Some new things

So I'm still full of something. Don't know what's gotten into me. Maybe it's the spring in the air!

Anyhow. So the network at work is down and as I try to think of what to try next to repair it (yes yes.... small office so why do we even have a network??? I don't know but one of my job titles is network repair... or at least the person who runs to the boss who set it up to ask how to fix it) I thought I'd point out a few new things here at Team Pink Virtual HQ.

Thing 1: on the right hand side we now have our countdown to Big Sur. I desided not to do the automatic clock like everyone else but instead Brian and I scour the internetz for the best picture of the number of days left. Today's is a personal favourite. Brian found it. I LURVES it. The goat looks so goaty in it. Awesome. I (heart) goats. (ETA on March 30: I've added the goat picture to this post because I love it so)



Thing 2: not really on this blog and unless you paid attention to my facebook or twitter a few days back it might have flown right by you. But I will make the offical announcement now! Drum roll please.... there is a new blog. The fabulous Joanne and Alison along with myself have started a recipe blog. It's a work in progress. And there are only a handful of recipes up right now but we are committed to bringing you our favourite foods and treats. With Pictures. Because I (and Joanne too) really like to see how it's supposed to look before you commit to make it and I like to see my food before I eat it. In fact the reason I made muffins this weekend was to get a picture for the blog.

So where oh where is this new blog. "I eat therefore I train" is at http://racing4waffles.blogspot.com/. And I for one would be more then happy to post some favourite recipes from some "outsiders" in a special "celebrity' entry every now and then (hint hint DAD!!!).

Tasty!

And then we made a bed

So today was the big day. Our 20 miler. With BIG hills. We skipped swimming and headed out the door from our place at 8 am on the button for our jaunt around False Creek, past the new Olympic Village, around Science World and then west to Stanley Park. Where we ran around the seawall except that we elected to run over Prospect Point... 1 mile or so and 300 ft of gain. Essentially half of the BIG hill at the BIG show that is BIG SUR. Then it was down the other side (2 mile descent... ouch on the quads) and then turned around at the bottom of the hill and went up and over again. Double ouch. Then it was 10 km to home. So 20 miles in 3:15ish... that would be my fault... I was full of beans this morning. Some one put extra get up and go in my corn squares!

Then it was off to brunch with Dan and Leeny at the FABULOUS Burgoo where I definetly earned my Pain Francais smoothered in warm vanilla infused maple syrup, bananas and hazelnuts. YUM!! Definetly one to remember for brunches or special breakfasts for Brian!



But we weren't done there. No sir! We came home, did our ice bathes, watched some golf (Brian), tidied various parts of the house (both of us), and built our new Ikea bed. Yup yup. Full of beans! And now we are waiting for dinner to be delivered and then I will finally stop. I promise Brian! I really will stop!

That's more like it

Training this week is definetly going better this week.

Wednesday night saw the introduction of a new saddle (which will move on to Pegs when she gets back from her makeover) and a happy bottom and dainty bits were the result. Oh happiness is a good saddle.

Thursday we hit the track all keyed up to do some kilometer repeats with 200m bursts. Brian was keen to do 4:20s and I was looking at 4:40s but Coach Alan had other plans. Six minute kilometers. To get us ready for Big Sur. The whole pacing thing. Rumour has it that this works. Ask Joanne or Alison or really anyone in the club who has used this thing. Joanne has a great method of running races which I think I will adopt for this marathon. Yes you get passed at the start but then as Alison mimed it's like fishing at the end when you reel them all back in as you finish strong and smiling and with a fab negative split. Worked for them in Ironman it'll work for us. So easy does it at the beginnning and ramp it up over the course of the race. Can do. Maybe those poky slow kilometers will come in handy. Get used to sucking it up at the beginning for the sake of the entire race. What a concept!!!

Friday (for me at least) saw some yoga at the office. So I'm feeling all loose in the hips (it was a hip class... and yes for those eagle eyed readers I do work in a VERY small office... of me, a grad student, and a few part timers who don't have regular schedules including my boss which makes setting up meetings and stuff rather interesting). Anyhoodle. Yoga is actually 3 or 4 of us plus the CFO (my boss's wife who is a certified instructor) Pretty handy person to have on staff.

