Rainy Day Ride

November in Vancouver means rain, rain and more rain. That's okay, it'll stop. Maybe not until March, perhaps April, but it will stop.

The rain does make it difficult to get out the door. Today I decided to sleep in, which was a nice change but a late start usually makes it even harder to get myself going. Today was no exception. I turned on the TV while eating breakfast and got hooked into watching downhill skiing, yet another distraction. Finally it was almost noon, I'd seriously mulled setting up the trainer but my dislike for the trainer trumped my dislike for courting hypothermia so I got myself together (as in four layers of warm and [hopefully] dry gear) and headed out.

Biking at this time of year is a bit nutty - it's cold and wet and dark and drivers are seriously distracted. As I haven't been biking a lot lately I'm pretty wary in traffic so I didn't get up much speed until I hit 4th and Highbury and rode along the beach. It's really beautiful there in this weather, best of all there's hardly anyone around so I practically had the road to myself. It was cold though so getting to the hill up to UBC was great as it meant I could work up enough energy to get feeling back in my hands. My hands didn't warm up much the first time up so I turned around at the top and headed down so I could try again.

After the sixth time up Spanish Banks Hill I figured my hands were warm enough and this was potentially getting silly so perhaps I should continue on. I rode around UBC and found a new route I like and will probably do on a regular basis - Marine Drive to the Arthur Lang but going under the bridge rather than over then ride on a road parallel to Marine (Kent?) to Ontario and back home. Heading up Ontario was great - 20 blocks of climbing to warm up again. After that it was a bit of a slog and my hands went from cold to numb to painful but it was only about 15 minutes to home so not too bad.

I have no idea how far or how long I rode for, my bike computer died and I'm putting off buying a new one until I have other expenses out of the way, but it was a fun day.

I came home to read a post on motivation by fellow club member (LETC's Male Triathlete of the Year - congrats Rob!). I'm pretty sure I fall into the intrinsically motivated camp, I'm certainly competitive but that's not what is most rewarding for me in triathlon. Despite the complaints about the weather I love being out on my bike, if I could find decent gloves and glasses that don't fog up every time I stop I'd be happy riding for four or five hours right now.

My fall project - straightening out finances

Ever wonder where your money goes? I have and finally got fed up enough to do something about it. I guess this has been my big project for the Fall.

As background, I had an expensive Spring this year. I paid full rent for a two bedroom place for two months while I tried to find a new roommate and figure out what I wanted to do for a living situation then shelled out for moving costs. Prior to that I had my "rubber ducky" debt - every time I thought I'd started getting control and paying it down it would pop up again, like a rubber duck pushed under bath water - so this just added to it. It was frustrating to see all the money going to paying off (or in this case not paying off) debt when I could spend it on so many more worthwhile things.

At one point I was even convinced Visa was messing with me as there was no way I could be that fiscally irresponsible.

I tried budgeting but kept forgetting things like haircuts and bus passes so I was always way off.

Tracking backwards didn't seem to work either, so I decided to start tracking forwards, noting every single purchase I made and every penny I spent when and as I spent it.

I started in the beginning of September, initially writing things down in a notebook then I graduated to a spreadsheet, on which I then included my budget and debt tracking and now I have the urge to create account codes and pie charts (I need to spend less time with our company Accountant!).

By tracking what I spend every pay period I could more accurately estimate my budget for the next and I could see where my money was going. It's been interesting, not least because the desire to buy a chocolate bar is now frequently (but not always) outweighed by the desire not to have to write the purchase down - who knew laziness could work in my favour!

What has been far more interesting is discovering that a good budget actually works: my spending is in check without greatly impacting my lifestyle and, mostly importantly, my debt has shrunk appreciably and should be non-existent in the near future.

This is probably a terribly dull post for most readers, especially as this is ostensibly a tri training blog, but as the child of a banker this is a fairly big deal for me. And freeing up that money that was going to debt means I can use it for things like race wheels, or a new wetsuit, or going to a training camp. Can't wait for the 2010 training season!

