Green Light

I'm pleased to announce, that this my 200th post carries with it good new!

I've been given the green light to start training again starting this weekend. Unfortunately "training" is going to have to be pretty relaxed for now, but at least it means I can get on my bike guilt free and stretch my legs. The Tri club is doing a 10k bike TT this weekend, I won't be able to participate, but at least I can ride out to cheer people on and help organize. A step in the right direction.

The reason for all the caution is because Storm the Wall is coming up in 3 weeks and in order to be able to go 100% there, then I need to make sure not to overdo it too early.

I'm still a long way from being perfect (on the health front at least) although I'm sure people would argue against that, but at least this is progress.

Concussion Update

Tomorrow I go to the Doctor to find out if I'm clear to resume my normal life again. It has been 4.5 weeks since I got the concussion and the headaches are going away. For the most part I feel as I always did, and only notice a difference when there are pulsing lights (bulb in the kitchen was going out so was flickering) or I have to concentrate on something really hard (like simple math). I haven't tried my luck with exercise, however, keeping my fingers crossed I will get the green light.

Wish me luck!

Concussion Recovery

I am pleased to announce I have moved on to Step #2 of my concussion recovery!

What does this mean? It means I can proceed to:

"Light aerobic activity (WOOO!!!) such as walking (wait, WHAT?)."

So, I no longer have to stay in bed all day. I managed to get through 24 hours without a headache meaning I can proceed to the next step. If my headaches come back I will need to go back though.

Still going to be a while before I can exercise again. Hopefully by the time the Olympic break is finished with I can be back at it. Jogging at least. I was making such gains in the pool and running that its a shame I've lost out this time.

This has been pretty much the worst time for a concussion. I'm not supposed to watch TV, use my computer, read a book.

How am I supposed to avoid everything these days. With the Olympics there is just too much to do.

On the topic of the Olympics. Canada is stinking it up with the medal count at the moment. I heard on CTV that Canada (as of Saturday) had 24 top 5 finishes, of these only 8 were medals. The United States on the other hand had 31 top 5 finishes, 24 of which medals.

Come on Canada, get it together!

A friend of mine had an interesting Facebook status, he asked;

Would double-gold in hockey actually redeem our lack of medals and plethora of 4th and 5th?

Unfortunately I think it would, which is kinda sad because Hockey is the only sport in the Olympics that in Canada doesn't need the publicity or money.

Hope everyone is enjoying themselves. Vancouver has had INCREDIBLE weather the past week which has made my sedentary lifestyle painful. The first perfect biking days of the year have been wasted!

Food Love/Hate Relationship

This is why I love/hate being a triathlete. Yesterday after 3.5 hours of training (1.25 hour swim/2.5 hour ride) I got home and was obviously very hungry. So I threw together some pasta, mixed with alfredo sauce and some broccoli and was good to go. 

Now although it looks like two place settings, no I am not seeing anyone. I simply laid out my food on two plates to demonstrate the sheer volume. It takes me 30 minutes to eat and when I'm finished, an hour later I notice myself roaming around the house searching for more snacks. 

In these photos there is a full large head of broccoli, a full jar of alfredo sauce, and 1 pound of dry pasta. YUM! Add to that 1L of milk and we have ourselves an awesome meal.

Hey D-Rock, thats you in the background!

You might think this is fantastic being able to eat all this without worrying about my weight and all, but think of it the other way. If I don't get this much in. I'm just constantly hungry all day.

Weekends are even worse 5-6 hour ride mixed with some swimming or running. Leads to 3500-4000 calories burned during the day. Means you have a 6000 calorie day to make up in food. Try it one day. I guarantee you'll find it hard, especially when eating semi healthy.

On that note, off to lunch!

Easter Long Weekend Training In Victoria

Over the Easter long weekend, I packed up my bag and took the ferry over to Victoria to meet Nick for a good weekend of training. 

I would be there from Friday noonish until Monday afternoon. Plenty of time for lots of great training. We focused mainly on swimming and biking swimming at the commonwealth pool and biking around the Victoria-Saanich area. The commonwealth pool is incredible! Not only was the pool very nice (a little cold for my liking), but they had a mini water park. check out these photos. 

We tried to go on the water slide but when we went it was closed.

Weekend Training Numbers:

Friday:

50k ride followed by a 20 minute run off the bike. 

Saturday:

3.3km Swim

80km Ride with some TT efforts. 

Sunday:

3.4km Swim

30 minute Spin Bike, 30 minute treadmill run.

Monday:

60km AMAZING ride.

1.1km swim (Nick's goggles broke so we called it a day).

The swims felt pretty good, however, many of the rides I just felt sluggish and heavy. I blame this on a few things.

• First I just got a new bike fit last week (blog post about that to come) and therefore I'm still adjusting.
  
• Traveling and living away from home puts stress on the body. 
• Early season and I'm just a wimp.

I don't look very happy for some reason...

The weather other than Sunday held out pretty well and we had a great time. Our routine was pretty repetitive but awesome.

