Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Hey Rob, Where You At?!!

It's been a busy few weeks and I haven't put out a decent post in a bit. So this is what I've been up to......first off, I turned 45 on May 6 so HELLO new age group!! Here's my opportunity to appear fast with the old boys. My birthday landed on a Friday and a rather busy workday. I flew up to Thunder Bay for the day and never stopped moving until I arrived back home at 7:30 in the evening. My present to myself was coming the next morning at the Personal Best long distance triathlon training day. The day would consist of a 75 min swim, 3.5 hour bike and 1.5 hour run back to back to back. John "the Beast" Ceko and about 25 others signed up for the fun.

The home base was the David Braley Centre at McMaster University, an awesome facility.

We had the full 50 metre pool to ourselves. John and I, however, mistakenly assumed this segment would consist of a 75 minute continous swim. Instead we were put through a gruelling workout by Andrew Cole, the McMaster swim coach. Our main set consisted of 2 x 50m all out, 2 x 50m easy, 150m all out, then 100m easy - we kept repeating this until our time was up or our arms fell off. Both John and I could hardly move our arms by the last 150m interval - it was not pretty!

Swim now over we gathered for the bike. The plan was to make our way from Mac to Flamborough where we would do 20km loops, some in pacelines, some individual time trials and some pursuits. It was a lot of fun despite the ever present cool weather we've been having.

Now on the bike the Beast was one happy camper as evidenced by the giddy look on his face!

The guy with the yellow jacket is Hans Porten. He's in the 50-54 age group and is an amazing athlete. He also has a very sterotypical German accent. During a paceline where we were in pairs I had the pleasure to ride with Hans and he repeatedly told our group to "stay togezzer!!" I was expecting the followup "we have vays of making you tawk" to come out of his mouth. He routinely wins his age group and I would kill to be in the shape this guy's in.

Beast getting antsy because we stopped for a pee break - "when are we going?!!"

Pro Karsten Madsen guided us to the run loop.

A shot of the group running - it was tough running and taking pics but I'm such a dedicated blogger and I told myself to HTFU. Incidentally, the runner in the white shirt is retired NHLer Scott Thornton who's right into triathlon now and I believe is gearing up for Ironman Austria. YouTube his name and MTV Cribs and you'll see his sweet indoor tri-themed workout area in his house - very cool.

This was part of the run loop near Cootes Paradise. By this point it started to warm up but this stretch of trail remained nice and cool.

I thought the Beast was going to hug high performance member John Rasmussen when he arrived with water as the Beast was a little parched. How John (not the Beast) rode with the case of water on his handlebars I'll never know. All the pros were great and totally supportive.

Another pic of the Beast and I.

The following Friday I took advantage of the nice weather and set out for a long ride. I started riding at 6:50 am and went to Brantford and back for 61 miles (Go Imperial Man Go!). I came back and headed out again with Sara to Grimsby and back for some more riding fun. By this time it was 23C and 30 with the humidity - it felt great!

Sara slicing through the wind. If only we had race wheels.......it was amazing to not have layers of clothes on.

Nice Face!! I took a picture of myself while riding no hands - probably not smart but I'll do anything for my craft! All in all I covered 102 miles on the bike (163km for you metric folk) - my first century of the season. John and I met up the next day and banged off 16 miles (26 km) of running with lots of hills. I felt pretty good so my training must be on track. We have our Muskoka training weekend coming up this Victoria Day weekend so I'm looking forward to another smashfest. That's all for now and remember "if you can't be good, be good at it!"

Have a good one - Cheers!

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Inspirational - A Perspective Review

http://www.penmachine.com/2011/05/the-last-post

The above link is from a BC man who recently died of colorectal cancer and was a frequent blogger. This was his last post that was sent out following his death. It is estimated to have received 8 million hits. Makes me rethink about the whining over gas prices!