The never ending off season

Long time no blog post, I know, I know... But crazy busy work and trying to have fun when I'm not staring at my screen 12h in a row does not leave much time for something else. For those looking for a triathlete in training, I am not much of one these days. It's like the never ending off season around here. But at least I am not stuck inside my head with my dark thoughts or eating my feelings. That's progress!

What February "training" looked like

February started pretty miserably with a week that I already talked about in my previous blog post. But at least it ended on a more positive note, with Zumba. As you can see, I kept the Zumba streak alive by returning to the class twice more.

I also swam three times, all in my Roka SIM shorts. I am still in love with them. What a marvelous invention these shorts are. I wish I'd swum more, but my motivation to go out of the house in the cold at 9pm hasn't been that great after very long days at work. Honestly, I felt like sleeping most of the time. I've been so exhausted, it's not even funny. And I'm not even training for an Ironman, yikes!!

Then, I went back to Yoga. Hot Yoga that is. Three times as well, and it made me feel so. damn. good. So far no hip injuries like last winter, but then I'm not going crazy with biking at the same time either. Speaking of which...

The biking has suffered the most. I've completely fallen off the wagon. I stopped going to the group spins on Wednesdays and Saturdays and since the aborted trainer ride at the beginning of the month, I only went on the bike once to try Zwift. Now, that is a lot of fun, but oh so dangerous!! If you are naturally competitive, watch your effort level! Within 3 minutes I was already trying to hang onto other people's wheels for as long as possible and beat my own times with each loop. I remember killing my legs that night which was probably not very smart. I didn't go back since, but I will... I decided to start one of the base building programs from Trainer Road and attempt a return to cycling...but it requires being on the saddle at least 3 times a week, and that WILL be a challenge. I'll see how I can fit those in and most important... how my knees will hold up.

With that in mind, I also returned to my massage therapist and he immediately found a lot more tension in my left hip and and adductor area than my right, explaining my knee pain once again. Read this article, it's quite interesting. I am going to see him once a week until the pain goes away. Word! I know there is no other way. I've already seen improvement in my run.... This guy has magic hands, for real.

So running... it's been... promising. I almost don't want to talk about it because I don't want to jinx myself. I ran once a week, mostly on the treadmill because of the cold. Last time I went outside, I came back like this.

Note that our 16 days extreme cold weather streak just ended, so there is hope for some outdoor running in my near future. What else can I tell you about my running? The longest I've run without a break is 5 minutes. Just this Friday I was tempted to do 5:1s, but I changed my mind in the middle of the first interval and decided to mix it up with Trisutto's famous treadmill workout. Again, if you are interested, this article explains what it is all about. My improvised session looked something like this:

5 min walk
5 min @ 6mph 1%
1 min walk @3mph
Trisutto's intervals
2x[30 seconds at 6mph 2%, then 30 seconds 4mph 2%]
2x[30 seconds at 6mph 4%, then 30 seconds 4mph 4%]
2x[30 seconds at 6mph 0%, then 30 seconds 4mph 0%]
1 min walk
Repeat set 3 more times
5 min @ 6mph 1%
5 min walk

I felt pretty good, although my knees seem to be a little cranky since... but it's a different kind of pain, more like fatigue. So I take it as a good sign, that other muscles were engaged. My next massage therapy is on Wednesday, and we'll see what Antonio-magic-hands finds then.

Last but not least, I went skiing!! I was SO nervous, you won't believe it. It's been 10 years (!!!) since I've been on skis. I even told my family goodbye like I was going to die that day. Thankfully I didn't go in the Alps, even though it's where I learned to ski, but at Mt. St Louis Moonstone, which looks more like a big hill to us Europeans. It was perfect. My friend Carrie drove me there and together with her family we spent all day on the slopes. I really surprised myself with my lack of fatigue. I remember back in the day, I was ready to go back home by 2pm, but this time, at 5:30pm I was still contemplating doing more runs. In retrospective it was a good thing that I stopped, but I still can't believe how much stronger my legs are. All the Ironman training is paying off now, lol.

