My love/hate of 6 am runs

Now I'm usually in my mid week training block (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) because I have rest days on Monday as well as Friday, so this makes for a pretty nice block in the middle of the week which allows me to go run in the morning, and then continue on with the day.  Although lets be perfectly honest here, it's more a hate relationship when I actuall have to get up before the run, and usually about the first half of the run, and then on the second half and after the run I'm loving that I went to go run.

This week I actually managed to hit all three runs, and I can't remember the last time I've done all my runs in the morning, but my legs were feeling pretty tired this morning when I went for my last run.  But let's rewind a bit to recap this week.  Mondday was a rest day so I got to sleep in.

Tuesday was a 6 am run day, but it was only the first of three in a row.  I use this app called sleep cycle that measures your sleeping patterns and then wakes you up in a 30 minute before your set time up to your set time.  I've found that in situations where I need to be actually coherant or I'm not getting enough sleep I'll use this as my alarm along with another one as backup.  It essentially taps into your iPhone/iPod's accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure movement, the awesome thing is that I've found that when it goes off you can slap the bed in the general area of where it is lieing on your bed and it'll snooze.  So..... cue ringing..... followed by a slap *BOOM* and alarm goes silent.  Snooze function kicks in for a bit, and rings again, and I slap it again, silences and then comes right back ringing. It's at this point I realize my 30 minute window before my set time has already been exauhsted, I guess it's time to get up and go running.  It was actually quite an enjoyable run especially because it was nice and warm and no need for anything more than shorts and a t shirt.

Wednesday morning was a pleasant surprise because I actually managed to drag a friend of mine Lisa out to run with me at 6 am.  Not gonna lie you know you have great friends when they're willing to get up at an ungodly hour to go run with you.  I actually kinda jokingly asked her the night before, hey want to go running with me tommorow at which she actually responded yes.  So here we go running, we decided to do an our and back and she'd just turn back a little bit earlier. And away we went.  I thought she was going to turn back at 30 minutes and I'd finish my distance and then turn back and start running her down.  It's just like the peleton trying to catch a breakway.  Only problem is that I realized that when I started turn around and run back she was already a mile ahead, which probably meant that in the remaining three miles I'd have to make up a mile on her, soooooooo running like over 3 minutes faster per mile than her.  Unfortunately I can't sustain that kind of pace (7 min miles) for much more than 3 miles, because I'm running flat out, and that's fresh.  Long story short, I didn't catch her because she turned back after 26 minutes.  But anyhow it was a good run, and the cool thing about running so early is that even when you're done you're run you still have the entire day ahead of you.

We're both way too happy for this time in the morning

Today's run was probably the slowest of the bunch, I'm pretty sure I ran the first mile with my eyes closed because I was pretty tired and I felt like I was pushign hard but it didn't say I was going all that fast.  Me thinks it's time for a rest day, but unfortunately I have been talked into spending 4 hours on my ass...... no not sitting on my couch but riding so I'll let you know how that goes.

~Cheers

Riding Bow Valley Parkway

So on Sunday, I managed to get the oppurtunity to ride the Bow Valley Parkway just off highway 1, past Banff all the way to Lake Louise, well not quite, didn't go up to the lake but I stopped at the bakery, so that's almost the same thing..... right? Well anyhow I did this ride last year and I think I had probably had my bike for not all that long maybe about 2 months.  Of this time, about a month of it, it was out of commision due to an awesome crack in my seat stay that made me slightly hesitant to ride the bike.  After all of that got fixed though I was back riding and this I think was probably my longest ride so far last year.  I wasn't particularly good, actually I was probably rubbish at this point and thus the ride itself was quite difficult.  For those that haven't ridden Bow Valley Parkway, here is a profile of it, and you can take a look, it's literally in between lots of mountains and offers some great views to look at.
The Ride So that link there will actually take you to see all the cool stats about this ride that is the story of today's post.

