Weekend Recovery

I survived my all nighter in the lab. It wasn't pretty and required a little bit of persuasion from my friend Elspeth on skype (she is in Australia and was still awake at 3:30AM Vancouver time) but I made it.

Recovery wasn't too simple. Friday was just a normal day and then in the evening our building had a poster session (social). I followed this up with going to see the Dar Side of the Rainbow. What is that you ask? Well, turns out that if you play the Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at the same time, that the two sync up pretty well.

Despite being one of the only "non influenced" people there, I still enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the record is only 45 minutes long so you get halfway through the movie and it just ends. Oh well.

Today I woke up for bike practice, but didn't quite make it. Instead I knocked out back to sleep until noon at which point I only woke up because someone was knocking at the door. I guess I needed to catch up on Thursday's lost sleep. It was a good thing that I was woken up, because I had to get to UBC by 1PM to be a timer for a thunderbird swim meet. I have a few friends on the team and this being a really low key meet was great because I was able to be on pool deck with them and interact.

The meet ended up finishing early (was schedule from 1-5 and finished at 3:30) and the lifeguards were still on chair for another hour and a half so I asked if it was ok if I swam. Many of the swimmers were still cooling down so they didn't see a problem there. Man was it great. I had an entire lane to myself for the entire workout. I put out a solid 3000m short course which I haven't done in a while. Swimming short course is fun, although I really had trouble a few times counting. I did as a main set 5X200m and was holding a steady 2:45-2:50 leaving on 3:10 which for me is really fast. I was pumped because I really haven't been swimming much lately.

Following my swim Matt from the Tri club came over for dinner and we had AWESOME steaks and vegetables. Was my first real meal all week since I've been living in the lab most of the time.

Matt is a Resident Advisor at UBC so had to leave early but then my friend Paul came over to watch a movie. I was invited out but after last week was too tired for it. I was pretty pleased with myself today. Good eating, exercise, no drinking! A+ for Vince!

Then Paul found a coupon for 2 for 1 McDonalds which expires tomorrow, and I'm ashamed to say we actually bussed to campus to get it. So much for my healthy day. That being said, we ran into half the Thunderbird swim team while we were at it. So if varsity swimmers eat it, can't be that bad can it?

Anyways, time for bed! Another big swim tomorrow.

Boys Weekend

As promised, I bring you photo documentation and the story of my trip to Victoria last week! The mission of the weekend. Celebrate Pat's bachelor party and catch some fish. I was picked up Friday afternoon and we headed for the ferry hoping to make the 5pm. Unfortunately traffic had other plans, arriving us at the ferry at 4:50, too late to get on. Oh well, we had an hour to entertain ourselves. This made for a good introduction to everyone who was going. Myself, Erich and Pat I already knew. Dan and Nate were new to me and we got to know each other over a bottle of Fireball. What I learnt over this weekend. Fireball isn't very good.

Dan and Nate with fireball!

Getting on the 6pm wasn't such a big deal and it was actually one of the fastest trips over to the island I've ever done. The girl behind Pat and I thought we were really entertaining.

Pat and I on the ferry

We decided that this was going to be a classy weekend, and as such, Erich decided that the entire time he was away, he was going to be wearing a suit (unless fishing). Taking the ferry as the start of the weekend he suited up.

He needed a little help with his tie

Arriving at the other side Derek picked us up and brought us all to the hotel as we prepared to go out to dinner. Oh, and one rule of the weekend. To participate you needed to have a mustache and join Pat's Movember team. Sure I didn't have one in the photo above, but I made short work of that once I was at the hotel.

Friday night was more or less uneventful after the ferry and dinner because we were waking up REALLY early to get out to Sooke to go fishing. We had to be on the boats by 7:30 so were up by 6.

For Erich, Pat and I this wasn't too hard. However, Dan and Nate who were a little more liberal with their servings of fireball and cocktails at the restaurant found the morning a little harder.

Waking up to go fishing, we had no idea what the weather was going to be, forecast all week were terrible and kept changing. So it came as a great surprise when we woke up and looked out and saw this!

7:30 AM

And with a little photo manipulation and posing, you saw this!

7:30 AM on the Pacific!

And this!

Few morning beverages to kickstart the day

We started fishing and the first 40 minutes were pretty slow and cold. We were a little tired and grumpy, I wasn't too sure what to expect. however, shortly after that we had our first success. We were using down riggers and trolling so we rotated who got to reel in when a fish was caught on one of the 3 lines. I got pretty lucky and managed to snag some awesome ones.

My first catch of the day: Before 9AM

Notice Mustache out in full

We had two boats out, My boat had all the non hung over guys. As a result we caught all the fish. The other boat. Didn't have so much luck.

Vince, Roger, Pat, Erich

(believe it or not, they all had mustaches... WEAK!)

And I'm not even going to explain this next photo, all I will say, is I decided to fight the fish as close to nature as I was willing to be, and was rewarded with my biggest fish of the day.

This guy is so dirty

As part of BC fishing law, we had to purchase a 1 day license and were only allowed 2 salmon each. By the end of the 5 hour fishing trip we were throwing fish back hoping that our 10th would be the biggest. In all between the 5 of us on the boat we caught probably close to 15 fish and threw a bunch of the smaller ones back.

We had a pretty successful haul. The other boat. Not so much, they only caught 3 fish...

Pat showing off his catch

Since we caught more than was allowed, and the other boat didn't catch enough it worked out well because we could share. Here is my boats catch. My big catches were the 4th and 5th down coming in around 9-10 pounds!

Hey Dad, Jealous?

I thought I was being so clever by holding the fish closer to the camera to make them look bigger. I think it worked

The dirty work.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on what perspective you take, my camera ran out of batteries and I was able to take no more photos than this. Thankfully there wasn't too much else photo worthy.

We followed fishing with a fantastic lunch. I'll have to get the name of the restaurant and spread the word. And then back for an afternoon of recuperation. Dan is studying to become a chef and cooked up one of the fish exceptionally well along with some vegetables and risotto. It really was fantastic. Then we hit up a night on the town.

All in all a great weekend and hopefully we do another like it in the years to come.

Tri BC Gala

This past week a group of the UBCTC and I went to the Annual Tri BC Fundraising Gala at the Stanley Park Rowing Club.

I wasn't too sure what to expect, but it was a lot of fun. All together we had 10 of us from the club, who get along really well and had a good time.

The atmosphere of the Gala wasn't as much "Party" as it was "Socialize and Mingle", nevertheless it was a good time and it was nice seeing some people I raced against in the summer and haven't seen since.

Paul Regensburg and Meyrick Jones

Meyrick encouraged us to come out and I'm glad he did. There was a great talk by Triathlon Coach and Commentator Paul Regensburg. He told a great story about the 2000 olympics and how he announced for CBC Simon Whitfields win.

A few things that would have been a nice addition for future years would be recognition for the racers over the year. I personally have never been to the Tri Quebec Gala, however, I know that they give out awards for the Age group Athletes of the year in each age group along with club awards etc. I think this is a big motivator to get more people out, whereas here in BC although there is a provincial race series. There is never any mention of it.

I personally have been 2X BC long course champ but other than an e-mail haven't had it mentioned anywhere.

Anyways, thats my 2 cents on how to improve Tri BC and the Gala.

Winston and I dressed somewhat similarly

Following the Gala, the group of us went over to Matt's place for a few more drinks and games.

All round it was a pretty fantastic Thursday night if I may say so myself and hopefully we can have a lot more team outings like this in the future.

Can anyone say Fondu?