Its interesting to note, that in my mind last week was probably a bit on the thin side for training, but looking back at my notes I’m happy to see that it was a solid effort and I didn’t really miss a beat, considering all the Olympic madness going on right now.

A couple of standout days as well, with Mondays Method Naturalle style workout in the Vibrams and then a sweet long run to SFU on Saturday.

Monday 
Methode Naturalle – took the VFF’s out to the trails in Stanley park and ripped of some pull ups on the jungle gym near second beach, ran through to thrid beach and performed a set of 5 beach sprints on the nicely groomed sand then hit the trails up to prospect point, back to the gym at 2nd and then home – no watch, no HRM, no shoes.

Tuesday
Zone 3 - Lacte threshold workout 5 sets of 3X3 (8.4mph low, 8.9mph high)

Wednesday
AM Zone 5 – Speed work 4 sets of (2 mins @ 11mph with 4 recovery  @ 4mph) 
PM Circiut training.

Thursday
Was fortunate enough to witness Australian snowboarder Torah Bright win an Olympic gold medal in the women’s halfpipe.  I was also fortunate enough to get myself on TV in New Zealand, Australia and Canada waving the boxing kangaroo flag!

The Poduim - Aussie Gold!

Friday
Strength training – chest and shoulders.

Saturday
Sweet long run from downtown Vancouver out to SFU, round the university and back to the city.   Hozumi was kind enough to take me out on this route, mostly paved for a total of 40km.  We were out for about 3 hours and 45 minutes.   The pace was easy, zone 1ish, and my knee felt pretty good.  It was also a good chance to pick Hoz’s brain a little bit as he ran Miwok last year but sadly missed the lottery this year.

Loop of SFU

Sunday
Recovery (read: hungover and then drunk again).
I had an easy 2 hours scheduled, but indulged in the Olympics on Saturday night, I flagged the run and then caught the Canada USA hockey game with friends in the afternoon, beers flowed, and much fun was had despite the result of the game.

Notes:
Olympics are fun !!!

Recently I have been focused on heart rate training for a few reasons:

1. It works.
2. Time and conditions make it easy.
3. I have a specific goal I am preparing for.
4. Better training benefit for less stress on the body.

Below ill share a few visual representations of my HR training over the standard Zone 1, Zone 3 and Zone 5 training zones. 

Zone 1 – Aerobic Zone – Goal HR = 155-170

Zone 1 - Treadmill - Controlled Environment

Comparative to a run of the same length (approx 2 hours).

Zone 1 - Trail - Uncontrolled Environment

Points of interest:  Controlled environment allows for consistent pacing in which it is possible to hold ones heart rate at whatever the desired number with little room for fluctuations.  A trail run, while infinitely more fun maintains a similar average HR over the time but jumps around due to terrain and is harder to monitor and maintain a specific range.

Zone 3 - Lactate - Controlled envirnment

Points of interest: This workout is done in stages, 10 minute warm up then 5 sets of 3 minutes at lower end 3 minutes of higher end of my tested Zone 3.  This workout primarily teaches my body how to train removal of lactic acid produced from the high leg turnover.  Working at the high end provides the “filling sink” effect and toggling down to the lower end provides the “draining sink” effect.  HR fluctuations looks to be minimal through the spectrum of speeds in training zone 3.

Zone 5 – Aerobic Interval Training 

Zone 5 - Aerobic Intervals - Controlled Environment

Points of interest:  This workout is focused around my top speed, with a stint of 3 minutes at full tit, and then a full 6 minutes recovery at my lowest speed.  this is repeated for as many times as I can hold good form though the maximum effort.  HR spikes indicate high levels of intense work followed by a long recovery.

A final thought:

While these style of workouts are designed to maximize training time and ultimately make me a faster runner, I do think they have a place in my training program but should only be a small percentage of it. They are convienant when pressed for time, or when the weather is crap, but come March, it will be very hard to get me on a treadmill. 

If someone asked me the question, ‘will this make you faster than the next guy?’ my answer simply be… who cares?

Certainly not me. For every single person that I beat in a race there are dozens, hundreds maybe thousands(?) at any given race that are faster than me.

