4/30 Long Run Half Cut

Definitely my first DUI long run. Morning hockey game at 8am, then hit the breaky, game 2 at 1115, then hit the free bbq lunch upstairs. Out to Mkeiths pad after 3 tinnies for a solidly mixed spiced rum n ginger... with a healthy glow and nice ball of cancer growing from all the second hand smoke from Dartsy McKeith all weekend I decided to get a run in. No idea where to go, no idea what route.   I'm not sure going for a run was my best idea but I knew I wanted to get a long one in on the weekend to stay on program.  That, and I had a mini bomb dropped on me and wanted to get a good run in to clear the brains.

Running semi cut has an advantage though since you just keep goin and the time flies. Ran past the events center, then down towards the golden ears bridge in the distance. Took a couple tries to find the pedestrian ramp up it, ran up to the highest point on the bridge then turned back, that was about 9.5k mark. Times got slower and slower as I got more and more dehydrated, and sober.

Tried to shortcut my route through one road but it turned out to be a deadend, some dude with 7 teeth total told me I might as well run back to 200th rather than 'turspass' on anyones prawperty. (direct quote)

Got back at 515 or so and got the pressure to shower and get out from Cigs before had a chance to stretch. Interupted his fast and the furious five driving impression to get a chocolate milk to half recover a bit at least! To the banquet by 6 bells to see the Nucks, free roast beef din.

Legs feel cooked, but jacked that I got this run in.

NOTE: weight in the morning was 188.  Weight upon return from run 181. 7 pounds, holy dehydrated.

4/22 Fletchers Challenge Trail Race

Fletchers Challenge 2011

Ka-riste that was a hard run. The hardest trail race Ive done for sure. Olly made the effort and drove up from Vic to run this one with me, and in the process nailed down a 12th place overall spot, sick. I slid deftly into 30th (out of 66 runners).

The route did part of Westwood lake then climbed, climbed, climbed, ran through (and along) a few creeks with water running over the ankles, deep mud, heart redlining climbs, and some steep downhills where it was hold on for dear life. Pretty intense. Rolled my ankle(s) early on about 25mins in and had to jack it down a bit for awhile. Got passed by 5 runners I think. Cookie platters after were solid, so was the beer and flatbreads back at the house.

Will come back stronger to this next year.

Runners of Compassion
http://rocnanaimo.com/running.html

4/21 First ever time trial

What am I getting myself into.  This was week 1 of the Mid Island Velo Association's weekly time trial Thursdays.  I thought it was at 730, actually it was at 630. I found this out at 621. By 623 I was in lycra and peeling out of the garage with bike on the rack.

Arrived at 630 and signed in, except I forgot my money, so rainchecked it. Geared up with arm warmers etc as fast as possible then realized I forgot...my helmet. Idiot.

Thankfully the organizer had his in his car or I wouldve been SOL.

With zero warm up and 16 serious bike nerds around me I told myself just dont get last, dont get last. The ride climbs for a fair portion of the way out to 7.5k marker, hitting 175m elev at its highest. On the way back its time to cook it down, with 3 mini climbs too though. Had a goal of breaking 30mins, then went for averaging 33. check check! Wicked good times, and best of all, didnt get last. 38.6km/hr average on return half.

Heart rate pretty high but not redlining it.

Might have to make these a weekly adventure.


Mid Island Velo Association MIVA http://bikeracing.ca/

Swimming and throwin right hooks 4/20

Woke at 510, tried to talk myself into sleeping in and that I needed these 2 extra hours. Willpower won out after a bowl of mini wheats. Hard workout, the last 400 set I red-lined, coach yelled at me to stay on Bills feet and catch him, I caught him and passed him. Dont think he was happy about it because during cooldown lengths he came straight at me in my line and his stroke caught me in the goggles like a punch without a word of sorry.  Why he decided to pass his wife when on a cooldown lap and head straight up my line, who knows.
Coach pulled me aside after and said it was my breakthrough session today, not sure what that means but I'll take that as a good sign.

Nanaimo Mountain Bike Club 4/19

Trail Route - I just add this to show how BAD the Bing Maps Aerials really are.  Thanks for switching from Google Maps to ShitBing and not listening to your customers Garmin.

Best decision I made all day was to suddenly grab the mountain bike and go for a ride. Decided to go even though it was finally a day off the program. 