Look at this beauty. 30 runs!! If you zoom in, you can even see the turns on some runs. How cool is that?

Okay, enough with the geekery. What's an epic ski day without pictures? And if I can say, I look pretty out of place. I swear, I must have been the ONLY person on the slopes without a helmet. A lot has changed in 10 years... wow.

Alright, time to end this post. Too much fun makes me rethink all this triathlon thing. But hey, Muskoka 70.3 is in 4 months and it's not going to swimbikerun itself. Whose idea was to sign up again?

Robbie Burns 8K Race Report

First race of the year, and thankfully it was only 8k. It was also my first time that I was running this distance officially, so I was going to get a new PR regardless, wheee!

I went to bed undecided whether I would run it or not. The only piece of clothing that I had taken out from the bottom of a storage box was my plaid skirt that I hadn't worn since I was 20. I knew that everything else was in the drawer with my running clothes because I barely used any of them this winter. Just like my legs. The longest run before this race was a 6k on the treadmill, while listening for warning signs from everything waist down. If I was going to race it, my goal was to "finish in one piece", aka no more injuries.

I did not discuss all these fears with Zin who I also signed up a few months prior, but I know that he read them in my blog. Alarm clock got set up for 6am anyway. Once I woke up, I had to make a decision. Temperatures were going to be around -25C with the windchill. Never in my life I ran outside in these conditions. See, I can put on my YakTrax and run on snow, maybe even on a few ice patches here and there in -10C, but when it's this cold, I start coughing the minute I walk outside. It's been happening every single day just going from my car to the office building and back. This winter has been brutal for my asthma and I could not imagine what the extreme temperatures would do to me. But after 10 minutes of mental wrestling, I decided to HTFU and go for it, as long as I'd be able to wear a balaclava and breathe through it. It was going to be the only way and to hell with the race pictures.

The race was in Burlington, about 40min drive from our house. We planned to leave around 7 and to make it there early enough to pick up our race bibs. We arrived at destination just before 8am and scored a parking spot just outside the school where the race start and finish were going to be. Sweeeeet! The registration and packet pick up went very smoothly and within 5 minutes we were in possession of our bib (which included the timing chip).

This race is very popular for whatever reason, and only 1000 runners get the chance to run it. We were the 999th and the 1000th to sign up by the way. While I was sitting there, waiting for friends to arrive, I kept asking myself if I had made the right decision. I had about 4 layers of clothes top and bottom, wool socks, 2 hats, gloves and mittens and of course, the balaclava to complete the bandit look. Or Scottish Ninja, whatever you wanna call it. Verdict?

Add two more layers for the final look

One hour and a half is a long time when you have self doubts. I was lucky to meet with a few folks and talk about random stuff to keep my mind from wandering towards the North Pole. Pulling faces with my significant other is also a distraction worth mentioning.

In which you get to see how short I really am. Why so serious, honey?

That's more like it!

I wandered around quite a bit looking for Patty and Nic, I went to the washrooms twice and listened to the Halton Police playing the bagpipes in the gymnasium. Hey, do you want to listen too? Here, a little present from me to you. Look at the lady in the middle, she does some neat tricks.

Alright, enough with the entertainment. It's time to run!

The bagpipes accompanied us outside just before 9:30am and when Zin and I went to line up with everyone else, I finally found Patty and Nic. We exchanged hugs and wished each other good luck, then the horn went off and we all started our own race. I never had the intention to put any kind of "hard" effort into it, coach's orders (and a good dose of common sense). So I just ran at a comfortable pace, trying not to freeze in place. However, by km 3, I could no longer feel my bum. Feet, hands, face were doing ok though.

I don't remember much else. It felt like running around the block, but with police at all intersections and a bunch of other people passing me left and right, no offense taken. I was there to have "fun", but in the end it was rather uneventful. One foot in front of the other, keep moving forward, and that was about it. 