I train not to be faster than the next guy but to be the fastest that I can possibly be with the amount of time and resources I have for training. I set myself realistic and achievable goals related mostly to fun and gnarly race courses with a lofty time target that requites me to train my ass off and then race my heart out to get there.

I train not to race again the next guy, but to race against myself and for the love of running and racing… unless of course I’m racing against Coo. Then I run for the win, but only by 1 second.

Robson Square - Vancouver, BC

With the City getting into full on Olympic mode my training in the next few weeks is sure to be broken and scattered, so I’m glad to have this one tucked under my belt. 

My solid week at it looked a lot like this:

Monday
AM Yoga
PM  Strength Training: 5 WG PU, 10 BW Dips, 20 Renegade rows – 30lbs dumbells X 5 Sets

Tuesday
Rest
Physio IMS – EMS

Wednesday
Zone 3 - 15 minute warm up then 4 sets of 3 minutes @8.4(low) 3 minutes @8.9(high)
Stretching

Thursday
Zone 5 -  3 minutes @ 10mph with 6 minutes recovery @ 6mph – 4 sets, 10 mins warm up and 10 cool down.
Stretching

Friday
Strength Training: 5 WG PU, 10 BW Dips, 20 Renegade rows – 30lbs dumbells X 5 Sets

Saturday
Trail run @ UBC!!  a little over 2 hours.

Sunday
Zone 1 – Treadmill – 1.5 hours @ 7.9Mph – HR ~163bpm
Motivation:  A race across the Sky - Leadville Trail 100 MTB bike film from the 2009 Race where Lance won in a CR riding the last 7 miles on a flat rear tire.  Machine.  Legend.  Man with a plan.

Notes
1. Poison – 1 pint Granville Islande Winter Ale and 1 Corona.
2. Knee still prone to flare ups, but generally day to day feeling alot better.
3. Brilliant run outside on Saturday, felt strong and good to run with Tania, Katie, Ray and Jeremy.
4. Sundays recovery run, was HARD.  Very unmotivated, misery loves company and I wouldnt have done it if Katie didnt show up to run as well so cheers.

Got in about 5 hours total running this week, all in my Zone 1 training zone or ‘aerobic’ training zone.  The goal in this zone is to average my HR 155bmp min and 170bmp max.  For most Zone 1 workouts require a conscious slow effort, for my profile however it means I need to work harder that I usually would on a LSD run.  Actually its like this accross all my training zones – work harder = run faster – not really rocket science…

This is how it all went down.

Monday
AM Yoga
PM Zone 1 - Treadmill  – 1 hour @ 7.8Mph - HR  ~160bpm

Tuesday
Rest
Foam Roller Session / Massage

Wednesday
Strength Training: 5 WG PU, 10 BW Dips, 20 Renegade rows – 30lbs dumbells X 5 Sets
30 Minutes Pilates
Foam Roller Session / Massage

Thursday
Physio IMS – EMS

Friday
Strength Training: 5 WG PU, 10 BW Dips, 20 Renegade rows – 30lbs dumbells X 5 Sets

Saturday
Zone 1 – Treadmill – 2.5 hours @ 7.9Mph – HR ~166bpm

Sunday
Zone 1 – Treadmill – 1.5 hours @ 7.9Mph – HR ~163bpm

Notes
1. Poison – can’t seem to avoid the booze at all lately, 1 Granville Island Winter Ale, 2 glasses Red.
2. Felt like throwing up during pilates class, left after 30 minutes and resigned that pilates is for chicks.
3. Knee rehab is coming along nicely, love IMS and EMS, stretching and rolling.  Managing inflamation with ice is also helping.  All good habits to get into regardless of injury level.
4. Could have used Katies company on the treadmill this weekend.  Womens tennis and endurance planet podcasts had to substitute.
5. I miss running trails – need to get out there next weekend and run free.

The major focus for my training this week was physical therapy.  I really want to try and clear up this problem with my knee before the training volume starts to increase, so I dropped all but the necessary workouts this week.

Still a lot on the go.

Monday
Physical therapy: Yoga
Strength training:  5 x strict inside grip pullups, 10 x 40lb alternating dumbbell curls. 8 sets in 15 minutes

Tuesday
Zone 3 workout on treadmill.  15 minute warm up then 4 sets of 3 minutes @8.4(low) 3 minutes @8.9(high)

Wednesday
Strength training: 200 pushups in 9:00, standing dumbbell military press 40lbs 5 sets of 10.
Physical therapy: 20 minute foam roller session
Planning/Motivation: Training zones and planning @ Peak Performance.

Thursday
Zone 5 workout on the treadmill.  3 minutes @ 10mph with 6 minutes recovery @ 6mph – 3 sets, 10 mins warm up and cool down.

Friday
Physical Therapy:  Physio at City Sports.  Acupuncture (IMS) and electrical stimulation session.

Saturday
Zone 1 workout on the treadmill.  2 hours @ 7.8mph – HR average 163

Sunday
A few lazy laps of Circuit 8 on the mountain bike – just for fun.

Notes
1. Poison – 3 x Granville Island Winter ale, glass or two of red.
2. Treadmill – felt like a bit of a lab rat, but wanted to get all key workouts in this week with a minimum of added stress to my knee.  Felt pretty strong on all workouts and eventually found my happy place on Saturday morning after an hour of boredom thanks to the Australian open.
3. Acupuncture in my quad hurts, but distracts from knee pain, so I guess ill call that a success.  Had good response to this weeks physical therapy and will probably take the same approach to training this week to help in the healing process.  Foam rolling and stretching need to take as high as an importance as all the other stuff.
4. Had a solid meeting with Mike at Peak performance to discuss recent lab results.  Looks like I can make some significant improvement over the year if I can get healthy and strong – always fun to discuss the science behind training.
5.  I love riding my bike and working on basic skills on the technical Nth Shore trails.  Wasn’t really that into it on Sunday as I didn’t want to push the quad and knee too much in an unpredictable environment, but always have fun out on the bikes with McG.

aye aye aye captain.

I’ve decided to have a go at keeping a somewhat accurate log of my Miwok training.

At first I was just going to throw the distance/time of my long runs into my outlook calendar, but after thinking about it more, there really is a whole lot more involved with my preparation than simply just building mileage for my first 100k run.

I have a pretty busy schedule with a mix of run specific workouts, strength training, active recovery and all important rest.  Each week I’ll throw a recap with some highlights up onto the blog, specific workouts, learning’s, aches and pains, and notes on what is working and what isn’t.

This week in training…

Monday
Strength training:  21-15-9 reps of 40lb dumbbell squat press and burpees for time: 11:13
Motivation: Trans Rockies info night at NSA

Tuesday
AM: Boxing class
PM: Zone 3 workout on treadmill.  15 minute warm up then 3 sets of 3 minutes @8.4(low) 3 minutes @8.9(high)

Wednesday
Rest

Thursday
AM: Boxing class
PM: LGRR track workout – 10X400 with 300m hard 100m recovery

Friday
Strength training:  200 pushups in 9:08, standing dumbbell military press 40lbs 5 sets of 10.

Saturday
Rest

Sunday
Long run 2 hours 15 minutes.

Notes

1. Poison – 6 x stubbies of Rickards White, 1 x shot absinthe, 1 x shot tequila
2. Body – right knee tendinitis a bit niggly at the beginning of long run Sunday, then periodically through out specifically on downhills.  Need to be more proactive in treatment, with yoga and massage and proper post workout stretching.  Will avoid squats until it starts to feel better.
3. Fuel – Long run fuel of 1 bottle Accelerade fruit punch flavour, 3 x Accelerade chocolate gels.
4. Overall – a good training week with all key workouts complete.  Couldn’t plan a Saturday morning run due to work commitments which allowed me to play a bit with friends on Friday night, finding the perfect balance for the week.

My right ankle to be precise.

2nd Cankle of 2009

Not to take anything away from the epic day I shared with friends on Chuckanut mountain running the middle 30 of the 50km race route.  It really was quite special, good company, fun terrain, magically clear day and a nice temperature,  it was a perfect day on the trails.

The Lazy Trail Runner has a very amusing  account of the day that really captures the spirit of the adventure over at his blog.  An enteraining read as with all his posts.

The twist itself was a non event.  Just crusing along, slight downhill, nothing technical then the roll and the pop I could hear quite clearly.  I managed to run it off for a few hundred meter’s but when we got to the bottom of little chinscraper, I pulled the pin and took the hike back down to the car.