On tap this weekend is a 1:40 spin and a trip to Ikea and then a 20 miler on Sunday followed by tastiness at on of my favourite post run restaurants Burgoo... mmmmm Burgooooooo.

So things are good if not great but I will hold back on that until after the 20 miler. Ask me again on Sunday afternoon. Unless I'm napping then leave me alone!

I'm pretty! Take my picture

Well honey, someone took your picture. And made it front cover material.

Looky who is on this year's Osoyoos Visitor's guide:


In matching pink no less. (I'll excuse you Nytro if you vomit a little in your mouth) Lookin' all newly married and lovey dovey. No not the older couple in the middle... a little to the left. There you go! Team Pink!

Another week, another run

It's been a week??? Seriously? oops. Well I guess neither of us had fab training weeks and had really nothing to say other then "grumble grumble" and "whimper". So after a crappy Wednesday night spin session and a GI plagued Thursday run we took Friday off for some R&R.

And it worked.

We got up on Saturday and it the trails for some fun in the mud. We bumped into Speedy-pants Steph and got her to change her mind about riding on the road and so she joined us on her mountain bike and the three of us had a great time in the trails. This morning we headed out on a "short" recovery week run of 1:50 ish and covered between 17 and 18 k. Not too shabby.

So we turned it around. Let's hope we can keep this up for the week and into next weekend for a 3:30 run. Then it's taper time. WOOT!

Best. Decision. Ever.

The schedule had us at the pool yesterday morning from 8:30 until 10, after which we would begin our 3-hour run around 10:30. Considering that we would likely be late starting the run, then adding stretching, showering, changing, etc., we were looking at getting back home around 2:30. We still needed to clean the house for some guests coming over at 6, fit in our ice baths and obviously, have a nap, so we felt pretty pinched for time as we rolled out to get it all started. But on the way to the pool, the though crossed our minds - "if the marathon is our focus right now, why don't we just run and get it over with?" And so it was, that our run began at 8:30 instead of 10:30. Why would this turn out to be such a great decision? Well, when the wind picked up to 30 km/hr and the sky started pouring slush down on Vancouver at 11:00, we only faced the last twenty minutes in pure crapitude. Making us feel even better about the decision, an hour after we finished it turned into an outright blizzard that we would have had to suffer through! (We did feel bad for Teresa though, who had to start her bike workout at 10:30 and ride through that mess)

But how did our first ever run over 3-hours go, you ask. Actually, quite well! Aside from a minor meltdown at 1:45 after having to climb up Camosen for the third week in a row, we both wore our BGPs and ran strong all morning. Our pace was pretty much right on target for the LSD training runs and we didn't cut anything short (even went 2 minutes over to finish it off). Having pushed through the point where our legs were tired and sore but still turning over anyways, we came away from yesterday finally feeling like we're going to be able to accomplish this marathon thing. It was definitely another big step on the road to Big Sur. Just five more weeks until we get to go enjoy some California sunshine!

Marathons

I was browsing through the bookstore yesterday when I came across the published version of "Stuff White People Like". I opened it purely by chance to #27: Marathons. I couldn't help but share this ...

In life, there are certain milestones of physical activity that can define you. A sub 5 second 40 yard dash, a 40 inch vertical leap and so forth. To a white person, the absolute pinnacle of fitness is to run a marathon. Not to win, just to run.

White people will train for months, telling everyone who will listen about how they get up early in the morning, they run when it rains, how it makes them feel so great and gives them energy.

When they finish the marathon, they will generally take a photo of themselves in a pair of New Balance sneakers, running shorts, and their marathon number with both hands over their head in triumph (seriously, look it up, this is universal).

They will then set goals like running in the Boston Marathon or the New York Marathon.

If you find yourself in a situation where a white person is talking about a marathon, you must be impressed or you will lose favor with them immediately. Running for a certain length of time on a specific day is a very important thing to a white person and should not be demeaned.

