through as it started pouring once I got out on the highway, I got drenched and cold by the time I got back(45 min of riding). Sooo I went to the gym and went for a 40 min run before the swim.

Today was a gooder, 2 hour run with 3x8 min at 10k pace. Yikes I don't know if I've ever done intervals in a long run. I didn't know how it would go, my calf still feels stiff, and with all the precipitation we've had I thought it might be hard to breathe running around the res in all the lush greenness. Well it started a bit rough, bit of asthma problems, and I had low blood sugar. Curtis joined me, although he didn't know if he'd do the 8 min intervals as fast. So we got in a nice long warm up and shortly after the 1 hour mark I decided to hit up the first one. I was feeling good by this time and it actually went pretty good. I didn't quite get to 8 min, I think I was at 7 when I saw a dark shape moving against a tree. I stopped for my rest and because I was curious about the shape. It was getting dark already so it was hard to see(we started our run at 9pm, Curtis is a family man :P). It was a beaver chewing on a tree. The weird thing is he didn't think I could see him, he just sat there against the tree about 10 ft away. By that time Curtis was there and eventually Mr. Beaver crawled off to the creek. It was on the back side of the res, near the creek, the SW corner. That was kinda cool, oh well we continued into the 4 min rest, up the big hill and went into the second one. That one went better, the third was a little tougher, I was getting tired. We finished up and had about 25 min left to run so we had to add onto the res loop. It's a really long version of the res. loop to begin with so with the extra we might have done hmmmmm 14 miles??? That's just a guess, I'm not sure. We passed more then one grp smoking pot, must have been a good day for that kinda thing too. It was a beautiful day for a run, I'm gonna cross my fingers that I can ride outside tomorrow. It's my last chance to get those damned MAP intervals done. Cheers, and stay dry everyone,

Darryl