Imagine

It makes me wonder what I could really do to a 10k race, especially one so flat.
It was a great day, great course. Woke up well, everything timed perfectly, everything relaxed and chilled, lots of time (but not too much time) to park, arrive and seed myself nicely . . . if I had only trained for this event specifically, I would have nailed it.

1:00:01 / 10k . . . who comes in at 1 second after their max target?

It was quite enjoyable though, just wish I had 5% more in the last 2k. The finish (last 200m) was fantastic. I had planned on pulling the ear buds out for the final run in, but John Lennon and "Imagine" came on. Wonderfully surreal.

Ethan was brilliant. Nice to have someone sharing in the fruit of labour. He booked it, finishing his run in the 5 minute mark, top 20. Then we walked around the grounds, through the runner-only tents, picking up runner swag, medals around our necks. Next year, he says, he's doing a 5k.

warm-down

relaxed, enjoyable, chatting-all-the-way 3k run with Ethan.

He'll make his kms for the timbit run. It was still a question last weekend. In fact, I figured he was out and was already ensuring he knew of my approval & love regardless. But he pulled off an incredible week: 1.5k pre school and 3k post school, daily, all week.

Last night after soccer I took him on a new route which he seemed to thoroughly enjoy. He chatted all the way with me. Then, with less than a click left, he hunkered down (actually said to himself, "okay, here I go") and finished the 3k without a break.

Sunday is gonna be a hell of a day.

Fartlek swimming

40 min swim. Focused on intervals: 50s, a bunch of 100s, an enjoyable 250.

May have discovered a warm-up tactic: 2-3-2-3 breathing for first 250. It seemed to quiet the panic attacks and HR prob in the first 15-20 min. Will keep experimenting with this.

Also discovered fartlek swimming. Did a fast 100 once I was into the groove. Excellent fun. Will have to time these.

note to Dezza: how's the beer tasting?

windy return

So I'm back in the saddle for return commute, still on the downtown pathway by zoo where there are some hidden underpasses and such which means I am abiding by pathway etiquette when a couple of big-boned fellas huff past me on mountain bikes. Me in my tights, garmin, speedy OCR2. Their treestumps goin at 99 rpm, tires whining.
A mere click later, just after the blind hills and corners when the trail opens up allowing for rather less congested travel, they're still ahead of me pumping away. Not sure if they saw the sleek whisper of blue streak past them, but it was their only chance. Those times I wished I had a mtn bike or even cross-cycle? Ya, not so much anymore.

13k, 38min, avg 20.5kh (wind gusts to 50k)

first commute

13.5k / 36:35min (avg 22.1k/h)
. . . now to see if my co-designers complain of the stink

8

A little more confident about this weekend's run given last night's 8k. It was a slow 8 but I finished strong. 54min / 6:32k/m (includes a nice, slow 1.5k start).
Good to be back into the 6+km weekday runs. (that said, 8 used to be a regular walk in the park)

. . . oh, did I mention that Jax ate my left running shoe? My brand new nike runner that I paid dearly for? The spanky, light-weight special on which I just recently put down all my xmas money? Yep.

biking rural highways

22k / 54min on the bike, rural highways just NE of city.

Straight into a gusty north wind for a brief 6k, but was surprised it wasn't worse. Then cruised the rest of the way straight west with mountains in distant view. Great road, but for the construction zone overtop QueenE highway where I pretended I was on a mountain bike to skirt some dodgy roadway in tight traffic . . . oiy.

60 minute swim

Is it just a mind game?
Is it a heart rate (warm-up) thing?

Spent about 30 plus minutes doing 50 splits with flip-turns. The quick 5 second rest after 50 was very welcome. But then, after figuring out how to do a flip turn in the extremely shallow end of the lane at the family pool, I turned on the power and went for nearly 20 minutes of strong, aggressive (for me) swimming; all flip turns, no rests.
Why does it take so long to get into the groove?
How can I get into this mind-frame/breathing-frame right away?

worried

5k evening run; 30 minutes.
Seems the cross training has some benefit; helping me out despite my poor attendance in running shoes. The 5 was easy. But can I do the 10 next week?

rhythm blues

Missed running on the weekend, Monday, and again yesterday. Oiy.
The excuse is frigid temperatures, sleet and whatever else is convenient.

