A Mohawk, a Moustache and a lot 'o fun!

I have a feeling this one’s gonna be long, but it’s 6:30PM now and I start prac tomorrow morning.

As my taper week drew longer I started to get all the usual self-doubt and nervousness that goes along with tapering. Then I went to pick up our car on Saturday morning and the one they showed me had a brutally small trunk. 4 people and a bike are travelling to Canberra and you give me THIS?! It all worked out though, I just had to take off both wheels and the seat. I should mention that Friday evening the Mohawk was carved, and the following morning Jared carved himself one fine moustache, and the theme for the weekend was created, M&M. Anyways, we got to Canberra with no dramas this time! Straight up 3 hours with like 4 pee breaks and 1 stop for directions (but we WERE on the right track anyhow). We got into Canberra and went straight down to the race site so I could check in and get my bib number and cap (had to do that between 12 and 2). Then we went back to the hotel for just after noon but we couldn’t check in til after two so we went to the Australian War Memorial (museum). Real cool stuff actually, lots of real artifacts (no shit) and we saw some soldiers’ journals from I believe December 14th, 1914, during WWI. Crazy, not unlike grampa’s. After the museum we headed straight over the Australian Institute of Sport for a guided tour (by a paralympic swimmer) of the facilities. That was pretty awesome too to see where all these elite athletes train. Wouldn’t that be the life, genetics are a bitch. J So anyways, completely random but when the guy was asking where everyone was from a couple of other girls in our little group (like 15 of us total) were from Ottawa! Nuts, didn’t get their full story though. Oh well. After the museum we headed back and checked in, pounded some pasta and then went out for groceries, drove up to some lookout, that sucked ass, and they wanted to charge you for the good views. After that we drove the bike course real quick to give me an idea of what it was all about (2 x 40k loop, so we only had to drive 40k to know it). Got back to the hotel, ate a little more and watched some home alone 2 and retired for the evening. Out like a light around 9PM. Up to take a pee at 2:45AM and couldn’t get back to bed, crazy race thoughts going through my head. I laid there til 4AM when my alarm went off and got up to do all the normal race morning pizzazz. The morning was pretty uneventful and we got out only 5 minutes late! Well done Lee and Julia!! J

