Wednesday June 24

Am Swim

I went over to the club bath today (another 87 degrees) and did 2500m.  The workout was 4 times 4x100 descending.

The first two sets were great! 1:50, 1:47, 1:45, 1:41...  Then the 3rd and 4th slowed a little as I started to over heat... although my 4th in each set was 1:46, I was pleased.

PM Strength

I met up with Claudia at the down town studio and we chatted about Peter a little.  Man were we both proud of him.  RAAM is so hard that even just getting there is such an accomplishment...

The workout itself was great and although I've said it before, I feel like little by little I'm getting stronger.

Tuesday June 23

90min recovery spin

Today was nice and easy 90 min recovery spin.  I know I'm probably supposed to ride outside for recovery stuff but I like challenging things a little so I set the CT to 135watts and spun..

I felt great afterwards!

Monday June 22

Daniel got his Tonsils out today... up at 4am...

Zilch training...

Sunday June 21

Happy Father's day...

7hrs bike 30 min run.

I headed out the door at 5:45 this morning to meet up with Kathie and John and Willem for another epic long ride. We met at Angus Glen CC - Can you believe the cops told Kathie not to park at Victoria square any more...

We scooted around a little and then went to meet Simon, Sid, Steve and Bern over at Lake Wilcox as they were finishing their swim. We all then headed east out to 4th conscession (I couldn't find it on a map and I wouldn't know which way to walk if I was dropped off there..) and then up to Zephyr and to Lake simcoe and back. Along the way back Kathie lost a spoke and her wheel came out of true. That really freaked me out because - what if that were to happen on race day - what would I do... ride real slow and hope for the best?

The ride was great, nutrition was bang on and aside from a little neck soreness I felt incredible... Over the 7hrs I covered just under 200km (195 I think). The average speed was helped by speeds of over 40kmph going south..

Over all a great day...

Saturday June 20

Rain Days

So I was supposed to ride for 7 hrs and run for 30min off the bike today... but due to the miserable weather out there, I just couldn't bare the cold wet feeling again. I've done it enough this year and wasn't interested today.

Instead I headed over to the pool for a swim that I slept in on the other day. The swim was 3300m and the main set was 4x 5x100m. Sets 1 and 3 were on 30sec rest and 2 and 4 were on 10 seconds rest. Because of my issues with the pool temp, swims have been tough to keep pace times. Today is was probably close to 85degrees (still too hot for a low ceiling indoor pool). I made it through - no question but paces were tough... Each 100 I was probably leaving the wall at 2:05 on the 10 sec rest and 2:15 on the 30 sec rest.

I'm not sure what to do about swimming... I know as the old saying goes.. what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger.... Swimming in warm water can't be that bad.. I just have to get enough recovery...

Thursday June 18

PM Run

I was really excited to get back out there and run today. My achilles has been feeling good and I was really happy to get this run in. In the hour I covered just over 10.3km and my HR was right around 150. What a weight off my shoulders...

Wednesday June 17

Tuesday Strength and Wed AM Lake Wilcox

I love going to workout with Claudia.  Every week I look forward to it and every week she beats me up and then writes the plan out so I can beat myself up again later in the week.  It's great because every week we chat about the past weeks events, she did the Ride to conquer cancer and I did the Muskoka race.  She informed me that the ride next year will have a 200 mile option... Sounds interesting,  maybe something to consider...

I find that week after week I'm getting stronger.  Today I graduated to the 25 pound dumbells.

Wed AM at Lake Wilcox

So I met Greg this morning at 6am.  I was tired waking up and was hoping in the back of my head that it might be raining or that Greg will have slept in or something.  The great thing about Greg is that he's always there... keeping me honest...

Just before getting in Willem showed up.  I do hope he gets over this lake thing he has right now.  That can be quite frustrating...

So out and back was the plan.  When I start the clock, that means go and don't usually puddle around... I just take it easy, taking it slow, getting lots of air and finding my rhythm.  I got the the other side in 17min, looked around for Greg and then waited another min or so and then went to meet him.  

Coming back had a little bit of a wind to it but I was much happier sighting today at least heading in a general straight direction...

Easy run this eve.... today will be a good test to see how my achilles is doing..

Monday June 15

PM Swim

It was great getting back in the pool today to do some sort of recovery swim.  I wasn't feeling as thrashed as I expected the day after a race - maybe a little sore but nothing else.  That's a good sign that meant the race was controlled and probably well executed.  

I know I'm going to have another battle on my hands though... The pool at RHCC!

The temperature was a whopping 87 degrees... and the air was killer...I'm no pool guy but I know that 87 is too hot...

My swim was slow - all 2600m probably because of the pool temp and a recovery effort thrown in for good measure... I don't think I'm complaining unnecessarily - with the pool that hot, I can barely breath every 2 strokes, let alone 3, 4, 0r more...