Right after km 5, I saw Emma - cowbell in one hand, camera in another. I knew that she wouldn't recognize me, so I yelled her name, and she took this photo in return. Thank you!!

My right calf was getting tighter by the minute and I wanted the race to be over with, I have no shame in admitting it. I was coughing a little and I could feel my heart rate going up. I started the countdown... 3, 2, 1 more kilometer to go. Oh, here's a photographer! And another one! Do I need to smile for the camera? I realized that it was in vain, nobody could see it anyway. At last it seemed to warm me up a little.

If you think that all pictures look the same, you are absolutely right. You must be so bored with my lack of facial expression by now.

Soon afterwards I was on the home stretch. I could see the school in the distance and I assumed that we'd finish where we started. I picked up the pace a little in the last hundred meters and crossed the finish line in 48:52. That was a wrap!! I ran a very comfortable pace, a full minute per km slower than my 5k pace but I could not be bothered. 

After crossing the finish line I was surprised to see that we were given little Robbie Burns medals. I was not expecting one, but from what I've heard, this was a special occasion due to its 35th anniversary. I met with hubbs and my friends, and we all went inside for some grub. I took my phone out of my pocket and I could only snap this shot before it turned off by itself in revolt.

I wanted to see how much ice I had around my face since blinking was making my eyelashes stick. In retrospective I am rather disappointed when I look at this pic (I must be too hot for this sh*t). Anyhoo, as I said, phone shut down instantly; I bet it didn't like the instant freeze. Inside the school, we had a bite with Nic, then we decided to go back home because we were starting to shiver. 

Another 40 min drive and we made it back home where we asked my younger son to take a picture before we took off our clothes.

Speaking of which, I'm glad that they gave us plaid pajama pants instead of thirts. I couldn't wait to get into them and spend the rest of the day in bed... but it didn't happen. We showered, ate lunch, then went swimming. And only then we got to rest a little.

And that's how my day/race/long-ish run went. Not sure that I should call it a race, if it weren't for the medal and the bib. Hubbs ran a speedy 35min, but I felt slow and heavy and ... just blah. Can't wait for this winter to find another place to bring hell to, like Florida. Until next time, but without the snow, the polar vortex and the frost quakes, please. Over and out.

IMMT Training Week 1: This Is The Beginning

I have yet to write a line and I hate these recaps already. Whose idea was it anyway? I have no patience for repetitive stuff and I'm rather lazy when it comes to crunching numbers. So what the hell am I gonna write? If there is something worthy to say, I will, if not... sorry dudes. I can't make shit up. 

Now, if you really, really want to see workout details, I log all my workouts in Runkeeper. No secrets. Knock yourselves out! I am also on Daily Mile, Trainer Road, Garmin Connect, Strava and Training Peaks, so there is more than enough information about my workouts if you're curious.

Also, with regards to publishing, I have time to blog roughly once or twice a week and if I wait for Monday, I may as well forget about it. Some weeks I will post recaps on Saturday, other weeks I will post on Sunday. I may skip some weeks because I don't feel like it. It's my blog and I can do whatever I want with it. Got it? Ok, so where were we? Let's try this.

Swim
Despite the fact that I'm still waiting for the "official" schedule from coach starting on February 1st, I got some feedback about the intensity of my current workouts. I was told that all my swims should be "hard" because I'm taking it easy in the other 2 sports. So on Tuesday I was told to go to the pool for a set of 10x200m pretty much all out (on 4:45). No pull buoy! Say whaaaat?

The graph was so pretty, I had to share. The times are nothing out of extraordinary, I am still a slow poke, but it's funny to see my descent into Hell. By the end of the workout, my arms were feeling like noodles ready to fall off.

To top it off, on Thursday I went to the masters swim (with the tri club) and this is what I had to do:

Warmup:
100m free + 200m drills + 200m pull/paddles
Main set:
2x50m fast on 1:10
100m pull/paddles
4x50m fast on 1:15
100m pull/paddles
6x50m fast on 1:20
100m free
14x25 (1 fast, 1 easy, 2 fast, 1 easy, 3 fast, 1 easy, 4 fast, 1 easy)
Cooldown:
100m any stroke

It was BRUTAL!
I may go for another swim tomorrow, or I may not. My limbs are still deciding.