And, I conveniently forgot my shoes for this afternoon's workout (good thing as I would have froze in the 3 degree ambient temp). So back to the pool.

It took 15 minutes to get into a rhythm. Not sure why, though the person -- I am quite sure she was mentally and/or physically challenged -- struggling with lane etiquette didn't help. It was kinda funny, actually. Even the lifeguards gave up on her.

But when I finally got a lane to myself halfway through the swim I picked it up a notch and went nonstop with flipturns for 15 - 20 minutes. After a difficult start, it was an awesome finish.

family swim

Returned to the family pool yesterday afternoon---the same pool where a few(?) months ago I tried some lanes as I was settling into a decision about this summer's tri and thrashed my way to exhaustion over a whole 6 lengths.

What a treat to be joined from time to time with the boys who would do a length or two with me; to have Jody sitting at one end encouraging me on; to have Addison critiquing my flip-turns; to outshine the younger guy doing a swim work-out in the lane next to me.

35-40 minutes. Flip-turns on the 50s.
Note: have noticed that it takes a while to get the rhythm back if I don't swim every second or third day.

bikin in traffic

the thing with a road bike (so I am finding) is that you do have a certain amount of acceleration and speed. And if vehicle traffic is tight and slow, you can not only keep up but do better than some of them . . . especially tentative minivans. That said, some day I'm probably gonna have a close call and then I may not be so brazen. But it is nice to be developing higher degrees of comfort not only with the bike but with the environments in which I am biking (notwithstanding road gravel . . . when do they clean the roads around here!)

What I am not so comfortable with is the outfit. So showing up at M&Ds for a family BBQ and beating Jody and the boys (who were bringing a change of clothes) and having to sit around in not-so-modest attire was rather uncomfortable.

Late evening biking

Got on the bike today after coaching Ethan's soccer practice/game. Good to get out, if only for a sprint, but am getting scared that I am not doing enough.
7.84km, 18:33min (avg 25.3k/h)

note: May 14 and Calgary still has mountains of skin-eating grit on the roads.

Doubled up

with a 5.22k run; avg 6:00 min/km
Knees in good shape. Finished strong.

Much better

30 minute swim. Felt like I could go forever.
Was in lane with another guy for some time. Had to concentrate on where each other was all the time. Bothersome? Maybe, but I felt it was good training for when I'm in a lake with many other thrashers.

The last 10 minutes I had a lane to myself and started doing flip turns. Got into a zone and kept it up for roughly 500 meters without stopping. Most of the turns were pretty messy, though.

So why this good swim after yesterday's tough one? I doubt the body responds so positively and sharply in 24 hours. Maybe it was rhythm; lost yesterday but recalled today. Synapse recovery?

Not the easiest

30 minute swim.
the last 10 minutes I was taking 0.15 breaks at the 50 splits (and doing some nice fancy flip turns at the 25s, I might ad).
I thought it has been a week long training drought due to illness and northern boreal forest exploration, but the blog, not susceptible to faulty perception, reminds me that it is closer to 2 weeks. That explains this minor setback and moves my resolve to step it up a notch closer to a sense of panic.

btw, tromping around in muskeg is fantastic for the quads. And I swear the air is thinner up there.

Fishing and training

Three fish -- that's all I caught on the Wharfe, in Yorkshire, on Thursday. Strangely enough, that was a victory. I'd postponed by a day my intended assault on the river, because it had been raining heavily there and I didn't really want to sit in the wet all day, regardless of the spectacular surroundings.

What I hadn't really accounted for, however, was the whole meaning of "spate river". I've fished rivers -- unsuccessfully -- that have clouded after a heavy rain (not least a brief effort last year on day four at the South Ram, after an almighty thunderstorm).