Also worth nothing, more competitive white people prefer triathlons because Kenyans can’t afford $10,000 specialty bicycles. If the subject ever comes up, just say that triathletes are in better shape than football and basketball players. It’s not true, but it will make the conversation a lot more genial.

Longest Run Ever!

Sometimes it feels easy. Sometimes it's a battle. I don't always know why the training is easier some days than others, but the fact remains that we have good days and bad.

While last week's run was challenging, we pushed through our 2:20 with pretty solid strength. Neither of us complained too much and we weren't watching the clock the whole time. It left me feeling confident and strong moving into our final piece of building for the marathon. Then yesterday came. We had 2:40 on the schedule, which figured to be both the longest and farthest either of us had ever run, but I felt good and thought it should go well. We hadn't left ourselves too drained from training during the week and we planned a route that was almost as hilly as last week, but not quite. So off we went, down the hill from the pool, towards the water, and across the beach. We climbed back up Spanish Banks hill and reached the top of it within 1 minute of our time from last week. We skipped the repeat of Spanish Banks so that we could run down SW Marine and see our friends racing the UBC Duathlon while they were on the bike. As it turned out, we timed it perfectly! We got to see Teresa, Joanne, Bronwyn, and Clayton all riding back towards transition on their second laps - great racing you guys!

After we ran all the way down SW Marine to Camosun, we attacked our second big climb up Camosun to West 29th. We crested that nasty hill a shade after 1:40 on the clock, so we just had to put one more solid hour together in the trails through the Endowment Lands. Unfortunately, we were suffering at this stage. Neither of us had as much gas in the tank as last week and that final hour turned into a slog. We went down the hill one more time to the base of Salish and proceeded to climb our way back up to 16th where we emerged with 20 minutes to go. Thankfully, we knew it was going to take us almost that long to get back to the pool and wrap things up, so we didn't have to loop around or do anything extra at the end. We finally ran (jogged? crawled?) back into the parking lot just after 2:38 and called it a day. We had a little more than 24 km under our belts which was a hair slower than we hoped for, but on a day when we were both suffering, we still managed to gut out the entire run and we didn't even wimp out on adding that last hill. Three big climbs and our time within 1% of the target - I call that a success! Next week, we target the 3-hour barrier.

A hodge podge

Either that swim was easier than usual or I just had a great day in the pool and didn't really realize it. I wasn't over heating and cranky and dropped like I usually am so I'm thinking it was the former. But it's practices like that which will have me happy as Flipper in the pool again. Eventually. Right now I'm only swimming twice a week. Which isn't enough to see any improvement or consistency in anything (i.e. actually being totally at home in the water again). So I'm looking to get in another swim during the week. Nothing too hard core maybe some steady stuff and some slower technique work. I was thinking Sunday afternoon/evening but I don't think I'm gonna wanna get off the couch after a long run of hills. So maybe Saturday somehow.

So far this year it's been all about the mental battles. I am getting tired of fighting and not seeing any victories or forward progression. Though I have to say I found Joanne's race report really inspiring. I need to deside on my Big Sur goals. I know it's going to be a tough go. And I know that no matter what the time is I won't be happy about it because that's who I am. So I need other goals. I think enjoying the day and being with Brian will be number 1 and then running all the dang hills will be number 2. And being proud of myself for just finishing the run. That last one I have to work on. It's hard to let go of the numbers and just accept something for what it is.

T-Minus 7 Weeks and Counting

We continue to roll quickly towards the Big Sur marathon and yesterday we began the final build in our training. Between now and the end of April, we will continue to increase our training run times to about 3.5 hours and we'll try to add as many hills as possible to get our bodies used to the shock of suffering the inclines and descents when they're tired.

With that in mind, we went for a 2:22, 22 km (13.5-ish miles) jaunt yesterday with three major climbs in it. The route and profile are below:



It turned out to be a great run. Amy pushed hard through the climbs and ran up them like a champion, only running out of steam at the very end of the last one (sounds like perfect timing to me!). As a reward, we decided to go back to Vera's for those wonderful burgers that we highlighted a few weeks ago! The remainder of Sunday was spent with us lying on the couch feeling exhausted and each of us suffering through 15 minutes of agony in the ice bath.