Bike
The highlight of the week was my return to Trainer Road workouts.

Giraud on Thursday

Nice and easy with a few intervals to get the heart going. I tried to keep a good cadence and not fall asleep.

Mont Gosford on Saturday

This one was a sweatfest. Four long tempo intervals. Thankfully I was watching the movie "This Is The End" and I was going WTF !!!??!?!!?? way too often to notice my own struggle or lack thereof, surprisingly to say the least. I did not change my FTP since last year and it seems that I didn't lose much fitness since, which is rather encouraging. I don't feel that I'm ready to take it to the next level though... I am being careful, especially with the muscle pain that I feel in my glutes right now.

Run
So far this week, only one treadmill run, but longer than last week. I ran for 35min on Tuesday and did a little "ladder" because 5x7min in the spur of the moment seemed the right thing to do. Plus, the guy beside me was running at 5.5mph, so I felt that a little lesson was in order, just in case... you never know when you get to race and beat a VP.

7min @ 5.6mph
7min @ 5.8mph
7min @ 6mph
7min @ 5.8mph
7min @5.6mph
All with 1% incline

I have no idea who he was, by the way. But I kicked his butt.

Tomorrow will be my first race of the year and I'm still on the fence about running it. It's my first time running an 8k distance so it'll be an automatic PR, but given the low temperatures (-24C with the windchill OMG), I may end up being very miserable out there. My asthma has been awful this winter and I already had to use my inhaler 3 times a day just from walking from the house to the car and into the office. My colleagues tell me that I have an old smoker's cough. Yikes! And have I mentioned my Raynaud's? How many layers will I need to wear? I can't let the cold get to me or I'll turn pasty white from inside out. So anyway, I guess I'll swing it. If I run it I'll most likely sport a balaclava over my face to save me from coughing to near death. I can't wait to see the race pictures, haha.

In a nutshell
This week will be almost identical in volume as the last, but I bumped the intensity a notch with longer and harder workouts, and possibly a race. I am being careful about my hips, hamstrings and IT bands. I did my physio strength workouts twice this week (I should have done them every day!) and also started some planks (3x1min on Fri). I tried to roll, stretch, ice as often as I remembered and hopefully it'll be enough to keep me from relapsing into injury. Tomorrow's race, if I decide to participate, will be slow and I don't expect to break any records. Overall, I've been feeling good and I don't want to spoil the progress. I won't call it a comeback yet... but I'm getting darn close.

Winter Running

IS IT SPRING YET??

I am starting to lose my patience here. Don't get me wrong, I do love winter and snow, but when it messes up with my training and my longing for the outdoors, I am going cuckoo. We had enough of this already!

So far I've only been able to go outdoors for my long runs and while they have not been too miserable per se, I just wish I could spend more time breathing the fresh air. The treadmill is nice and predictable, convenient too, I can hop on it without wasting too much time at lunch, but constantly staring at the outside while I do my runs, it wears off my little fuzzy brain faster than my soles.

Ok, I know, I know, I am full of it, I COULD go outside if I REALLY wanted to. Coach has been giving me some specific workouts such as hill repeats and tempo runs, but finding the right places outside my office to do those looked pretty impossible to me, and I just didn't want to leave them for the evenings, it's dark and cold and all that meh.

The trail outside my office was in this shape until very recently, I guess, so without YakTrax it's useless. The time I went out for a walk and took the pictures below I almost broke my neck thrice.

However, it did the job and brought back my sanity, at least for a little while. I have the smile to prove it:

I tried though, now look at this messy sidewalk. This particular run was constant jumping over slushy puddles and tip toeing on ice patches, as well as on and off the road because the sidewalk itself had 5 inches of frozen snow on it, harder than a block of concrete (I don't have proof, but you gotta believe me, I almost sent a letter to the city).