So without further ado, lets get to it.  I went out with Jeff and Anna, both people that are on STC like me.  It was actually kind of a gloomy day because it started off raining, but thankfully it let up in time for us to go riding.  There were also fires that made for some awesomely smokey weird views.  The ride it self is pretty much all uphill all the way to Lake Louise, and for some reason that day I actually didn't feel bad on the bike, in fact I felt alright.  The ride itself starts off with a little bit of undulating hills, up down up down, up and down, till you hit the first of the real hills.  I think it was around this time that we saw a person up the road going at a fair lick.  Now Jeff is a climber there's no disputing that but since he's broken his second shifter, he's riding on a sweeet Argon 18 cross bike.  I thought there's no way he's going to attack up this hill, I mean we are going to catch her anyways.  But I think it was also around this time that logical thinking went out the window.  Jeff decides to light up the climb, I follow and as i'm following him up the only thing that's going through my head is man if we keep on trying to destroy each other on these climbs I'm not going to survive.  Thankfully we pass the female rider (she was wearing a Mt Ventou Jesery).  Rumor has it that there's a weekly race that goes up Mt Ventou, or Alpe D'Huez.  These are both ridiculous climbs.  Like Ventoux is something like 8 to 9 percent average (possibly more) up 21 k. Like I enjoy climbing, partially because I'm lightweight but I can't even begin to imagine racing up this, let alone every week. So really cool this lady had a Mt Ventoux jersey if she really did climb. 

Now an unfortunate thing that often happens when going out riding with other people is that you don't really work with the, you're beside them chatting with them, having a good ole time and....... wasting energy.  Thankfully on this day we did decide to work together, and I actually enjoyed pulling this day (this may have had something to do with my mis alligned shifters after my crash resulting in me thoroughly enjoying having my hands on the top of the bars.  I think our average speed going out there was about 27 and this was into a headwind.  I was determined to hit an average speed of 30 over the entire distance, but before that we had to head to the bakery at Lake Louise.

Laggan's Mountain Bakery and Deli makes some really really good pastry items.  I had this pizza bun last time that was deeeeeeeelllliiiiissshhhhhhhh.  We went later this time so it was a lot less choice but still some really great stuff.  I had this saskatoon berry square (which was really just like a saskatoon crumble)  Jeff had this english pinwheel something or other (I still don't know what it was)  Imagine something like a cinnamon bun, but a lot lighter, without the syrupy cinnamony mixture and replace it with just a light sugar and dried fruit.  It was pretty good.  Like any ride you have to draw between resting and catching to tail wind.

Determined to actually make the 30 km average, we pounded it back somewhere around 35 and up the entire way, it was actually pretty sweet and nothing was going to stop us, not even the tail wind turning into a headwind which always seems to be the case.  You will always have at least 1 headwind...... you will likely have a headwind on the way back too.  If you are lucky you will have headwind then a tailwind..... you will however NEVER get a tailwind both ways. 

I think that's enough rambling for this ride.  I've taken to doing six AM runs tommorow and if the weather holds out (Which I have a feeling it won't) will be a double day with the run in the morning and training with the team in the evening.

~Cheers

The road to ..... somewhere

So I've been away from the blog lately, and given it a little bit of thought because it's turned from what was originally supposed to be a blog Jess and my adventures towards Ironman Canada in 2012.  Along the way there were little blips that were kinda training experiences for this big goal, I ran a marathon last year, I ran a marathon this year, and I'm running another one in the not too distant future. Jess is running Edmonton in August, and then we have to get our act together and start training for Penticton pretty much after a little break from her marathon. 

So with that little blurb out of the way, I think there's some other stuff to talk about.  This blog like I said was supposed to be about our adventures and I think more and more I've been turning it into a blog that's about biking, running and the gadgets that go along with it.  I don't think that's exactly where I want it to go, although I definitely enjoy doing the occassional review, looking at stuff that I can't afford to have but would be super cool to anyways, and sharing my experiences. So I guess from here on out, there's going to be a little bit of a revamp of the blog.  I think I'm going to work out with Jess (fingers crossed) that she'll write a blurb here once a week about how her training is going, because as you all have probably realized I am absolutely horrible with asking her how her training is going.  I'm going to cut back on the wishlist, review posts, and combine those into kind of a once in a while gear post, either new gear of mine, new gear I want, or gear that I've used and tell you how it is.  I think I'll also post a lot more after training and let you know how it goes, and hopefully if I find a better camera some more pics.  So there you go, maybe I'll even change up the layout of the blog and some colors, but that should all be coming up in tommorow post where I talk about the weekends ride which was awesome.

~Cheers

Product Review: ZipVit ZV-1 Energy Drink

So I talked about expensive nutritional stuff from a swiss company called ZipVit in a post back in..... April I think and one of the things that I talked about was their sports drink, called ZV-1.  Now as far as sports drinks go, they're usually all pretty good for loading you up with energy, some just a little bit more effectively than others. The only problem with all these little things as I've talked about lots on the past is that when it's working..... you don't notice it.  Like if you drink gatorade and it's working, you don't bonk.  If you drink Gatorde (or not) and you will bonk, then it's something tangible.  The other thing is an energy drink isn't going to suddenly turn you into Jens.  So after that little meandering, lets get to it. 

Today's post is hopefully going to be the new format for review stuff, a little bit of a preamble, pricing/availibility, some nice rhetoric and a quick summary portion. 

This powder either comes in individual sachets, or you can get a tub of it (which is cheaper, but because ZipVit stuff is pricey... is very expensive). 

It'll run you about 20 bucks for a tin which gives you 25 servings (750mL) which I mean at the end of the day is 80 cents a serving, but I think it's still about double the cost of good ol gatorade which is the benchmark for most other "sports drink".  One of the gripes with sports drinks is they can ruin the effects of a short workout, pretty much putting you back at calorie neutral and Gatorade has something called their G-Series (2 I think) that's meant to combat this, I'll test it out soon.  When I poured out the single serving of this powder, I was actually pretty alarmed by how much powder was making its way into the bottle but hey it said one packet, into 750mL so I just listened to them.  Turns out that it actually wasn't sweet at all which was pleasant, and it made you want to keep on just sipping away at it keeping you continually hydrated, and energized which was a good thing.  I had the fruit punch flavor, and if I were to make one comment/complaint/observation is that because it's not particularly sweet, there's also not a whole lot of guidance in what you're actually tasting I mean it's kinda sweet, and it doesn't just taste of sugar, but I'm not quite sure what it tastes like.  They also advertise that it won't upset your stomach which is always a good point.  I've made note multiple times that I am a nutrition snob in that I won't race on anything that I haven't tried thoroughly before, and I won't train with something that doesn't at least sound fantastic on paper (or if it's shiny, it supercedes most of my logical thinking).  It went down, stayed down and my stomach was nice and happy, so I guess it's true to their claims. 

Pros:
- Delivers what you need without a huge fuss
- Not too sweet
- Easy to go down and keeps you reaching for the bottle

Cons:
- Expensive
- Not quite sure what it tastes of, but it's not unpleasant

Bottom Line:
It's a good drink, does the job, but it's wee bit expensive so it'll be saved for the days where I feel like treating myself.

Happy Summer Solstice

So today's post which should've been some training tips post...... was swapped out with a 100km ride with Simon, I'd say that was a pretty awesome trade..... see you tommorow with a review post, now the question is what to review?

Wishlist: Shimano Ultegra Di2

Today's post actually comes on the back of some pretty exciting news from the Japanese bike parts manufacturer.  They introduced this back in the Fall and brought with it some pretty big leaps in bike tech.  Prior to it all shifting that was done on a bike for mainstream products was by mechanical movement (pulling or slackening a cable) which seemed like it was a little bit old fashioned to Shimano, so they made an electronic group.  The Di2 stands for Digital Integrated Intelligence.  It's got a CPU on the front mech which allows for some cool stuff to happen while shifting.

Now with electronic shifting, you literally just push a button and it'll move your mechs for you.  Everything is still the same just as if it were the mechanical version.

Now some other things electronic shifting allow you is that the front mech will actually time when it's the best point to do a shift, and it's not going to be a huge delay like multiple seconds, but rather just a position on the cassette.  There's specific notches that are so called "shifting gates".  All of this is done through the front mech, which also trims your front cage so that you won't get any chain rub and therefore no noise.

The rear mech will just keep on whirring away based on your button clicks, and hopefully shouldn't drop your chain like Andy's did at least years tour, but apparently he was having chain problems on a tt recently so maybe I should hold my toungue on that comment. It looks more or less just like the mechanical version but instead of having a metal cable go through, there's just an electric wire that goes into the unit.

Now with all this talk of it being electronic, there clearly has to be a battery right? Well that looks like it's been more or less transferred over, and it still looks about the same, and like the other batteries, this can mount below your bottle cage relatively easily

So there you have it, brand spanking new gear from Shimano.  The Dura Ace version works great, that's why a ton of pros use it.  Fortunately, it's going to be coming down quite a bit in price, probably around 1500 bucks which is still a lot, but a TON cheaper than the Dura Ace version of it.   Rumor has it that it should be hitting bikes by the time the fall trade shows come around, when manufactures start announcing 2012 bikes.