Is there a word for this?

You know, that semi-coma you fall into when you've finally warmed up after courting hypothermia while doing some sort of ill-considered excerise in the great (wet) (and cold) outdoors. Is there a word for that?

I rode today with the Glottman Simpson group today. I was happy that it was a small group as I'm still not confident in my pack riding skills, but the reason it was a small group was that it was seriously cold this morning.

I checked the Environment Canada website before I set out and it was 2 degrees. Predicted high of 6. I'm pretty sure we never came close to six! Despite the fact that it also predicted rain I opted not to wear waterproof shoe covers and to test new gloves. In retrospect, not a good idea.

I made it to coffee shop on time and met a nice group of riders. We headed out to Iona and, aside from some very strong winds, it was quite nice. They mostly kept a sane pace and I could keep up and get comfortable riding in the group. At one point everyone decided to race up a hill and I was thoroughly dropped but they were kind enough to wait for me at the top.

On the way back from Iona the rain started. Sharp, stinging rain that made it suddenly feel significantly colder. We all decided to make it a day and head home. Wendel (I think that's his name) was kind enough to bike with me over the Canada Line bike bridge so I could take a shorter path home. Once he got me to the Ontario bike path he turned around and headed back the way he'd come, the guy went out of his way in nasty weather to get me in the right direction - I'm very thankful!

The last twenty minutes were not so nice. My feet were vacilating between numb and painful, which was unpleasant, but my hands were doing the same thing, which was scary as working the brake became challenging. I started to worry my hands would be so cold I wouldn't be able to unlock my door!

I got home, and in the door, and three quarters of an hour, one long hot shower and one very large cup of hot cocoa later I finally stopped shivering. I had lunch then sat on the couch and tried to watch the hockey game (someone won in over time, didn't notice who) but instead went into the I-almost-had-hypothermia-but-now-I'm-warm-and-well-fed stupor.

Is there a word for that?

Not much to report

The fall has been pretty mellow. A little swimming, to the two days of masters I've added on a swim on my own on Friday, I show up and figure out what I want to do when I get there. I'm really feeling like there are a lot of improvements to my form after a couple of months swimming with Peter, I'm looking forward to doing some longer time trials (really!) and seeing what I can do. Hmm, I could do that on a Friday I guess, I'll just consider angry-I-refuse-to-swim-in-a-slower-lane-but-will-take-up-lots-of-space-while-using-(sharp-edged)-paddles dude and various other strange denizens of the Friday am swims extra challenges to get around.

Not much running. I ended the season really feeling unspired about running so I took a bit of a break from it. Then I started running in the mornings with a friend from swimming, which worked great until she gave up her gym membership and she had nowhere to change after. No great tragedy, we switched to running home after work, initially I'd run to a B Line bus stop and bus home but I've worked up to running as far as Clark and just walk the rest of the way. This week I may go as far as Commercial. I'm also hitting the treadmill once or, well, less than once a week, I plan to up that to twice a week!

I did a women's bike skills session with two of the coaches from Glottman Simpson, Stephanie and her husband Bjorn, and I'm considering joining the Glottman Simpson group to ride with them. The classes I made it to were fantastic, unfortunately I missed a lot of classes due to travelling for work.

Oh yeah, travelling for work - I went to the UK. Training-wise it was a bit of a wash. I got in a few treadmill runs and had an awesome day biking around with my uncle. I went for a work conference, so it was a whole of time in a hotel. Good to meet the various UK suppliers we work with. I tacked on a few days at the end and had time to harass my uncles, it was very good to see David and Stewart, although it was a bit rushed.

Other than that, I've been a bit of a hermit. I'm enjoying being a homebody, the quiet's kind of nice. Things will change, however, come the Christmas party season (I have an invite for a party in November! C'mon, at least wait until December.) and the New Year with the club.

Calgary 70.3 RR (much delayed)

My pre-race breathing in AB was great. I wasn't even allergic to my aunt's hyperactive puffball of a sheltie. No knock on Soxy, I quite liked him.