As bummed as I am that ill be off my feet for at least 6 weeks, I’m going to remain positive.  I have no real race goals, and can probably use the rest if I plan on hitting up some of the long stuff again next year.

Time to get creative with my cross training.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interesting story and I’m looking forward to the feature documentary.

Documenting such a dramatic transformation in this way incorporates all the key drivers such as motivation and accountability and while there is no doubt it’ll be a long hard road back for him, It is his profession and I am sure he will put in the hard yards and get it done.

This is a similar run to the Seek the Peak race and will be my Seek the Peak v1.  The plan was simple enough.  I needed to build on volume for Stormy in August but I wasn’t really too sure how long this run would take or even how far the distance was.  I just knew that it was something that I wanted to do.

I set of pretty late for a long run; I must have been in holiday mode as I left my apartment around 9am.  The path was straight to the sea wall, head round the lost lagoon, up Tatlow trail then up Rawlings trail to Prospect Point.  From there I took the Lions Gate Bridge over to the Capilano River where I found after a few attempts the start of the Capilano Pacific Trail.  I followed the Cap Pacific trail to Cleveland Dam, then Up Nancy Greene Way to the Grouse Grind.

This was my first time up the famous Grind, but unlike the other hikers attempting natures stair master, I had already been moving for a good 90 minutes and had gained about 300m in elevation.  I think I made it up the grind in around 45 minutes.  It was a hard slog, certainly not easy no matter what shape you are in.  I spent a bit of time marvelling at the footwear that I got to see people wearing up this trail which ranged from full on hiking boots, to flip flops, cheap sneakers and even plastic shoes.

At the summit, I made use of the facilities, snacked and then headed back down the BCMC trail.  The BCMC was still a bit wet and kind of slippery near the top.  I was out without an ankle brace so I just took it relatively easy down the BCMC, then followed the same route home.

Seek the Peak v1

Total time for the Expedition was 4 hours 30 minutes moving, 5 hours door to door.

Seek the Peak v2 took place just a few days ago and was scheduled in on my last big volume running weekend before Stormy in August.  I was unsure of the time it would take for my v2 as I wanted to alter the course somewhat as to avoid the grind and add some time to the route.

My plan for this was to run Stanley Park, Lions Gate, Capilano Pacific, Nancy Green, Baden Powell, Old Mountain Highway.  Assess the time when I got to the summit from the OMH and either gondola down, run home or BCMC down and run home.

As it turns out it took me 4 hours and 30 minutes to reach the top via the Baden Powell and OMH.  Seeing I was aiming for 6 hours in total, I took the gondola down and ran back for a total expedition time of 6 hours moving time, 6 and a half door to door.

Seek the Peak v2 gave me a really good chance to work on my nutrition strategy for Stormy coming up and I was trialling out a new Nathan handheld water bottle.  I filled my pack with 2L of water and then took a bottle with Nuun from my apartment to Prospect point for my first refill.  I then used Cleveland Dam, OMH, and the Chalet at the peak for future bottle refills.

Seek the Peak v2

I used the water in my bladder for washing down Chocolate Accel Gels (my new favourite) and ElevateMe fruit protein bars.  I also ate a pack of plain salted chips and 2 bottles of PowerAde at the top of Grouse, as well as 2 O Henry bars.

I felt really good in term of fuelling the whole time and had a pretty good hydration strategy as well as nutrition plan and all the food seemed to settle nicely in my stomach.  I pretty happy with this and will base my Stormy nutrition plan around the foods and timings used on this training run.

Total food intake for this training run was:

6 thermolytes
4 bottles, and nuun
2 PowerAde
2 O Henry
2L water
1 bag salted chips
6 gels
2 ibuprofen
3 elevate me bars

I was happy to log this run in at 6 hours, it was a beautiful day and it was pretty special to be moving quickly and quietly along the Baden Powell along early on such a lovely day.  It was perhaps a bit too hot for the last hour or so, but I do love the heat, and its great to be able to run outside, shirt free, in the mountains under the sun.

