Time Trial and Training

So yesterday was my first ever time trial on the bike. It was a 20km TT out on Valley View Road. I wasn't sure how I was going to do and how my legs would feel after four days off after my crash but I went out anyways with a positive attitude and just wanted to do my best under the circumstances. Right before we started it looked like we were going to get a good down pour but it held off for the whole TT. It was a learning experience for me how it worked, we all started 1minute apart and they placed everyone from slowest to fastest. There was about 15 riders there and they placed me second last to go with only Mike Hay behind me. I got off to a good start and felt like I had some power in the legs in the first few km's. I could see I was making up some time on the rider in front of me. I caught him just after the turn around at around 11km. Drew was next rider in front of me after that but he had a 2minute lead and I couldn't see him until almost the end so I ended up riding the second half of the race pretty much by myself with no one in front to chase. My right calf, the leg I feel on cramped up with only about 1km to go so I had to kind of stretch that out while I kept going. My time ended up being 30:08 which works out to averaging 40km/h so that wasn't too bad with the turn around and one good hill with a couple other rollers. Ryan beat me though by 10 seconds. I really would of liked to have had someone pushing me or people in front of me that I could chase down. I guess I can't complain too much after taking 4 days off with no training at all. It was a good learning experience and I'm looking forward to the next one. Jack come out with Lea and I and also had a really good TT. Afterwards we went out with Jack and Hayden to East Sides for supper.
Today my legs felt fine after yesterday which was good so this am I went out for my first real run since my rash. I did 60minutes at just kind of a steady pace. I felt "ok". I definitely felt slower than usual. I still have a bit of swelling on my leg so hopefully that will be gone soon and I'll be back running like I was. This afternoon I'm biking into town to do a swim at the beach with Lea when she's done work. After that we're going to Bell Park because today Terry Fox's brother is there doing a fundraising BBQ with the original van that he spent 6years tracking down that they used when Terry was running across Canada. He had it all fixed up and back in running condition and turned the inside into kind of a museum about Terry Fox and is going across Canada again raising money for cancer. It's really amazing how much money has been raised over the years for cancer because of what this one man started.
Anyways this weekend will be pretty low key for Lea and I, it's my weekend to be on call for the fire department so I have to stay in Lively. I'm sure most people from Sudbury have heard about the accident that happened here in Lively the other night were the 17year old girl was killed. I was at that accident and it's really sad that people don't learn that drinking and driving kills. It's too bad you can't bring all the people who choose to drink and drive to an accident like that to show them what happens all to often and what her body looked like in her upside down car.
Well tonight it should be interesting to see the Terry Fox van and maybe get some cool pictures. Well I better get some stuff done now around the house on my day off before Lea comes home tonight and I'm in be trouble...

"Thank you to the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down".

Good party but now back to buisness

Like to thank everyone who made it yesterday and for everything they brought. Lea and I appreciated everything very much and it was just nice to spend some time and see everyone. The food was great and I definitely ate way to much especially with not doing any training because of my leg. I think I enjoyed my days off a little too much and pack on a few pounds from all that good food. That beer chicken on the BBQ that Lea and I had on Saturday was one of my favorites I think.
So Dr. Therriault convinced me to go into the hospital yesterday morning to have her check out my leg and make sure there was no dirt left in it. Just in case anyone doesn't know how much I hate hospital, well it's probably the last place I would ever want to be. Like I pass out from needles pretty much. So agreed to go in and let her LOOK at it. So it was alright, she only picked at my scabs a little bit and said everything looked alright from what she could see so I guess I must of cleaned it pretty good.
Today is my first day back at it. My leg is still a bit sore and bruised so I only did about a 75minute bike this morning and I'm going to try out the pool later after work. I think running will still be another couple of days so it will be a lot of biking and swimming as much as I can for now.

My leg...need I say more

Hackett still has it

Being a long distance swimmer in swimming myself I looked up to probably the best 800m FR and 1500m FR swimmer of all time Grant Hackett of Australia. He went undefeated in the 1500m FR from 1996 until the 2007 at the World Championships. This article shows how he's swimming faster than ever now leading up to the Olympics and will make for some fast swimming in another couple weeks.

Grant Hackett Crushes 800 Free World Record Over Short Course:

Grant Hackett downed his seven-year-old world record in the men's 800 freestyle over short course meters at the Victorian Championships.
Hackett ripped off a time of 7:23.42 to eclipse is previous record of 7:25.28 set in Perth, Australia on Aug. 3, 2001.

Here is a comparison of the splits: 2008: 25.39, 52.92 (27.53), 1:20.76 (27.84), 1:48.55 (27.79), 2:16.47 (27.92), 2:44.62 (28.15), 3:12.83 (28.21), 3:41.02 (28.19), 4:08.99 (27.97), 4:37.22 (28.23), 5:05.43 (28.12), 5:33.75 (28.32), 6:01.92 (28.17), 6:30.09 (28.17), 6:57.29 (27.20), 7:23.42 (26.13)
2001: 25.05, 52.68 (27.63), 1:20.67 (27.99), 1:48.78 (28.11), 2:16.92 (28.14), 2:45.19 (28.27), 3:13.46 (28.27), 3:41.84 (28.38), 4:09.95 (28.11), 4:38.33 (28.38), 5:06.65 (28.32), 5:35.01 (28.36), 6:03.02 (28.01), 6:30.91 (27.89), 6:58.56 (27.65), 7:25.28 (26.72) Hackett also topped the men's 400 free in a near-world record time of 3:35.16. He owns the standing global record of 3:34.58 set in 2002 in Sydney.

Those splits are unreal!! He's slowest 100m split is like 56seconds! I was never a sprinter by any means but my fastest 100m FR ever was a 56 and that was only one of them not 8 in a row....

Going down hard!

Yesterday the plan was to go out for my bike ride and get my workout in and then when I got back I was going to go out with Lea for her bike ride because she doesn't like going out on the highway yet by herself. So my bike ride went awesome, I was doing some short time trials at all out effort and I was feeling so excited because I've never felt this good and this fast on my bike. I got back home and picked Lea up and we started out and about 10minutes in if that I was watching her and how she was riding and I stopped paying attention to the road in front of me for a second and next thing I know I'm flying through the air. There was a little chunk of pavement missing and I much of hit that and lost control. My bike went flying out from under me and I landed hard on my right hip. I landed in the gravel and I knew right away that it was going to be hell cleaning it up. I only got one little cut on my hands, guess I didn't get them out in front me fast enough to brake my fall. I got a good one on my for arm but the majority of the damage is on my leg. It starts about halfway up my calf and runs all the way up to my hip. the whole section of my leg got cut and scrapped pretty bad but the worst of it is definitely my hip. My hip swelled up pretty good, looked like it was sticking out about an inch at least. Last night I think once the shock wore off I could start to feel the pain throughout my hip and not just where it was cut. When I got home I sat on the side of bath tub wondering how I was going to clean this. I refused to go to the hospital and let them scrub it. I'm a baby when it comes to stuff like that! I pass out when I get needle... So I just took a wash cloth and ran it under cold water and would place it on one part of my body, let the burning go down a bit then try and wash and scrub away as much of the dirty as I could. While I was doing this Lea went up to the drug store just up the street to see if they had anything that I could use to clean it with but wouldn't sting. she gets back and the first thing she tells me is the pharmacist is a biker also and the first thing he ask was is my bike ok?! Who cares if I'm alright...just worry about the bike. Any yes for everyone who is wondering I think the bike will be alright. Or is that a bad thing because if it was broken well then that would be horrible because then I would have to get a new one. Wasn't that your excuse Drew?! Anyways I'm still alive and will hopefully mend quickly.
I was reading the blog of James Loaring a Pro triathlete from southern Ontario who has been racing on the world cup circuit for a few years now and came across his race report for Muskoka and this is what he had to say about the beginning of the race..."The gun finally went off and immediately it was a very fast opening pace that reminded me of an ITU race (thanks to Buddy Green who is a sub-16 minute 1500m swimmer). " I had a little chuckle after I read this because it definitely was a fast pace that I set and those two guys who were able to hang on to my feet and draft me for the whole 2000m swim right until the end were I pulled ahead a bit can thank later.
So not much else is new, still painting and getting a few things done around the house. We're looking forward to having a few friends and family over on Sunday for the BBQ. Maybe tonight I can get Lea to take a picture of my battle wounds and I can put a pic up of the damage. Hopefully I'll be back training very soon, I'm thinking Monday and for the weekend I'll get some good rest and I'll do some tubing instead of swimming.

"Thank you to the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down."

Correction

The BBQ that we're having at our place is on Sunday not Saturday. At least I caught that now and not at the end of the week!

2008 Island Swim

I had a good weekend for training. Saturday I had to work from 10-2 so I headed out early on my bike and got in 90km of solid riding. While I was at work Lea went over to the Market Square to help my sister out because she is running the Blueberry festival and after I was done I met them over there and had a few sweets. After that was a short 2km swim in the pool because the next day was the Island Swim. It's a great local swimming event that brings out a lot of people every year. I've won it now five or six times in a row. It was calling for rain and thunderstorms all day on Sunday but as soon as we got to the beach it cleared up and the sun came out. I had a good swim which was encouraging after my last swim in Timmins. My 1.6km time around the island was 18:22, about 10seconds faster than last year. Lea had a good swim also in about 27minutes and had a bit sprint to the finish with Jack. After that Lea and I headed home with a stop at the Home Hardware to pick up some plants and vegetables to plant in our garden. Lea had to go back to the pool to work so I went out for a good 13km run that felt really good.
We are planning on having a some people over next weekend on Saturday for a BBQ and kind of a little house warming party. Hopefully we'll have all the painting done by then downstairs. So I hope everyone can make and we can have a fun night. 275 Seventh Ave. in Lively. People can start coming over around 3ish or whenever they can make it. We'll have lots of food but if you think you can make it give me a shout or send me and e-mail.
This week I just got a lot more training planned. I'm not racing for a few weeks so this will give me a chance to get in a lot of hard training with little rest before my next race.

"Thank you to all the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down".

The Big Move

So this weekend was our big move into our new house! I'm happy to say that everything went fairly smoothly. We had lots of help and a huge thank you to Lea's parents who came up from London that worked non stop all weekend. Also a big thank you to Sig, Molly, Marcus, Drew and Jose. Drew came out even though I told him not to because he was leaving the next day for Ironman Lake Placid. He'd down there now getting ready and I'll probably be glued to the computer on Sunday when he races. Good luck Drew!!
So the move went really good, we ended up doing three trips with the U-Haul and that got pretty much everything out of the apartment. We've been busy doing all kinds of little things already to the house. I've raked and cut the lawn, cut down a tree that was dead and put in some solar lights around the deck. Each night we've had a really nice BBQ and then a fire with the wood from the tree. The new appliances from Sears look great and we've already started to prime the walls down stairs to paint. Other than that everything else has just been little changes like changing some light bulbs, wall plugs, air vents...things like that. So far everything is good and once we get everything put away and the finish painting down stairs we are planning on having a bunch of friends over for a big BBQ and show everyone what we've done.
Training this weekend though was another story....Saturday I did absolutely no training. I was going to go out for a little run but I was just too tried from moving for two days so Saturday was a day off. Sunday I got out for a 1.5hour ride in the AM and then 40minute run with a stop at the lake where I jumped in and just did a quick little swim. This week I'm back at the training full speed ahead. Tomorrow I have an appointment for some orthotics. The doc said I pronate when I walk/run and that may be the cause of my pain in my foot although it has been much better and almost non existent lately. Sunday Lea and I will be doing the Island Swim here in Sudbury. Always a fun event that I've done so many times now I've lost count. I'll blog later in the week with how the training is going and I'm sure there will be many new things happening with the house that I'll be able to report on and maybe I'll get some pics to that I can post.

"Thank you to the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down."

This week has been going really good as far as training goes. I've been getting in some solid hours which is good because tomorrow we are moving so I'm pretty sure my weekend will be pretty busy but I'm going to try and get up early and get my workouts in before we start for the day.
Monday was just kind of a day off after the race on Sunday with only a 40minute spin on the bike. Tuesday though I got in a good 4.5 hours of training that I was really happy with eventhough I difinetely didn't bring enough food for the day to go along with that much training so I was feeling pretty weak after I was done. I did a 2hour ride in the AM, then a 1.5hour swim at lunch, then a brick workout later in the afternoon where I went 20minute run-20minute bike-20minute run. Wednesday I did a 15km run from home down the highway then an hour swim in the pool once I got to work. Today was I did a 65km bike with some tempo work and hopefully later today after we go to the laywer to sign all the papers for the house I'll do a swim in the lake. I've been feeling good and strong all week since my race. My foot has been much better, I only feel it every once and awhile so hopefully that means that it's healing.
Tomorrow Lea's parents are getting here from London for the weekend to help with the move and I know a few other friends will be helping out which is really nice because there just seems to be so much stuff! Anyways I better get back to work, actually more like start working but we wont tell anyone that and we are supper excited about moving into the house tomorrow so I'll let everyone know how that goes once we get our stuff in and things get settled a bit.

"Thank you to the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down".

News paper article

http://www.timminspress.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1103326

Timmins Race Report

So this weekend we headed up to Timmins for their annual Sprint Triathlon. We were very lucky and got to stay with a friend of friends so that worked out really nice and saved on paying for a hotel room. We got into Timmins around supper time on Saturday and went straight to their house. We had the house pretty much to ourselves the whole night as they were out at a wedding. A big thank you to Rhys and Karin for letting us stay at their home.
Saturday night we went down to the race site for a little swim and to register. The swim was definitely short...only about 600m. I found out later that the guy who measured it included the run up to the transition as part of the 750m swim. Then it was off to East Sides for some good old pasta.
Sunday morning even though it was a pretty small race with only about 100 people I was a big nervous because I knew Mike Hay is in incredible shape right now and I was in for a tough race. Once at the race site set up went good and I went for a little ride on the bike, practiced some turn arounds as there was three of them in the 20km that we were doing.
So this raced seemed to go a little backwards...its supposed to be that my swim is the best part of the race...well not on this day. Right from the start I didn't feel like I was pulling any water and Ryan Smith pulled out in front of me. I tried to get on his feet and at least stay there but it seemed like harder I tried to get on his feet the worse things got. It was two laps of 300m and after about 200m on the first lap I started feeling wired and it seemed like I couldn't see straight every time I looked up. Sure enough as I came out of the water to run around the buoy for my second lap I face planted right in the sand. I knew something was up and asked myself if maybe I should stop but I didn't and came out of the water about 20seconds behind Ryan. It seemed like as soon as I got out of the water I felt a 100 times better and made up some time in transition. I passed Ryan after only a few 100m's on the bike and just went for it. I knew I would have to bike strong as Mike Hay is a supper strong biker and runner. At each turn around I could see that I was getting farther away from Ryan and Mike wasn't really gaining any time on me. I came in T2 with about a 1:40 lead over both Mike and Ryan. After Mike's 15:45 5km run a few weeks ago I knew I still wasn't in the clear. The run wasn't marked very good at all and right about 500m in I took wrong turn and had to turn back. I felt really strong on the run and knew that this is finally the way I've been training and I'm doing it in a race. Right at the end the road split and again there was nobody there saying which way to go and on the road it said one way for 1st lap and the other way for the finish...so since I went the one way for my 1st lap I figured I had to go the other for the finish. I could see transition coming up but it seemed wired because there was nobody really around and it didn't look like a finish. Sure enough some says that I went the wrong way. I went over to my bike got a drink and a few seconds later the race director came over and asked if I would go back and run in the proper way. I thought that it was kind of wired that he would ask me to run back but I did anyways! It turned out that my time would of been pretty much the same as it was the same distance. They didn't have an official time for me so the time they gave me was made up and I'll post a link to the news paper in Timmins that did a story about the race and I got interview but it says I was only about a minute ahead of Ryan when actually I was about 2 1/2-3minutes ahead. I'm not sure what happened to Mike on the run but he just stayed with Ryan the whole time so that was a little strange....things worked out in the end though and I got a couple nice t-shirts, $50, a watch and a gift certificate for a bracelet.
But then as we got to the car I noticed that some of my stuff was wet in my bag. I thought it was stranged but then Lea said she had put a water bottle in the bag and I guess somehow it wad opened and sure enough my cell phone was in the bottom of my bag and soaking wet...no more cell phone! It was definetely fried pretty good!! Well accidents happen and we have to move on.
Anyways it was a good weekend overall with some nice prizes for winning. I will post some pictures later tonight when I get home from work. Four more days and we move into our house!! Crazy!!

Thank you to the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down".

Timmins Tri This Weekend

Well it looks like we're going to be off to timmins this weekend for the Timmins Triathlon. It's a sprint distance so it will be a short one and probably even shorter as they say the swim is about 150m shorter than it's supposed to be in a Sprint Tri. Oh well, what can you do. There is a couple of people going up from Sudbury. Ryan who came second last weekend in North Bay and Mike Hay who won his age group in the Duathlon at Worlds about a month ago so I'll have to put together a solid race if I want want to hold onto the lead after the swim.
No complaints about my training this week. Monday I got in a work for all three, nothing too hard, more of just recouvery. Tuesday I had a good bike ride with Jack again. I'm really enjoying getting out riding with him every once and awhile. I did a little run off the bike with Lea when I got home. Wednesday and Thursday I had a swim-run workout one day and a swim-bike the next. Swimming is feeling good in the pool, I was holding sub 2:20 for 5x200m on 3:00 so I can't complain about that. I've been doing most of my swimming later in the day but this morning I got up early to go to the beach for 6am where everyone else swims every Monday, Wed, and Friday and I was shooked that there was at least 15 people there swimming. It was great to see everyone out. We swim from the beach to a point that is exactly 200m one way so it's easy to keep track of how much you're swimming. Got to talk to Drew for a few minutes before I got in but then he took off becuase he was swimming accross the lake and back.
So other than that there's not too much else that's new other than it's exactly one week to we get our new house now so I'm really starting to get excited and nervous. I feel like we are pack so much but then you turn around and there still seems to be so much more!! Well I hope everyone has a good weekend, it's supposed to be really nice and really hot so it will be a big change from what we've been having and I will let everyone know how the race goes probably Sunday when I get home.

"Thank you to the people who said I couldn't, you have been what has defined me, never give up, and never back down".