I just got my weekend plan and this weekend is a big one.. thankfully its fathers day so I may be ok...

Muskoka Chase

This was my first time doing this race and second time doing a long course triathlon.  The swim was 2km, bike 56km, run 15km.  

Greg and I headed up Saturday after his garage sale.  We went straight to the race site to check things out, pick up our kits and check the water.  The sun was shining so things were looking good.  We saw Lisa and Dave and spent a few minutes chatting with them.  It's so great that when I see Lisa, she's so positive and cheery.  She was happy to see Greg and I and I thought it was real menchy to ask out my achilles, reminding me to ice and take care of it...  Dave was the same way, offering support where ever necessary.  

Lisa went off to do a swim so Greg and I went to check out the water.  It really wasn't that bad, more refreshing then cold.  Lisa also didn't think it was so bad... and she always gets cold.  

We headed off to the cottage to meet up with Sandra and the kids.  Hopefully they had been behaving as she had been alone with them since lunch and it was now close to 3.   We had a nice dinner and got to be nice and early.

Race morning....

Up at 5am had some breakfast and out the door at 5:30.  We knew it takes about 45 min to get there and we wanted to get there early to have time for the 101 things to take care of.  When we did get there, it was already very busy.... I got into transition and to my surprise I had pole position.  My bike was parked right across from the bike in and out sign...  now there was no chance of getting lost in Transition.  

Time was moving fast now and before I realized it, I had to get down to the water... no warm up today... it was going to have to be in the water once the horn went.  I made it to the start with about 4min to spare.... jumped in and moved my arms around a bunch to try and get the blood going.  When the horn did go, I was off... I was really excited about my new wetsuit and looking forward to a good swim.  About a couple min in I got really "burpy"  almost every stroke was with a burp but thankfully no "chuck".  I made my way around and came to the end at 38min.  It wasn't the 36 I was hoping for but it wasn't bad...

The bike was controlled... I was planning 200 watts +/- I was feeling really good dropping to the easy ring for the tough hills (not doing anything silly) and my nutrition was going perfectly every 15min a little power bar piece.  I even went through my two bottles and probably could have used more with the heat...  Coming towards the end of the bike I popped a gel and was feeling great.  I finished the bike at 1:49 - avg 30km/ph

The run was sort of a different story... I put my old HR strap on for the bike because my SRM reads the original coded polar and not the new WIND ones.  So when the run started, I switched transmitters thinking that the new watch would just start working... It didn't... so I didn't have HR for the run.  I think for Lake Placid, I'll ride the bike with my new Heart Strap... and that way I won't risk any issues for the run.  It was probably a good things since I wanted to run hard get as close to 5min/km as possible to shoot for 1:15.  Since I was blind I started taking a lap time every Km to at least get an idea of how I was doing.  Pace was good, I remember why I didn't like those Ediscs - chewable eload disc, because I didn't have enough water with me... I liked the feeling of being free of a water belt, however, it wasn't good to get a little bit every km as I really had no gage of how much I was drinking.  I did like the gels stuffed in a bottle with a little water, I just have to remember when my next gel time was because I got confused a little... I finished the run at 1:19.  I was pleased!  Dave told me for Lake Placid, just don't walk... even going so slow running is still fast then a fast walk...  I that's what I did, I ran the whole way and was proud of that....

I came across the finish at 1:52 and change and was really happy to see Dave waiting there to congratulate me, getting me to stuff ice on my achilles as soon as possible.  I was so happy for Lisa, winning the females race.  

I then went to meet up with the gang to wait for Greg.  He was started about 30min behind me and I saw him at about 2.5km as I was coming back in..  The gang was all hanging out, and suddenly the gels started going through me, so I hope Greg wasn't upset but I had to get back to transition and "GO"....

All told a great experience...  and was really happy with my results today.

It's all coming back to me....

It's been some time since my last post...  I know, I know... life gets busy and before you know it, you're just trying to hang on, get the workouts in and spend time with the family.  In the last two weeks, I've layed off the running to allow for my achilles to get back to normal and properly heal.  

Bacel Ride for Heart Sunday June 7

This was an incredible event.  If you haven't heard of it before, this ride completely closes down the Gardiner expressway and the Don Valley Parkway to allow more then 13000 riders to ride the route up and down.  

I was interested in this even for two reasons.  One was that, this ride was something different and that I've never done before - as well not to mention the fact that I had a four hour ride to do and was looking for something fun.

The other reason, was that a group that I ride with sometimes out of Young and Sheppard was doing this to support Douglas Stoddard of eload to help promote eload a little.  Not that we were going to be able to change the world promoting eload, however, since a little product was thrown our way, it certainly didn't hurt.  