1. Wake up
2. Eat as much as you can, typical breakfast for example: (two bowls of cereal, banana, avocado, bagel)
3. Go for a swim
4. Eat as much as you can (similar to above but more lunch foods this time).
5. Ride
6. Eat as much as you can (Again, similar but dinners this time).
7. Go to the gym do 45 minutes stretching.
8. Play some Halo
9. Sleep
10. Repeat

My favorite Ride was the Monday morning one. Nick showed me this small windy road. Its barely wide enough for a big car and is always going up or down left and right. Never can you see much more than 150 meters ahead of you. On top of that the pavement was perfect and your riding through rich green forest. Simply amazing, I will certainly be going back to that road in the future. 

A hard clime with a faulty cassette. 

All in all it was a pretty fantastic weekend and Nick was a great host. I hope to return the favor in the form of a mini training camp over the July long weekend or something like that here in Vancouver.

Returning from Victoria, my roommate Rob and I decided to go to the driving range down our street. It has been a while since I've played any golf but enjoy it all the same. I was a little rusty to say the least at the start but by the end was hitting some pretty solid shots. Its funny though. Despite a full weekend of training. I have no stiffness from that, however, the 60 golf balls I hit at the range have my entire side in stitches. 

All in all a good weekend. Monday night I was in bed by 10 (real early for me) and asleep by 10:15. Was FANTASTIC! 

Tuesday night I went for a quick 50k ride with some friends around Stanley Park. The weather has been great this week. Hopefully I'll be able to get out some more before it changes its mind.

Highs and Lows

This past week has been filled with a lot of highs and lows. It started off pretty well, my friend Derek and our new swim coach Liam both gave me swim tips at the end of last week. Very simple things, elbow position etc, and WOW did they make a difference. I won't hesitate to say that with one practice I was swimming 5-6 seconds/100m faster for the same effort.

Well thats not exactly the true, its greater perceived effort, but since the stroke is better, its targeting the bigger stronger muscles so the perceived effort is greater, but total energy output is the same.

Who knew a minor change in shoulder/elbow angle could be so drastic. 

Just to demonstrate the change, last week I would be struggling to hold 1:30/100m if I were doing more than a couple. Sunday at practice the workout was 6X100 pull (I'm even slower at pull) and I managed to hold 1:25 for all of them. This was very exciting for me. 

I'm going to have to make a comment to Derek and Liam about giving me swim tips the week before Storm the Wall since they are my major competition.

Come Tuesday afternoon things were going great, then the week took a turn for the worse. A friend and I decided it would be a good time to take a jump off the high dive. Lots of people do it, whats the big deal, it will be fun. Well I landed funny in the water and it honestly feels like I broke my tailbone. Awesome...

Honestly. Sometimes I'm an idiot. 

Two days later and it still hurts to sit down and depending on the movement (kicking in swim) it still really hurts. Hopefully it will be better by next week when Storm the Wall starts up, otherwise I will really pissed with myself. 

To make matters worse, things just went downhill on Wednesday. I woke up that morning feeling fine, got up and headed into the bathroom and got really dizzy, This happens sometimes when I get up to fast but this time was different, I felt really panicky for some reason. I quickly sat down and waited a few seconds for my head to clear. Now things get hazy, I think I went to stand up but I'm not too sure, the next thing I know, I'm laying on the floor and have knocked over everything in my bathroom. I'm boiling hot and still a little out of it, I stumble to my room and lay flat out on my bed and notice I'm sweating like mad. This last for 2-3 minutes then I start feeling normal again and just get cold. I notice my shoulder is stinging and check it out, only to notice I'd caught myself on the radiator and put a nice 4 inch cut on my shoulder. Fortunately its not very deep.

Its a pretty wimpy cut, the reason I'm showing it is more just to demonstrate the fact that I don't even remember getting it. Thats not cool.

The strangest thing of all this, after that 5-10 minutes passed, I felt perfectly normal again. I think this was caused because I sleep under heavy blankets and my heat is often left on. I must have overheated during the night and had similar symptoms to a mini heat stroke or something. 

I decided despite the fact that I was feeling alright to take the day off work, more because I was stressed over fainting, not wanting it to happen again outside of my house. 

Anyways, yesterday passed. I got some good reading and a bunch of naps in and today I'm feeling back on track. Did my swim workout tonight and had a pretty solid swim (despite doing it all pull).

Even though I don't feel sick anymore I still feel under the weather or something strange like that. Its almost as though I feel like I should be feeling sick, so I'm moping around waiting for it to hit. 

Who knows, tomorrow is another day. Going to get a good sleep tonight and hope this all passes by the weekend. I've been having a lot of good weeks lately. A downer was bound to happen eventually.

Midweek Update

Blisters are still on feet from the UBC tri, however, with proper taping am able to run on them no problem.

Tonight we did a great hill workout, running from Jericho beach up to Chancellor Blvd. Definitely left me tired. Was getting leg cramps sitting on the bus, must have looked some kind of crazy.

