Busy day

Busy but not with training. I'm heading off to LA tomorrow and have a ton to do before leaving. The biggest of which is completing the pool closing. I started on Sunday and it shouldn't have been an issue finishing the same day but just as I was getting started .... poof .... the pump doesn't start up. I'd turned if off 3 weeks ago because the pool wasn't getting used any longer so there was no point in wasting electricity. For whatever reason it now refused to turn on. Well I wasn't about to drop $400-$500 on a new one at this point but I still needed to drain water from the pool to close it. So I went to Canadian Tire and purchased a cheap submersible pump, connected the garden hose and threw it in the pool. Four days later the water level finally dropped to below the jets and I could finish up. So here it is Thursday and I had to deal with the closing on top of breaking down and packing my bike and all my clothes and gear I'd need for my 10 days in California. I cleaned the pool up as best I could, skimming all the leaves out, removing the jets and plugging them up, running around getting chlorine and plumbing antifreeze and dumping 10 litres into the pool and getting the tarp cover and netting ready. I couldn't cover the pool myself so Ryan was coming over after work to help me with that. In the afternoon I took the P3 apart and packed it into the case. I used plenty of bubble wrap and foam to protect it form the gorilla baggage handlers but I am always so leery about what I'm going to find when I unpack the bike. Today's training was short. I just wanted to get into the pool and stay loose so I went in the evening and only did 1200 m. Not much distance, 2 sets of 500 m and a 200 m cool down but I did them at a 2:12 pace. Then I sat in the therapy pool and let the hot water and jets work on my back and shoulder while I waited for Chris to finish his session. One more sleep and off to Lotusland.

Tapering for the Los Angeles Triathlon ...

... Is what I SHOULD be doing. Instead, I found myself out riding with Chris sprinting a 48 km ride at a 32 km/hr average speed. And if that wasn't enough as soon as I got home I switched into my running gear and went for a bit of a run .... 5 km at a 4:50 pace. I'm too tired to write anymore, I'm going to eat something and go to bed.

Just when I was swimming well .....

..... I got kicked out of the pool. No, not that way. I didn't get kicked out, I was told I had to get out of the pool because my time was up. Damn. Here I thought I had up to 3 hours for lane swim, not that I was going to swim for 3 hours, but it turned out I only had an hour. I was swimming pretty well and was at 2350 m and I was going to finish at 3000 m, way beyond what I've swam in the past, but as I hit the wall at 2350 m I heard "Sir, you have to get out". Huh? Why? What did I do? Apparently lane swim had ended and senior swim had begun. Well I guess I should be happy they kicked me out. It would have sucked if they'd let me continue to swim thinking I was a senior.

My old friend ....

.... but not a good friend. I was planning a long run today but my knee tendinitis flared up and being paranoid about it getting out of hand and messing up my last month of training I decided to skip the run and go for a ride instead. I got together with Chris and we didn't plan a long ride and I also wasn't considering going too hard so as to not aggravate my knee. Funny thing though, easy rides aren't the norm when I go riding with Chris. We started out at a not too hard pace but that ended as we hit Bloomington Rd. The short run across to Markham Rd. and back and then down York Durham was done "balls out" and I don't know about Chris but I got a good burn in my legs. At this point I think I'm going to ice 3-4 times daily and back off running till I see how my knee feels by Wednesday. Hopefully I'll be good to go again by then.

32.7

My average speed today. On its own, not that impressive but considering that the wind speed today was about 25 km/hr I was very happy with that. I'd done a ride earlier in the year where I'd averaged 32 km/hr over 50 km but that was a pretty much dead calm day. When I started the ride I really didn't have any objective in mind but once I hit York Durham and started heading north I set a 30 km/hr average speed as my target to Bloomington Rd. Usually we do this portion of the ride averaging 28-29 km/hr and with the wind out of the north west I kind of had my doubts I'd average 30 but I watched my Garmin and kept an eye on the average speed and I was able to maintain it above 30 as I headed north. It's generally a climb all the way up to Bloomington and with the wind I could see my average dropping but as I hit a flat portion I'd jump on the pedals and pick up another tenth of a km or 2. The last couple of hundred metres to Bloomington hurt but I got up to the crest as York Durham joins Tenth Line and checked my Garmin and I was at 30.3 km/hr. That was satisfying. I continued up the climb north of Bloomington and on to Aurora Rd. and west towards Kennedy. The terrain is quite a bit flatter here but I still had the wind to contend with and while I did maintain a bit more speed it was a workout. South on Kennedy is rolling to Bloomington so no change in speed there but the rest of the way home was where I made up for the effort I had put in to that point. It was a 16 km sprint the rest of the way and I finished up at 52 km and a 32.7 km/hr average.

