4 Hours to go....

So I'm less than 4 hours to go unstill the start of the race. Nervous as hell!! The breifing lastnight was going good until they asked, "is this anyones first ITU race"? I looked around...nobody was putting up their hand so I said what the heck and I put my hand! Their response was, "you sure picked a hell of a course to start on"! I've biked the course and I went in for a swim yesterday. Little wired swimming in water with sea lions. Something doesn't seem qiute right about that. The water was very cold at first but I warmed up after a little bit. Well I'm just off to grab a bite to eat and then hit the tub to shave down. It's time to GO!

My first Professional ITU Race

It's been awhile since my last post and things have been pretty busy lately. I leave this week on Thursday for San Francisco. I can't believe that's it's almost here and in five days I will lining up on the start line next to the best in the World along with Olympians that were in Beijing only two months ago. I think I'm going into this race though with a good attitude though that no matter what the outcome and what place I finish it will be an amazing learning experience for other races like this to come. I know I'm not where I want to be with my training from some health issues over the past month with being in the hospital for my stomach to being sick and run down for almost two weeks. My training had to be cut back in order to recover from these things but going into this race I know no matter what I can swim with these guys so I know I will come out of the water with the leaders. On the bike it will be my first race where it's a draft legal race so I know there will be lots of things to learn about how these guys race races like these. I know coming out of the water with the leaders I will be in the lead pack on the bike and it will be just not to do anything stupid and I should be able to stay with them. After that once I get to the run the top guys will be running between 30-32 minutes for the 10km and I'm just not there yet. There will be so many things to learn though from this race that I know I will be able to find all the positive aspects and build on those for my next one.
Work has just been work lately, nothing new and exciting. Last weekend Lea and I went for out weekend course of marriage prep. I went into it with a pretty negative attitude and that the whole thing was going to be really boring but I was very wrong. I learned quite a bit of stuff from the couple that was giving the course and many things that Lea and I can use in the future. The wedding is only about 6 months away now and we are starting to put invites together to get ready to send out. We're working on a few other things also in order to get ready and we are getting pretty excited. Last weekend on Saturday night I got went to a big structure fire at a family home where the family just barely made it out. It was a big fire and the house sustained a lot of damage. It was my first house fire since Lea and I moved into our house and it really hit me how scary it must be for the people who's house it was and how I have no idea what I would do if that ever happened to us.
Things have been going good though at our place and we've been getting lots of work done. We finished the base boards in the basement around the floor we put in and we installed a door to separate the rec room from my work shop and laundry room. This weekend my aunt and uncle from North Bay came to visit. They got here Saturday afternoon and after doing some shopping into with them we went to the pool because my sister was swimming in a swim meet. After that we had a really nice relaxing evening back at home and my sister came over and we all played some cards. It was good to have Mark and Bonnie here for the weekend because we never get to see them enough and it was a chance for them to see our new house for the first time.
So I guess I'll post after I get back from San Francisco with some pictures. I leave Thursday morning and I'm pretty much ready to go. I've got the race wheels on the new bike, my new wetsuit from Xterra because I'm sure that ocean is going to be chilly and now I just got to show up and race my best.

Cottage pics

Here are a couple of aerial pictures that Jenn took while on a plane ride over our lake at the cottage. The first picture is of our two cottages, they are the two on the left. The second picture is of our whole bay and you can see where it goes out into the rest of the lake. I thought they were some really cool pictures and you can even see the deck build a couple weeks ago on the one cottage. Anyways that's all for me for now, I'll try and write more later when I'm not feeling so under the weather.

Back in the swing of things

Things have been back on track this week as my stomach has been feeling much better. Tuesday was a swim and bike, nothing to hard just trying to get things moving again. Wednesday was more of the same with a swim and run on the treadmill. I pushed it much more though on the swim with my main set being 10x100 on 2:00 holding 1:05's. Today I did a hard brick workout with the bike on the trainer and running on the treadmill again. I did 45minutes on the bike, 45min run, 30min bike and 30minute run. It was a solid 2.5hours and I felt great at the end.
Yesterday I had another appointment with Dr. Stauber and he said my lower back is starting to look really good and he is happy with my progress. It's something that's good to hear because with back pain like I was having was making for uncomfortable rides.
This weekend will be my last weekend heading up to the cottage again to get some work done. I've done a lot of work this fall on our other cottage. When my parents and my grandpa bought the land 30 years ago they built two cottages, one for my parents and us and one was for my grandpa. The one for my parents got finished first in order to be able to stay in it while they built my grandpa's. After my grandpa died his cottage just became starage and was never finished inside and wasn't maintained properly. It's a beautiful cottage with huge windows over looking the lake but over the years very little has been done to it. So we decided that it's time finish it so this fall I've tore down the old deck and built a new, reshingled the roof and replaced all the sofit and facia. I'm going up with weekend to do a few more little things and then in the spring we are going to replace all the windows and do the eletrical. We hope to have it all done within 2-3 years is our goal. I'm so excited to finally be working on it as it's been a goal of mine for many years. I told myself that one day I would finish what my granda and dad started.
I'm going to make sure to get my training in though also this weekend and next week will be a big week for me as I only have a couple weeks left before San Francisco. The start list came out the other day and looks like I'm going to have my work cut out for me. There's a few Olympians and a guy who was ranked number 1 in the world back in 2006 along with some other big name guys. I'm really going to go into this though as a big learning experience and don't want to get down on myself if I don't place good. I know I have my strenghts and weaknesses and want to see where each of them measure up. I'm almost looking forward to the training that's going to come after the race as I am the race itself. This winter is going to be huge for me as far as training goes. I had a good winter last year and I want this one to be even better and get in even more hours.

