Wednesday May 30 |
 | MTB 2:00:00 [3] | |
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| Good trails with Mike and Jeff. Much drier than last time. Was riding my old bike which felt quite odd. I much prefer my new bike and so some of the ride was a little frustrating. Especially since my front middle ring is worn out so every time I'd really be digging in the chain would slip. Bike will be back from the shop on Friday and it will be oooohhh soooooo sweeeet! |
Tuesday May 29 |
| Running 1:30:00 [2] | |
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| Nice light session tonight with Bob, TVP, and Sudden. Felt nice to stretch the legs out. |
Monday May 28 |
| Paddling 1:30:00 [4] | |
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| Running warm up/down 20:00 [2] | |
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Sunday May 27 |
| Note | |
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| I hate writing essays |
Saturday May 26 |
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| Event: Suphur Spring Trail Race
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| Running race 2:03:26 [4]25 km (4:56 / km) vdot: 43.6 | |
| slept:6.5 |
| Awesome day out at the Sulphur Springs trail race! Bob and I had been discussing our pre-race gitters the night before; the course looked long! We'd run sections of it but never the whole thing all at once and so we both decided that we'd just "have fun" and take 'er easy and finish well. The start line was a mix of our 25km race and the 50km. I started off at a good comfortably quick pace and made sure that I was staying relaxed, I even walked some of the steep hills. The 50 and 100 milers has started an hour before we did and so seeing these people out on the trails ahead of me gave me some added motivation - especially since they were running relatively slower so I just kept passing people - good for the ego! Anyway, there was a girl in a pink t-shirt a little bit in front of me, and I knew from some of the out-and-back sections that there were some strong looking ladies behind me too. At about the 15km mark I noticed that one of these ladies was getting closer and closer. I played with the mental struggle of whether I should speed up, or just let her pass me...she eventually caught up and we had a quick chat (I wanted to make sure if she was actually in my race or not) and she gave a few quick strides and left me behind. I felt happy that I now had a good target in front of me, and judging from her pace and strength on the hills I figured that I still had a chance of catching her again. I never let her get too far in front of me - I wanted her to be able to hear me breathing right behind her :) We had a very steep hill up to the last assist station at the 20km mark and I figured that it was now or never! At the top of the hill managed to catch up and she could probably feel my breath on the back of her neck. I tried my best to put out a good, strong, and intimidating pace as I strode past her on the next downhill section. One more good hill was between us and the finish at this point. Lucky for me I came across TVP at this point (who, by the way, looked very strong and happy!) and his shouts of encouragement pushed me up the final hill. After that there was about 2km of downhill to the finish and I swear my legs almost came unhinged because I was running down them so fast! I finished 2nd female overall, 1min and 1s behind the girl in the pink shirt, and 36s ahead of my rival. Yahoo!
Also, was 20th finisher overall.
Congrats to Bob (who's smile and cool collectedness on the final push to the finish were much more intact than mine), and Hans, and the 50-miler TVP (who was STILL running when we left). Good job guys! |
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| C • Fantastic! 9 |
Thursday May 24 |
| Paddling 45:00 [4] | |
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Wednesday May 23 |
| Running 50:00 [3] | |
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| Some of the Sulphur Loop with Bob. Definitely didn't feel great at some parts, but once I got warmed up it was better. Maybe a good stretch is in store before our race on Sat. |
Tuesday May 22 |
| Note | |
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| Has to miss TNT tonight due to scheduling changes at school. Instead of giving us the day off on Monday, they instead cram all of Monday's stuff into our 4 day week! Lovely!
Had so much work to do that I didn't manage to get out at all today. :( |
Monday May 21 |
| Running 2:40:00 [3] | |
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| Good run, mostly with hansel, around Blue Mountain area. Started things off right with a calf-killing "run" up the ski hill and then we headed west along the Bruce. Lots of good little hills that hurt much more on the way back than they did on the way out. I say I ran "mostly" with hansel because shortly after our turn around point my legs were not quite feeling up to the challenge of meeting his need for speed and he took off and I continued on at our moderate pace.
