Victoria

I went to Victoria June 26-30 as part of my 7 days off. I was sitting on the fence because I knew Victoria would be amazing, but I wasn't keen on training on my own in a new city. Westjet had a seat sale for $49 which pushed me to comitt to the trip.

Luckily, after buying the tickets, Amy and Kjell told me that they'd be driving out and could meet me on the Big Island of Hawaii (I wish). My flight landed at night, so we settled into the Gaunt's place which was next to Elk Lake. In case you didn't know, Elk Lake is notorious for Rowing. National teams, and our very own olympic team row out of Elk Lake. In fact, the Gaunts were hosting two rowers, One was going to school in Princeton and the other at Toronto (i think). They were both on the Junior National Squad.

I'm pretty obsessed with Simon Whitfield and Kirsten Sweetland. I was DYING to randomly run into these two during a training ride/run. But no luck :( I was reading Bree Wee's blog last night. She's been in Victoria the past week and was running mile repeats with Mr Whitfield himself. They were doing loops around Elk Lake!! Darn it! i missed them by two weeks.

Anyways, here's a summary of the work outs and a few photos.

Victoria, Tofino, Uclulet Training including:
-140km ride Victoria to Salt Spring Island and back
-20km rain forest trail run along the ocean
-80km ride from Uclulet to Tofino and back with a stop along Long Bach
-1hr Swim in Thetis Lake which was WARM!
-15km run to the top of Mount doug (210m elevation gain) for a GREAT view of the Peninsula.
-40km ride through farmland riding pass Butchart Gardens.

Good food, Better Seafood, Great friends, and fun!

The majority of the trip was out on the WEST COAST by Tofino and Uclulet. Both were AMAZING little fishing/surfing towns. The weather worked out perfect and I couldn't have asked for more!

Fong Ting and Benny

The morning started at 5am for the girls (who stayed up well past midnight!). We took photos of the girls getting ready before the guys showed up to 'buy' the bride.
The bridemaidss play games with the groomsmens like listing 10 reasons why Benny loved Fong Ting, or making the guys share the same donut! This was followed by a chinese tea ceremony at the bride's parent's house, followed by the groom's parent's house.

A beautiful ceremony was held at the Mckenzie Towne Church. Here's are some photos from
the day which had 60% chance of rain!

Wasa Lake Olympic Triathlon

I knew that Wasa was near radium/invemere but I didn't realize was about 1.5 hours past those towns. It's a bit of a logistic nightmare since the race is in wasa, race package pick up is in Cranbrook, and our accomodations were in Kimberley.

We left at 10:30am after struggling to put Meghann's new bike rack on her car. We arrived at 4:00pm for package pick up. We attended the MANDATORY pre-race meeting which was kinda pointless....all the info was already included in the e-mails. The organizer even said "it's totally different seeing the map on the wall, versus the real thing. Tomorrow morning I'll go over transitions in a chalk talk".

We had a 3 bedroom condo in kimberley which was REALLY! nice and cheap too! A hot tub/corona party happened and I was in bed at 11:30. I slept probably a total of 10 minutes all night..it was horrible. I blame summer solstice coming up and the HUGE window on the door which had no blinds.

Alright...so actual race day.
I woke up at 5am since it's a 25 min drive to the race venue. I started out too fast in the swim and had to tread water after 300m. I always fight with doubt during the swim. I would think about the 70.3 and question myself if I could actually finish the swim. I was able to calm myself down by counting my strokes. I wanted to count to 100 before taking my next 'break'. Fortunately I caught my breath and was able to continue before needing to take another break.
I found that I COULD NOT swim straight! I'd sight, take 6 strokes, sight again, and I'd veer to the right. So i started to breath bilaterally and that fixed things a little.

The swim course ended up being short by about 200m...and I had a swim time of 27:51.

The bike course was flat and the headwind wasn't too strong. I settled into a nice pace for the first 20km and pushed a little harder on the last 20km. SO many Drafters/cheaters! and for some reason people liked to ride on the road even though there was a HUGE shoulder...so I'd yell 'pass left!' but they wouldn't move....so a few times i shoulder checked to make sure the referee wasn't there and I'd pass on the right....
I hit a bump on the bridge and was riding 1 handed (eating gel) at the time..so my aerodrink fell off the aero bars and i lost half my water. I could feel a quad cramp coming on in the last 10km so slowed up a little.

run was great! footpod wasn't working so all I had was heart rate. I held 160 and was probably moving like a turtle for the first 3km. but then my legs caught up and I started to fly! I ended up running 45 mins, but who knows maybe the course was short.

7th in my age group
125th in the mens
154th overall.

It was an interesting race because the men started 22 mins before the womens....Since the bike was out and back, and so was the run. I was able to see my placing in the men's..but could also see the lead woman gaining on me! I was able to hold her off and crossed the line 1 min before her (but really she beat me by 21 mins!)

Results here!
http://www.winningtime.ca/09/09wasa/olymale.txt

Turning Twenty Four

Turning 23 was a milestone for me. It was the year I graduated from University and the start of a career, but not before doing a bit of travelling ;).

It started with running the Vancouver Marathon which taught me alot about patience and not being TOO intense TOO early.
I then flew to Hawaii where I was TOO intense! An unfortunate surfing accident left me with 9 stiches across my face and 'ruined' the rest of my trip. I was still able to see the entire island of Oahu but I feel the need to travel to Hawaii again.
After that was the Sylvan Lake camp (which is where i'm head this year as well) where I tried to run when i should have been resting from the marathon. This left me with IT band problems all year.
A few weddings (not mine, but I took photos at these weddings) later I was enjoying Sydney (olympic sights, surfing, the zoo and roti!), Brisbane (chilling out drinking bubble tea almost every day), Cairns (SCUBA DIVING, gorgeous sun, and cold water), and New Zealand (Tauranga volcano climbs, rain, hot springs, bungee jumping and visiting my buddy Stefan).

Work started in September and I was placed in Calgary for 6 months before moving to Firebag (north of fort mcmurray) where I'll spend the next few years learning and gaining valuable experience.

So! Twenty Four. I have a few goals this year which I won't verbalize, otherwise i'm accountable to those goals :). I tend to look forward to the future instead of enjoying the 'now'. I want to take the time to enjoy each moment while looking ahead to 2012, the next major milestone that I've created for myself.

Golden Triangle

May 1-3, 2009 I biked from Banff to Golden, Golden to Radium and Radium back to banff.

In total it was 380km ride over the 3 days. My longest ride before the GT was 70km so day 1 was a bit of a shock to the system! I intentially rode a slower pace to make it through the day. I cramped a bit due to lack of electrolytes. Day 2 i tried to go harder since it was an 'easy' day at 100km. the road was much bumpier and vibrated against my already-sore butt.
Finally i had a great ride on the 3rd day even with the rain! The day started with a 600m climb over 12km. I'm glad to have heather with me for all the hills. We chatted every single hill and discovered the 'granny position' on the bike which saves the back :)

After a few day recovery with easy swims and runs I flew back to Firebag on my b-day, May 7th. We also had a pub night on the 6th at the cat and fiddle.


Here are a few pics from the trip.