Hospital to Race

I hope everyone had a good safe thanksgiving weekend with friends and family. I got to spend the first part of the weekend at the cottage with Lea and my mom. It was a busy weekend with more work getting done on the other cottage. I didn't get much training done though as I found myself to be in quite a bit of pain for the majority of the time. My stomach just didn't seem to like me very much this weekend and it seemed like no matter what I did nothing helped. It was also good to get up to the cottage this weekend as yesterday would of been my dads 60th birthday and it was nice to spend some time visiting where he lays.
Lea and I left the cottage Sunday afternoon and stopped in North Bay to visit my Aunt and Uncle for a nice supper with them. We never get to see them enough and any chance we have is always nice. After that we stopped off for a few minutes at Jenn and Mark's house to see all the work they've done since they moved in this summer. It was so nice, they've done such an increadible job.
Sunday night I woke up in the middle of the night in even more pain and it just kept getting worse and Lea took me to the hospital. Exactly what I didn't want to have happen. Hospitals and me just don't seem to see eye to eye on a lot of things. Well we walked into the emergency department and usually it's full and it's a couple of hours wait before you even get seen well I'm not even kidding there wasn't one person in the waiting room. I walked in and thought they were closed and was ready to leave. Well turns out that if you ever have to get sick and go to the emerg, then go on thanksgiving. I was seen right away and had blood work done. It tured out to be nothing serious and just that I had way to much acid in my stomach and was eating everything that I ate and that's why I wasn't going to the bathroom for almost a week. The doctor gave me some medication and I'm starting to feel better now.
So Monday morning I was originally supposed to do a run race at 10:00am. Lea said I shouldn't do it but me being stuborn like I am went but I only did the 3km as I didn't think my stomach could hold out for anything longer at that point. After two whole days off of training because of my stomach I didn't know how I would feel but I wasn't to bad and I ran away from the 50 or so other people pretty fast and won the 3km by a good few minutes.
Today I'm feel even better, I think the medication is starting to kick in and I plan on getting some training in today and tomorrow will hopefully be back in full swing.
Don't forget to vote today!

This weekend was a lot of fun and we got a lot accomplished. The plan was to get the flooring that Lea's parents bought us for christmas installed but we had no idea how long it would take. Saturday morning Jack came over to help me instal the floor and Shaylin came with him and kept Lea busy all morning. I do have to thank Shaylin though for the nice pictures though. The floor went in really nice and smooth and after getting a good start on it Jack headed into town to watch Tayte in a race at Delki. This kid can fly and I know he's going to do great things in the future. While Jack was in town I went out for a run, nice and easy 13.5km. In the afternoon we got back to work and by about 5pm we were 2/3 done. Drew and Jose came over for supper and the roast we had put in the slow cooker was amazing. After supper my mom and Randy came over and we work some more on the floor.
Sunday I had to be at LU for 11:30am to coach so I left early and got in 90minutes on the bikes. On the way home I just biked straight home for another 40minutes as I had to meet my mom and Randy again to help finnish the floor. The floor got finnished and looks so good. It totally changes the rec room downstairs and tonight Lea and I are going to pick out the base board to finnish it off. While I was working on the floor on Sunday Lea went to this girls house that she works with and they printed all our wedding invites. They look really good and we will probably be starting to send them out in the near future.
Yesterday I did a swim the in the am with the club. My swimming feels so good and I know that I will be breaking some of my PB's this year. In the afternoon I did a 90minute bike and a 6km run after. Training is still going, I'm just going to try and not get sick like everything seems to be lately. This weekend I'm heading up to the cottage for thanksgiving but will be back for Monday for the Turkey Trott run. Hope everyone likes the pictures of Jack and I working on the floor and and then the floor all done. There's a nice shot of Tayte also running like the wind.

Here's a few pics from this weekends project and Tayte putting on a clinic over at Delki on Saturday. I'll blog more tomorrow because I'm off to bed now as 5am comes early for practice.

Training going good!

This week has been pretty low key for the most part. I've been putting in a lot of time putting together my new sponsorship proposal that Mark Simmons is helping me with. Mark is a great guy from Toronto who introduced me to the owner of Shot Crete Plus back in the spring who paid for my trip to Vancouver. Mark was a very successful boxer and qualified for the Olmpics in Sydney at the Olympic Trials in Mexico with a broken hand. He's a great guy and has been helping me out a lot!
My training has been going good this week. I've been getting in a lot of running which I think is good because I better be running fast in order to keep up with any of those guys I'm going to be racing in San Francisco. I checked out the results from last year and a few of the top guys in the race all were at the Olympics this past summer. I've also started swimming with the swim club again in the mornings. There's a good group of top guys there with about 5 of us and it can get pretty competitive at times which is good because it pushes us and we can't hold anything back. My swimming has been great all summer, right where I've wanted it to be and over the next month leading up to San Francisco this will get me swimming even faster. My new Devinci bike has been great also. That's going to be the part of the race that I'm the most nervous about just because I've never raced in a draft legal race before where I'll have guys inches from me at all times on the bike.
Well there doesn't seem to be much else that's new going on. Jack is coming over tomorrow morning to help Lea and I with the floor downstairs.