We had nicer ones too, thank goodness, but far too few. And the sidewalks were FINALLY cleaned. See the difference with the one below and look at my hubbs go up the hill!

There is hope though, it seems to be thawing little by little and soon there will be no more. Right, RIGHT?? Some people even took their toys outside, for good juju. Look how the snow melted all around it. I think it's getting the message, slowly but surely.

As for me, I am trying to keep a positive attitude, what else can I do? Have you seen this bright sunshine? At least it's not always grey and gloomy. I even got to wear a sweater instead of my fleece and replaced my wool hat with a buff. Can I say hip hip hooray?

Last  but not least, the snow seems to have its advantages too. Instant ice bath, half the soaking! I swear I laid there motionless for about 10 minutes and I could not get enough of it. It's only when my butt froze completely and I could no longer feel my belly button that I decided to go inside and stretch.

The morale of this story? Some days, winter is great, some days, it's a real bitch, but in the end, it shall all pass. When it comes to biking, I am still in the honeymoon phase with my trainer, when I run I am thankful for at least being able to look outside, the pool is warm, most of the times, so triathloning in winter is doable. It's only the times when you want to break the monotony that get to you.

So, Mother Nature, please, please, with a cherry on top, hurry the fuck already and put on your bikini and stop all the crying before I lose it again.

Enough with this, even if it's pretty:

And definitely no more of this!

Mmmkay? Peace out!

Running blind

Another week of so-so workouts, the motivation was there, but the body not so much. I didn't get in a pool or on the bike at all, but managed to run a few times. I hope to run again tomorrow, there is a 14k scheduled with the tri club. Today I am taking it easy as I try to relax and rest from a week of stress at work, which seems to have become the norm lately. I also took on a photography gig tonight, despite my reticence in touching the shutter button in almost a year. I am nervous, but it's never too late to renew my love with "professional" photography. I also updated my portfolio website as the folks at 500px released new themes and I found one that works well for my stuff. If you've never visited my photography website, take a look here, I am pretty proud of it. I've been shooting as "Still Memory" since 2002, holy cow that's 10 long years. It doesn't make me feel any younger. At least the photos never get old, right?

But back to running, here's what happened. On Monday, I felt like going for a minimalist run before my Yoga class and I didn't regret it. Zero pain so far, despite increasing the time to almost 25min. On Tuesday I went out with hubbs who is still nursing an injured knee, so we played tag. It was a bit of a run/walk which still felt like a workout, so... in da bank! Walked for over 1h on Wednesday and on Thursday we went out for my younger son's birthday and got food poisoning, so I missed the tri club swim again because I spent the evening agonizing in bed with horrible stomach cramps. Last night I was really craving a run, but the weather was just miserable. The whole week Mother Nature had been very temperamental: foggy and wet in the morning, gorgeous sunshine and temperatures during the day, freezing at night. The pictures below should sum it up.

Yesterday it brought us a horizontal blizzard and that's exactly when I decided to finally go out. Not sure whether the picture below makes it justice, but it was NASTY. REALLY NASTY.

 I just didn't know what I was in for until I started running and then I went blind. All the snowflakes were smashing against my eyeballs and I had no visor, just a hat and a turtle neck that I pulled up as high as possible, covering my face right up under my eyes, ninja style. Alas it didn't give me any superpowers and for about 15 minutes I had to run with my eyes closed, not sure whether I was crying or bleeding. It was definitely the worst feeling ever. At the same time my Raynaud's came out of deep sleep as well and made my hands scream in pain. 15 minutes were almost enough to make me turn around when... miracle, the blizzard stopped, or maybe I just ran away from it far enough. I finally opened my eyes and assessed the situation. I could do this.

Continued running south, hoping for my hands to start feeling alive again, which they did eventually. I was going to run in front of the hospital, so worst case scenario, I'd go straight into ER. I had my RoadID, check. Passing out was not going to be a problem, they were going to know who I am. But by the time I made it to the hospital, I was actually feeling pretty awesome and was wondering how long I could go on... I didn't want to go back into the blizzard for sure, so I took my time to enjoy the feeling of running happy and relaxed.

