aw sh-t

Where have I been? What a week...
So last Thursday I went to swim and my achilles was hurting me. I took it easy, and left early. Friday I saw my physio and he told me to take some time off. Saturday was raining cats and dogs so I didn't go to the workout. Sunday was very lazy too.

Since then I've been biking. It finally stopped raining so since Monday, I've ridden about 300km this week so far. I went to swim last night - I felt mediocre. At one point my calf/gastroc felt a bit tight but my times were ok. Today I'm finally exhausted. Hopefully I'll get some easy spinning in. My rpms are dropping.

Oh right. The sh-t. So I went over the icebreaker yesterday and the may flies were out. Not in full force (I've seen worse) but bad enough that my shorts, shirt, helmet & hair were covered in them. As I turned around at the end of the stretch, I sat up to drink some water and... SPLAT! It felt like someone hit me with a water balloon. But no... I turn over my wrist and there it is... white bird crap. On my glove, on my top tube, on my water bottle (thank g-d I was carrying my nalgene) ... EVERYWHERE... damn birds...

riding in the rain. riding in the rain.

Yesterday was pretty busy - started with my 7am swim, which was interrupted by a fire alarm, (although no one seemed to exit the building). Then, as it wasn't raining yet, a bike ride warm-up to polytechnique and up the hill twice standing, then Mt.Royal front side 5x. I felt really good after the second one, spinning well and strong seated. 6pm ride at the F1... in the rain. I did a half assed ride of base, race-pace and above laps. Some assh*le in a black bimmer almost ran me over twice as they "raced" the course. I hope they crashed soon after... I'm pretty tired today...

I am SO sick of seeing this image every frickin' day! With the exception of ONE bike workout so far, its rained on every bike workout day. How am I supposed to get a long ride in? eeeeeeeeeesh! Rain, rain go away, come again another day...

Friday run was ok, we were at Lafontaine and I was able to hang on at a good pace. Did some weights beforehand and so I was pretty sore all weekend. Saturday it rained all morning for practice but 'becca and I did the backside of MtRoyal 9x. We were unsuccessfully trying to fix someone's flat but it took so long that by the time I got home I was shiverring. Arg. Finally cleaned the junk bike but it looks like it'll rain tomorrow too. Sunday swim was hard, 5x300, did them in between 4:45-4:55. I thought I felt strong on the last one but only mustered a 4:52 so... Even though it was forecast to rain, it stayed fairly clear... too bad it was mum's day, otherwise I would've gone biking... (although it was good I didn't since my left knee feels funny and my right foot callus/corn is getting really annoying and its affecting my gait.)

muscle memory

Amy had an interesting post about runner's high and I mentioned my theory that for some its just the body's transition of changing fuel sources. I was thinking about it again last night during my swim. The warmup felt slow as usual, and I was dreading the main set seeing as I had a 3 week absence from the pool and only 2 weeks of being back in it. Strangely though, I was flyinig. Maybe it was the draft (usually don't have one) but I felt strong, and had plenty left and yet was doing way past race pace (3:10-3:20). (2x(2x200rp,1x200ez, 1x200fast)). It was one of those days when everything comes together and you feel smooth. Don't get me wrong, my left arm/shoulder was starting to get sore near the end but I felt fantastic in the water.

Wednesday morning I rode ~2 hrs base pace, and then ran hard in the evening, resulting in a beautiful purple toe nail again (middle toe, right foot). Surprisingly I was able to keep a reasonable pace running along with Lo and Jq. 4:20-4:30 for the 2x3km rp, and 4 flat, 4:10 for the 2x1km fast. My hamstrings were dead afterwards and I didn't really stretch or cold shower them afterwards I was so tired...

way past race pace

I usually hate the technoparc but today I was flying. (Partly chasing). On the main stretch I was doing 44km/h and 40km/h on the other side... hahaha. Waaay past my race pace. The main set was 6x(1 loop rp, 1 loop ez).

Morning swim at 7am was slow. Very slow. My arms feel like jello. Time to go back to the gym...