After losing keys 3 times and borrowing the neighbours lawnmower, was on my way by 530 for what I thought would be a half hour ride. 

Extension/Transcanada trail start point, rode the power line up searching for singletrack jutting off. Found one quite far up the climb and it was BEAUTY. Except for wondering about cougars. Looped around, got lost a few times, and then headed back taking random trails the whole way, some dead ends, some good. Upon getting to the parking lot after a solid hour and 5 minutes I saw a group of mountain bikers in the lot. 

Chatted with them a bit and theyre the nanaimo mtb club, they were nice enough to invite me along for their ride. Decided even though I was tired I'd go, good chance to meet locals and learn trails. Turned out to be super mellow good group of people. Couple IMC finishers who gave me great advice, so refreshing to meet some real IM athletes who arent strung out and talking about pace/splits/hr nonstop. 

So glad I made it out for this ride!

Nanaimo Mountain Bike Club http://www.nanaimomountainbikeclub.com/

Thetis Island Bike Tour 4/16

As a surprise for my turning another year older, O planned a full day bike tour out to Thetis Island. 

Rode the Jake with trunk bag so I could carry some shoes for a mini hike if sun was out, and some gear, cyclocross tires are noticeably slower but more comfy short term. 

We headed out at 1030am, over to Cedar road then down to hwy1, hit chemainus road and followed that to the ferry terminal. Great ride, but didnt feel too spry after last nights hard 15k run. Awesome bakery in town though that got murdered by myself. Rains flirted with us the whole ride, never too wet though. Bakery lady told me it hailed hard just behind us from Nanaimo southward, nice timing.. 

Chemainus

Ferry is just a tiny vehicle raft more or less, fits 20 some cars, tiny room for passengers, no prob. Chilled in there and some random little girl chatted us up. 

Obviously the leg warmers aren't working

Beautiful roads on Thetis

Beautiful hill climbs on Thetis

 Onto Thetis Island for our first time ever, holy hills. From sea level up to 130m in first 4k, then steep down another 15% grade to the point (end of road). It was sllooowwww. Like cranking the big rings at a cadence of about 20 and going 5-6kph slow. Hit the point and did some quick timing with the ferry, decided to boot it back but that meant a hard climb up the 15% again on the out n back. Hit the hill as two other cyclists were coming by, some cyclists can be serious douches, elitist weirdos these two were. Got to the ferry and waited 4 minutes tops for the 250pm back. 

Back in Chemainus after the 25min ferry and was at 48k point, needing 30 to get home, tired. My legs started to get sore and my right ass/hip muscle tightened up harsh. Pulled over a couple times on the hwy1 with the rush of cars deafening me to stretch. Rained almost the entire way back, started to defeat me. Very very sketchy point in the final km from home where you have to cross 2 lanes of traffic where cars are going 90 around a blind curve, dumb dumb dumb setup. I told O about it before we approached it. As we got there I looked, no cars, started across the 2 lanes, a truck comes flying in inner lane and O is behind me crossing slowly. Truck starts honking and my heart went out ,too close. If she had panicked or swerved there would be a very bad ending there. 

Got home to clean the bikes off and then scrub the bbq of 5 yrs of mold and grit.  Most excellent ride!

Morrell Sanctuary - 4/10

Still exploring some new trails nearby..  

What a pisspoor day outside, winds and heavy rain. Felt shitty about missing a longer ride but after 3 games of hockey over the weekend my legs felt pretty beat up anyways. Instead ran the Morrell Sanctuary trail for a nice easy run, came home and put together a canadian tire desk for about 2 hours and 200 f bombs, did a medicine ball workout, pull ups, then onto the trainer for a 30min spin. The 'boyz' are going numb badly every ride these days...

Some nice pics of Morrell... great trails

Chainsaws and Motorbikes - Nanaimo Lakes Road 4/3

Sunday Long Ride.

Slept in til 9, by far the latest in a few weeks. Felt good but a bit sore from the long trail run yesterday. The bikes and gear was ready last night so just cooked up some eggs and toast and was out the door once digested.