I ended up doing a bit longer than 8km, 55 minutes in total. That was enough fun for the day. Jumped straight in the shower to warm up (wait, this sounds just like my previous post - am I a broken record?) and then in bed because I was pretty much done.
I woke up like this:

So far, the only workout I did was to walk to the near coffee shop in order to replenish my caffeine reserves. Oh, I also drove to the hairdresser because if you hadn't guessed yet, it was definitely time for a haircut. And then I watched the Expandables 2 on my couch, which most likely didn't count for anything other than laughs.

I hope to do better next week. Who knows, I may get better luck at staying in the groove and actually dragging my ass to the gym and the pool. Yeah, whatever I said. Is it spring yet?

The Beating aka How I didn't break my neck snowboarding

I am (somewhat) proud to announce that I didn't die today and I didn't even break my neck or a limb. Last time I tried snowboarding, six years ago, I broke my wrist and that, my friends, was the WORST pain that I EVER felt. (Bringing babies in the world didn't count, they took the shortcut). Because of some people's incompetence, they didn't take x-rays until a week later and that's when they noticed that my bones had set at a 15 degree angle which would have left my wrist impaired for the rest of my life. They asked me what I wanted to do though, and without hesitation, I said that I wanted a straight wrist, which meant breaking it AGAIN. So, that's what they did (I will spare you the details) and I ended up stuck on my couch, drugged in la-la land for about 3 weeks, watching the olympic winter games, what an irony. 6 years fast forward, pretty much yesterday, I was still scared shitless. I had not approached a slope, not even with the thought, all this time. When my 12yr old son, who went 4 times snowboarding this year asked me to take him to the Hockley Valley Resort this weekend, it took a lot of mental preparation to accept my fate again. I had no choice, spending quality time with my son was way more rewarding than doing nothing and waiting for the fear to pass.

I didn't need to rent anything, I already had my boots and snowboard, but they were rather dusty from sitting pretty in the basement all this time, so I asked a guy at the rental shop to take a look at my bindings and make sure everything was in order and off we went. First on the "Teddy Bear" hill which I climbed a few times by foot because I was even too scared of the baby lifts and all the crying toddlers hanging around them, literally. Those few runs on the baby hill were a disaster, I could only face downhill backwards if you see what I mean, unable to make a turn to face forward. That's because I obviously have no abs to pull myself up, so I had to flip on the stomach and get up by pushing on my arms. Since I was constantly on my toes, my calves took the first beating. Of course, knees followed closely since they were the natural, most readily available joints to fall on. I was getting quickly frustrated, so I went and booked a 1h semi-private lesson for me and my son. $100, cha-ching! But that was the only thing that was going to save the day, someone to remind me the basics.

We had peanut butter and nutella sandwiches for snack and while waiting for the lesson to start, we decided with my son to take the ski lift up and then the long, gentle slope down. I fell off the ski lift pretty badly, banged my elbow and shoulder again. But guess what, I didn't fall once going down the hill. I kept doing the "leaf" across the slope, but as long as I was standing, I was WINNING! One more descent and it was time for the lesson. He took us to the baby hill again and tought me how to take the kiddie lift, but shortly after that I said enough, I hate this damn slope, I can't get up. So we took the lift up again and after receiving the necessary pointers from the teacher, I had to launch myself into actually making turns. "Keep that goofy foot forward and rotate upper body with the arms out in the direction that you want to turn". Sounds easy enough, right? Well, that's about where the falls started and lasted a long, long time. I counted about 50 for the day. My tailbone and knees are bruised and I feel like I took a beating all over. By the end of the day my quads were spasming, the calves were crying and I was taking it all with the smile. Figured I'd stop while I was still standing and if shaky legs were a sign, I definitely listened.

Here's a picture from our last run, taken by my son.

Am I ready to start again? I need to let my bruises heal, but I think I'm game!! That'll teach me to complain.