Swimming is coming along, I'm still struggling to get the mileage in, but I think that with school settling down I should be able to get back on track. I'm having a lot of trouble waking up in the morning and as a result keep missing workouts. I'm getting plenty of sleep but still sleep right through my alarm.

Finally, I think there may be a second trip to the Velodrome this Friday. I went a few weeks ago and it was awesome, but there should be a full post about that coming soon. For now, I'm going to read my book and head to sleep. I've been reading "I Know This Much Is True" by Wally Lamb, its a good book but far too long, and midway through a whole second story line picks up which I somewhat lost interest in. It will be nice to finish this one and take something lighter, and a little less depressing.

Thats all for now, I'm OUT!

Boulder Wrap Up

I have fallen behind on my blog post. Its frustrating because I have idea's for post, but no time to write them.

Instead of a detailed recount of the rest of my trip, I'll simply do a photo diary of it.

Monday, Angela's last day in Colorado was spent in Denver. We went down to the city and walked around, checking out the shops and simply enjoying the nice day.

We walked around the Art Museum which has a lot of cool sculptures around

This was followed up by going to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Will and I really wanted to go there to see some dinosaurs.

This is me growing very impatient at the lack of dinosaurs we've seen, I threw a bit of a tantrum

We continued walking along checkout out the shops on 16th street mall. Here will had his second accident of the trip, a little pop mishap. Not as embarassing as the first misshap, but photo documentation nonetheless.

Shortly after Will's accident, we came across this awesome car.

Deep

On our way to the museum however, we ran into our first roadblock. The iPhone which had been directing us without failure all weekend led us astray. This though, was in no reason fault of the iPhone, I blame google for giving us the wrong address.

Angela and I gave up, but Will kept looking, finding the museum eventually.

The museum was pretty cool and it was a fun way to round out the afternoon before driving Angela to the airport. 

Kelly's best dino impression

This is how we roll heading into the museum!

That night was spent watching Slumdog Millionaire, and an early night.

Tuesday arrived and we really didn't do much, made pancakes, watched, I'm on a Boat, and then I headed to the bus stop to catch a bus to Denver Airport (Angela got driven, apparently they love her more).

The bus was uneventful and the flight was nice and short with little turbulence. I landed in Casper Wyoming and was welcomed by a great meal with Mike and Gina.  But more on that in my next post

5 Questions

In my daily scouring of the blog world (refuse to call it the blogosphere) I came across THIS blog and saw a post I found quite interesting. The idea is someone who has glanced through your blog to get an idea of the type of person you are asks 5 questions for you to answer, so its like a mini interview. I left a comment and here they are.

1. What has been your biggest challenge during training, and how have you overcome it?

My biggest challenge so far in training has been consistency and flexibility. Very rarely have I actually had muscle injuries, it is always some sort of complication of lack of flexibility resulting in knee pain, ITB issues, hamstrings, etc. For example right now I am fearful of getting on my bike because of my IT band, worried that the piercing pain will come back. The reason I listed consistency in my challenges is because more often than not, these injuries are the result of inconsistent training regimes, I will not train for two weeks in one sport and then all of a sudden go all out. Net result, my parts get super tight. Also the consistency in the amount I stretch, I have a really bad habit of stretching as a consequence of injury as opposed to in prevention. Overcoming this in the 2009 season I am trying to focus on stretching at least a little bet everyday, even if that just means 5 minutes at my desk at school.

2. Why have you made triathlons your sport of choice? 

Anyone who knows me knows that I am quite a competitive person. Before entering the world of triathlon, I raced track and field and cross country. There are two problems I encountered with the running world, the first being I kept getting injured. I don't know if its just my physiology, but I wasn't able to handle the mileage, shin splints were a painful memory from high school flaring up each fall with cross country and then again in the spring with indoor track season. 

The second reason I left track was because I wasn't particularly good at it. I was good compared to high school track team kids, however, when I raced in the Quebec Federation I got whooped. I remember one day racing provincials, finishing 4th in the 800m, respectable enough right? Well I ran a 2:08 and Josh Wolfe ran 1:52 if memory serves correctly. 16 seconds, thats over 100 meters behind. I realized that I was a good runner, but not matter what would never be great. When I hit CEGEP (transition school between high school and university in quebec) scheduling conflicts prevented me from being able to run track. Abbott (my CEGEP) did have a swim team though, and it was really well organized so all levels could race, being a beginner swimmer, this offered a challenge and a way out of the running injuries. Two years of that and I decided to combine my two sports, swimming and running with my first triathlon. After that first one I loved it and was hooked. Ask anyone who knew me back then, you couldn't get me to shut up about it. I loved swimming and I loved running, the second I got on a bike, I enjoyed that even more. 

What I loved most was that it offered a great way to avoid injuries because whenever my legs hurt, I simply stay off them for a few days and do a swim focus. Also, since I've gotten pretty good at swimming and always had that background in running, I find that I excel in triathlons to a much higher level than I would have in either sport individually. 

