Pictures and posts are up for Saturday and Sunday so you'll want to scroll down to see what the non-ironman training portion of Team Pink has been up to.
And here is Tuesday's photo:
Dear Running,
I think we need some time apart. It's not you it's me. Really. I just haven't been connecting with you lately. It's been a rocky few months with you. You've done a number on my head. I feel slow and incompetent around you. And I know it's me. I know because you and I used to be good together. I felt good with you. I felt positive about me. But lately I haven't and so I am trying to find out why. And to do that I need some time away. I think I need to spend more time with Cycling and Swimming. I need to get my confidence back and my happiness too. So I'm setting you aside for a while. I'll be back eventually. I can't stay away from you.
Take care of yourself,
Pants
So I was all about training with Brian. That is until it got hard and no longer fun. Then my goal became HAVE FUN! And that's what I've been doing. I've been going on adventures on my bike to try out new routes or go on rides where the goal is a cafe or a bakery. Fantastic!
This weekend it was a ride I had heard of but never done: 0 (Zero) Ave out in the valley. 0 Ave runs right along the border between the Great White North and the US. And when I say right along I mean the road edge is about a meter (aka a little over a yard for you Yanks) from "The Line". Which is a ditch. Seriously. All that protects our igloos and prize winning sled dogs from those gun toting yahoos over the border is a ditch. And a few cameras here and there. In fact at times there w ere two roads: one on either side of the ditch. And the differences were kinda funny: a US house was advertised (on the Canadian end of the property) as for sale for $125,000 and was a good size and had some good land and a great view (of Canada) while a few kilometers along the road there was a new development (no where really near a major town) on the Canadian side of slightly larger houses with the same view and a half acre of land for $599,000. Then further along there were raspberry fields where the machine operators in Canada were mostly Sikh while over the ditch they were Latin American. (Incidently the raspberry harvesting machines are my new favourite piece of farm equipment - they remind me of the Wonkamobile - they shake the ripe berries off the bush)
Anyhow back to the ride. Which was awesome. Have I said that yet? AWESOME. And having Rebecca as company only made it better. 0 Ave was so quiet and empty. And even smelled good. Like raspberries. Or blueberries. Or horses (I love that smell) (OK so some of the country roads further along that went by hog and cattle farms weren't such an olfactory delight). We talked. We stared at the scenery. We could see the US from our bikes! It was fantastic. It was hot. Really hot. And on the way back it was headwindy. And hot. And there was a long up hill portion. And it was hot. And there may have been some heat stroke affects. But I put on my pinkest big girl panties and soldiered on. And 135km and around 5 and a bit hours later we were back at the car and ready for the air conditioning and some good drinks from the Mack's.
Ten years ago this weekend, my journey began. I didn't really know it at the time and it's taken a lot of twists and turns in between, but it was the second last weekend of July, 2000, when Dave (a university friend) and I took a road trip from Waterloo, ON to Lake Placid, NY to watch and volunteer at Ironman USA (as it was known then, before the creation of IM Louisville, Wisconsin, Arizona, et al). We had both been convinced by Wolfgang (also going by a different name at the time, right Kyle?!) to try out this triathlon thing and had signed up for the sprint race in Orillia later that summer **. In our excitement about training for triathlon, we thought a road trip was called for and we ended up in central NY State for the weekend.
** If you're really interested in seeing how terrible I was despite training all summer for a sprint, you can click here (I had to do some digging to find that).
I can vividly remember standing at the lake watching the start and thinking, "how on earth can anyone swim that far?!" Some days I still wonder, but I credit Amy pushing me to swim when we first met as one of the best challenges she could have given me. I can't tell you how much pleasure I now get from swimming with our group of friends and breakfast with them all on Friday mornings is one of the highlights of my week.
Dave and I were late signing up for volunteering since everything happened kinda last minute, so we ended up helping in the change tents during both T1 and T2. It was there that I feel one can really start to understand what people are experiencing during IM. We got to see the top pros come through and help them with their gear in a whirlwind. And at the far end of the spectrum, we got to see the last couple of swimmers and riders as they just barely scraped in under the cutoff times. It was all of those late afternoon riders who really opened my eyes and made me think that this kind of event would never be a possibility for me. I didn't have that kind of determination or strength. I was floored by their ability to just keep going.
Before our volunteer shift even ended, I got to poke my head out of the tent and see Cam Widoff run in to victory ten minutes ahead of everyone else. Tony Deboom is who everyone expected to win when he came off the bike in first and looked great, but he had a complete explosion and handed an hour back to the other top pros on the run. We were super excited to see Melissa Spooner, a Canadian, win the women's race and then we were shocked later in the evening to see her bouncing up and down the finishing shoot, full of energy, cheering in the midnight finishers!
After 2000 I dabbled in racing a little, doing one or two duathlons a year around Ontario until I moved out to Vancouver in 2004. After crashing in the Vancouver race in '04 and then starting my Masters program, all physical activity took a backseat for nearly two years until Erin convinced me to come for a ride with LETC one night in the earliest stages of the club. It was just weeks thereafter that I met Amy and she "threw me in the pool" so to speak. With her encouragement, I began to stretch the distances that I imagined possible to an Olympic distance that first summer, then half irons in '07 and '08. Finally last August the itch caught up to me and I made the commitment for the big show in 2010.
With three big training weeks left, I think about all of the hours of training this summer and how "long a road" it's been to get myself ready. But in reality, this summer has all just been the last few steps on something started a long time ago.
I fell back on flowers last for Wednesday and Friday out of desperation. I resolve (again) to keep this trend to a minimum. My mantra will be: there is more beauty in the world then just that found in flowers. My other July photos have taught this to me.
Wednesday July 21:
I owe you two (kinda three) photos.
Monday:
