Nothing like a 6.5km recovery swim!

That's right... that's what I did this morning! I know in the swimming world this might seem quite normal, but I didn't grow up in the swimming world so to me that just sounds silly. But hey if it will make me faster then I'm all for it! The volume actually doesn't seem to bother me and the practices do go by quite fast. I also thought that by not being a swimmer kid and going straight into triathlon I had strategically escaped 5:30 morning practices for life. But that too is no longer the case! I am really enjoying this swim club. We do tons of IM because it is a swim club but there's no doubt I'm getting stronger because of it and might be able to do a 50 fly now! The coach made me do a fly kick set the other day and was laughing at me as I got lapped repeatedly. haha I just suck it up and do it though :)

Last night's practice was the hardest one yet, and a little bit of a shock to my system as I haven't done an anaerobic swim in a while. The main set was 3km of sprinting as 3 sets of (4x25 sprint on 45, 2x100 hard on 1.50, 2x75 hard on 90s, 1x100 hard on 2 min, 2x50 hard on 75s, 150 smooth on 3 minutes).

Tomorrow morning will be my last swim with the club before I go to Spain on Monday for 10 days. I am really looking forward to being in the warmer climate for a while. This weekend I will also do two rides with the local cycling club here. Tomorrow will be 3 hours and Sunday closer to 4. Yesterday Aileen took me to "the forest" to do a long run. It was so nice to run on trails through the trees and reminded me of home!

My Aunt and Uncle get home from Tenerefe tonight where they were on holiday. It will be nice to have people around the house for the weekend. I am also stolked that they will be here to give the cat some attention because I have been ignoring it. I feel really bad about that but I am allergic to it so I just talk to it from a distance but try and not touch it! haha I am a bad person.

I just made a wicked Thai curry so I have to go eat it now!

Today's Adventure

I went on a 3 hour biking adventure today. I tried to stop for some pictures of the irish countryside. Basically it's very green and there are lots of sheep!!


This is my house (borrowed from my Aunt and Uncle):

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...

A little town called Moira that I rode through..

And a couple things to remind me of home:

I guess you can't go anywhere these days without some good ol' American Fried Chicken!

Okay this one was just for Andrew...

Rookie Mistake

I think in my last post I mentioned I was going on a 3 hour ride the next day with a local cycing club in town. WELL - I can talk about it now because I am pretty much healed - but I stupidly wore my new cycling shoes that Noa had fit for me just before I left Victoria. I had ridden in these shoes three or four times but totally forgot that I hadn't since Noa changed the cleat position. Needless to say I got knee pain an hour into the ride (only my right knee) and couldn't turn around because I didn't know where I was!! So I had to keep riding 2 more hours and by the time we got home I was in so much pain I could barely pedal. Anyways the next day it was feeling a bit better so I went for an hour run and made it super sore again. So yesterday I just swam and did weights (no run or bike) and today I rode the trainer with my old shoes and it felt good. PHEW! I would have felt like such an idiot if I had injured myself that way!

The ride was pretty fun though despite the knee pain. Can you imagine a pack of 10-15 riders riding 2 abreast on the narrow roads of Ireland? It was pretty crazy but I found the cars quite tollerating of us. The group is constant laughter and jokes that I really don't understand! I guess I'm going to have to figure out what all the irish sayings mean sooner or later.

Anyways apart from the knee hiccup everything has been going really well. I am getting back into the groove of swimming again and think that this swim club is going to be very good for me. They average between 6-7km a practice!! Aileen has been very helpful and a great training partner. Everyone is worried that I am lonely in this big house on my own so people have been inviting me to dinner almost every night which has been awesome!

Well I guess I need to go put the fenders on my bike that are currently sitting in their packaging on the floor beside my bike :) The weather here is SO unpredictable. Honestly I think every day I've been here so far it has alternated between blue sky with sunshine to torrential downpour. Tomorrow is another day of being careful with my knee so I'll do a little ride in the morning followed by massage/physio. Then Lucy has suggested I go on an adventure and explore!! I'll let you know where I end up!

No food channel?

I guess it's time for an update eh? Well the only downer to my next 6 weeks is that I will have to survive without my daily fix of the food channel :(

Where will I be for the next 6 weeks you ask? All over the UK!

I arrived in Ireland yesterday and will be staying with my Aunt and Uncle for 2 weeks (although they left on holiday this morning). They have been kind enough to lend their house and car while they are away so I have everything that I need. I will be swimming with a local swim club here and training with a couple of triathletes in town. Then I will be going to Spain for 10 days to train with the irish triathlon team on a training camp they are having there. It will be great to get out of the rain for a little while and to have a group to train with. Everyone I have talked to are really nice and incredibly welcoming. Following Spain (yes there's more) I am going to England for 10 days or so to train with some athletes there before coming back to Ireland for Christmas. Does that sound like a great trip or what?