Got to race site at 7AM and got all my stuff into transition and set up. Went out for a quick ride on the bike, and a quick jaunt in the runners. All is good. Got the wetsuit on and headed down to the terribly cold water to figure out this poorly marked 2.2K course. Got a half decent idea of the route and figured I could follow some other people as well. I know some people switched to the duathlon (we had the option because of the water temperature being so cold) but our group wasn’t too too big, but hopefully I could find some mediocre swimmers to follow. J Well we got to goin’ and soon enough the fast guys were just GONE. I followed their splash and the yellow buoy way off in the distance as best I could for as long as possible. Finally I noticed a couple more guys around and we pretty much worked the rest of the course together (turns out there were 4 of us total, one just hung at the back the whole time). Out of the water in under 41 minutes! Wicked! This is s low budget race so they just have the dudes with stopwatches and look at your bib number, and he was sitting halfway up the shoot to transition. I was on my bike and on the road by 43:xx. AWESOME! My goal was 45 minutes to on bike time. The guy who was racked right beside me was in my group and we had a quick chat about cold water, numb feet and arm warmers, wished each other good luck and ran out of transition together to each start our 80K ride. Well he went off ahead and I just sorta kept him in my sight. Eventually I got into a rhythm, despite freezing cold muscles, and started picking up my speed and caught up to him and passed him, he said something to me (not sure what) but I just kept on goin’. After about another 5K on an uphill he went by again, but not with much conviction, so I knew I could keep him in my sights for a while and pace off him. Long story short we did this together for 80K of riding. Couldn’t have asked for a better situation, but I GUARANTEE you there was no drafting on either of our behalfs so don’t even go there! I heard his wife tell him he was 15th out of the swim, so I was 16th. Anyways, on the course there’s this sick downhill (a nice longy) where I hit 60K!/hr! And then you have to hit the breaks towards the bottom of it because you go kinda sharp right, cross a bridge and climb a Muskoka-esque hill. Not too bad, but gets ya outta the saddle for a few mins of grindin’. Got up that and there’s a few more rollers on the way out. The rest of the ride is just ROLLIN’ ROLLIN’ ROLLIN’. I definitely underestimated it, thought it was a lot flatter than that, but it was still achievable. It was a mixed bag of country road, city road, city highway and nice parkway, over brides, under bridges, shitty pavement that makes your whole core rattle and pavement as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Long story short (well it wasn’t really short by any means) we moved up to 7th and 8th overall!
It was great to see Tunes, Jerry and Bingy again! A nice little pick me up before 20k of running. The first few k were dedicated to getting into a rhythm and finding the running legs, or something that resemble them. My swimming/riding buddy went out pretty fast and I figured he was just a really good runner so I let him go and before I knew it he had about 200m on me. After a while though he wasn’t getting a bigger lead, we were pretty much just goin’ the same pace. Soon I was AROUND 4:30s and just got in a groove. Caught him after the first lap (10k) and we ran the second lap shoulder to should ALMOST in complete silence, Mark Allen and Dave Scott (sorry to say I was the Mark Allen of the early years). Incredible feeling to just run literally shoulder to shoulder the whole way (almost) for the second lap. We got passed by two people (I think, results aren’t up yet) on the run, but then there was NOONE for a long time after us, and we just pushed each other. I think we just paced each other and kept each other honest the whole way. I felt terrible a couple times and just keeping him on my right shoulder kept me goin’. At 15k I was almost ready to let him go, but just shut my brain up and kept goin’ with him for as long as possible. On a short in and out I saw a guy who was about 350m behind us (that was around 17k). We continued on and at about the 18k mark I just said “I can’t hang with you man, I gotta let ya go”. Bad idea? Maybe in retrospect, but I was feeling kinda terrible and couldn’t hold his pace, and didn’t wanna blow up and lost to him AND have the guy catch me from behind in the last couple k. I let him get away and slowed down a wee bit and just kept checking behind for the next guy. My buddy went out about 30m ahead but again, at 19k I felt good for a second so just “hammered” and slowly reeled him back. As we approached the finishing shoot he had about 10m on me, turned right into the chute and looked back at me sprinting at him and he sprinted down the chute and beat me by about a second! Unbelievable experience to have swam, biked and literally ran the race with him. Again, it was great to see the three amigos at the finish! They were proud of me! Hahaha.... had some water and banana and orange and watermelon. I was 3rd in the 20-29AG! Dunno how many were even in my group, could’ve been 3, but the winner of the race was 20-29 so there were some fasties in my group for sure. It was pretty neat to get a trophy!
After a few minutes I grabbed my stuff from transition, we packed up the car, I changed real quick and then we were on the road, homebound.

I must say the entire weekend was just awesome. Great friends and my best friend in the whole world were there to support me and just have a good time. Can’t thank Jared, Lee and Tunes enough for their support this weekend. Have to thank Michelle Majovsky who always supports me too in these sort of things and have to admit that i thought of her a couple of times out on the run when it was tough, didn’t wanna disappoint her! Thought of mom and dad a lot too, who are probably my biggest supporters apart from of Julia. Definitely gotta give a big shout out to Marco also who was the inspiration for both the Mohawk as well as the overall mental attitude for the weekend. The man sets the bar pretty damn high and I look forward to getting my ass smashed all over Muskoka and Peterborough next year!

3 Days to go

Til race day! They're gonna check the water temp tomorrow and make a final decision about the swim. If it's ~15C the swim will probably proceed, but if they feel it poses a serious health risk to participants then they'll change it to a duathlon and replace my swim with a 5k run before the bike. I'd prefer to swim I think. I wanna race a tri. This morning I went down to that pool at the harbour that you can see when you see the famous Wollongong photo and swam, it ocean water, salty and chilly, but i was wearing my wtsuit so it wasn't half bad. We'll see what they do, either way I can't wait to let 'er rip!

Tomorrow morning I have my last test in this program. Last day at uni. wow. Then we leave Saturday morning and we'll be back and I'll be in prac before I know it! Then 5 short weeks and I'll be a teacher! I'm excited for prac but realize it'll be a lot of work. I really wanna try some different things with the kids and come up with some good ideas.

It's Thursday evening now. Gonna do a little more studying this evening and start preparing for tomorrow and the weekend! Wooooo hooooooooooo!!!!!!

Holla... I'm a schola!

haha. But seriously, I'm getting really good marks this term! So far a 68%, 72% x 2, 74%, 84% x 2 and 85%! Not too shabby eh? I'll say. One more test on Friday and then 5 week prac starting next week! Wow. It's come and gone! Where'd it go? It's crazy, last term is just starting to sink in!

