One week away from the pool = one fast swimmer

It wasn't by design but somehow I managed to have 7 days away from the pool. I had some pretty heavy training days last week; almost 300 km on the bike and a new PB with my LSD (1.5 hrs) so I ditched my Thurs and Sunday early am swims to sleep in.

At the time I felt a tad guilty... I LOVE my training but my body was telling me to rest and I listened.

Good thing too because I was in the pool at 6am this morning eager to do some laps. I probably had one of THE best swims of my training season thus far. Everything was just in "sync". I was gliding SO effortlessly and at one point my stroke count was down to 14!!

After the Tri swim class finished (today was a pretty mellow 2.5 km workout) I was feeling really great and decided to do a 2.0km time trial in lieu of my 1/2 IM exactly one month and one day from today!

I haven't swum 2.0km "continuously" this season so I wasn't sure what to expect. I started out pretty slow, 10:30 over the first 500m.. yeah that was pretty slow!! ... but put in some solid negative 500m splits over the next 1500m and finished the entire swim in 39:05.

Hopefully I can hit around that mark at my 1/2 IM next month. Cripes the race season is here!!! What the hell am I going to wear....

And now for something totally different.. the season finale of House is on tonight!! Yay!

Yay it's a long weekend!!

Happy Victoria Day long weekend!!

Things to do this weekend: Train, drink, eat, sleep. Train, drink, BBQ, sleep, train, drink, BBQ, eat, sleep. Ahh I love long weekends!

The past few days have seen some record temps here in Cowtown.

Tuesday turned out to be a record setting day! Not only did Calgary break a 100 yr old record temperature high (it was 30C+ !!!) but I managed to complete a morning 2 hr swim and a 60km bike and then come back later that evening to complete an intensive 1 hr hill interval bike workout. Crickey I was pretty tired Tues night!

Wednesday saw another 30C day. I set a new PB for my LSD. 1.5 hrs!!! That's the longest I've ran since completing my 1/2 IM in Victoria back in '95. Crickey!!

Quick aside.......

Elliot Yamin was voted off Idol on Wed.. so sad.. so glad.. Go Katharine!!! Kat > Taylor!


Thursday saw another beautiful day. I set out with my friend Carmen and we fired it up on the bike! 84 km in 3 hrs. We could have easily done 90+ in that timeframe but I bonked about 2 hrs 15 min into the ride. I need to revisit that nutrition article in last months Triathlete Mag.
Bring more food fool!!!
Eat the food fool!!!
Stop losing bottles on your XLab Flatwing!! (Lost another bottle yesterday!! arg!)


Finally, a big shout out to the City of Champs. Good luck tonight boys, you're representing an entire country now!!

Sign me up!!!

Took another big step forward today by signing up as a volunteer for IMC!! I've never participated in an event this size and am really looking forward to working with the volunteers and athletes and meeting some amazing people.

First choice: Medical (of course!)
Second choice: Massage
Third Choice: Registration (Thurs and Friday)

This is going to be a HUGE training week! The weather should be a beaut (20C +) and I'm planning on logging some serious km's on the bike and run. Tomorrow (Tues) should be especially fun!

I'm "double dipping" on the bike. Going for a nice ride in the am after swimming, then some folks from my Tri Swim group are meeting up tomorrow night for some hill intervals.

God I love training. I love this sport, for meeting some wonderful people and for all the amazing opportunities that have opened up for me.

Hey hey it's Sunday... Happy Mother's day and wow it's my birthday! :)

Happy Mother's Day, I love you mom and hope you enjoyed a nice relaxing day. Dad better have made you a nice diner!! :)

Damn this week has flown by and I've been slacking on my blog entries. Egads, I also turned 36 yrs young today!

In celebration for my birthday weekend I thought it would be appropriate to go long with my workouts. 128km bike yesterday (4 hrs 58 min) short 20 min brick afterwards and a 4km swim today (1 hr 35 min) .

I cut back on my running this week to try and get in some solid bike days.
Wed ez spin: ~ 22 km
Thurs: 85km
Fri (ride cut short because of wind gusts) 25 km
Saturday's epic ride: 128km.

I logged some pretty decent km's on the bike this week ~ 260km so I'm taking these next few days to recover well then will kick my bike training into the next "gear" later this week.

I'm at the point now where a 100km bike is a walk in the park.

For comparisons sake, I did my first long ride of the season back on April 2nd, 96 km in about 4 hrs 15 min. It nearly fricking killed me LOL. I was pretty spent.

Yesterday I hit the 96km mark at 3 hrs 42 min then continued to ride for another 1hr 16 min.. then ran for 20 min afterwards! Huge improvement!! Yay it's good to see all the hard training is paying off!!

Well, actually I owe it all to my Beefcake 4000!! Gotta hit Costco again here soon to get some more! LOL ;)


My race season officially kicks off on May 28th.. two weeks!! I'll be treating each sprint distance as my "speed day" workout and to gain more experience in the sport. My B race is on June 24th, the Chinook 1/2 IM then it's a 3 week recovery/taper window until my A race, the Edmonton ITU World Cup where I hope to qualify for the World Championships.

I can't believe the race season is in full swing. Time really does go by faster as you get older eh?!!!

My world is flat.. literally! :)

It must be karma. I've flatted 2x this week since getting my first flat in almost 10 yrs during my 155km ride see here.

Tuesday, flatted about 1 km from my home. Yesterday, on the return leg from riding out to Elbow Falls I flatted about 10 km outside Bragg Creek.

Now my first flat from last weeks epic ride was a strong HISSSSSS. Tuesday's and yesterday's flat was more of a mushy bumpy flat.

You know the kind, it sort of feels like you're riding on one of these...


Bumpity, bumpity bumpity...... mush.....

Now you would think that after my flat on Tuesday I would've taken my tire off and checked the rim and the tire proper. But noooo... I just did a quick rub with my fingers and just changed the tube. bleh.

Well it finally sunk after yesterday's flat.

So I says to myself.. "self I says".. you have a foriegn object(s) stuck in either A) your rim or B) your tire. What's your guess?!!

Oh what a sexah rim!


Ok the rim looks good, lets check the inside. Looks pretty good to me!



Let's check the tire!


A ha!! gotcha you little bugger!



Lesson learned. Check the damn tire noob!

What do you mean you don't eat red meat???!!

I love the first Tuesday of every month. Why? Well it's quite simple. 10% off day at Safeway!!!

Now usually I'll do a circuit and wheel my trolley up and down each isle and load up on the things I need for the month.

Today was no exception. 2 (x 12) boxes of Cliff Bars, Can of Gatorade powder, a few tubs of yoghurt, bagels.. Milk, OJ, yams, squash, etc etc.. you get the picture. :)

After completing the circuit my trolley was quite full... here's a symbolic representation of how much food I bought today.....

Now, I find this quite annoying and I'm sure you've had it happen as well. The check out lady was eyeballing EVERY fricking thing I bought and commenting on it!!

The women queuing behind me (who was quite attractive I might add!!) had a good chuckle so it's a good thing I didn't buy anything "too" embarrassing!!!

As the cashier scanned though my meat purchases she made the keen oberservation that I didn't buy any red meat.

"You don't eat red meat or you're just not buying it today?" she quipped.

I replied, no I don't eat red meat and haven't for almost 18 years. I just don't enjoy it.

"But you live in Alberta!! How can you not eat red meat?.. Even if it's just once a year..".

ROFL I was cracking up. Told her, I don't want to get any

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.

She's like "huh?"

ROFL.. That juts made my day!!

Moo!!!