3. What is one trait that you most admire in another person? 

I admire motivation, and dedication, no matter how hard I train, I feel like I could still be doing more but would have to sacrifice my current lifestyle. My biggest load week last year was only in the range of 15-18 hours. I have friends these days who have been doing that all winter. I'm constantly impressed at the amount of time and dedication they can put in despite their crazy busy schedules. Two people I'm really excited to see race in the spring are Facundo Chernikoff and Nick Gottfried. Both of them have put in huge training mileage over the winter and I think we will see huge improvements over last year. 

4. You seem to love silly pictures. What is your current favorite? 

I have lots of favorite photos that I've seen online, however, I don't think any beat this one that was taken by a friend of mine just yesterday outside my building at school. This may not be the funniest photo online, however, since its something that I was able to see in person it makes me laugh every time. Check it out, tell me if you can spot the problem.

The best part I think is the fact that clearly the parking lot wasn't full, the lane on the right still has open spots. 

5. What do you like best about being Canadian / from Vancouver? 

Wow, huge question, where do I even begin. About being Canadian, well there is all the cheesy stuff like when I travel people like me for being Canadian and there is an inbred pride that goes along with that. But a more down to earth response would be because its a big country (geographically) but still small world. Just to give an example, I was talking with a friend from St John's Newfoundland, and I only knew one other person from there, sure enough, they went to high school together. So here we are in Vancouer 6000km away and have a mutual friend. In Canada I find that you get that small world effect all the time. This is especially evident in the Triathlon World. I dare say you could name any triathlete in Canada that I couldn't find 2 degree's of separation from. Every race I go to I meet people I know or have heard about. 

And to answer the second question, I'm not actually from Vancouver, I was born in Ottawa ON, and grew up in Moncton NB and Montreal QC. So instead of saying what I like about being from any of those, I will describe what I like about being in Vancouver now. And it can be summarized in one word; Environment. Its amazing for all my sport passions, I swim outside all winter long, I can bike and run in the most amazing settings you've ever seen, and it never gets TOO cold. How can I complain about that.

Anyways, this post has been long enough.

I'm finishing the last part of the cycling study right now, will post the results probably sometime tomorrow.

Oh, and this questionnaire, if you want me to ask 5 question for you, simply post a comment and over the next few days I'll check out your blog and come up with 5.

Roller Antics

Tonight I had a lot of work to do, a grant proposal first, and once that was finished and submitted, I had to prepare my lab presentation for tomorrow morning.

Before starting in on the lab presentation, I decided to take a breather and have some fun since I've been working more or less since 8AM straight. Did I want to do a normal 20 minute spin to loosen my legs? I decided to mix things up, since I wasn't really looking for a workout I decided to make a video of myself on the rollers doing some of the tricks I've been practicing. 

So here it is. 

-Getting on without a support

-No Hands

-One Leg

-Standing Up

-No Hands One Leg

-No Hands One Leg Clipping Back In

Let me know what you think. Also what other skills and tricks should I work on?

Next skills to work on:

-Removing Shoes

-Dismount Triathlon Style

The video was a little rushed, although I said I was procrastinating for a little bit, I still felt like I should get back to work sooner than later. Had I put in more effort I could have made it better, but for tonight, I think this was fine.

I'm not all to sure why it cut out so quickly at the end there. I did the other leg as well and then came over to turn off the video but I must still not be good at this whole youtube thing because it cut the video about 30 seconds short. Oh well, I didn't really say anything new.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, last week a fellow triathlete from North Van, Meyrick Jones who I've referenced a few times in my blog got a sponsorship from Lululemon and as a result he held a contest for one of two jacket/sweaters (wow lots of hyperlinks). And I won! This was pretty exciting news this morning, a little cheer me upper in the middle of my research. I've never actually met Meyrick but a few of my friends have and say he's a pretty nice guy, and so next week I'll be meeting him, I'm pretty excited. It will be nice to finally meet the person I've been reading about and put a face to the name.

 

Anyways, back to the lab book. I will be ready for when this weekend finally comes.

Masterful Meal Creation!

Yum Yum Yum

Two days ago I was making one of my staple meals, pierogies but decided to try and spice them up a little bit. Not knowing exactly how I was going to achieve this I started looking through the fridge. Lo and behold I had leftover taco meat from a fantastic Taco Fiesta I hosted on Sunday night.

So I boiled the pierogies, and when it came to the frying point I threw them into a wok with the taco meat and onions. Yum Yum Yum!

As you can see by my thumbs up, I approve. 1000 Calories of deliciousness.

I often try and do this, mix and match my meals, one time I had just made bacon and was making pierogies for lunch the next day. Deciding since they were Bacon flavored pierogies, I would fry them up in a thin layer of bacon grease. Although delicious for the first one, as they cooled the bacon grease started to congeal making them slimy and gross. I don't recommend. The thought of what was happening inside my body was frightening.

At least taco pierogies is one for the success books.

SUPAMOTION!