15 seconds faster

After Tuesday night's crowd fest at the pool I decided to go for my swim this morning instead. Good decision as it was way less crowded and the entire pool was being used for lane swim. I wanted to try and get a good long swim in without the interruptions I had to deal with Tuesday so I could get an idea of pace. I pretty much had a lane to myself so I got in and swam. I concentrated on 2 of the things that Lena told me, a wider arm entry and a deeper catch. I stopped at 1000 metres for a time check and I had to shake my head. My time was 22:40, a 2:15 pace. Still slow for anyone else but Yikes for me. I must have messed up my timing somehow, I didn't believe my timer. Ok, so I reset the timer and started again. I would stop after 900 metres so that I could get a 1900 metre time (if my 1000 m time was correct) and this would give me an idea of what to expect in Miami. My time after 900 metres was 20:32, a 2:16 pace. So I either had a great day or the 2 changes I concentrated on made a huge difference in getting my 100 m pace from 2:30 to 2:15. I have 2 more swim sessions next week before I head to Los Angeles so I'll see if I can duplicate this pace or if it was a fluke.

I love my P3

Another great day for riding.I only hope this weather more or less keeps up till Justin and I get through our training so we don't have to deal with cooler temperatures. It was still windy though, the norm for this area. The plan was for Justin, Chris and I to do a 50 km ride followed by a 6-7 km run for Justin and me. We decided on the York-Durham to Aurora Rd. route again, across to Kennedy and south to Major Mackenzie and home. The whole ride my legs felt really good. I got into my 16 tooth cog on the cassette, pretty much the middle of the range and wanted to stay in that gearing all the heading north. It was a combination that I wouldn't spin out on when on a decent and challenge my legs on climbs. The ride north is basically a climb and isn't very varied so I was able to maintain consistent pedaling even though I had to grind up one small climb. Just north of Bloomington though there's a bit longer, steeper climb and while still in the same gearing I decided to get out of the saddle and jump on the pedals to the top of the hill. It seemed like I was pounding forever and I while my legs started to burn and ache it was my arms that were starting to give out. I'm pretty stubborn though and I wasn't about to sit my butt down until I got to the top. I made it up and thankfully sat down and rolled over the top and began a long decent down towards Aurora Rd. I thought for sure I'd trashed my legs for the rest of the ride but after turning onto Aurora and heading west they still felt good. Chris picked up the pace to around 38 km/hr and I found no trouble keeping up. I have to think that the P3 geometry has to have something to do with this. I told Chris that I felt I could push a bigger gear and not feel it as much as I did on the Orbea. I really hope that's the case and not that I was just having a good day and with any luck the P3 will help me to a good bike split in Miami. During the ride though Justin mentioned that his knee was still bothering him and he thought it best to skip tonight's run which was the right decision. Last thing we want at this point, this close to the race, is to suffer an injury that would impact our final training and maybe even affect race day.

Faster in the water?

Tonight was the first chance I've had to practice last week's suggestions by Lena on my swim stroke. The 2 things I wanted to work on were a wider and earlier arm entry and a deeper catch. I met Chris at the pool too and I thought that one of us had our times screwed up because he was doing the triathlon swim sessions and I was there for lane swim. Apparently we were sharing the pool and I thought this would be a problem because their group had quite a few people and lane swim was always kind of busy. As it turned out they ended up with 2 single lanes and the lane swim ended up with 2 double lanes. I was in a group of 8 swimmers in our lane and that messed up my plans timing wise. Most of the other swimmers were faster than me so first off I had to pick up my pace in order to not clog up the lane which tired me out quicker so I had to take breaks where normally I'd swim right through the full session. Secondly, every time I reached a wall I'd check to see if one of the faster swimmers was behind me and if they were I'd stop and let them pass so I didn't hold them up. So I tried working on what Lena told me to but I couldn't tell if it made any difference in my time. To be honest, at this point I'm not sure I'll be gaining much time in my swim anyway so I'll just continue to work an these few changes and work on the rest over the winter/spring.

