40 steps to 40: Eleven months update

Did you know that I turned 40? Yep. It happened. Quietly and uneventfully. I didn't have a party or invited guests, but my colleagues bought me a cake and sang Happy Birthday to me in three languages.

Hubbs also made me cake (twice!), a non-dairy Far aux Pruneaux (which I devoured with orgasmic pleasure) and bought me a gift which I had been coveting for years (an iPad Mini). So, maybe there wasn't so much Bang! about this birthday, but I lived to tell the tale. I consider Goal #40 complete! Remember, I make them rules. Just like I decided to continue with those goals until the end of the year, because.

To recap, I have the newly completed goals below:

1. Finish Ironman Mt. Tremblant
DONE! You can read the whole saga about the swim, bike and run by following the links.

2. Clean up my diet
To further update you on this, I had an official allergy test done and I AM allergic to milk after all. All types of milk, but my body gets more or less rebellious whether it's cow, goat or sheep. I was told to avoid them all. I am now supposed to carry an EpiPen with me at all times. Yikes. Not fun. My oldest son is also allergic, so misery keeps company... at least I have one more reason to stay put and not go YOLO on my body whenever I feel like it. I have to be a perfect example of discipline. Truth is, whenever I have dairy, it feels like my insides are about to explode and I am super miserable and regret putting myself through this punishment. I am still a work in progress from this point of view, but man, it's hard... there is milk EVERYWHERE.

12. Go skinny dipping
Vacation, cottage, private access to lake, warm water, need to say more? DONE!

15. Bike the Caledon Trailway
DONE! Initially the plan was to ride about 80km on it, but I didn't get the chance until Zin asked me to ride beside him and carry his nutrition for the longest run before his next half marathon. I rode 24km at 13kph. A glorious fall day with ALL THE COLORS on the trailway - I say it counts!!

16. Climb a mountain

DONE! Mt. Tremblant, on the Thursday following the race. I may write a separate post for it because I have too many pictures to share. It was amazeballs. Quick look at Strava:

17. Volunteer at a race

DONE! (again) I volunteered at Ironman Muskoka 70.3 (again) and I had a blast putting medals around the finishers' necks, which deserves a separate post as well. These are piling up already... just like my Ironman bracelets (I did end up removing those on my birthday).

26. Go on a date night x 4

1 done, 3 to go!! We saw "Gone Girl" and I had absolutely NO clue what the movie was about and I think it was even better this way. I loved it, really well done!

24. Spend a whole day at the movies

Yeah, speaking of movies... I am too old for this shit. Two max, and I'm done. I will replace this goal with another one that is more adequate for my age.

27. Make something with my cork collection

DONE! I saw this at the cottage that we rented in Mt. Tremblant. Here, on the mantel... it looks artsy, right? (you may have to squint to see it)

And this is my version:

I tried getting drunk, but it didn't work. We need more wine.

30. Try paddle boarding

I said I would try this, but then another opportunity arose... and I decided to scratch this goal for... Riding a horse!

And that's it for the goals on the list. However, I am going to add to it a few more "fun" things that I managed to fit in and that I could not have anticipated when I made the list. 

I went to see a hockey game live (my first ever!) with hubbs and the boys. It was a great game that finished with shoot-outs and, cherry on the cake, the Leafs won!!

I went to New York with my mom for her birthday and we saw A LOT of tennis! Federer, Tsonga, Bouchard, Dimitrov, Sharapova, Robredo, Lisiki, Kyrgios and many more. Spent three days at the US Open and walking around Manhattan and ... more in another blog post (am I shooting myself in the foot here??)

I also saw (and took a picture with) Naked Cowboy. Because New York, yo!

Last but not least, my boobies got a squeeshy hug today from a machine that takes pictures and makes funny whirring sounds. Yep, once you're 40, you get to have Mammograms. Have you booked yours yet?

And that's enough fun for this post. It's making me depressed knowing that I only have 3 days left of vacation before the end of the year. Who's got more cake? I'm all out!

Instacards from NYC

I mentioned in my previous blog post that I went to New York City and man, did I have a good time!! I bought a plane ticket 10 minutes after receiving an email from my best friend from France, whose 40th birthday was the following weekend. Initially she wanted to go to the Bahamas, but eventually settled on NYC and Naples. I could only spare one vacation day to join her, so I booked my flight from Friday to the following Monday, with the plan of going straight to work after landing back in town. I had 5 days to prepare and work on containing my excitement. It had been over a year since I'd seen my friend and these times are always so precious, it's hard to plan around the hours that we spend just being there for each other. Nothing else is as important. So I told myself, I go there with no plan, I will just follow along with my camera and enjoy the moment. My only mission was to run in Central Park and that I accomplished. I know that my friend understands my crazy, she was with me in Paris for my first marathon as well... so I didn't feel too bad taking off for 2h on my own.

Here's how we spent most of our time that weekend, with Instagrams for posterity.

All that Jazz!

I left Toronto in this itty bitty airplane. It wasn't the smallest that I took in my life, but close. You know that is small enough when your carry on bag does not fit in the overhead bin.