Sea Wall

In any case, I set out this morning with no real goals other than a 3 hour recovery run after a 6 hour long run yesterday (more on that later).  I had organised to meet up with Brain for a bit as he had a 14km slow goal for the day, so I left at 7am, down to the sea wall and took it pretty easy round to Pacific and Drake where i proceeded to run a little triangle loop while I waited for Brian.

We met up just after 7:30am and took off towards Science world.  I was running for time and recovery today so the pace and direction was his.  As we settled into a stride, I noticed a few running friends running towards us.  We exchanged pleasantry’s, discovered that they too were beginning their run so we turned around and took off with them towards the park.  Our 2some became a nice 5some and we ran comfortably together chatting away.

We soon got to the toilets and I wanted to fill my bottle and at an hour in for me I wanted to eat a gel as well so I let the group run on ahead and went about my fuelling.  As I got back out on the seawall and went to catch up I noticed another familiar gait in front and it was another running fried, Angela.  We ran together for a while, caught up to the group ahead and the 5some became a 6some.

Angela was heading over to watch the Summerfast 10km, which I wasn’t aware of, so we said goodbye to her and hit up some of the Stanley parks trails to avoid the runners on the seawall.  We ended up running a mish mash of trials leading up to Prospect Point, we turned around, go spat out on the causeway, hit up the equestrian crossing and ran back through the park.

We got back to 2nd beach as the 10kers were finishing and thought it would be fun to join the finishing chute and cross the line as if we had run the race.  We were running down when just before the mat I spied Coach Campbell.  I stopped short of the finish and went over to say Hi.  I also got a chance to see Leo and Pam representing the Lions Gate crew at the race and we all hit up the post race food.  It was pretty nice to be able to stop, socialise and eat aid station style on a weekend long run.

We soon got moving again, back along the sea wall, Brian left back at David Lam Park, and I lost the Group of Kelly, Nathan and Stacy at the Cambie St Bridge.  I continued on solo to Science world, turned back and ran home to finish up just on 3 hours.

It was a great morning out that materialised from nowhere but more than that it made me realise that running the sea wall isn’t all that bad.  It’s the old faithful for Vancouver runners.  It will always be there, you are more than likely to see friendly familiar faces and it’s a staple for the Vancouver road running scene, playing host to numerous races year round and better yet, its all in my backyard.

Random Running

We chose to head over Saturday afternoon and had booked a camp site just out of Duncan. When we turned up we got to pick a spot by the river and ended up with a sweet site right on the river next to a cool little swimming hole.  We set up the tent, locked the bikes in McGregor’s car and jumped in for a swim.

Camp McG Gunshow

The evening saw us walk into town to pick up some salmon and broccoli for BBQ’ing and a few kilos of trail mix for the ride the following day.  We made a pretty sweet fire and cooked the salmon in foil on top before turning in around 10pm, following our passions with some light reading, me reading Canadian Running Magazine and McGregor reading some Mountain Biking rag.

We woke early on Sunday and gobbled down some blackberries and Yogurt for brecky, along with a couple of bananas and some more trail mix.  We tuned up our bikes a bit, loaded them into the truck and drove the 8km out to the start of the event.

Registration

It was a small event on the scale that the organizers would like to grow it with about 30 or 40 riders turning up to take part.  I signed in and handed over my $20 entry fee which was going to the cops for cancer foundation and then stood in line at the porta potty.

Today was my first experience with Chamois cream.. and I was a little bit scared.  Especially as McGergor seemed to be excited about the prospect of lubing up his cycling shorts with and inch of butt lube..  Needless to say I was not very generous with my application, but it was still very uncomfortable when I had to plant my ass on my seat.

The start of the ride was wicked!  We left as a group with a vehicular escort and as we were riding in a peloton behind the support vehicle, I couldn’t help but imagine that I was an elite level cyclist riding ‘le Tour’.  It really was a fun experience and we rode like this for the first 20 or 30km.Then the first of many mechanical problems struck. McGregor dropped his chain and effectively the peloton dropped him.  I chose to drop off the back and wait for him and was surprised at how far behind we were when we finally met up again.  We worked hard together to try and re join the pack but we were too early into what was going to be a long day of riding to really give it our maximum effort.  It was the last of the pack we would see all day.