But spate rivers, at least this one this time, are different. I'd only been to the area once before and hadn't paid much attention to the river; but, still, as soon as I saw it I could tell it was high. Very high.

It was also murky and tea-coloured, deep and extremely fast. That's what two days of heavy rain on the moors does for you: all that wonderful peat infiltrating the water (and cleansing it, in its own way, and enriching it) turned it into one torrent of Yorkshire tea. Ho hum.

Anyway, the other thing about spate rivers: they go down incredibly quickly. I saw it drop a foot in just over an hour.

By the afternoon, I'd seen just one fish rise. I caught him on a claret-bodied Klinkhammer.

By the early evening, I'd had another two on nymphs and saw another three rises (yup, three).

No one else was on the river, and now I know why. It was a good experience. I think if I'd had a sinking line and some heavy nymphs I'd have had more luck. I also might have had some luck with a good mayfly nymph pattern, because there was a glorious mayfly hatch at one stage, but I saw no activity on the surface.

TRAINING

Not so good this past week. I'm making the same mistake I've made in my last two failures: not revolving my life around my training, but aiming to "fit it in".

That's stupid. First off, it's a total false economy. "Too busy" is a silly excuse, looked at objectively. Because I get more work done, more efficiently, and have more energy for other stuff -- like being wingman to my wife for Leon's birthday party today (20 kids, treasure hunts, superheroes, etc) -- when I'm training hard, too. That sounds counterintuitive, given the hours of one's day it takes to train properly, but it is true.

Second, after the last two failures, I know what needs to be done, it's just the psychological warfare I have to win in order to do it. Tomorrow's always another day. So we'll see if my plan to do a bit of all three disciplines tomorrow holds.

Last thought.

My folks have given the dog to me for a few days while my dad is in India. (Having just returned from　South Africa, having just returned from the US, etc, etc. What a guy.) Tonight I took her for a walk around Erwood reservoir, five minutes drive from the house, stunningly set in the Goyt valley, surrounded by moors. There was a glorious sunset. I watched trout rise on a glass-calm surface. The clear, dark-blue sky was gorgeous.

But here's the thought: sublime as it is, it still doesn't wrench my inner being in the way an August evening on the Dogpound (similar setting, in the pastoral sense) or the Little Red or the Highwood does. Don't know why. But I suppose it's partially the call of the wild, partly the call of Canada, and partly the sense of wanderlust.

Swine Cold

I've been sick.
Sick as a pig. A sore-throated, hacking, head-like-a-football pig.
Haven't done a thing since last wednesday.

But I am convincing myself that I am getting better. After coaching Ethan's soccer tonight, we went for a 1.5k run. Then I carried on until the 5k mark. Felt fantastic. At about 3k I was hardly breathing.

That's a good sign, maybe, that I haven't missed too much over the weekend. However, I'm gonna miss another weekend making it 2 in a row. While DB is out fishing pastoral waters, I'll be sleeping under the stars in the northern boreal forest in the middle of nowhere.

On the turbo

Got the turbo out. It will now be camped inside. Lord, I hate that thing.

Did over 23km tonight on it: 44.51 mins. average speed 32.75kmh. Took it easy, though AHR was 157.

So, that's a swim and a ride today. Hopefully fit in a run or a swim tomorrow before taking off for a couple days TO FISH THE WHARFE RIVER. Hurrah. Average cadence was 88, which is too slow. Want it closer to 100. (Though that's not bad for me, usually much lower; that's one of my goals, to increase the leg speed on the bike, which I figure will be good both for the time-trial of the triathlon itself, but also for making me a more efficient runner and swimmer.)

getting better

20 lengths today, bilateral breathing. Could have gone longer. Green shoots of ability. More optimistic.

16 lengths

That's two more than last time. And it felt slightly easier. But in two weeks time I really want to have some lessons. I basically don't have a clue how to do this. Feels like I'm swimming through treacle. Actually not really swimming, but pulling myself with great difficulty through treacle.