Yesterday was my day off but I did a very easy run around the reservoir ~30mins. It was just starting to feel good when I stopped :P

Road Race #2

So today was my second race of the season and turned out being very different from RR1. First, I was called by our team's gen. manager and was told that this was one of the most difficult racs of the season because it consisted of a large climb. This intrigued me and got me wondering a little. I decided either to race of show up and watch the race, but after getting myself mentally prepared on Saturday, I was ready for anything on Sunday. Once I got there, I saw these girls warming up with pretty known sponsors and began to reconsider....but then as I got my stuff ready, I got my mind ready and I had made up my mind that even if I was dropped off the pack in the very first minute I would finish the race.
After the warmup, which was doing 1&1/2 laps of the course, I knew it would be tough. I got dropped in the first second of the start. I don't even think you can consider it being dropped because I never actually was part of a moving peloton, only a stationary one....but after fighting the strong gusts of wind, I finally caught up some girls, even dropped some and held on to this OBC girl. We worked hard to keep a strong pace. On our second to last lap, we were lapped by the women's peloton and we had to finished fighting our way through the men lined up for the next start.... I wasn't too happy about that because we waited in the cold for all the men to finish before we started.
But I finished and was pretty proud of it...but I think we were DQ'd because we got lapped, but we'll find up once the results are posted.
Surprisingly enough the girl who won, actually recognized me from last year. I felt pretty good about that but god knows what she remembers....
So this race totalled 49.5 km.

summer pool schedule

waking up an extra 30minutes earlier to swim hurts. Even though swim is still at 10am, getting up, and getting in always feel so hard... As lathargic as I felt I had an ok swim. The main set was 2x800m with us drafting off each other (2 second intervals) and toe tapping.

The afternoon was more interesting with 3x each side of Mt.Royal. Doing the backside I was able to do almost race pace level efforts but the front side was definitely very lacking. Afterwards I did 3 laps of the F1 track at a base+ level. Dinner at Alto's...

rain rain come again another day

So today was a repeat of Tuesday. Well, no. It wasn't that bad but it rained on me on my way home and I got drenched. We went over the icebreaker and did 7min on, 3min ez (2xbase, 2x85% of rp, 2xrp). Since the forecast called for rain I took the junk bike so I have no numbers but I felt reasonably good.

Back to Tuesday, it was pouring - so we did some sprints and then 4 laps of the F1 track. I felt ok but I was certainly in no mood to push hard. Wednesday was a run workout -I was happy with the effort ~165bpm and 4:06-4:30 kms. 3x2km. Thursday I did an easy ride out over the bridge and back focusing on smooth turnover and swim was pretty boring with 20x50's. I still feel slow. Friday, another run, but by then the corn/callus on my foot was killing me. Not to mention we were doing cadence-ups downhill so after about 5 I had to quit.

coming back

After a week of congestion and uncontrollable nose movements, I finally biked on Saturday - I felt good but I couldn't keep up with 'becca. :P Then I was re-introduced to swimming after a 3 week absence on Sunday - I felt so slow and even though the sets were 400's they felt like 800's or something... ug. Yesterday I did mt.royal x6 on the backside and felt pretty strong (it was 20C+) and then a quick 40minute run in Lafontaine. I finally brought along my heart rate monitor and it was in the 155-160 range. No wonder I feel like crap... I try to do an easy run but it just ends up being in aerobic... (there was a time when I could run comfortably at 130-140bpm) Anyway, and this morning, back in the pool. 5x200,7x200, 4x200. Argggg... halfway into the main set I thought I was going to slow down soooo much... (went from 3:20's to 3:35's?) And even though its raining, tonight is a bike workout...

The Bike

I went for a bike fit on Thursday, and the guy told me to come back once I had ~2000km in my legs to put the seat a little higher because my fitness level was not great right now. So I bike with the tri team on Saturday and we did about 7 times the circuit in 45 mins followed by a 20 min run...the run felt increadibbly horrible but the bike was great, I tried to hold on to a few guys to save my legs a little for Sunday while still going pretty hard on Saturday. After the 45 mins bike the guys told me they were really tired so I felt pretty good about that 'cause I was real tired too!
On Sunday, I had my first bike race off the season, in Ste-Martine, 56km which consisted of 4*14km of a really flat course open to any wind at all, thank goodness there was no wind yesterday! My goal was to stay with the pack for as long as possible and even though I was shaking like a leaf at the start, I managed to stay with the pack for the whole race!! Although, the down side was that I got to experience how scary it actually is to ride with ~35 girls just as or more competitive than me....there was some knocking, pushing, shouting...and quite a few borderline crashes. I have to consider myself lucky because at the end of the race I decided to move up and that's when one girl took one of my teammates down, luckily my teammate wasn't hurt but the other girl was not looking as lucky.
So next race the plan is to try to position myself closer to the front of the pack.....oh yeah....and know the course before the race...!!!