~Cheers

Training Updates - June 17, 2011

Another week, more rain.  It almost seems like mother nature doesn't want us to train, but I refuse to have any of that and train right through it.

Jess
This week was probably a disaster week for Jess, she had an exam that she was writing and thus devoted all of her time to that.  But now after this it should be smooth sailing, and a whole lot of training en route to intact edmonton derby marathon..... (It's actually called the Canadian Derby Edmonton Marathon) in August.  I still haven't decided if I want to/can run that marathon in August so we'll see how that goes.

Kel
I think this is probably one of the first decent weeks I've had since my crash, but it's good to be back and going again.  There's no words that can describe how much being away from exercising sucks.  But here's a quick recap of the past week in my life of training

Last thursday: I just did a one hour ride on the rollers, you don't really ever appreciate how difficult something is till you do it for yourself.  Be it climbing a hill, running a course, and riding on rollers is no different.  There's almost no friction and it's horribly difficult just to keep going in one line and balancing because you literallly have no friction between your wheels and the cylinders.
Sunday:  Finally managed to go for my first run since the crash, and it was just kinda seeing if my knee could take it.  It wasn't too bad, the road rash stil hurts a little bit but the knee isn't horribly sore
Monday: Rest day
Tuesday: This was an epic evening ride on highwood pass, there was no cars on the actual pass portion which was great because it made for super easy riding where you could take up an entire line on sweeping corners and just hammer away at it
Wednesday:  I somehow thought it would be a good idea to squeeze in a run before a class of mine, and of course there is.....
a) never enough time, it takes longer than you ever think it will
b) if it looks like it will rain...... it will..... but only if you go outside to do something.
So of course those two inevitabilites happened, and Edward and I got absolutely soaked on the run, it was just a short 8.2 km that was run kinda slowly
Today:  I went on another 5 km run around my house, just trying to loosen up everything from yesterday, and keeping up my form for SF.  IT's going to be a long way but we're making it there bit by bit.

Tommorow is a rest day for me, and I'm greatly looking forward to it, hopefully I'll be able to do some of my longer runs. 

~Cheers

The story of bike names

So a funny thing that I've noticed is that we as a society like to name our possessions, cars, computers etc.  I've been contemplating what to name my bike for a while and last night it got it's name courtesy of Kelly.  So here is the name.......... "The Slut".

Now with all names for bikes, there's usually a story behind it.  My bike is made by BMC and it's called the Road Racer SL01.  Now we had thrown the bikes up on the roof rack and Kelly was thinking man Kel, why on earth do you have such profanity on your bike.  The top portions of the 0 and the 1 were kinda cut off, but you sould still see the S and the L, and therefore that is my how bike got her name "The Slut".  The bike on the left is another friend's bike.

My brother's bike is quite green and her name is Fiona.  Like princess fiona from shrek who is superbly green. So that is the story of my bike finally getting her name after many months of riding.  This actually isn't the first time that it's been brought out that it looks like my top tube has the word "slut" written across it.  How did no one at BMC's visual department catch that, oh well.

So thanks again to Kelly for finally officially naming my bike, Anna for arranging an awesome ride out on highwood yesterday, I'll talk about that on Friday.  

~Cheers

*Because a certain someone, not naming any names got angry that I didn't give them due credit, here it is, yes you made the observation, we just never named her that way.... yet

Wishlist: Speedplay Pedals

So I've taken a little bit of a hiatus from this blog, been a little bit busy, little bit tired that and I somewhat forgot to write the saturday post.  But today is the return of posting and the monday wishlist post of stuff I'd love to get if money were no object, but unfortunately it is and therefore I'm only going to be wishing that I had all these cool gadgets and toys.

Today's post is about something that probably doesn't get all that much thought, I mean I didn't give my pedals a whole lot of thought when I got mine.  Find a pair of pedals, if they work, don't spend too much money on them because it can be better spent elsewhere.  So I got a pair of plain old Shimano 105 pedals, I even got them cheaper because Bow Cycle kindly price matched them for me.  It was also before I got my bike that I started following my first team (Cervelo Test Team) and they used these pedals that looked kinda weird.