The Sting: Part II

The bee sting that is. No not me again, Justin this time. What is it about us and bees? Chris you better keep your head on a swivel and keep your eyes open for these little flying torpedoes on our next ride. You're up. The weekend was pretty well occupied for both Justin and myself so we pushed our long brick to this afternoon. This was also going to be my first real ride on the P3 so I was excited to see how it would feel. We were just heading up York Durham, Justin was leading and all of a sudden he starts waving and wants to pull over. He yelled "I've been stung!" and pulled off his helmet. At first I thought he was joking but then I saw the bee fall onto the road and I thought "Stomp the little bugger! Send a message back to the hive!" but before I could move it flew away. A few scratches, some rubbing and Justin was ready to go again. We rode the same route that Chris took us on last week, up to Aurora Rd., across and down Woodbine, back across Bloomington towards home. It's a great medium distance route with few hills that you can get a pretty decent average speed going and by the end we had averaged 30 km/hr even though we really hadn't pushed ourselves. We didn't head straight home, we dropped in at Cyclepath to have my front derailleur checked to see if they could loosen the limit screw that's seized. No luck, it's stuck good and the verdict is I need to replace the whole thing. Either that or be really careful with my shifting. Or never get out of the big ring which I rarely do unless I hit a big hill anyway. So ok boys, no big hills till I get this replaced. I'm pretty sure Justin hopes I never get it replaced eh Justin? We rode home from Cyclepath and switched into our running gear and I leashed up Kona to come with us on the run. I was going to break in my new K-Swiss K-Ona's today too and hoped they felt as good as the first pair I bought because these are the ones I want to wear in Miami. We took a route that went by Cyclepath again because while I was in there earlier I noticed the same tool bag that Chris has and both Justin and I wanted one so we dropped in, bought the last 2 and took off again. We started off averaging more than a 6:00 minute pace and I wanted to finish at better than that for Justin so I kept pulling ahead and trying to get him to push a bit harder. At about 9 km I told Justin that we were close to a 6:00 minute average and we picked it up to about a 5:30 for a couple of km and then 5:15 at the 11 km mark. We got a bit of a rest at a traffic light at 9th Line and then from there we sprinted the last 350 m and finished well below a 6:00 average at 5:45. Essentially, this 12 km run was a test run for what I've laid out for Justin in Miami. Start at 6:30, work to 6:00 for the majority of the run and finish off strong. Granted this was half the distance but I think it showed that it can work.

P3's inaugural ride

Even though I still had an issue with my front derailleur I was planning the P3C's first ride for this afternoon. Chris was out for part of the day but got back in the late afternoon and we went out for a spin to get the bike fine tuned. I had concerns about the seat height but Chris watched me ride and said it looked fine. To me it felt a little higher than the Orbea but I'd re-asses after an hour's riding. Chris did notice that my aerobars were tilted too far downwards so we stopped and raised them. It felt better after that but that new position put more pressure on my butt than normal so I made a slight adjustment to the saddle's angle and it felt much better. A couple of more stops to adjust my shifting and everything seemed to fit and run pretty good. It was a short ride and not too hard but I got a good feel for the bike. I'm set up with a more aggressive position and a shorter reach than before and I'm hoping that this will translate into a faster ride and some energy savings.

CONGRATS to Ryan and Erin.

So today was the day ..... Ryan and Erin's wedding. I was kind of wondering if it would ever happen considering they'd been dating for almost 11 years .... yes, 11 years. But last Christmas Ryan popped the question and Erin probably let out a huge sigh of relief and thought "FINALLY!" Wow that girl has patience. It was a very nice intimate gathering of immediate family only with the ceremony and luncheon taking place in Mississauga at the Glenerin Inn. I got to see my baby girls, Olivia and Annabelle again after a few weeks of them not making it out to Markham and also my big girl, Katie who's up at school in Barrie at Georgian College. Ryan had asked me to be on standby as the photographer but he managed to get a friend of Katie's to do the picture taking. I'd taken all the photos at Brendan and Danielle's wedding and and they came out really really well and everyone was quite happy with them so I was thinking I may end up taking pictures for Ryan and Erin. Apparently they wanted me IN the pictures this time so had another photographer. Nevertheless I had my camera and took my share of shots that I'll try and make a wedding photo book out of like I did for Brendan and Danielle. Two down and one to go. Now just because there's a wedding doesn't mean we ignore training. We got home around 5:30 and I immediately got my running gear on. Justin and I made some adjustments to our schedule and will end up doing our big brick on Monday so I wanted to get my long run in today and give my legs a chance to rest and recover by Monday. Tomorrow I'll probably just tinker around with the P3 and try to get it dialed in. I leashed Kona up and we headed out and my plan was to just go out easier but see what kind of distance I could get in. I hadn't run since last Sunday and I felt really good starting out. In fact I felt really good the whole way and tried to maintain about a 5:15 pace which I did over the first 10 km. I picked up the pace for the last 5 km and finished with a 5:08 pace for 15 km which surprised me but not because of the time. What surprised me was that I didn't push myself and felt really comfortable the whole way and still finished at a 5:08 average pace. The only time I'd picked up my pace was on the last third of the run and even at that I was was still running very comfortably. Maybe it was not running for almost a week that helped but in any case I hope the same thing happens in Miami after a week or so of tapering.

