New Shoes?....... come sooner please

So I've been running with the same model of shoes for the past..... 3 years now? They're the wave creation from Mizuno, and I've probably written a post (or 3 about them) and for good measure, here's another one.  They've finally release pictures and some details about the next iteration, the 13's, and I already like the shoe and I haven't even stepped a single foot into one yet.  So first off, what do they look like?  Well they've gone a little bit less shouty this year than they usually do

Mens

 

The silver shoe almost reminds of those gillette fusion commercials where orange comes flying on one side and then blue comes on the other and they join and you get a pretty explosion.  I'm not quite sure how I feel about the big holed mesh.

Womens

 As you can see in the crimson version of these mizuno designers must have run out of money, because that is yellow in the mens shoe is blue on the women's shoe, nicely done.  They seem kinda subdued again, but hey you never know they might be super flashy in real life.

So whats different? Well they've made them lighter again which is nice, and apparently the shoe is a little bit more flexbile in the heal to toe transition.  I shall let you know when I manage to get my paws on a pair of these.

~Cheers

Hills hurt....Couches kill

I was actually talking with my brother last night about the need to take a break after a season of running, and I ended up taking like a month off, and got back into it, but then I took another break, just because I've been really busy.  However I went for a run today, and I cannot remember the last time I have felt that awful after running:
a) less than 5 k
b) running it at a pace that is around 10 min miles

I came to realization, you never forget how to run, it's a basic concept that we have ingrained into use from caveman times.  You also never forget how to run fast, also from caveman times.  What does happen is that your body gives you a biggggggggg screw you if you've taken a lot of time off and then decided a brilliant idea would be to attempt to go for a fast-ish paced run. I got a major stitch at mile 1, then another one at mile 1.3 and then it just kinda kept on hurting till I got back to my house.

  Guess my goal trying to swim twice, ride twice and run once and stretch after all activities kinda flopped.

I swam once, rode twice, and ran once.  I did however stretch lots, which is a good thing because man was I ever sore when I got my massage on tuesday.

~Cheers

Old habits die hard

I just got back from a massage appointment, and it just got me thinking to most athletes, and even an age old adage.  "Old habits die hard" I never ever quite stretched enough, never really worked enough on my core, or functional strengthening to prevent injuries, and even though I've tried to make conscious efforts to change all of that.  Does it change anything if the things that I'm supposed to be doing are actually good for me?  Not really, it requires a buy in on your part to know that what you're doing will result in tangible benefits.  It's the same idea with a coach, putting your faith in them to do the right thing to maximize performance.  So what is the whole point of this post, well it's 1 part sharing where I've been, and 1 part possibly putting this out in the internet so I follow through with what I say I'm going to do.

I've talked a little bit about stretching in the past, and I really am not here to say that it helps prevent injury etc because that's highly debated.  What I do know for sure is that life is better with stretching (even ignoring the injury aspects of it).  You can be strong as an ox, but if you have a very finite range in which you can exert that power, than it's not particularly useful.  I never really thought about it, but thanks to Bill, something that's so obvious is now just a little bit more on mind.  The other thing is that if your muscles are in tip top shape, and constructed in the linear fashion that they're supposed to be, then you can clear whatever metabolic waste you have built up more efficiently.  If however you have a bunch of scar tissue, criss crossed linkages from over exertion/under recovery than your endurance is also compromised.  So that's kind of the short version of it

What am I doing, well I'm going to stretch after every workout (we'll see how this goes, I'm notorious for this in swimming because after you're done swimming you just want to get out and hit the showers).  I've used this excuse in the past, and really it shouldn't be one, spend like 5-10 minutes stretching, it'll do wonders.  I'll do core work at least once a week (this is also great for not falling off your bike once spring comes around).  Lastly this isn't so much related to stretching, but I'll try to put in some specific workouts every week:
2 swims
1 roller session
1 interval session
1 run
1 core workout
Lots of of stretching.

Now that it's out here on the interwebs, hopefully it'll keep me a little bit more accountable.

~Cheers

Food Time: French Toast at Vendome Cafe

So I really like food (it's probably one of the reasons why I was a little bit of a fatty as a kid) and I've found some pretty cool places to have meals around time.  Hopefully this will be a section where I can share some of those place with you, and what I found was tasty to eat.

The place in question is called Vendome and they bill themselves as a touch of Europe in the heart of Sunnyside.  It's actually found in the vendome building which has a bit of a storied history (of which I read on a plaque and have promptly forgotten).  You can find their website here, they don't have a whole lot, except some pics and an address (940 2 Avenue Northwest  Calgary, AB).  They're open 7 days a week for "breakfast, coffee, lunch and brunch".  I went for breakfast with Jeff and Carm.