I had somewhat of a first today, or at least a first in a very long time. A friend of mine, Choppy Somjee (Chops) is a physical trainer, and is focusing his expertise in the field of triathlon. I met Choppy this summer as I was traveling the West Coast with his girlfriend Jody. Once we met the three of us became the triathlon trio who travelled to races together ripping up the Subaru series. This afternoon he agreed to give me a training program of gym exercises geared towards my weaknesses. 

Weaknesses? What? I have none! 

Well Chops would disagree with me, we discovered that I am heavily quad loaded, meaning what? That my quads do all the load bearing without any help from my glutes and hamstrings. We must have done 4-5 exercises before finally finding one that activated my hamstrings. Result of which, Chops has given me some drills that will be bringing the pain. 

On top of this, he has also given me a few to strengthen my back in order to hopefully fix my posture a little bit. I didn't mention this much but one of my new years resolutions was to straighten out my back and to have general better posture.  Hopefully some of these targeted workouts will help out with this.

I unfortunately don't know his professional contact information yet, however, if you hadn't guessed SupaMotion Fitness is Choppy's company that is ever expanding across the Greater Vancouver Area. You'll be hearing about him and the company a lot more through me and I'm sure the active (Triathlon) community. He is in the progress of changing his website so some of the links aren't up. I'm really excited about the prospect of incorporating this type of training into my workouts. We both agreed that this is the area of my training which is seriously lacking and holds the most potential for progress! I'll be sure to keep you all updated on how it goes.

I know I talked it over with my roommate Rob Eso and he agreed, gym workouts could really benefit us both.

First gym workout is on Thursday, LEGS! 

Bringing on the pain.

Dark Night Reconnaissance

Starting up this half marathon training following the workout plan found here has kept me very busy this week. I'm pleased to say that I didn't miss a workout. I did however have to change a few of them around. The reason being I encountered a few dilemmas along the way.

Since the workout plan is all set up for me, it should be simple, just go out there and follow it. Issue being this doesn't take into account how I'm feeling on any given day. Are my legs doing well, feeling stiff, any aches or pains?

For Sunday I had scheduled a long easy run of 13km. I set out planning to do this and then started questioning myself. Was I starting up this week too strong? What if I get shin splints from the sudden increase in mileage? I should have worked my way into this program and started two weeks from now. This is where the internal debate comes in, pride makes me want to finish the workout so as to not "cheat" at all along the way. Then reason kicks in saying that it isn't smart to push too hard.

In the end reason ended up winning out. I decided that Sunday I would take it easy, and then do my long run Monday so as to have the recovery day off on Tuesday.

That being said I did 8.5/6.5/13.5 km runs Saturday/Sunday/Monday, I feel this is pretty good, but I'm definitely looking forward to my day off tomorrow.

One thing I have come to realize this week, is that if I want to stick to this plan, I will need to plan my days well, I can't just wing it and do long runs every night, sometimes I'll have to wake up and do them before heading into work. Also, I'm going to need to really pay more attention to my body and not beat up on it. I'm really going to focus on stretching and icing right now. The last thing I need is to be all gun-ho in the off season and plague my season with an injury.

Now to the exciting stuff. My reconnaissance mission concealed by the darkness of night. Unfortunately/Fortunately  for this evening, all of my cold weather running gear is black (I really don't know who designs this stuff, they should know by now that winter its dark when you leave for work and dark when you get home, why make the gear all black as well?). The fortunate side of this coin is that my mission which I chose to accept was to break in to the UBC construction side at 16 and Westbrooke and take a peak at the progress on the new track being built there. Rumors have been swirling around as to when it would be finished, ranging from already done to sometime early next year.

With none of these answers satisfying me I decided to check it out myself. This wasn't so much premeditated, I was running by and saw a gap in the fence so decided to detour a little bit. 

Dressed all in black I stealthily passed by the gate, Underarmour sweater with built in hood pulled up for ultimate stealthiness. 

I must say, the layout of the track looks superb! My only complaint is that it looks like it was built in a rush. The track is clearly not flat in some area's and I feel while sprinting that you would have the sensation that the ground is slightly dipping under you. It really doesn't take much to notice this, I remember Lindsay Place High School's floor dipped by 1/8 of an inch on some of the tiles and you felt like you were missing a step sometimes. The one thing I am holding out for at the UBC track is that it still isn't finished. All that was done was the cement base, hopefully when they lay the top layer (Not sure what its going to be, I hope rubber), that they even out all the dips. I'm going to need a smooth surface if I'm going to run a fast mile!

Anyways, that was it for tonight, came home and made myself a milkshake with supper. I think I successfully got 70 grams of protein in me within minutes of finishing my run!

2009 Preview

Now that the new year is upon us I figure its time for a season preview. 

For starters I've made the decision not to do the UBC triathlon this year. Instead my friends and I are forming two relay teams we hope will be highly competitive and hopefully win the overall.

With this race set aside I can purely focus on getting into shape for my first race of the year, the Shawnigan Half Iron. The reason I am adding pressure to this race is because its the provincial championship, and hopefully I can catch people off guard with their fitness and come out on top.