Building the P3 up

It took 2 nights but the P3 is done, mostly. There's still a couple of issues to take care of but for all intent and purpose it's ready to ride. It was fun building it even if I did hit some snags. Routing both the shifter and brake cables was a challenge. All 4 are routed internally on the frame with only a small opening from which the cables can pop out and it took some creative use of tools to fish the cables out. It got done though and now the bike can shift gears and stop when I want it to. The Dura Ace bottom bracket that came with the frame didn't seem to be compatible with my FSA cranks so I ended up using the FSA bottom bracket from the Orbea. I tried installing the cranks but spindle wouldn't fit through and even though I'd read online that it was a snug fit and just needed some tapping to get the spindle through but I thought the better of it and just did the BB swap instead. The seat post may need some cutting for me to feel right on the bike but I'll have to get it out for a ride to see for sure. The seat post is bottomed out and just sitting on it, it feels a touch high and could probably use a 1/4" cutting. My biggest problem though is that the limit screw on my front derailleur that restricts how far out the derailleur cage swings when shifting to my big ring has seized and won't turn. If I can't free it up I'll likely need to get another one. Without being able to adjust that screw my chain will always fall off the cranks when I shift. So I'll take the bike out for some riding on the weekend and do some more fine tuning and try to figure out if there's something I can do about the screw before jumping on a new one.

I caved and now ......

...... I'm the proud owner of a 2010 Cervelo P3C, well just the frame for now till I get all of the components transferred. And my application to be a part of Team Cervelo has been approved. I waited all day anticipating my meeting to take a look at the frame and take it to a new home. We met at Yorkdale Mall and as soon as I saw the frame I new I wasn't leaving without it. Up till a couple of days ago I'd only ever seen the white colour scheme for the 2010 P3C model but this one was black, silver and red. I went to the Cervelo site to check it out and to be honest I wasn't overly impressed but I have to say that the image on the website just doesn't do this frame justice. Up close and personal this frame is beautiful. The guy selling it is a student and a sponsored rider looking to go pro and up until June was riding a different bike. In late June he was involved in an accident where he was hit by a truck. He didn't suffer much damage but his bike was totaled. He was competing in the Canadian National Championships a month later but now found himself without a bike. He placed a call to a previous sponsor and landed a new bike for the race, the P3C. He put in about 500 km of training on it and a couple of races and that's it. This frame was next to new and it looked it. Anyway, long story short, I paid the gent and the P3C frame had a new home. On top of that, being sponsored, he had all kind of additional gear that he was given. He offered to throw in a new carbon frame pump and a saddle but I wouldn't have used them so I declined. However, he also had a nice Rudy Project helmet that he had to use during a race where he was sponsored by them and that I did take. Plus he left the Dura Ace bottom bracket that he was using installed in the frame. Bonus swag! I can't wait to start moving components from the Orbea. So that was in the afternoon. Tonight Chris, Justin and myself had "swim lessons". The woman that bought Justin's Cervelo Dual is a personal trainer and a swim coach so we thought it might be a good idea to get some instruction to see if we could correct some technique flaws and pick up some time in the water. She really new her stuff and for myself, I think I got a lot out of what she told me. Now I need to put her recommendations into action over the next couple of weeks and see if I can drop a bit of time off my swim. I'm thinking that we can have her come back out for another session near the end of the month to see if we've been able to make some headway and also to see if she has any more suggestions for us.

Could it be?

A Cervelo in my future? I've been playing with the notion of replacing my beloved Orbea with a Cervelo. The Orbea is a great bike and I love riding it but let's face it, Cervelo makes what most riders consider to be the fastest bikes around. Add to this the nudging and prodding that I've been getting from Chris about jumping ship to the Cervelo family and I've been browsing online for P3C frames. My preference would be to find a 2009 or 2010 frame and not go older than that but everything I'd found was still pretty pricey. Until today, and today I actually found 2 affordable frames. First I stumbled across a site (Totalcycling.com) that had new 2010 P3C frames for $600 lower than anywhere I'd previously seen. Wow, that caught my eye. But, these guys where in northern Ireland. First thoughts were is this a scam? You know what they say, if a price is too good to be true ...... it usually isn't true. And even if it was true these guys were in Ireland and would they even ship to Canada? So I started to research them and everything I found indicated that they were legit. I visited biking forums and many people said they'd bought from this site and were extremely happy with their service. I then visited the Cervelo site and did a search for UK dealers and yes sir, there they were .... Total Cycling in Northern Ireland. Woohoo. Now, shipping. I went back to the site and and found their shipping policies and yikes .... they ship worldwide!! Cost? Only 30 frikkin dollars!! Oh happy day! Now it doesn't end there. I wanted to get an idea of how much I could get for my Orbea frame to offset the cost of the Cervelo so I visited some usual sites that people advertise their bikes and component on. One of these is CanadianCyclist.com. While looking for price on frames there I came across an ad for, you guessed it, a Cervelo P3C frame for sale. Now this was a used frame but barely. It's a 2010, has 10 rides on it and minimal kilometres and the bonus was that the seller was local and the price just under the frame in Ireland. Many emails were exchanged and we ended speaking on the phone and arranged to meet up tomorrow afternoon so I can see the frame and make a decision. It is apparently in immaculate condition and you couldn't tell it from a new one. We'll see. Oh, and I almost forgot, I did 40 km on the bike today. Quite possibly the last ride on my Orbea. Now I'm sad.