I race this weekend! I'm pretty excited about it as I feel as though I'm really fit and can race fast, so lets keep our fingers crossed!!!!

Also, great email from Aunti Terri out in Perth, sounds like they're gonna take great care of us when we're there! The excitement is starting to build BIG time for this adventure of a lifetime! Christmas on a beach?! Oh ya baby! We'll be somewhere southern Queensland/northern New South Wales by then.

So that's it for today I guess. Onward and upward!

A week's worth

Really? Since Monday. Thanks for the reminder mom!

This week has just been really busy I guess.

Me:
I'm tapering for Canberra, a 2 week taper this week at 12 hours, next week 8 hours plus the race. Bad news was it's looking like it will PROABLY be a duathlon as the water temp is still too cold to go ahead with swims. Kinda crappy, but I still look forward to racing fast on the bike and run.

I've been rockin' through these assignments. Handed in HSIE on Wednesday. Finished PDHPE yesterday (due Monday), Art is more than half due (due Tuesday) Learners with special needs has beens tarted (due Wed) and then I'll study for the test next Friday in Quality Teaching. I'm also still working on ideas for this "Canada" unit for prac. So that's pretty much what I've been doing. Lots of school stuff. Weather this whole week has been crappy-ish. Decent in the morning, but chilly, then clouds over in the afternoon and rains/t-storms over night. People are saying this is the coldest it's been here in forever. Greeeeeeeat.

I'm listening to the sens game right now at the computer lab at school, between lecture and tutorial.

Julia is working her little tail off. Yesterday she started at 6AM and finished after 2PM, over 8 hours on feet at a "go-go-go" pace. She was hamemred by the time she got home, and had a fly in her eye. I made her lunch and she slowly came around, but went to bed uber early.

Last night I watched a show about the gang wars in Melbourne. The real story behind the "Underbelly" tv series.

Not really much more to say. It's just a countdown every day. Every day is a day closer to prac, a day to close to my race, a day closer to being done, a day closer to Ironman and a day clsoer to our travels.

OH! I did get an email from Auntie Terri. Wow, I have a feeling we're going to be SPOILED rotten! She's going to pick us up from the airport, and then has a place booked in or near Busselton. We'll have to buy them a gift or take them out to dinner to thank them!

The Ironman World Championship in Kona is this weekend. 2 days away! I'm excited to follow it. The men's race will be INSANE! So many top guys, past champions and really fast young guys. It'll be really cool. I can't wait to get there one day.

That's it really. What else is there to say? We do groceries most days, walk around and make jokes.

My quality teaching lecturer is a friggin' joke. Absolutely terrible and can't believe she's banking the paycheque she is for the "quality" she puts out.

Another Entry, Another Title

I wonder what will come of all these blog entries. I mean, will we actually read them all, or will it all just end up in a heap somewhere, never to be looked at again? Interesting. Regardless, I've enjoyed writing them to date, it's definitely been one constant all year long!

Today it's crap out, weather wise. Rainy all day. I did a wicked hour and a half on the trainer this morning. REAL hard. 20 minute warm-up, then an hour at ~38km/h! Overall average was 36.3km/hr! Woot woot! The power is there. The taper is on folks!

Jubee worked today. 5 horus @ ~$44/hr! Gotta love public holidays here! she's napping now and then the three musketeers are going to go for a walk. ONE MORE TIIIIIIME!

I got some homework done today. For PDHPE class we have to write up a unit plan. I'm doing one on nutrition! Gonna be for year 5. So far my activities include a crossword (which I made) a nutrition based scategories game (which I made) an advertisement for a healthy food item that they choose, where they have to convince us to buy it, some internet games that I found, a cooking lesson (still in the works) and a diet journal (5 day, that we will analyse).

TODAY I OFFICIALLY REGISTERED FOR IRONMAN WESTERN AUSTRALIA!

It's on! 9 weeks to go. I have my week by week training schedule up on the wall. 9 weeks! I can't wait!

Had a good/quick skype with mom and dad this morning also! Saw Lucas too which is always great! Can't wait to get home and see Sierra!

We have enough airmiles to fly to Vancouver return in low or high season for one of us. 1700 more and we can both go in low season. :) We'll get there in a year or so! We were also thinking Newfoundland though. not sure yet. :) I know I know, we need to get home and start paying off debt, don't worry, the priorities are in check.

Ok that's it.

Oh yeah, maybe skype Ray tonight.

October-bike-fest!