Overall the experience was actually really good, they have an open kitchen so you can see the chef making your food. Even though there's only one cook, the time we had to wait for our food wasn't long at all.  The downside to having an open kitchen is that your clothes smell of the place after you leave.  I had the french toast which was actually really tasty.  It was french toast with caramelized bannanas, whiped cream, and cream cheese and cinnamon.  When my plate arived I saw a mountain of cubed french toast and while I was slightly skeptical but much to my surprise it was good. The batter is adequately crispy but the inside is still soft and moist.  I would've liked the bannans to be a little bit more caramlized because they ended up being a little bit more mushy than caramalized.  Note to all other people who would follow the logic that when something is hot and you want to eat it, you blow on it to cool down.  This doesn't work when you have icing sugar dusted on top of your food as you will also dust your neighbors food with icing sugar (in this case, eggs benny).  So the big question is would I go back and eat it? Absolutely, it was a good price, and huge portions, and tasty to boot.

Jeff and Carm had the benny and the fritata.  The benny had a twist because it used black forest ham instead of back bacon.  The egg was a little bit too well cooked and wasn't quite runny.  They also used a kind of bread (it looks kinda like a triangle, the stuff foccacia sandwiches come on?)  But overall benny was good.  Carms fritata was apparently well cooked and wasn't rubbery, I wouldn't know, haven't had any before.

So vendome cafe is definitely a place to try out for breakfast, I really liked the french toast, the portions were good, service was quick, and prices were reasonable ($10-$14).

~Cheers

Race Report: Run without Borders

So this was a race that I did for the first time last year and it's mean to benefit doctors without borders.  It was cold last year, if anything it was even colder this year.  It was a glorious minus 11 degrees when I got out of the car to head into Eau Claire.  An amusing anecdote was that when the race marshall asked everybody to start heading out to the start line, everybody went out one set of doors and then waited in front of the second set till we were prodded on our way out. 

The Race Itself
I am not a short distance runner, by any means, I can run 100 meters at max effort and that's about all the ability I have for short distance running, however this wasn't the most serious of races and I somehow found myself at the front of the start gates.  If any of you guys have run the mother's day race you'll know that thte throngs of people make it difficult to get a good time unless you're at the front.  Right from the get go two guys just hit the front and went like bats out of hell.  I had the brilliant idea that yeah I'll follow them I'm sure to get swallowed up by the people who really are racing for a decent time.  Weird thing was that it never did happen, I kept on running at the front, I could see the two guys ahead of me, but there wasn't a chance in hell I was going to catch them.  If you look at the race route here, it was close to the 14th st bridge that I got passed by med school chic (for lack of better name).  On the way back I saw there was a guy in a white shirt that seemed to be gaining on me.... joy. This was pretty much the first half of the race, very solitary running.

The way back however when the guy in the white shirt caught up, I heard some very vigorous breathing, nothing quite like a snorting guy bearing down on you to motivate you while running.  I turned around and took a closer look, he was wearing a deadmonton losers jersey.  Guess I really had no choice but to beat him now.  Double the motivation.  Being a longer distance runner than 5k, I knew that it was probably unlikely that I could beat anyone in a straight up sprint for the finish.  So I started to throw down some little accelerations forcing him to follow me.  If he was going to beat me? I was going to make him work for it.  At this point, I've already lost the feeling in my face for the better part of the race due to the cold, but my hands werent' numb yet so I still felt pain, another reason to run faster and get back to the warmth of eau claire.  With the last 200m or so in sight, with one last 90 degree right, I decided it's now or never and just broke out into a full out sprint.  Thankfully I had a little bit of traction and didn't go slip sliding on the last turn (although that did happen on the course) and managed to pull out ~15 meter gap on the guy (says Amy).  It helps when you know that you're in pain and going through hell, so is the guy running behind you, so just keep on going right though it.  Finishing time was ~22.41 (it wasn't officially timed).  Cool thing was race marshall was like I need your name and bib number (Sweeeeettttttt, oilers guy asked him if they needed his, response? No.....DENIED). 

The last part of them trying to get my name (which they still screwed up when announcing it) and bib number probably took a good 5 minutes, mostly because I was just completely spent so thanks to Amy for telling the marshall my name and bib number. So at the end of the day, froze my butt off, ran harder than I can remember in a very long time, and got some sweeet swagg to show for it.  It's a third place, but hey it's my first and only medal for running which I think is pretty sweet. Thanks for reading.

~Cheers

A return, finally!

So this blog has kind of been in a coma lately, there hasn't been much happening, but I think I'm going to start writing in it again, I honestly kind of miss it.  So in the next week or so, I'll be telling you about a few things (in no particular order)
-a sweet cafe I went to this morning for breakfast that makes a different style of french toast (but it was still plenty good)
-a cool piece of software that makes training suck a little bit less
-really cool goggles that seem to fly in the face of all logic
-training updates
-a race report (Run without borders)

So hopefully tommorow I'll get out that race report, there's something exciting to share in that if you haven't already heard about it.

~Cheers