OK maybe I'm not faster

Or maybe I just can't count anymore. Last Wednesday I wrote that I got back in the big pool after a summer of training in my backyard and that by trying to concentrate more on technique during those sessions that I may have picked up a bit of speed. Well I was back at the Stouffville pool this morning and I may have been incorrect. Or there's a chance that my counting sucks. The more that I've tried to concentrate on technique the less I've been able to remember my lap counts. Today I had several moments where I wondered "Am I on 600m or 650m? Am I on 900m or 850m? No wait, I've done 850m so it must be 900m. I think. Does this put me at 1250m? Didn't I just do 1250m?" Sigh, I need an assistant just to keep track of my laps correctly. When I did a quick time check at 1000m I was back to my previous 100m times but again, I'm not sure I really did 1000m, it could have been 1050m or GASP 950m. I did 1000m in 24 minutes (I know, pathetic) and did 1900m in 48 minutes. So my 900m after the first 1000m was even crappier. Pretty bad. But now the good news, I didn't stop there. I'd avoided the foot cramps that hit me last time out by barely pushing off the wall on each lap and mostly only pushing off with one foot, the one less susceptible to cramping up. So after doing my 1900m I kept going and completed 2600m. That's the most I've ever done and was a great confidence booster that I can increase my swim distance looking towards next season.

Short and sweet ........

....... and that refers to today. It was basically a pretty uninspiring day. I ran 13 km, 5:04 pace. How's that for short and sweet?

Have you ever had one of those days?

Well Chris did today. We had our regular Saturday brick scheduled for an 11:00am start and Justin had arrived at my place and we were getting our nutrition and fluids ready to go. We were expecting Chris to show up at any minute and we'd get going on our ride. In addition to riding Chris was planning on joining us on our run which in the past wasn't part of his training regimen but having finished his racing season he decided to come along. So at 5 minutes to 11 my phone rings and it's Chris. Earlier in the week he'd built up his P2 frame with several spare components and had taken the pedals off his P3 and put them onto the P2 cranks. This morning he was moving them back onto the P3 for our ride but was having difficulty getting them onto the cranks. I told him that Justin and I were just about ready and that we'd ride over to his place to see what was up. Justin and I finished up, got on our bikes and headed over to Chris'. When we got there Chris had pulled the cranks off of both the P2 and P3 and had installed his older FSA SLK cranks that had previously been on the P2 onto the P3. His thinking being that the pedals were just on these cranks so he shouldn't have any problems getting them back on. Well he was still struggling with the pedals so while he was working on one side on the bike I grabbed the other pedal and tried to install it on the opposite side. It would not go on ...... and then I noticed that I had the left pedal and was trying to install it onto the right side crank arm. In his hurry to get the pedals swapped from the P2 to the P3 Chris must not have noticed he had the pedals backwards. So I switched pedals with Chris and the pedal started to screw onto the crank arm. But before continuing I suggested that Chris pull the SLK cranks and re-install the original cranks onto the P3. While he proceeded to pull the SLK's off I installed both pedals onto the other crank arms in preparation to install them onto the P3. Well Chris is unscrewing the crank bolt ..... and it's turning ..... and its's turning ..... and it's turning ..... but the cracks aren't coming off. I suggest he try to tighten it but same thing, the bolt just kept turning. We figure the threads are stripped and start thinking so now what? We can't remove them, we can't tighten them. And Chris says "hack saw". There's just enough space between the arm and the bottom bracket to get a hack saw blade in there and cut the arm off of the spindle. Out comes the hack saw and Chris starts sawing ...... and snaps the blade. More blades come out and he starts again. I take a turn, then Chris, then me, then Chris and finally "pop" the arm falls off. As Justin commented right after that "I can't believe what I just watched". And yes it was a first for me too and probably a last but at that point, with the threads stripped, there was no other way those cranks were coming off. Ok, we installed the original cranks and headed off for our ride. About 3 km into the ride Chris and I lose Jusint. We've turned a corner and he's nowhere in sight. We wait a couple of minutes then think he's had a mechanical so we turn around and head back a bit but see him coming down the road. He'd tossed a bottle and had to turn back to retrieve it. Off we went again heading up York Durham this time past Bloomington to Aurora Rd which Chris had ridden before but Justin and I hadn't. About 1 km after turning onto Aurora Rd. Chris, who was in the lead, started waving us down to stop. He pulled off the shoulder and looked at us and said "flat". You got to be kidding. He pulled the back wheel off, removed the tire and replaced the tube in no time. A shot of CO2 and we were ready to go again. Chris buddy, what did you do to anger the bike gods? Well thankfully the rest of the ride went off without a hitch and we made it back totaling just under 70 km and it was a good thing we ended up doing a shorter ride today because who knows what other surprises could have been in store for us. Chris, Justin and I arrange to meet up at the Petro Canada at 16th and 9th to start our run. I've drawn up a training plan for Justin that I hope will get his run ready for Miami and it involves consecutively longer runs off the bike over the next 5 weekends. Today's was to be 11 km and I planned a route starting east to the bypass, around the bypass and west across Bur Oak winding down to 16th Ave., out to Markham Rd. and back home along 16th. Justin wanted to maintain about a 6:00 minute pace but Chris and I picked up the pace initially to about 5:45, then to about 5:30 and by the end of the run to below 5:00. I told Chris I wanted Justin to push himself during these bricks hoping that when he saw he could do the runs at a better pace than what he'd set out to he'd gain more confidence. We knew he couldn't keep up with us but that wasn't the idea. We wanted to act like the mechanical bunny at a greyhound race except we had Kona running with us so that doesn't really make sense. Afterall the bunny never chases the dog. At the end of the run, with the exception of probably eating a clif bar too late in the ride and feeling it during the run, Justin felt much better than the 2 previous bricks we'd done and we're thinking the nutrition plan is developing well and will be bang on when Miami rolls around. And here's hoping we don't have one of those days at the race.