I mean usually your cleat is relatively small, while the pedal itself is relatively big.  Speedplay reverses this and makes a few claims about it.  They say that it's light, and yes the pedal/cleat system is quite light.  There is a a ton of ground clearance because the pedal is so small, it easily clears the ground.  The contact from the cleat to the pedal is also huge because now you've got that entire platform for your foot from the cleats. 

Other little things is that it's dual sided entry which makes them an absolute joy of just literally being able to mash your foot down and you'll lock in.  Second thing is these pedals don't employ the use of a spring loaded jaw mechanism, but rather is a true locking mechanism.  They say that it's easier to get in/out of and better for your need.  A lot of people that I've talked to say otherwise, but hey that's their marketing department trying to make a sell on you. 

The other thing is because of how speedplays are built, there is a TON of customisation and I mean a ton.  Like a dealer fit kit has different size spindles, float, cleat adjustment, shims, everything that you could ever want/need.  And they're also highly rebuildable, like you can literally rebuild an entire speedplay unless you've snapped the spindle off.

Both my brother and I have scratched the hell out of our pedals from various encounters with the pavement and this probably could've been prevented with fancy schmancy pedals.  The other thing is you can get various materials for what the pedal spindle is made out of and that allows you to have a pretty fluid sliding scale for prices which is sweet.

Last of all, last year Garmin bought Metrigear and there looks like there might be a speedplay pedal that can do power measurement too.  That my friends would be AWESOME

~Cheers

Training Updates - June 9, 2011

This week has been a little bit of a disaster for both of us, partially because of certain upcoming exams for one and then a giant dose of road rash for me.  As you may have heard me mumble about earlier, I have had yet another intimate encounter with the road, and I can't say it was consensual or enjoyable for that fact.

Jess
This week has been super busy for jess and she's been busy with work so running's taken a little bit of a back seat.  It's not too bad she's still got time before her marathon and she is putting time in running and some time biking so she's still staying active, just not doing as much running as a schedule prescribes.

Kel
I actually had not too bad of a week..... kinda.  I managed to go for a long 16k run on Saturday with Edward and Dana and they're really good runners, but we were all hurting from one thing or another so we took it nice and slow.  Sunday was supposed to be another run but got distracted by running errands.  Monday I went out for a 60 k bike ride and just when I was almost home, I hit a hole and went flying and then landed on my shoulder and have been out of commission for a little bit.  Today however I spent an hour on the rollers, which are unbelievably tough, but it was good to get the legs pedaling again.  Not a whole lot of pain, but my shoulder and left side of the body is still kind of stuff.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back into running again, it's alright because my running plan kinda had an extra week built in, I just didn't think it would be used resting although hey it might have been meant to happen.

Review: Sharpie Liquid Pencil

You guys might have remember some rumblings about how excited I was to find a liquid pencil.  I was pretty stoked about this because I've tried some pretty cool pencils in the past, and I am a little bit of a stationary snob, I will completely admit that.  I've tried pencils that automagically eject lead as you write.  This was actually really sweet because it kept it at the same height while it went along which was cool.  I have one that allows you to shake the pencil and it'll eject the lead.  This is essentially the same as clicking and if anything it's probably worse for the lead and will cause it to break more often.  Enter the Sharpie Liquid Pencil

So I actually didn't use this pencil for very long for two very big reasons.  First off is that it doesn't actually write like a pen, it's kinda hit and miss and doesn't always roll your liquid onto the head and onto the paper.  The problem with this is that you'll be writing and then mid word it'll be like hey, JK not going to write.  So that's problems number one.  With a pen it's almost something that is kinda expected when it happens and it's not a huge deal, just go back and redo it.  But with lead on the other hand in plain old mechanical pencils, it's just going to keep on writing and there you go.  So that's big problem number one.

Problem number two goes more to what sharpie is all about.  When somebody says Sharpie you undoubtedly think about permanent markers and I do/did too.  I've come to realize this isn't quite true as Ethanol does a great job of stripping Sharpie's right off (But that's what ethanol resistant markers are for).  So when you write in pencil, for the most part it's pretty permanent, I mean sure it smudges but I mean it's relatively permanent till you take an eraser to it.  So I was writing along that night and was already thinking hey it's not writing great, but hey it's a new thing maybe it'll get better as time goes.  It's about this time that my brother shouts from downstairs that this pencil is erasable just like they claimed, only problem is that it's erasable.....without and eraser.  And you're sitting there thinking well how is that possible.  Well when you rub normal pencil it smudges, rub this liquid pencil and it......disappeared.  Now I know they say that it's permanent after 3 days but I mean you're inevitably going to be shuffling papers a little bit and having pencil that disappears is not good, at all. 