How am I going to accomplish this? Smarter training. Last season I put in a fair bit of hours but I realize in retrospect that a lot of them were junk hours, primarily on the bike. I did a lot of long hard rides but no heavy interval work. The result of which being my biking power plateaued mid season and I found it very difficult to improve from that point onwards. Unfortunately this means a lot of painfully boring time trial efforts out at Iona beside the runways at the airport. I figure that with good targeting mixed with some weight work I should be able to bring my average speed on the bike from 35 up to 37kph.

For the run, the key will be more consistency. Last summer my running was all over the place. Compared to a normal triathlete let alone those training for a marathon, my run volume was embarrassing. Rarely did my running total more than 100km a month, and usually it was closer to 60k. This year, I decided to follow a program for my runs. I was digging through my old e-mails and came across a training plan for a half marathon that my old run coach Rich MacKenzie gave me in preparation for the Ottawa Half Marathon.  I was originally planning on running the Vancouver half marathon on May 3rd as a warm up for the season, but as my mom pointed out, it wasn't worth the risk. I have a bad habit of running too hard in road races and getting injured. This is fine at the end of the season, but 3 weeks before the start of triathlon season didn't seem wise. Keeping that in mind, I decided to train for the half marathon, but not actually go through the injury provoking activity of racing. This way I should be in tip top shape for my first race 3 weeks after this program completes.

I've posted my training plan here, the yellow are days that I have successfully completed according to the plan, and as the month go by I'll update with how its going posting my progress to keep me honest. Days I miss will be in red or something. 

Click to enlarge

I know many people will be training for spring half marathons. This is a good program with very little high intensity training which should be good for anyone trying their first or tenth.

On another running note, I have been reading the book "Bowerman and the men of Oregon" by Kenny Moore. Its excellently written. Kenny Moore having been one of Bowerman's athletes give a really good perspective. When I finish it I'll have a full review most likely in painful detail.

The reason I brought this up is because a large focus of the book is on the milers that he trained, and it got me thinking. How fast can I run a mile. Back when I was in grade 10 I think my fastest 1600 was in 4:48 but I never really trained for that distance (I was primarily a 400 and 800 runner) and consistency was my biggest fault back then. That being said, since I hope to keep myself honest with the added mileage for the half training, I decided to try my luck and see how I could run a mile. There is a new track at UBC that should be finished being built any day now. Once that is done I will christen it with my mile record attempt. My goal right now is to break 4:30, who knows, 67 laps are fast. I may have to re evaluate.

More of that to come though. 

I'll leave out my swim update because swimming is boring and not much exciting happens there. 

WOOT!

I just want this pain to go away.

A little recap before I get into the nitty gritty of where I'm at today.

I had my lab presentation that I was procrastinating my last post and followed that up with a weekend of festivities. Starting with the Microbi Symposium which is always a good night out and then the Saturday going to the Parade of L

ost Souls out on Commercial Drive. Its more of a gathering than a parade. People dress up in their halloween costumes and there are street performers and drums. All round a good time.

I specifically like the people on stilts.

The following morning there was a nice change of scenery. Two friends of mine from the McGill Cycling Team are now living in Kelowna and were in town to watch the World Cup Speed Skating Competition at Pacific Coliseum.

This is short track speed skating and I had a childhood friend (Travis Jayner) racing for the American Team. I won't give too many details, but if you've seen it on TV, its 10X faster in person. Its really incredible to watch. My favorite event was the relay. For those of you who don't know what this is, what happens is there are 4 teams of 4. So 16 people on the ice all skating in circles. One person has to be doing laps at all times but the tag of for the next skater can happen at any time so its a chaotic 5000 meters of high speed skating that somehow doesn't result in a crash.

Check out this video (This is front the Vancouver Race) Canada is the Black with White stripes typically leading the race. Go to the end to really see the speed pick up.

Unfortunately Travis didn't have the best day, but it was still cool to see him skate.

The following week was fairly uneventful, I had a promising meeting at work with another lab where we brainstormed ideas and came up with some new objectives for the coming month. But the week was really just focused on Halloween that was coming up.

Thursday night a bunch of people from my building and I carved pumpkins. You can check out our work here, but I'll post mine just so you can see the awesomeness of Optimus Prime. 

For Halloween this year I had a whole lot of ideas and was debating what to be until the very last minute. In a clutch decision I decided to be Steve Prefontaine. If you don't know who he is, first off; FOR SHAME, and secondly, read up on him because he is pretty sweet. There are also two good movies on him; Prefontaine and Without Limits. I suggest watching both many times.

To perfect his costume I would need running attire, but most important is a beautiful growth of facial hair. Check and Check. With a little arts and crafts time I made the Oregon Logo to go on a shirt that he was so famous for and was ready to be on my way. My friends and I all decided to go to a bar party at the Blarney Stone which is crazy busy on normal nights, so on Halloween we decided to get there insanely early at 6:30 to make sure we got in and didn't have to wait too long. This turned out to be a great move because I know people who showed up at 8:15 and never got in.