Holy, it's Ocotober 3rd! I can't believe it's already October! I mean I can, but it's just all flying by! I'm sure I'll have written that 100 times before we leave, but seriously, this year is like a blurr!

I got some real good school work done yesteutay (no training) and today had an amazing workout. Yesterday, Jared and I joined Lee on her way up to Sydney to drop her mom off at the airport. I had Lee stop off at a store in Taren's Point to pick up some bodyglide, as they don't really stock it in many places.

Today I had one of those workouts that I'm sure I'll look back on when I'm really hurtin' in a couple of weeks, or more importantly in December. It was 3.5 hours on the trainer, then a 50 minute run. I had a bunch of movies prepped on youtube (cuz I don't get internet in the basement) and some other podcasts downloaded to listen to. Long story short, after an hour it was all out the window and all I had for 2.5 horus was my Ipod! That was a mental grind. But I got through it and ended up with 121km on the bike, then immediately went out for my 50 minute run. Light rain, nice and cool, perfect for running. I felt awesome. For having done that much cycling, I felt fantastic! I couldn't believe it. Makes me real excited for Canberra.

Then, Jared and I went to the Library (returned 5 DVDs, took out 5 more (3 on soccer, one on Perth and one on 9/11) and to Wooly's and the Reject Shop.

now I'm just eatin', gonna do some homework for a bit then Jared's coming back over and we're going to watch that 9/11 movie. Should be coooool!

ok. That's it. I'm starin' at a big ole bowl of pasta with cotto and pepper. DELIGHTFUL!

It's not about the Bike

That's the title of a Lance Armstrong book. talking about hi fight with cancer, putting things in perspective. Meaning that cycling isn't the be all and end all of life. I just had the biggest bike volume month ever. Last year was my biggest ever, at just under 29 hours, this month I did 37.5 hours. That includes a 5 day stretch that we were in Gold Coast and I COULDN'T bike. 37.5 hours and almost 1300km in September, plus all my running and swimming. 37.5 hours in the dungeon, just me, my thoughts, some youtube videos, some good tunes and a few podcasts of interviews with ironman athletes. A 3:00 ride, a 3:15 ride and a 4:00 ride were amongst those, all with at least a mile of running afterwards, just to see how the legs will feel. I find for triathlon, the more I bike, the better I run in the race. Basically, if my legs are less tired after cycling I can run better. Makes sense no? Since mid May I've put in a total of 126.5 hours of cycling, 4038km. ALL on the trainer. Not a single km of that was on the road. WOW! I WILL do some riding on the road before my race, just to get the feel of the bike a bit better. I do ride a mountain bike to and from school at least once a day, that's about 5k per day every day of just commuting, but I don't count that as training. So at least I have that feel for the road still. I rode the bike a bit outside today and it felt awesome, but I DO want to get in a ride or two of at least an hour or two to really tune into how I will feel in the race. I have so many memories of training on the bike. My bedroom in Stittsville, basement in Stittsville, pretty sure even the family room in Stittsville once or twice, the workout room at Daly, Living room in Huntsville, Shillolos' basement in Katrine, now here. Incredible! I love it! I just can't believe all these adventures I've been on over the past three years with this training. So many memories of running, cycling and swimming in different places, not to mention the races and adventures. I've ran all over Ottawa and area, Huntsville, Katrine, Penticton, Peterborough, Florida, Bali, Sydney to Wollongong, Blue Mountains, Gold Coast, Canberra etc etc... I've ran on countless treadmills. Each experience means something different. I have memories from Stittsville treadmill, YMCA treadmill, UO Sports Complex treadmills, Shillolos' treadmill, Deerhurst treadmill, UOW treadmill... frig, I'm like a Gerbil!

I'm babbling now, and it's not even relevant to this Aussie adventure... I just enjoy reflecting on this stuff that has consumed my life over the past 3.5 years, because looking at where I've been and what I've accomplished helps with dreaming about where I might go from here. Speaking of which, I MAY skype with Ray tomorrow or Friday, we'll see though. :)

Tomorrow morning I'm meeting Jared at 6:50AM at the lights at Bourke and Flinders. We'll ride over to the gym together and he'll hit weights while I swim for an hour, in my wetsuit! My brand new wetsuit that I WON almost exactly a year ago! It'll be good to practice swimming in the wetsuit, as I will be racing in it in a couple of weeks!

Tomorrow is October. HOLY CRAP! A little over 7 weeks and I'll be a bonifide teacher!