Flattie

We got down working together and passed a few straggling riders but the going was tough and McGregor got a flat around the 50km mark on a climb along the highway.  We stopped and got in a pretty quick change but decided that we would just work at it ourselves and abandoned all hopes of catching the leaders.

Shortly after the flat we also noticed that we were a bit off course and we had to double back around to try and find the first food stop, which also saw us get lost a second time trying to find it.  Thanks to Mr. prepared McGregor and his pre programmed GPS we were able to find the food, get a map and keep going.

This saw us take on the most challenging portion of around 90km on winding and rolling road.  We were working together running with 2 minute pulls trying to get in a good recovery behind the rider when our pull was over.  It was my first time riding like this and we seemed to master the skill pretty quickly.

Ridin'

We were supposed to meet the group at Port Renfew for lunch and it was a hard slog to get there.  My Quads cramped at one point and I had to walk a pretty steep climb.  I got back on the bike but didn’t enjoy the final 15km into Port Renfew.  My legs were sore, my ass hurt and I really was tired of riding my bike.

We stopped for lunch and I contemplated getting a ridein the support car for a while with the lovely support ladies.  I ate a Halibut burger for lunch and then scoffed down a plate of fries absolutely smothered in salt and felt 100%.  We met a girl, Chrissy, at lunch who had gotten lost earlier and wanted to ride with us for a while so we set off after about an hour break and got down to work.

Chrissy wasn’t quite as fast as us and it was welcome at first to be able to ride at a more relaxed pace, but once the legs got moving again, I was anxious to push it and try to finish the last 80km or so feeling strong.  We moved pretty slowly for the next 50km, I have a few mechanicals with my bike and there was some climbing which kept the speeds down.

Ridin’

We managed to pick up the pace as we neared Lake Cowichan and picked up a nice tail wind for what would be the last 30 or so k’s of the ride.  Chrissy’s friends met her en route and picked her up for the drive back to Nanaimo and this left me and McGregor with a nice tail wind and some wicked country road to lay into.  We worked together again and I clocked some of our pulls to be around 40 to 50 kph, we were moving nicely.

We made it back to Duncan quickly and eased off on the pace so we could navigate back to the start, McGregor’s truck and the end of the ride.

We arrived back at the truck around 8pm, exactly 12 hours after we left it in the morning at 8am.  There was 9 hours of riding time and 250km covered in that 12 hour day.  It was a long one.  A true challenge and a lot of fun.  We both really pushed out limits and tested ourselves out on the road that day and I was really proud of McGregor as he rode strongly in the latter half of the day and ultimately motivated me to get going over the last 100km.

Not sure if I’ll be back for this one next year, for no other reason other than the fact that I’m still not really sure that I like road cycling.  Its good cross training, and good fun, but I’m not super passionate about it like I am with running.  We will see where I am next year and how it all fits into training.

We ended up catching the 10:45pm ferry back to Vancouver and I got to bed at 2am the next morning.  It was a long day.  Surprisingly my legs weren’t that bad, nothing like after I have ran an ultra and I was back running on Tuesday after taking Monday as a full day of rest.  It’s the end of the week now and I’ve gotten in 3 gym sessions, 2 hard run workouts and I’m feeling fantastic, time to get in some real training miles for stormy now.

Recovery from 5 peaks on Saturday was pretty smooth and I spent Sunday at the car free day on Commercial Drive relaxing with some friends and ended up catching the sunset over English Bay with a couple of Coronas in hand at the boathouse patio.

Monday saw a good hard Tempo workout on the tready.  The workout looked like this:

10 minute warm up @ 5mph
3 minutes @ 9mph
3 minutes @ 8.6 mph
x 6 sets
10 minute cool down @ 5mph
Stretching.

Tuesday night was back on the bike racing out at the Escape Velocity crits, hoping to see Trevor Linden, but again he was a no show.  My goal for this was simply to finish, as last week saw me drop out at about 17 minutes into it.

It was a tough slog, had cramping issues but I managed to hang on to the pack for about 20 minutes before dropping back with the other stragglers.

I rode by myself for a few laps and had a good race on the last couple with a few other blokes that were in behind me.

Tuesday Crit

I’m pretty confident that after a few more weeks of this I’ll have the hang of it and may even have a crack at one of the sprint finishes.  We’ll see how it goes.