The night was a big success and since we got there so early it was a fairly early night. I don't know about you but I can't last too long drinking when I start at 6 so my 1:30 AM I was home and by 2 in bed asleep. Lilia made fun of me for being old because this was really late for me.

Unfortunately the facial hair is all gone now and I'm naked and cold. People keep telling me I look weird and like a little boy without it, so I think I am going to grow it back. Time will tell for that one.

Now for a training update, which also goes along with the title of the post.

I haven't tried Biking yet, weather has been pretty crappy and I think psychologically I've been nervous about getting back out there after my leg injury for fear of it acting up again. The main reproach to fitness I've done is running. Last Wednesday I led the run practice which included a 2km warmup and then the main set was 1km repeats. I made it about 3.5km until my knee started to really hurt. This was in the same spot as the pain from after the marathon. I think that one of my tendons must be really tight still. I took the rest of the practice easy and then walked it off. 

Today being a week later I was hoping my knee would be better. Again I ran the warmup with everyone but then about 3km into the run my knee started getting that twitch to it again. That being said I quit running and became coach Vince from there with my stopwatch in hand and yelling voice ready to encourage and get mad at inconsistent pacing (Rich would be proud). 

I haven't really done any stretching since the marathon, so this resting recovery clearly isn't doing enough and active stretch recovery will be needed.

A little more serious than the tight knee though is the pain I get in my foot after I run. Its the same pain I got during the marathon which leads me to believe that I may have damaged something important in there. I really hope this doesn't stick with me for a while. I'm beating myself up over not getting outside and exercising, I've gotten really lazy since the marathon which is transferring over to the rest of my life as can be seen from the lack of updates on the blog, but getting myself out training isn't going to help anything either. Hopefully by my next update I will have taken steps to make things better. 

One fun thing thats been happening to me a lot lately, since I've been coaching the run practices, I've had a few people from work start asking me questions about running and fitness, and I find it really rewarding and exciting to have people showing an interest in fitness as a result of my influence. Hopefully I can make this spread.

Well I think thats all for now. I'm trying to catch up with work and the rest of my life right now, so training updates will be a little slow but maybe I will have more personal updates in the near future.

Thanks for reading

About Time

I decided after the marathon that I was going to wait some time to write the report because my opinion of the race was somewhat jaded immediately afterwards and my review of it would have been somewhat skewed.

Short version:

Race went generally well, at 16km foot started hurting due to timing chip, fell of pace at 26km. At 36k was just trying to hold on to the finish which I finally did in 3:12:44, good enough for 4th in my age group.

Before beginning my detailed race report, I would like to congratulate a few people who ran this past weekend:

Sean Brown: running in his 6th marathon and setting a huge PB (3:30:35)

Winston Guo: Finishing his first Marathon (3:22:34)

Erin Prosk: Finishing her first marathon (3:29:42, 4th in her age group)

Doug Giles: (3:09:52)

Rachel Kiers: (3:09:30)

Luke Lavallee: Unfortunately only made it 26km, his knee started hurting resulting in having to quit the race.

Long, Detailed Version:

Race morning is always a time I hate, wake up extra early to try and force feed yourself food you don't really want to be eating in the first place but know that you have to. Eating before a triathlon is bad enough, but at least you are eating before swimming and then a bike ride, plenty of time to properly digest before the run. The marathon on the other hand offers no easy transition into the morning. 

I decided to go with my typical two Cliff Bars, worked and fueled me well enough for half irons, it should do well enough for a marathon.

The race was at 8:30 AM, I decided it would be wise to wake up at 6. I'm quite jealous of my brother race morning, Luke was also running, however, he seems to have an iron stomach race morning. I started eating at about 6:05 and finished forcing the two Cliff Bars down by 6:34 I remember seeing on the clock. Luke woke up at 7:15 and was done eating two Cliff Bars and a bowl of pasta by 7:30.

The race was roughly 2km from the hotel, not too far, but further than we wanted to walk race morning. We went down to the lobby to look into a cab, but didn't need it, a driver that went by the name of Dominic offered to drive us. Man was Dominic a character, he asks us if we mind him playing some music on the way, Luke and I agree to it, and so he PUMPS UP THE TUNES! Hard Gangster rap at 7:45 in the morning is a little much.

Here is an example of the introduction into one of the songs:

"What do you say to someone with two black eyes?

-Nothing, you've already told him twice!"

Dominic, despite being from Victoria, I'm not sure knew his way around. He drove us a roundabout route towards the race start, after warning him that the roads would be closed off all along the course he got confused and started driving us in the wrong directions. At this point, Luke and I decided it was best to walk from there. Dominic got us 1/2 of the way. Not to bad and we still had plenty of time. 

Dropped off our stuff, went to the bathroom and then quickly lined up for the race. It was a little chilly race morning, but I decided to go with only small dollar store gloves and no arm warmers. 

Positioning myself near the front, I had 2 minutes to stretch and get ready for the race. I was about 3 rows back from the front, I think this was among the best I could have asked for seeing as how the first two rows were the pro seeded runners.