Solitary ride

It was blustery and overcast all day with rain threatening and tonight's ride was up in the air. I followed the forecast and it seemed like it wouldn't rain so when Justin emailed to see about riding I told him I was up to going. He wasn't so sure though and opted out and it looked like it would be Just me and Chris. Until Chris emailed to let me know he was hitting the pool tonight. Ok, just me then. I didn't realize how windy it was tonight until I went to start the ride and at that point I changed my route so that I would have a head wind to start and a tail wind coming home. Or so I thought. With construction on 16th Ave I rode up 9th Line and turned east on the bypass which brought me back around down to 16th by 10th Line. Heading east and southeast along the bypass I had the tailwind as expected and managed a really good speed. Well that was surprisingly the last time for the tailwind. I worked over to York Durham and turned north into a pretty decent wind. It was hard work all the way up to Bloomington and heading west along Bloomington was a chore as well. All the way to this point I kept counting down "wind distance" left. Only 10 km to go into the wind. Only 8 km to go into the wind. Only 6 km, 4 km, 2 km. AHHHHH. Finally I turned south onto Warden and sighed relief thinking I'd have a tailwind all the way home. Well not so. I don't know how but it still seemed like I was getting a headwind. Thankfully the ride south from Bloomington is downhill but it just wasn't as easy as it usually is. At Elgin Mills I turned east and thought surely now I'd have a tailwind. Well not so much. It seemed to be coming out of the north now and was pushing me all over the road. At this point I threw my hands up in the air (only figuratively) and gave up hoping for a tailwind. I put my head down and pedaled hard and ended up at 48 km and a 31 km/hr average. Not bad for riding into a nasty wind that changed direction 4 times to be a head wind for the entire ride.

Back in the big pool

It's been a while since I swam in a 25 m pool and tonight I was back at the Stouffville pool for the first time in 3 months. I spent the summer swimming in the backyard in my comparatively small 10 m pool but I hoped it wouldn't result in a degradation of my swim. Considering my swim already sucked that would have equaled a disaster for me. So tonight was my chance to see what if anything might have happened since June. It started well, I felt comfortable and went through 1000 m without any problems and when I stopped to do a quick time check it looked like I'd picked up about a minute compared to my time before the summer. I wasn't keeping exact timing but I did look at the clock both at the start and after 1000 m and in the least I sure wasn't any slower. In the backyard I often tried to work on technique and maybe it helped a bit. So I continued swimming wanting to get in another thousand but at 1100 m my foot cramped and I pulled up and kind of bounced back to the pool edge on on leg. I waited out the cramp and started swimming again and at 1250 m ...... crap, another cramp this time in my other foot. It happens when I push off the wall at the end of a lap and usually once I've swum over 1000 m and I really don't know how to get over this. I figured 1250 m was enough and called it a night but was still happy because I still felt good and knew I could have done another 750 m. I'm sure glad there aren't any walls in the races.