This will be my first Christmas with all of my extended family so I am really looking forward to it. My great aunt, aunt and uncles, cousins and their spouses and babies will all be here. For the past 20 years my attendance at these Christmas gatherings has been from the other end of a telephone so it will be great to be apart of the action this year. My mom is also flying out for Christmas as well.

Today was a bit of an adventure teaching myself to drive on the left side of the road and around roundabouts. The left side is not the issue but I keep forgetting that there is all this car to my left that I am not used to being there. I nearly hit my left mirror on things more than once today, but I survived and so did the car :) Grocery shopping was also a good time. I spent a looong time in the grocery store just looking at things. It's neat seeing all the different varieties that the UK has compared to Canada. Tomorrow I am joining my new training partner Aileen on a ride with a local club. I think we are going 3 hours (with a coffee stop) so hopefully it will be sunny again like it was today (not counting on it though :).

Another funny thing that happened today was I went to do weights and the gym I went to has a policy that you have to sign up for session to get introduced to the gym before they let you use it. So this guy was supposed to take me around every machine and show me how to use it. He started with the treadmill. I learned how to turn it on, speed it up, incline it, slow it down, and even use different routes to challenge myself. I didn't want to be rude so I didn't tell him that I have a kinesiology degree and am an athlete, but he quickly figured out that he was wasting his time so we went through the rest of the gym in 5 minutes haha!!

thats it for now..

BC Cross

I had a good race yesterday at the BC Cross Country Champs. I finished 10th overall. This was my first cross country race in a year (and possibly my last until next year) so I was kind of hoping it was going to rain so I could take advantage of getting as muddy as possible. But alas, it was sunny. I really can't complain about that though because as you can see from these photos it was such a beautiful day and the backdrop was amazing. I felt strong the whole race and was really happy with how I executed it. I went out fairly conservative but established myself in a pack of about 5 girls by the end of the first lap (2km) in about 6th position. As I mentioned in my previous post my focus was to work really hard in the middle 2km. I did a good job staying positive and strong through this section which I am happy about. The pack did gap me just before the 3km point when someone surged and I wasn't able to respond, but I kept a clear head and just did the best I could with what I had. Without having raced in a while it was good to remind my body what it feels like to go hard. Now I will be better prepared to run the Fall Classic 10km in 2 weeks!
We came home on the 5pm ferry and then it was time for Halloween fun!! Mags and I had a good time being bratty kids, although we probably could have been more bratty!

The lollipops were good!!

Getting ready to Race!

Tomorrow is the BC Cross Country Championships at Jericho Beach in Vancouver. This will be my first race of the off-season so I am excited to strap on some spikes and run hard! I have been doing a lot of running the past 6 weeks so I know my fitness is high. My goal for the race is really quite simple - to run as hard as I can, keep my speed and cadence up in the middle 2km of the 6km course, and to practice effectively utilizing some positive mental cues when it's starts to get tough. I'll have an update for you once the race is over. I am also racing as part of the senior women Prairie Inn Harrier's team which is a nice privilege as Bob Reid has offered to cover entries and ferry costs! It should be a great team and includes Lucy, Marilyn, Jess and Kirsty as well.

Apart from that I am also excited for Halloween tomorrow as Magali and I have have hilarious costumes! I will have to put up some pictures so you can see.

I'm also feeling much better about the MCAT prep course. Last week I was doing physics (my worst subject) so I was really not enjoying it much. This week however I did chemistry which was much more fun - if you can use fun and chemistry truthfully in the same sentence?

Okay off for some din dins - Sushi!!
Updates of race and Halloween shenanigans to come!

Silly Me

I have to keep reminding myself that stress lowers life expectancy. This is funny because I think I thrive on it. I get stressed out when my life is too "relaxed" and stress-free, so then I somehow make it stressful and then stress that I'm stressed. Make any sense? Not really. I know.

Anyways sometime in my future I have always had the goal of going to medical school. Now that I'm finished my degree I'm not planning on applying until after I finish racing tri's, but everyone has been advising me to get the MCAT exam over with before I forget all my basic science info. The test stays valid for many years so if I write it now it doesn't mean I have to apply for med school now. So I decided the off-season would be a good time to study to write the exam and would give me something to do while I'm not training. Plus I like school so I don't really mind the studying. So I'm taking an online MCAT prep course. There are no official marks or tests or anything, it just provides you with all the tools one might need to learn the material, and lots of practice tests as well as online lectures. The whole course is taken online and I can do it at my own pace. So if I don't finish it in the time allotted it really doesn't matter - there are no marks! So why was I stressing all week about getting my physics finished? Silly me. My mom thinks I should have taken a relaxation course instead, and Brent suggested I take a tai chi class and bring my flashcards along so I can study while relaxing! hahaha maybe these are good suggestions :)

So my new approach to this course will be: training comes first, do it when I have time, NO STRESS! Sounds good to me.