The remainder of the week saw a couple of runs, and a couple of gym sessions.  Saturday will be complete rest and Sunday is the Summer Solstice Trail Marathon.

I’m really looking forward to this one.  The guys at Nth Shore Athletics have worked hard to map out a very challenging course. They are a great bunch of people over there and it is guaranteed to be a great fun day.

I did the first half of this as an Orientation run a few weeks back and know firsthand that this will be a tough one.  I think the first 5km took about an hour and 20 just to get to the bottom of the cut and the 25k took about 3 and a half hours to run in.  It’ll be a hard slog and the key to feeling good in the last 10km will be to approach the beginning conservatively.

No real goals with this race other than to have a good fun run and try to feel good at the end of it.

Summer Solstice Orientation Run

Ambergris Caye

Training has been going really well.  Tuesday’s tempos are getting faster and faster, probably too fast, but its good to really belt out a good hard run. Last night I felt the best I have in a long time on a Tuesday night and finished the 8Km tempo with a strong push.

I’m not sure where the energy came from as I did VO2 MAX and Lactate threshold testing out at Peak Performance yesterday afternoon.  It was a pretty simple process; 10 minute warm up, then put on the snorkel to begin the test.  The treadmill increases 1km per hour every 3 minutes at which time a blood sample is taken from a prick to the finger while trying to maintain pace on the tready.  You run untill you cant run anymore and signal with a hand wave when you think you have a minute to go.  Then you get encouraged to keep going for another minute, then another   Once the snorkel and slober get taken from your mouth there is a 10 minute cool down and its done.

Running in the snorkel was extremely uncomfortable, and that probably had a huge part in me deciding to call it quits after about 15 minutes.  I’m sure the body could have kept going, but the restriction of oxygen uptake was pretty uncomfortable and I just wanted to spit it out.  Ill get the results from the testing when I get back and will discuss it here.

The Headgear

Also, of note, was last Saturdays Iron Knee training run.  It was a great group that showed up for the orientation run and I was glad to be a part of it.  I tried to keep at the front from the start and took a few k’s to catch the lead group of Adam, Steph and Sammy.  Once I caught on I did my best to stay with them and we hit the BP pretty hard on some very technical downhill single track.

The pace backed off a bit for some flatter wider sections before twin bridges and then we slipped into a hike for Powerline.  After powerline I did my best to hammer out some good fast downhill trying to keep up with Step and Sammy and did a pretty good job untill I kind of bonked (yes, I bonk on training runs ) just after the deep cove lookout.  That part is pretty tought for me, the trails are wide and im always tired and careless by the time I get there, so I backed off and cruised on into deep cove.

Afterward we had a nice lunch with Ray, Andrew, Tanya and Andrews mate before I hitched a ride back to my car and called it a day.  I did the right thing and braved the icy cold water after the run to help in the recover of my tired legs and thankfully I did as the other guys still seem to have some aches and pains from the run.

No training on the schedule for the next 10 days.  I will be doing my PADI certification and getting in a bunch of open water dives in on the 2nd largest reef in the world!  there will be many beers drunk and plenty of time for relaxing in the hammocks!

My goals were simple; run an ultra-marathon and become a certified personal trainer.

As always with smashing goals, it is empowering to say that both are now complete and even surpassed as I have run 2 ultras, and am a BCRPA certified personal trainer all before May.

I Have a couple of other goals I’m working towards right now, mostly running related which ill state out in another post, but want to celebrate these achievements before targeting the next ones.

Time to Celebrate!

Running:

Finally got back to some sort of training schedule only to break it with a bender of a trip to the Bahamas, a few lazy days off work and then a fun filled 4 day weekend in Seattle.

Ill pick up again when I get back from Seattle with hopefully a full week of training and then the First 5 peaks race of the year on Saturday the 9^th.  I’m hoping I’m fit enough to really run this one hard and it’ll be a nice change to be running fast again as opposed to running long.

I had also registered for the BMO half marathon this weekend which I was supposed to pace a friend through, and unfortunately my travel plans to Seattle means that I got a $90 Saucony t-shirt and a DNF at the Vancouver ½ marathon.