Riding with a vengeance

Wow where did that come from? I think I pissed someone off. It was a gorgeous start to the day but the forecast was calling for the usual 5:00pm thunderstorm. I emailed Justin and his reply was that if there was a threat of rain he'd rather not make the drive up and potentially not ride and he'd get on the trainer instead. Well the trainer is ok for winter training but we have to take advantage of the remaining nice days we have. That and unless you're really, really dedicated the tendency is to not go as hard as when on the road. So I followed the weather forecast and went online to track any potential storms and I figured that while there was a chance of rain that we should get out anyways. I called Justin and told him I was calling him as his coach, not his friend, and that I wanted him to get his butt up here after work to go riding. If it rained we'd stop, we'd get wet and when it stopped we'd keep going. I think that must have pissed him off just a bit but he did come up for our ride. Chris opted to head to the pool instead tonight so it would be just Justin and me on the road. So we started out and we got lucky as the storm clouds had moved off to the east and blue skies opened up above us. With road construction going on along 16th Ave we wound our way through Cornell and made our way towards 10th Line. We rode easy for this first part but once we hit York Durham Justin took the lead and whoa ..... he started hammering. He rode with a vengeance and personally I think he was trying to hurt me but hey if that's what it takes to get him motivated and to get his performance up where I know it can be then I'll take the bullet. What was even more surprising though was that he was doing this through a pretty stiff wind. Going north it was more of a crosswind but with those HED 3's on his bike that's the worse kind of wind for him to have to deal with. And once we hit Bloomington we turned right into the wind and he continued to push a 30 km/hr average speed. The route home was somewhat easier by being downhill and then once we turned east also aided by a tailwind but he didn't let up until we got nearer to the house. Once we got done we switched into our running gear and headed out for a 6-7 km run. It wasn't long before Justin indicated that his energy level was down and he was concerned he may not be able to complete the full run. This is something we need to dial in before Miami because it could end up being a race killer for him. He ended up finishing a full 7.5 km but the run was a polar opposite from his bike and right now we have to work on both nutrition and probably pacing his bike leg to ensure he has enough energy left for his run.

Miserable day and a state of flux

Typically Saturday is my brick day and Sunday is my long run day. This weekend I reversed the order because I was moving Katie up to Barrie for the start of another school year. I figured I'd get my run in this morning and go pack up Katie's stuff into the truck in the afternoon and drive her up. Well early on I really wasn't sure if I'd even get out to run. It was rainy and didn't seem like it would clear up and even if it did I wasn't even sure what kind of distance I'd get in. Around 11:00 it seemed like the weather would co-operate so I got my gear on and being cooler I decided Kona would love to go running. Now usually when I run I have a planned route and an idea of what kind of pace I want to follow but today was pretty much a state of flux. We started out heading up 9th Line. At the 1/2 km mark it started to rain. Crap. Not hard but hard enough that we turned on to Tiers Gate to head back home. Flux #1. Heading back along Larkin the rain stopped so I decided to continue my run. Must have just been a quick shower. Flux #2. So we cut over to 9th Line again and this time we headed south thinking we'd do the Highway 7 / Markham Rd. / 16th Ave loop. All the way down to Hwy 7 I kept checking the sky and it didn't look bad, some clouds but also blue sky. Then we turned onto Hwy 7 and yikes .... I looked west and big black storm clouds loomed. On top of that we headed right into a 35 km/hr wind. And on top of that my Garmin started screaming at me that it was full and had no more room to add laps. I've got it set up that each km is a lap and this was km 2 on the run. Right at that point the skies opened up in a torrential rain and because of the wind it wasn't falling, it was flying at us horizontally like little bullets. I stopped under a tree to see if I could get the Garmin to shut up but realized that I'd have to delete previous data and I wasn't sure if I'd saved it yet so I let it go and decided to put up with the beeping and buzzing. Right at that point another runner passed us just as we started to run again. With this rain I changed my plans and decided to head up Wooten Way to home. Flux #3. We were getting pelted with rain and I was following this other runner and she was booting along at about a 4:30 pace so I kept up figuring it's only 1.5 km to home. A couple of minutes later the rain totally stopped and lo and behold, blue sky above. So as we came up to Fincham Ave instead of turning for home we turned the opposite direction to get a few more km in. Flux #4. We followed Fincham around to 16th Ave and were going to head back along 16th but ... you guessed it ... flux #5. We crossed 16th and headed north up into the community of Greensborough. Up to Bur Oak, back over to 9th Line and south towards home. Until we reached 16th and encountered flux #5. I was feeling good so turned left on 16th. We ran for about 1.75 km and turned into Cornell for a bit and back towards 9th Line again. A quick calculation indicated we'd finish up at about 13.5 kms. Not bad, I'd be happy with that. Except that when we got back to 9th Line and turned south towards home flux #6 was waiting and we ran right past Fincham. To add a couple more kms of course. We cut in and ran back to Wooten Way and once again turned for home. I was now looking at about a 16 km run and surely would be very happy with that. But running along Fincham, finally only a half km from home, flux #7 smacked into us. Over to 9th Line, north to 16th, west to Mint Leaf Gate, south to Larkin and along Larkin towards home. No more states of flux were encountered and the final distance ended up at 19 kms. I felt good the whole way and averaged a 5:10 pace which was very satisfying. I could have kept going too but Kona hadn't been out on many runs with me with all the hot weather we'd had this summer and I'd been pretty much dragging her along since about km 11 and figured I'd put her through enough. And finally I could off the freaking Garmin after 17 km of it sqeaking, beeping, squawking and buzzing at me.