We spent the first day exploring an abandoned place called 5 Pointz, which used to be the Mecca of Graffiti in NYC, but alas got painted white all over sometime at the end of last year, then fenced up. See here for all the awesome work that artists had painted and is now gone. What a shame.

Rooftops are awesome

The next day, we embarked on a more touristy exploration and took the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty up close, then visit Ellis island and look for family members on the immigrants wall.

Found mine in L

Freedom, Liberty.

It was a chilly and windy day, but the sky cleared as we were touring the Liberty Island and the sun showed its face to warm us up.

In the evening, we all went for a nice dinner to celebrate my friend's birthday, but not before taking a stroll on The High Line, in the heart of Manhattan. It was quite the photo explosion.

Brick, glass and grass

And a sculpture on train tracks.

Magic Hour Reflections

On Sunday, I ran in the morning, and took more pictures, as you saw in the previous post. Then we went on another adventure, around Ground Zero and over the Brooklyn Bridge.

One web

Two webs

Yeah, that blue sky followed us everywhere!! I can't believe it either. It was a beautiful weekend spent mostly outside, breathing the fresh air (at least I hope it's fresh - shhh, don't tell me), discovering new sights, which I had really never seen before. Sharing meals with best friends. Catching up on life stories and everyone in and around them. It was long overdue. I miss these moments already.

Before I knew it, it was time to pack again and head home, to work, family, workouts, business, stress. And now starts a new wait... Happy Birthday, my dear Fred.

PS. For more photos from NYC, follow me on Instagram or visit my Flickr stream.

IMMT Training Weeks 10 & 11 (and half of 12) : A breath of fresh air

It's been how many weeks already?? Ok, ok, but I had a good excuse. For realz! The days are going by way too fast. No, this isn't my excuse, even if it's true. But it's also a matter of perspective. Too many things happening, too little time, so I had to prioritize.

Swim

The highlight of these past weeks have been my long pull workouts, all with flipturns so I don't fall asleep. The longest so far has been 55 minutes and I have been working hard at keeping a good form throughout. I tried swimming with an MP3 player and that made the set a little more entertaining, but overall I love the peace these swims bring to me among the chaos of all the other technical workouts, so I don't feel that having extra noise in my ears is absolutely necessary.
From Garmin's perspective, this is what my longest swim looked like:

I have to ask the question: WHY is it that the first 50m are always the easiest and fastest? Why I cannot keep doing what I'm doing in the first 50m for the entire workout? It's so unfair. If I rest for a few minutes between shorter sets, I am able to repeat this performance, but if I don't stop, it only goes downhill from there. I'm like a broken toy or something.

Bike

The bike workouts have been going really great, despite their increased difficulty. I am now working a lot at sweet spot or threshold and my longer rides are 3-4h long, with a "recovery" week's long ride still being a 2h effort. Thanks to a few records broken recently, I decided to bump my FTP by 10 points to 180. A new level of suffering is about to start.
You can see my career page on Trainer Road for all the rides I've done since the last update. I am going to highlight just the ones that made me rethink my FTP.
First, three 12min intervals, at threshold or just under. Since my heart rate stayed put, I felt that I could have pushed harder... And I know that I should not have ground so much, but some days my legs respond better to high rpms than others.

Then 1h10 at sweet spot non stop.

This one scared the sh*t out of me, but it didn't feel too bad in the end. We'll see what happens now with a higher limit to chase.

Run

Running felt like a rollercoaster ride though. I had ups so high and lows so low, that I cursed everything from the wind to the hills, from my belly fat to the treadmill. I finally made peace with my legs, thanks to a weekend spent in New York City where I went running in Central Park. Aaaaaaah, bliss.

Oh look, a dirt trail!

Chasing ponytails

2 seconds before my phone shut off

There was also a race ongoing in Central Park and I ended up mingling with the back of the pack runners/walkers who had these "Senior Care" ambulances trudging along them. It was quite the procession. Thankfully they didn't seem too busy with emergencies.

And rest assured, I didn't take any water from the stations. However, it took me 10k to find a water fountain on my own. The weather was absolutely beautiful, on the chilly side though (37F/3C). Look at that blue sky!! Now that's light therapy.

So I came back home with new brain cells and spring in my legs, a heart full of happiness and contentment to last me for a little while. And I didn't even mention the cookies that I bought at Levain Bakery yet!! Yeah, about those... YUM. That is all.

In a nutshell

Treadmills lie. Those speeds that I saw, the kilometers that I banked, they were worthless outside. There was one run in particular that brought me to tears. I can say with certainty that I am no PR material for now. The 10k race waiting for me on Sunday? I'm not even allowed to race it. And I don't even think that I'd have legs left after tomorrow's 3h30 trainer ride. Speaking of which, bike trainers don't seem to lie, but the pavement will still have to wait until I put my wheels on it. Asthma is still bad in cold weather, which of course becomes even worse with wind blowing in my face. One day at a time... Will be back with some Insta-Postcards from NYC.