The last thing which is a deal, but not a deal breaker is that these pencils although amazingly cool and awesome are not cheap at all, they run something like 3 bucks each.  So I mean they're not cheap, but if they wrote as good as normal pens, and were actually permanent it wouldn't be that bad.  So until they figure those thing, it's back to gold old plain pens and pencils for me.... well plain ish.

~Cheers

Bike Rollers

So last night I had another unfortunate encounter with the pavement, and maybe it could've been prevented with a little bit more work on the rollers which is the topic of today's post.  Now you can use the trainer to help out with riding during the winter and it's really good to get a nice quick hard workout in, but the problem with those is that because your back wheels is essentially hooked onto a very stable platform that allows you to sprint.....HARD. And not absolutely go flying off your bike.

So you might be asking what are rollers? Well they literally are just a set of rollers, that you rest your wheels on , and then you pedal and it'll spin the bike and because you're not hooked up to anything you will have to balance on your bike and pedal so it helps to build up the muscles that stabilize you on the bike. 

So as you can see that these rollers are pretty minimalist, there's nothing much more than a two rods, 3 cylinders, and an elastic.  So I've ridden a few times on rollers, fallen once or twice, almost fell many more times and spent a whole lot less time actually upright on them :).  I am lucky that I had a friend who had a spare pair of rollers they no longer wanted and I was thus able to inherit.  So for all those that bike, I would definitely recommend a set of these because it can do wonders for pedal stroke. 

So lets talk a bit about my experiences.....if I had to sum it up in one word.... HARD.  Wow I couldn't actually even pedal on my bike without having to hold on to a wall.  I highly recommend doing it in the door frame, because that way you have something to hold onto and what not.  If in doubt, pedal faster, because the parabolic motion will help to stabilise you.  But until then I'm back to nursing some awesome road rash, hopefully I'll be able to go back out onto the bike, or at the very least pop onto the rollers soon.

~Cheers

Week in Review June 4, 2011

So as you've probably realized I tend to be really all over the place and write a bunch of little sentence fragments.  I also always have these little things that kinda just crop up and don't really make a full post so they just usually never make it to a full post.  But hopefully with this weekly review I will be able to put them in, and there can be a quick recap of what I've written this week.

So here it is, a nice small summarizing Saturday post, a look at what's happened, cool random things and maybe if I have not gotten distracted maybe what we will do next week. This week has been nice and eventful partially because of the marathon and now we're back into training once again

Posts this week
Monday - Wishlist: Fi'zik:k Arione Saddle

Tuesday - When the best laid plans fall apart
Wednesday - Review: ZipVit Race Belt
Thursday - Training Updates
Friday -  Race Report: Scotiabank Calgary Marathon

Random Notes
A friend of mine whose a fantastic cyclist, Julie Beveridge took her first french cup win last week, super classy solo win.

Alberta Contador did win the Giro, he really has no equal right now

I'm going running today with a couple other people.  This all stemmed from a facebook conversation.  We have named nicknamed ourselves (Edward Dana and I) Speedy McGee, Out of Shape Girl and Slowpoke respectively.  I'll let you know how it goes guys

~Cheers

Race Report: Scotiabank Calgary Marathon

Sunday May 29, 2011 7:00 AM
The horn blows and we're off..... but lets rewind a little bit

Friday May 27, 2011
So the prep for a marathon usually starts off a lot earlier than just race day.  Some people say that you should start drinking more water the week before, but I usually drink enough water as it stands, it just becomes a lot more important in these days before.  So here I was drinking lots of water making sure I wasn't thirsty

Saturday May 28, 2011
This was a day that I definitely felt quite fat as all I was doing was sitting there, and eating.  Even Ken was like man is all you're doing sitting and eating? Ya pretty much.  Because you want to make sure you're not tapping into any of your energy reserves.  That also creates a slight problem because your last run that you want to do you don't want to go too deep.  So nice short run to make sure the legs were all nice and ready to go, had some good pasta which I have my mom to thank for that.  It was also this night that I was stupid and ate some spicy soup.  Absolutely fantastic soup, but wrong time to have it.