Cooking up a storm

What with summer vacation and Cassie being on the west coast for several weeks my culinary skills had been put on hold. Well Cassie is back and Katie is heading back up to Barrie for her second year at Georgian College so tonight was a good chance to get back to "chefing". My biggest problem always seems to be what to make. I can always make a meal that I've made in the past but I like to try new things and prepare new tastes and experiences for Tammy, Cassie and tonight Katie as well. So I decided on Trout Meuniere with sautéed vegetables. I had come across Collard Greens in the produce section the other day and figured this was my chance to use them. I'd never prepared greens before so this was going to be a first and I was concerned I was going to screw it up. The worst part of cooking is the prep work, the cutting, slicing and dicing and generally getting everything ready to cook and this usually takes the longest amount of time. I sautéed the some sliced bell pepper, onions and tomatoes in olive oil and garlic while boiling the collard greens. At the same time I prepared the meuniere sauce by melting butter and adding cajun spiced flour to it to create a roux. I added this to a mix of vegetable stock that I had heating with some red wine vinegar, lemon juice and worcestershire sauce and mixed to make the sauce. It came out a little thicker then I wanted but was still pretty good. I drained the greens and added them to the sauteing vegetables and then pan fried the trout, 2 minutes per side. With everything ready I plated everything, sauce on the plate, I cut the trout into slices and placed them over the sauce and added some lupini beans to my greens and vegetables and added that to the plate. The reviews were raving good. So after that I had a good visit with Katie and made plans to drive her and her stuff up to Barrie tomorrow. Another school year just around the corner.

Rain, rain go away

The forecast was for rain and it was threatening all day day but was holding off and the hope was that we could get our ride in if not both a ride and a run. Justin and I kept in touch via email and at 4:00 pm figured it looked like it it would be a go. He left early from work and made his way to my place and I got in touch with Chris to let him know we were giving it a go. But as Justin walked into my place the dark clouds rolled in and it looked pretty threatening. Chris arrived and we headed back to the deck to check out the skys and as we stood there talking it started to come down. So this ride was called off. We took it inside and Justin and I took this opportunity to talk to Chris about Louisville and his race and the whole Ironman experience. He told us about his great swim and amazing sub 6 hour ride and his painful run and the strange thing is that even though the final part of his race was an ordeal he obviously never regretted doing it and was planning on doing it again next year and for the 400th time was recruiting me to join him. The scary part is that even with the tortuous conditions I'm not saying no. But let me get Miami under my belt first. By this time the rain was really pelting down and no one was going anywhere for the time being so Justin and I began picking Chris' brain about race strategy and nutrition planning. He's done this for several years and races and has his plans figured out and as bad as it might sound we can learn from his misfortune in Louisville. I always enjoy talking with Chris. He knows what he's talking about and I've learned a lot about triathlon training and racing from him and am hoping all his experience that he's imparted on me takes me to a successful completion in Miami.

Pretty satisfied today

I got back in the pool today hoping to get a long swim in without any shoulder or hip flexor/groin issues. My shoulder still isn't 100% but with Miami just 2 months away I need to make sure that my swim doesn't deteriorate. I mean really, it's pretty bad as it is I can't let it get any worse. I tried to focus mostly on technique but there were so many things going through my head that I found it difficult to execute everything I was trying to do. Keep my head down, chin close to chest, don't cross the "centre line" with my hand entry, upper and lower arm at a right angle to maximize surface area on my pull, kick from the hip. It's just not natural to me yet and I feel like I'm jumping from one thing to another and not able to put it all together. I think I did make some good progress though because I reduced the number of strokes to cross the pool by 1. I think that's a good thing. Anyway I did 2000 m and was happy that I didn't have any groin issues and my shoulder ended up no worse for the wear. I also got in a run tonight, just 10 km but I pushed myself pretty good. I often go out thinking "easy run" but I've yet been able to stick to that thought. Tonight was like that again. I wanted to just get in an easy run between 10-12 km but my pace started out pretty good and my mentality became "let's see how quick I can go". I opted for 10 km rather then 12 and ended up with a 4:48 pace. I swear, one of these days I'm going to go out for an "easy run" and do it.