Wildflower Bound!

Geez Louise! Time really does slip away. What a great few weeks I've had. Let's back up a couple of weeks to the Easter break - I did finally find something to do... I took a quick trip back to Toronto for a visit with the family and see some friends. It was such a great trip. I really do miss everyone terribly, but this is the second trip back to Toronto now that really solidifies how happy I am to be on the West Coast. No doubt Toronto will always be special to me, it's where my family is, where I'm from and where some of my closest friends are, but really, Vancouver is home now.

Last weekend was the Vancouver Sun Run. The 2nd largest 10K race in North America - 52,000+ runners this year! My boss has been the Race Director for the Sun Run for 19 years, so this year he invited me down to the start line to help "coordinate" before the race. What an experience, it was so much fun. Here's a pic of the start, the funny thing is I'm standing juuust outside the frame, right beside the Vancouver Sun Run banner on the left. I was hoping I'd make the front page of the paper, but turns out they do some editing for stuff like that....

I jumped in after about 30 straight minutes of watching people run by (it takes approx an hour and a half to get everyone started). I ran my first 10K of the year in 54 min. Not bad. It's a bit tricky with so many people - you do alot of dodging and weaving.

Onto the next! Tomorrow morning I'm leaving (EARLY) for California where I'll be spending a week in the desert with my coach and about 7 other people to train. Coach Andrew has a wicked week planned for us with about 25-30 hours of training overall (ouch). We'll be down at Lake San Antonio which is the site of the infamous Wildflower Triathlon which takes place next weekend. I'm not racing, but a few of the people with us will be. This is a HUGE race with close to 5,000 participants overall. It's known as the "Woodstock" of Triathlons for a few reasons. First - it's out in the middle of no where. The nearest town is about 50K away. So after those long days of training... don't think I'll be headed back to the pool with a fruity drink with an umbrella in it... this isn't that type of vacation :) Nope... we're full on roughing it. I'm told there are shower/washroom facilities, but that's about it. We'll be there Sunday to Sunday, and most people start to show up for the race weekend by Thursday-Friday. I'm so excited! Here's a link if you want to read more about Wildflower:

Official Site

Fun Review

S0 I'm off to get a few things done before I go. I'm planning on keeping a training journal while I'm there, so I'll send updates when I get back. Here's a video I found from last years race. It's about 7 mins long, it's a great clip. Take a look and think of me this week!

Ciao!

Sarah

When life takes over...

It seems like it's taking forever to get back into a routine. I knew going into March that it was going to be a busy time and that I would just have to accept that I wasn't going to be able to get in all the training that I was hoping for, life was going to simply be too busy and I would completely burn out if I didn't choose my battles wisely.

After Sport Events finally ended, I figured it was all over and last week I was glad to be getting back into my regular routine. Turns out that the last two weeks were some of the busiest of the last three months! Geez... I had my boss on vacation, I was prepping for the IOC (Int'l Olympic Committee) coming to town for a Coordination Commission (read: check up on VANOC to make sure we're on track), plus I was planning 2 BIG parties back to back Thursday and Friday. Needless to say, I was operating at max capacity. Even doing my very best to find workouts wherever I could (sometimes very late at night on my traininer in my living room), I still missed workouts Wednesday, Thursday AND Friday.

I made up for it Saturday with a great ride out to Horseshoe Bay and a rip around the park (3 hour ride) and today I had two AWESOME workouts. The pool workout went like this:

300M Easy
300 easy by 25M drill x 25M free
6 x 50M 3 sec slower than the 1000M time trial pace.

Main set = 2 x 1000M # 1 at 3 sec slower than pace, #2 at pace

I was dreading the main set. Last week we did 1000M time trials and it was painful. I struggled through it and did it in 21:30s. I must have ate something magic this morning because the first 1000M went by in a jiffy and I felt great. I swam it like I was just causally taking a dip in the pool (mind you, it was supposed to be super slow which made it all that much easier). But I still finished it in 21min. That was quicker than my time trial the week before.

Even though the first 1000M turned out to be easy, I wasn't fooling myself thinking that the second one would also be a breeze. I knew it was going to be a fast one, and I knew for certain that this one was going to hurt. Away I went sticking on Alison's draft (the pace swimmer in my lane... she keeps me working hard). I usually loose Alison, or she usually losses me I should say, at the 600-700m mark. Then I get tired and she just pulls away. The strangest thing though, today I was on her like stink on a monkey. I never lost her. I finished the second 1000M in 19:50! What the heck?!?!? A minute and a half faster than my time trial?!? I don't know what happened today, but whatever it was, I'm not complaining. It felt great to swim so well. Lets hope it's a trend and not an exception.

Somewhere around the 650M mark in one of the sets, I remembered that I forgot my food at home and that I was going to have to run from home today instead of with the group. It was a beautiful day in Vancouver and I got out for a 1:45min run along the seawall/kits beach. I felt great.

Now that my big work projects are complete, and after a weekend of great workouts, I'm feeling pretty satisfied and I'm completely recharged for the upcoming week.

I'm still following my diet. No caffeine (although I did cheat twice this week with some killer early mornings in the office), no wheat and no processed food. I could defiantly tighten some things up, but for the most part, I'm eating only fresh food, and I think it's making a huge difference. It takes some effort, that's for sure, but I'm going to stick with it for now.

Next week is a short one, I am off work Wednesday afternoon until Tuesday. It's the Easter long weekend plus we have an Appreciation Day on Thursday (office closed) and whenever there is a long weekend, the day before we're closed at noon (Wednesday). I still have no plans, but I'm trying to work something out before Wednesday.

Hope you had a great weekend to.

Sarah