Sunday May 29, 2011
This day started quite early with me eating MOOOAARRRRR, I probably could've scaled back the food a little bit but I mean hey I did it last year and it seemed to work alright without me getting too hungry so we'll do it again this year right.  I woke up at 4, ate some more pasta and some Slim Fast (I can't remember if I've talked about it, but if I haven't I shall soon it's a great recovery drink).  Went back to sleep and then I woke up at 6 to have one last snack and sip on some gatorade before the race and that gets us all the way to start of the race....7 AM

7 AM
The horn goes off, and man the organizing committee has absolutely no imagination just like every other race committee.  What song would you play to get all the runners motivated before a race in the morning?  Clearly some music from BEP is warranted, and what other song then Let's get retarded, but of course they wouldn't play the real version, and they played radio edit version "Lets get started".  Thank you calgary marathon for fulfilling the obligatory cliche song to play before the race.... greatly appreciated.....NAWT.

So another gripe that I have with races is that all too often people are horribly out of place with their seeding in the race.  And we absolutely love it when somebody stops about 100 meters after the line comes to a complete stop right in the middle of all of us running.  We absolutely love it guys, we enjoy nothing more than filtering through all of your trying to get ourselves into where we want to be.  So please guys if you can't run that pace, or at least hold that pace for a reasonable distance, do not plop yourselves there. 

Alright enough griping now and it's all about the race.  This year I have to say I trained a whole lot more than I did last year, this was partly due to the fact that I didn't get swine right in the middle of training which forced me to take a very awesome and completely un-wanted break in the middle of marathon training and from there I never really ever recovered and thus ran a very painful marathon last year.  This year though I was going to shoot for a relatively ambitious 3:30, that might have been slightly over ambitious but hey I was going to target something around that pace.  When I hit mile 6 my stomach decided to play unhappy camper and this really happened at probably one of the more inopportune times because I was feeling good, I was nailing a nice 8:20-8:30 per mile pace.  But of course stomach problems hit.  So I walked a bit, rested up and ran again, but my stomach would have none of it, so the next two miles were a disaster.  From there I was ~240 seconds behind schedule, not a huge deal, I had 20 miles to make up that kind of time, 22 seconds, ya I could claw some of that back, maybe not all of it.  So got back on track and was like I'm going to do this, and proceeded to pretty much claw back 40 of those seconds over the next 4 miles, not quite where I wanted but hey now I was only 200 seconds behind right?..... WRONG  Stomach decided to play unhappy camper for the next 2 miles, and surprisingly nailed 2 miles both at 10.04 on the dot, totally not trying to becaues I wasn't feeling good.  The worst part about this was this was after I had managed to run down a TON of people coming up Shaganappi Trail and then looping around Varsity Acres.  It was at this point my body was finding it unbelievably hard to make use of anything that I was taking in and as you know that once your stomach is not aggreeing to play ball you're done.  From there my stomach would feel good, and then feel bad, good bad good bad, and I was just absolutely done for at that point.  It become a question of not can I finish, and how can I finish.

I talked earlier this week about what to do when shit goes wrong and I started reasoning with myself, Kel one more mile then walk for a minute, and it's amazing when people cheer you on.  Speaking of which holy crap there were a ton of people that ran Boston out cheering on the course, it's kinda cool to see that so thanks to the people I will probably never get to meet but helped me through.  I hung onto the 4 hour pace group for quite a while, met a really nice guy from Ontario, who was trying to run a marathon in every province.  Thank god he picked ours over edmonsuck, but that helped for quite a bit because running with a group you don't feel as bad, it's a collective effort moving forward.  This year I actually could run down Shag, slowly but I could run down shag and it felt good unlike last year where I was absolutely hurting like no other.  It was cool running along memorial because TONS of people cheer you on, encourage you, give you motivation, they tell you you're looking strong (Even if you're looking like crap) and it actually does help. 

The last stretch when I was 10k out, I started doing some time distance calculations and was like 4 hours is a very reasonable goal to hit and I can totally do it, it's only 10k common Kel you've run a 1 hour 10k for the past.... umpteen years so off I trotted.  I'm really glad I brought along some extra gels because even though I probably didn't NEED them, it was nice to have something sweet in the closing bit and just putting on the after burners.  So finishing straight I was starting to hurt but I had to put in a last kick, and so I did sprinting to the end, eating up a bunch of people that didn't have a finishing kick.  At the end yeah I hurt, but I wasn't absolutely and completely drained like I was last year.  It's a nice feeling that I didn't hurt and could actually walk but that's because I couldn't run as hard as I wanted.