Rode up the parkway trail til Harewood Mines Rd, rooty and climbs from 30m to 110m. From there its left up the road which turns into Nanaaimo Lakes Road, lots of climbing. Got to 200m and knew I still had to get to 300m elevation before we topped out. Slow going, definitely going to do this route as a training ride but not part of the long rides for awhile, punishing to know you climb for 45 mins just to go 12k, when you have to hit 56k for the day by the end.

Lots of rednecks on this route, chainsaws, ford f150s, motorbikes, quads, ciggies, and flannel jackets aplenty. Chilly day today after summer yesterday, feet numb, balls non existant. O took the turn at white rapids rd to head the 5k home while I headed out for the meat of the ride out to Yellow Point / Cedar to loop around to home. Lots of rolling hills, some stretches of really shit pavement, but overall good 2 1/2 hr workout. Forgot my HR monitor.

Love the garmin edge.

Swim Club Entry, Time to be Humbled 3/28

Recognizing that if I'm going to have a shot in hell at completing the swim leg of Ironman Canada this summer, I had better get some better form on the swim.  Bad technique just means you'll work as hard or harder than others but you won't go anywhere.

I joined up with the Hub City Tri Club, hoping to meet a few people and get out on some training rides with them through the spring and summer.  The club has set up a swim coach for a 12 week set, Mondays and Wednesdays at 6am.  Waking up at 5 can only get easier....

Today was tough, and so so humbling.  I stumbled around at 5am, in the darkness drove out of the garage and over to the NAC.  The swim coach is John, seems like a good guy.  The group appears to be an uber fit assembly of very fast swimmers.  I went in the slower lane and got absolutely worked.  Today ended up being about 1600m, with the coach giving me plenty of tips out of the water. 

I am a human anchor.

Yellow Point Ride - Brick Run 3/26

Always good times to learn new routes around you.  Had a nice ride out on Cedar Road then to Yellow Point.  O and I stopped and enjoyed the beach for a bit before carrying on.  This was her first road ride in awhile but she still did great.  Some funny (one could say, rednecky) signs out this way "No Trespassing, is it worth your life?".

Got back to the house then headed out for an easy 5k run.

Westwood Lake Runs - 3/19

Westwood Lake is this amazing little oasis right on the edge of the city and nudged up against the base of Mt.Benson.  I remember 6 years ago running this when on a trip back from Japan I was visiting Josh here and he took me out for a lap followed by some runs out in Colliery.  I clearly remember how very "Vancouver Island" it felt when visiting the lake back in '05 on that trip with the huge trees and vegetation everywhere.

Today I drove the quick ten minutes to Westwood lake and planned on running 5k out back (10) then another 4k to round out to 14k. Ended up just doing 2 laps of the 6k lake loop, followed by a 1k out and back to equal 14 instead. Added the final lake loop km hill climb to the long run which hurt like fuk but has to be good for me somehow.

Stopped at 6k and 12k for quick water and part of a bar. Ran this one just keeping hte heart rate down and ran for time (goal was over 1h20).

Lake Loop 1 36:50
Lake Loop 2 35:22

How good is it to be able to drive 10 minutes in zero traffic and be at the lake??

The NAC

One of the big drawing points to moving to Nanaimo was definitely the pool, and I'm not even a swimmer.  Having that nice long 50m pool to do lengths in is amazing, and it's not warm (and yellowish) like a kiddy pool that so many have to swim in!  I heard that back in the day there was quite a resistance in Nanaimo to build a pool that big saying that no one would use it. 

From what I've seen there's a very large group of fit, happy, and active individuals who would argue that, and that's just at first glance.  Build the facilities, parks, soccer pitches, baseball diamonds, tracks, hockey arenas, TRAILS, and you'll stand a much better chance at a very healthy community as well as kids who will enjoy the outdoors more than a PS3.

March 5 - Colliery Dam

Settling into Nanaimo, awesome to have a few days to unpack for the first time in EIGHT years.  Since I left for Japan in 2003 I haven't ever been in one spot to unpack fully.  I'm pulling out boxes of stuff I forgot I even had.  Makes you realize how much you really don't need.

Out for a beauty run on the Parkway Trail, so close to home and goes on for 18km one way to the north end of the city.  It reminded me of my old stomping grounds in Sapporo, the Shiroishi Cycling Road.  Though that pathway can never be matched this one is pretty good. 

We got out for a nice hour or so bike ride up the pathway too, checked out Colliery Dam Park.  Looking forward to finding more and more trails...