We also had a short bushwack section in terrain that looked to me like a place I would love to live if I were a poison ivy plant. I did a very thorough job of washing my legs when I got back. Absolutely no need for a repeat of the SAC Long Course in Marmora a couple years ago. 'nuf said. |
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| C • Scenic Caves 7 |
| Note | |
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| The blackflies have descended upon Ontario. This weekend, and especially while climbing on Saturday, I had horrible flashbacks of bushwaking in Timmins. Oddly enough, although I usually bear the brunt of the swollen bleeding neck from the masses of blackflies that love to feast on me, hansel suffered the most this weekend. My bites didn't get puffy at all and are only little red specks on my legs and ankles. It's possible that exposing yourself to 24hrs straight to the most intense blackfly infestations imaginable is some sort of cure for the suffering they impose. Interesting. Maybe we can market this. |
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| C • Marmora 1 |
Sunday May 20 |
| MTB 1:05:00 [3] | |
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| Good trails at Kalopore with hansel and rich. A wee bit slippy though. Lots of good little ups and downs. |
| MTB 1:15:00 [3] | |
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| Fun Blue Mountain trails with hansel. We had a great ride on some good technical stuff. There was also a good flying superman over the handle bars for me. Ripped my computer wire in half - oops!! :)
I'll stick with my motto: If you're not crashing, you're not trying hard enough. ;) |
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| C • Be careful! 6 |
| MTB hills 30:00 [5] | |
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| 2 X 15min hill up Scenic Caves Road. Phew!! |
Saturday May 19 |
| Note | |
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| Out doing some climbing this morning at Metcalf rock near Collingwood. I reallly felt the fact that I haven't climbed in a while as I was flailing on Hansel and Rich's relatively "easy" climbs.
Set up a static line and practiced some ascending. |
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| C • UTOC 4 |
Thursday May 17 |
| Running 25:00 [5] | |
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| 8 x 50second to 1min hills on Nancy Green as hard as possible with rests in between |
| Running warm up/down 45:00 [2] | |
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| Nice run in the cool of the evening after class tonight with Bob. Up to Chedoke for some pain. |
Wednesday May 16 |
| MTB 1:15:00 [3] | |
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| Good fun muddy trails at Snake Rd. The ground was slick mud from all the rain and so there were some sweet wipe-outs and lots of pushing the bikes up the steeps when the back wheel got so full of mud that it was like trying to ride on a banana peel. Rode as many hills as I could and did some repeats on the longer ones and more standing hill repeats back out on the road. |
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| C • sweet! 2 |
Tuesday May 15 |
| Note | |
| slept:7.0 |
| Headed out to the usual meeting spot to meet Bob for our warmup to TNT. It had started raining a wee bit when I walked out of my building at school, and was raining pretty darn hard by the time I got to our meeting corner so I ducked under the eaves of a lumber store to wait it out. Well, it started raining incredibly hard with thunder and lightning and grape-sized hail started falling from the sky and there was tons of noise as it ricochetted off the sides of buildings and cars. Eventually I was covered in goose bumps and the rain kinda stopped and so I decided to get moving and was on my way up to the golf course to face my nemesis (the Chedoke stairs) when the storm relapsed and the snap-crackle of lightning was filling up the sky again. So then I ran my soaked-to-the-bone self back to school, and now I'm finally home in my warm dry cozies and thinking that I'll get an extra workout in tomorrow......
Oh yeah, I forgot to add the 1.5min of zone 4 workout I got at the GO station as I ran up the down escalator. Urban hard core-ness at its finest. |
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| C • sulphur loop 2 |
Monday May 14 |
| Paddling 1:30:00 [3] | |
| slept:6.5 |
| Good workout tonight in the rain. |
Sunday May 13 |
| Orienteering race 1:16:00 [3]**** 10 km (7:36 / km) | |
| 10c slept:8.0 |
| Good fun up in Milton at the Hardrock Orienteering event put on by GHO. Unfortunately, not too many people out on this very fun and challenging map. Lots of running through rocky woods and swamps - practically up to my waist at least once! I made a few mistakes - not so much that I ended up being somewhere that I didn't want to be, but instead I made some poor route decisions but executed them very well. :)
Hansel beat me, but I'm over it now. Really. |
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| C • Over It 9 |
Saturday May 12 |
| Paddling 1:30:00 [3] | |
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| Dragon Boat practice |
| MTB 2:01:18 [3] | |
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| Sweeeeet trails up in Durham forest with Hansel. Lots of hills and tight corners and fun speedy descents! Logged this as a 3 but definitely had plenty of 4-ish moments as the lactic screemed through my legs on the uphills. And another beautiful day!!!