Boys in the Bahamas

Cross Training:
Even when my running is slacking, I’m always focussing on cross training. It’s a real passion of mine and I want to share a workout I did the other day. It was 20 degrees out and a beautiful sunny Vancouver day. I had the day off work and a lot on the plate for the day so a long ride or run was out of the question.

I was about to head off to the gym, when I was grumbling in my head about how wrong it was to be working out in the gym when it was so nice outside when I had the idea to take my workout outside.

I remembered a children’s playground just through china town and jumped on my bike and rode on down. 20 minutes later and warmed up ready to go I began a circuit using the jungle gym, my body weight and imagination and put together a great little workout that had me working to failure in my muscles why my heart was racing.

I based it mostly around:

Explosive pushups
Elevated pushups
Pushups to failure
Burpees to pull-ups
Wide grip pull-ups on the rings
Chin ups on the monkey bars
Inverted rows
Squat jumps
Box jumps
Vault jumps
Bodyweight dips

Moving quickly through the series of exercises, this workout had me sucking wind in no time. It was just what I needed after a mischievous few days drinking and partying in the Bahamas.

My Gym

The ride went really well.  I rode out along the Lions Gate bridge to meet McGregor at the RV park and the ride over the bridge had me spinning in my lowest gear and feeling pretty tired after the previous days run.  Once we got riding everything seemed to come together fine.  I probably under dressed for the ride, thinking that it would be pretty warm, so it was a bit chilly, but I was pretty confident it would warm up.

The ride out to Horseshoe bay was pretty quick, we picked up a solo scottish lad with legs the size of tree trunks and he took us right down to Whytecliff park where the divers were out in droves.  We parted company with the Scott, refilled a bottle, and then headed up to the highway and for Cypress.

I was a bit apprehensive for the climb to cypress, having never climbed one on the locals on my bike and I knew I was a bit tired and didn’t want to bonk on the climb.  We sated up and it was pretty flat, but after about 1k the incline began and I just settled into a comfortable pace.  We slowly caught up to a guy in from riding his bike up with skis attached to his backpack and then took a break and refuelling opportunity at the lookout.  It was another beautiful day and the views of the city were great and you could see all the way to Mt Baker.

We continued up the climb, pretty much at the same slow but steady pace.  It was tough work, but I never thought that it was too much.  The km marker signs were coming pretty quickly and before we knew it we were at the top.  I took McGregor up to the new chalet and he refilled the bottles while I went upstairs the get a couple of snickers bars.

We did get a few weird looks, especially me in my bike pants and cycling shirt in at the chalet, everyone dresses for skiing and riding and me in my cycling gear.  We had a bit of a break at the top, ate a snickers, cracked a few jokes and were on our way for the decent, which I was quite looking forward to .  We got moving pretty quickly and tucked into an aero type position and flew down the hill.  I think the top speed I got to was around 73k per hour which was OK, and very manageable.  The fastest I have recorded on my bike is 82k per hour. We changed up the lead a few times taking turns at tucking in behind the lead rider and lowering the heart rate.

Before we knew it we were spat back out on the freeway and decided to head back to Horseshoe bay to try and get in the K`s.  We were flogging along quite nicely along the number 1 highway when I heard a bit of a pop from my rear and then a loud hissing sound.. I didn’t know what it was initially, but very quickly realized I had blown my rear tire.

I wasnt too upset.  I didn’t bring my pump because I know that McGregor carrys everything with him, so I set about changing the flat.  It didn’t take long, but we did find a pretty nasty tear in the tire (my new schwalbe tires too) that we tried to patch from the inside.  I threw in a new tube and McGregor produced his wicked CO2 dispenser and 2 cartridges and within seconds my tire was up around 100psi!  Magic.  The patch on the tire was actually not very good and the tube was trying to get out.

We decided to accept defeat on this one and to head on back and call it a day.  It was still about 20K from home so we did some exploring in west Van and found our way back to Marine drive and then began the spin home.

All in all and WICKED day out on the road bikes.  A great introduction for me to climbing the local mountains and bike handling coming back down.

Pictures from the ride below:

Cypress Lookout

Pricey Rides..

Got Skis..

Cypress!

Flat

Videos form the ride below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sunday Ride - April 5th