Cool things from this race include:
My name is apparently Kelving.... which is absolutely hilarious because if you know my last name is Ng.  The Ng is pronounced like "Ing".  So come at the finish line when the announcer calls out people's names he was like Kelvingng.......errrrr 20 years old from Calgary.  It definitely brought a smile to my face.

Second thing is the timing chip is not so much a timing chip as it is a timing tag(s). Its on your race bib and you MUST wear your race bib for it to work. See those strips on the sides, and the one on the front at the bottom?

So I mean how was the race overall, well it was nice, good weather, nice to learn where I stand for my next marathon, and we're back to training again.  Thats going well so I'll keep you guys posted on the raod to the next one

~Cheers

Training Updates - June 2, 2011

This week has been a relatively big week for me, a little bit of training, a whole lot of racing, and a little bit training bookending said racing.

Jess
Training is going well, runs are getting longer, I think I'm probably going to be running with her hopefully in the next week or so and we can bring you more updates on what she's doing.  Her bike's still not quite setup yet so she's putting in an awful lot of time on stationary bikes at the gym, don't know how she does it, I think those seats are the worlds most uncomfortable ones ever.

Kel
This week was my marathon, and it didn't really go too particularly well, I'll talk more about it tommorow, but I didn't run too too much.  Did a short tuneup run on Saturday to open up the legs and make sure they're good to go for Sunday.  Sunday was my marathon and then monday was much welcome rest day.  I was back at it on tuesday though with a very slow (11:15) 2 mile run, but I was actually surprised I was even able to run after the gong show that was last year.  Wednesday was mothers nature day of pissing on us, with a crap ton of rain and thus I just spent around 20 minutes on the bike rollers.  It's actually quite difficult, I'll talk about that too sometime.  Today was day 4 after the fact, and you know my legs don't actually feel too bad, but I can definitely tell that I still need some more time for recovery.  This week looks like I'll be hopefully getting back into the groove of everything. But until then...

~Cheers

Review: ZipVit Race Belt

So this week, looks like lots of posts are going to be dedicated to crap that happened from the marathon, and today is not exception to that.  I bought this race belt back in April to deal with the awesome and elegant solution that I had last year when I had to pack 8 gels for the marathon.

Now during any marathon, or really and kind of road race you're going to see aid stations that usually have water.  For shorter races that's all that you need, you have no need for gels or gatorade or stuff like that.  Half marathons and marathons will usually provide you with gatorade and/or gels.  The only problem with that is when you have nutrition snobs like me that are very specific with what they down and are worried about running into problems you end up bringing your own food.  Last year I found a brilliant way to carry gels, although unbelievably unelegant.  It involved clipping gels to the waistband of my running tights.  I used...."purse clips" I have no idea how to describe them other than that, but here's a picture.

The brilliant thing about this last year was that it was super cold, like snowing cold. So by having them up against me, they were kept nice and warm and were not thick as molasses when I had to actually consume them.  This year I thought about getting a race belt and there's a bunch out there but frankly a lot of them just have to much crap on there.  Pockets for cellphones water bottles etc etc.  The zipvit belt that I got is nice because it's minimalist.  Gels and race number, that's it.

It's got loops for up to 10 gels, although I only ran with 9. I had put my racebelt on that morning, number and all but then made a last minute change and actually wore a jacket in which I can stuff all my gels, and then proceeded to put it under the coat.  The gels stay firmly in place, are easy to pull when you need to grab them, and putting on a race number is quite easy.  Just take a hole punch, make a hole, clip....done deal.

Some little niggles that I had with this belt included the fact that belt although comfortable, does seem to bounce a little bit more than I expected.  This probably could've been solved if I cinched it a little bit tighter and this would have prevented the problem.  I think it could have also been helped by having some rubber or silicon grippers on the inside where the gels are held.  The last little thing that I was slightly annoyed at was the fact that I lost one of the buttons that holds the race number on, as I am now unable to affix my race number to the belt.

It's pretty cheap like 5 bucks, so I mean not the end of the world that it's like that but I'm glad I got the belt, made carrying around gels much easier than last year.

~Cheers