This was our actual riding time according to my bike computer. Hansel's recorded a few extra minutes but I think he was just sitting there spinning his front wheel whenever we stopped. |
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| C • Albion 2 |
Friday May 11 |
| Running 1:30:00 [3] | |
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| Ran part of the Sulphur Springs route. Beauty day (while in the shade). Felt strong. Can't wait!! |
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| C • 2nd fastest trek 6 |
Thursday May 10 |
| Note | |
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| Midterm tomorrow. Bob and I were supposed to go orienteering tonight, but she ducked out to study which makes me feel that I should do the same. So my decision is to not work out and feel guilty (and suffer Attackpoint shame), or to not study and maybe do poorly on my exam. I've decided to go with the former. Long run tomorrow....?? |
Wednesday May 9 |
| Note | |
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| Found another cute pic from this weekend.
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Tuesday May 8 |
| Running intervals 40:00 [4] | |
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| 3 X 2-3-4min with 1 min rests. I was H-U-R-T-I-N-G!! Probably not quite recovered from this weekend, or my mad dash to make the GO train on my bike last night. This run felt stupid hard and it is starting to really warm up too, and combined with today being the GTAs first smog alert of the year, my lungs weren't feeling up to the task. |
| Running warm up/down 50:00 [3] | |
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| Usually my warmups feel like 2s, but today....today was a different day all together.
After I finally got home on the GO and went to the grocery store I stuffed down some good fresh pasta with red meat. Good for the blood and the energy levels! Yum!
Oh, and I topped it off with some Heavenly Hash......deeeeeelish! :) |
Monday May 7 |
| MTB (Road) 1:30:00 [4] | |
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| Cruising from the Burlington GO to school and back....Looks short on the gmaps but I was going pretty hard. Lots of red lights and some wind. |
| MTB 15:00 [3] | |
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| From home to the GO station and back. |
Sunday May 6 |
| MTB 45:00 [3] | |
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| Looking for lost kids. |
| Running 30:00 [3] | |
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| Various running around looking for kids or helping them through the trek. |
Saturday May 5 |
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| Event: Fronteir Adventure Racing - Adventure Challenge
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| Adventure Racing race 6:48:00 [4] | |
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| Bobkittens Forever!!!
Great day with Leanimal and the Norwegian Forest Cat. Felt strong on the first MTB and the trek. Navigation was great. Leanimal is my hero as we made nary a mistake on any of the sections. We almost nailed the bushwacking part of the trek but ended up about 50m downstream from the CP. No biggie 'cause we ended up picking up some great trails that saved us some time on the other side of the cold and slippery stream. Paddling was fun as usual, as long as I kept my feet out of the puddles in the bottom of the boat....fun little riffles and a nice tailwind. 3 girls may have been a bit of an advantage in the shallow rocky river bed, but we probably lost whatever we had gained during the portages. We were ahead of my rivals SRS until I heard a grunt behind me on the portage trail and there was Ben with his boat trying to pass us on the trail. Between bouts of gossip we managed to push hard on the paddle to make the supposed 3pm cutoff with only 4 minutes to spare. Little did we know that they had extended it for an hour so we had a few extra minutes to munch cookies in the TA. I was hurting a bit on the advanced bike. My legs had somehow decided that they would much rather just take a break now please and were saying "no thanks" to the hills and deep viscous mud puddles along the way.I worked hard to eat some good stuff and had some water and managed to re-energize myself with a little help from the Kitties. We were happy to finally hit the pavement for a super-speedy cruise to the finish line. Crossed the finish 4th overall and to a very welcoming crowd of all the friends that had just arrived before us. All in all, a good day of teamwork, laughs, and fun in the litterbox!!
I'm not really sure about our official final time, but I think this is about right. Will correct later when splits etc go online.
Meow.
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| C • Congrats! 7 |
Thursday May 3 |
| Paddling 45:00 [3] | |
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| Early morning on Lake Ontario. 4 minute sets with the first 3 at 70% and the last minute at 90. |
Wednesday May 2 |
| MTB (Trails) 1:30:00 [3] | |
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| Lots of fun on the Snake Rd trails with some boys from my class. Lots of twists and turns and semi-techinical fast ups and downs. Good 'ol mud-in-yer-eye fun.
Throat still sore today. Trouble swallowing. Still using my Vit C and Echinachea formula. Hopefully won't be any worse tomorrow. I'm also focusing on eating well. Right now I'm laying good foundations for healing by inhaling a bag of Quaker Crispy Minis - BBQ flavour. (NOW made with sunflower oil) |
Tuesday May 1 |
| Running intervals 25:00 [4] | |
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| 4 on 3 off times 4 with TVP and Sudden. Felt great. |
| Running warm up/down (3500) 35:00 [2] | |
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