Off goes the gun, right on time. It felt really weird running a marathon, I'm used to running 5-10k races where your first km is always freakishly fast, in this situation, we took it out fast, but at the same time still really controlled, first km in 3:56

The first 5km were pretty fast, it was really hard to keep my pace slow and not race. Reaching 5k I looked down and saw that I had run in 20:05. Pretty good considering running on pace would have put me at 21:20. This is the point in the race however that I started thinking to myself how much running I still had to do. 37.2k to go, ugh!

Running through the next 5 k were pretty good. I came to realize that I was really fast on the flats and descents, however, any uphill part really slowed me down. When I list the km pacing later on, you'll see the inconsistency in my pacing, this is all due to small inclines in the route. Anyways, rounded of 10k at a steady 41:16.

Up to 15k there were no real problems, the only issue was that I was running more of a 4:05 pace instead of a 4:16-17 as I had planned so between km 10-15 people who ran a freakishly steady pace started to catch up to me as I slowed down to 4:15.

km 16 is where problems started to kick in, I made a rookie mistake. Having never really done a long road race before I laced the timing chip into my shoe. The problem that aroused from this was the timing chip caused bunching of my laces and I kept getting a pressure point on my right foot. This started hurting quite a bit at km 16 and persisted until the end of the race. It hurt enough that I went from being 1:50 faster than pace at 15k to being only 4 seconds faster than pace by 21.1km. I actually stopped to loosen my shoe and try and fix the timing chip at 20k.

I was able to battle the pain in my foot holding steady 4:16km until km 26 when the pain really started to set in at which point my pace really started to soar. 

At km 34 Rachel Kiers caught up to me, and we chatted for a while, she was still running strong. For those of you who don't remember, she also raced against me at Shawnigan Lake and Vancouver half iron. I tried running 1km with her, however, the 4:45 min/km pace was too much for me at that time. My right foot was just crushed. Looking at my watch I knew that my new target time was now 3:10, but that would be slim.

 

Finally after 42.2km I crossed the finish line in an agonizing 3:12:44. Generally I'm pretty happy with this. I know that had I been more conservative I could have gone probably closer to 3:05 but that was never the intention, I wanted to take a crack at 3 hours. I sacrificed the good to go for the great and ended up with Just Ok for my standard.

The worst part of this race was being at 35km and hating life in general and knowing deep down that I would do this again because I knew that had I properly trained 3 hours would be easily attainable. 

My recovery from the race was pretty good, I was barely moving the days following the race, muscles were feeling pretty good, however, my feet and knees hurt a lot, the tendons around me knees were really tight, and my feet felt like they had been beaten with a hammer. I guess thats to be expected after running 42.2km. After all, the first guy to run a marathon finished and then died, so just finishing is a testament to my body.

Funny story from the marathon though. There was a runner who was doing a charity run for the Canadian Comedian Association or something like that, and anyways, he ran the entire marathon juggling. Where this becomes unfortunate was that this juggler had a personal marathon (non juggling) of around 2:30 (really fast), so juggling he slowed down to roughly a 3:10 pace. This meant that he ran the WHOLE race either just in front or just behind me. Every corner that had spectators instead of having people read my race number and see my name and yell "way to go Vince!", I just got, "Hey looks, its the JUGGLER!"

I thought I had beat him at 33km when he dropped a ball and I passed him (I swear I didn't kick it), but then at 38k he passed me, I tried to respond but legs just weren't giving any, so I got beat by the juggler.

Anyways, here are my paces for the race. I only have the first 29km because the watch I forgot had a limited amount of lap times.

1km   3:56

2km  3:51

3km  4:15

4km  3:56

5km  4:05    [20:05]

6km  4:15

7km  4:18

8km  4:04

9km  4:26 (uphill and aid station)

10km 4:05   [41:16]

11km 4:23

12km 4:24

13km 4:13

14km 4:21

15km 3:57

16km 4:21

17km 4:34 (Ankle pain really kicks in)

18km 4:24

19km 4:14

20km 4:32

21.1km 5:04 [1:29:54 NEW PB!]

22km 3:35 (Only 0.9km)

23km 4:25

24km 4:16

25km 4:25

26km 4:41  (Last km ran with average being on 3 hour pace, no longer able to hold fast pace with foot pain)

27km 4:41

28km 4:54

29km 4:58

42.2km 3:12:44

This means I averaged 4:16 for the first 26km and then slowed down to 5:04 for the last 16.2k. This is really something I need to work on for the next race, hopefully I can avoid the foot pain, but to be perfectly honest, had it not been my ankle, something else would have hurt.

My biggest mistake other than the timing chip was lack of preparation. My longest run prior to the marathon was 28km and I really think I payed for that. I was able to run strong thru to the finish which I would have liked to have done, so when I run one again, I will really be more strict with my training and plan out a regime that will involve a longer run.

Anyways, hopefully I didn't bore everyone. If you felt reading about this was long, you should have tried running it.

Here is a finish photo, do I look happy?