I wanted to get 4 hours in just spinning away and so I decided to park about 20 min away from the CNE and ride down.  It was cool riding through downtown at 6am - no cars to swerve around and green lights all the way.  I knew the ride home was going to be much different.  

We started and rode the route down the Gardiner - the wind was at our back and we had a great draft line going..

When we hit the DVP - everything changed.  I didn't realize that the way up to York Mills was mostly up hill and add in the head wind, things got tough.  

The way the route worked was that when you get to York Mills, you turn around and ride south bound back to Bloor and then back to York Mills and back to the CNE to complete the 75 km loop.  

I loved doing the loops because you get this ridiculously fast downhill back to Bloor, so there was a nice break before you had to work again.  When I back to Bloor the second time I started getting a little nervous about riding back through downtown again to the car so instead of going back to the CNE, I did another York Mills/Bloor loop.  By now the slower riders were making their way up the DVP and things were getting very busy.  Now, the 3rd time back to Bloor I decided to duck "off" the DVP and cut out the downtown ride.  

4hrs and 115 km later I had a great experience...  I would highly recommend this ride to anyone.  

Thursday June 3

Am Swim

So today Marks the day of the inagural pigrimage to Lake Wilcox. My Chiropractor Tim has already been going for a couple of weeks and said the water wasn't that bad...

We got in and even though the water was cold my face didn't burn like it did in Lake Placid.. We swam out to the other side and back. Going was great, straight line and all but coming back was horrendous... straight into the sun and I couldn't see a thing! I swam into the tiny cove on the left side and then swam somewhere into the middle of the lake before making it back...

I'll say it again, that wetsuit was increadible.. last year one way would take me about 19/20min and today was 17min one way...

Wednesday Jun 3

Well I was glad to not have to do anything this past Monday as I was feeling a little tired after that weekend away. My achillies was also acting up a little - as expected after logging over 200km during the weekend...

Tuesday I opted to juggle my swims a little and just go and see Claudia for some strength work...
She beat me up as usual.

Today (Wednesday)
Ride - this was pretty straight forward.. just rpm 90 or plus and ride... so I set my ct at 150 watts (zone 2) and went.. I know it wasn't the free ride that was expected... however, I wanted to work that 150 watts as much and long as possible...

Off to Lake Wilcox in the AM...

Wednesday May 27

90min Ride
warm up 15 min easy gradually build wattage 150-160; then do 5 x 1 min build wattage on each one as you warm up – 180, 190, 200, 210, 220 watts – take 1 min easy spin in between each one; 5 min easy; 5 x 5 min hard riding – these are very hard – think of each one as an individual workout and go for it – maintain 90 rpm – so if your last 1 min interval was at 220 watts, then aim for 210 watts – but don’t set any limits – challenge yourself on this and push it – you can always ease off the wattage if you need to – take a full 5 min recovery in between; warm down for 10 minutes
So the workout on this day was pretty tough - but the hard parts were only 5min long... So I went for it... 215watts for all 5sets...
I felt really strong and going into the Lake Placid weekend I wanted to know I could push if I needed to.

Lake Placid Weekend

I was really looking forward to this weekend... It was going to be the determining weekend to break any mental barriers down that would prevent me from thinking that I couldn't do this race.
We Got there on Friday and the weather wasn't great - somewhat chilly and wet the whole weekend..Since we arrived early we drove around on the bike course and then checked in and went down to the lake - thank god for that swim cap because it was COLD. I swam out to the first bouy while the others were deciding to go or not. My face was freezing... Then I just went for it... After about 10min everything was fine and I was happy that I went... We swam for an hour and acording to the GPS it said 4.5km - something didn't seem right. The actual swim course wasn't there - it was modified, so I was able to follow the line and that wet suit was incredible...
Saturday the two loops were good. I had one flat - the roads were really rough and the wind coming back into Lake Placid was really strong so it was tough. Running time on the 180km including the flat was 7:05 (I'd say 635 without) - I might consider going slightly easier next time and the 45min run was really strong - my pace was 5:30kms and my hr was low 150s. I was really proud. The group that did the reverse loop took 1.5hrs to climb 10miles into the wind... Not fun..
Sunday my 2hr run was strong but my legs were a little heavy... I covered the loop in 2:03 with my hr 145-150.
All told it was a great weekend - I'm glad that I went. Now with 6/7 weeks to go, I know that I can do this and that my training is working. I now look forward to it and not feel nervous about it...
I tried a one piece tri -suit that Dave gave me to try for the race. It was a typical trisuit but had a beefed up shammy that you could run with as well. It was great and very comfy - just hard to "pit stop" in....
I'm really glad to have a supportive family to allow me to do this.. it really means a lot....