Pre-race was nothing special. More nerves than I've had in years, last time I was this wound up for a race was probably 2006. I was also a bit off the workout schedule as trying to fit in workouts around visiting/being a good guest was awkward. This was my first big race where I wasn't either with family or friends from the club the day before the race so things were a bit odd. My hostess in Calgary was great but next time I think I'll book a hotel for the night before for my own peace of mind.

It didn't help my nerves that finding information on the race's website was difficult, there were some things that had no information whatsoever and others where you had to do some serious interpreting, such as realizing they were using different names to describe the same shuttle pick up point.

The anxiety all came to a head when I dropped off my bike - other people were doing rides on the course, why hadn't I? I should have had a tune-up on my bike, what if something went wrong? Should I have gone for more runs?? It took an effort to walk away from my bike, I was actually shaking with nerves.

After an early dinner and early to bed I managed to unwind enough to get to sleep early.

Race morning, however, was pretty much all zen - that's the point where there's nothing more you can do except get out there and go, I love that! I was up super early for a big breakfast. Then it was time to pack my transition bags, as this was a point to point bike course there were two transitions so you had to pack accordingly. I had a big bag full of my swim gear (this would later by my warm up/dry gear bag), a big T1 bag full of bike gear and a T2 bag with just my runners and a hat. The T2 bag looked so underfull that I threw in a couple of gels to pad it out a bit.

I got to the shuttle area in time to catch one of the first buses, despite the fact that my swim start was an hour after the first wave - I like to have lots of time to set up in transition and I also wanted to give myself some breathing room in case there were SNAFU's with the shuttles.

We dropped off our T2 bags then got on the buses. Lots of quiet, tired and nervous folk on the bus. Turned out the woman sitting next to me was only nervous, not quiet or tired. We chatted the whole way up to the lake (probably to the dismay of everyone seated around us!). She was doing this as her first ever triathlon, I'm a firm believer in doing small tris before taking on something big but as this was the morning of the race of course I was telling her she'd have a great race.

I was in early enough to pump up my tires, walk through transition and hit the loos without much crowding or waiting. The closer it got to the race start the harder it got to move around transition (it was super tight) and the longer the lines got for the porta-potties. I was happy to have missed some sleep in the morning to avoid dealing with the craziness.

My swim time was coming up so I dropped off my T1 bag (checking for the 50th time that I did, indeed have my helmet), got into my wetsuit and then dropped off my dry goods bag. There was space to the side of the swim start/exit for a warm up swim, although very few people were making use of it. The water was cold enough to be shocking when I got in but turned out to be the perfect temperature for a wetsuit swim.

The swim was okay. It was a very small wave (supposedly 120 but as only 78 finished I think there were a number of DNS's) but somehow I started too far back as I couldn't find a decent set of feet to draft off. I decided to go for speed rather than sit behind someone too slow. Mentally I stayed focused the whole way, a big accomplishment especially after my Squamish day dreaming.

Somewhere along the way the line "No excuses" popped into my head - meaning I'd trained all year for this race and there were no excuses for doing anything less than my best. I don't usually have mantras like that but it was pretty cool, anytime I wanted to back off it'd pop up. I didn't have a rocking swim time but I ranked pretty high overall so either I had a great day or the majority of racers were bad swimmers. Also, the water got a bit choppy as I was getting out, so that likely affected later waves.

T1 was slow as we had to put our bike shoes on prior to entering the bike enclosure - a long way to run in cleats. After the fact this made sense as there was no space in transition so people sitting down to put on shoes would have blocked other racers, but it was annoying at the time.

Getting on the bike was great. I felt good from the get go, I have photographic evidence that I was immediately working on my calorie debt - the photographer at the T2 exit caught me sucking on a gel.

The tailwind on the bike was great, somewhere near the start I was on a false flat going 41km/h without putting in a ton of effort. I tried to get into a rhythm without going to hard at the start, which I usually do at Oliver.

The turn onto Grand Valley Road put us heading directly into the wind and on the long ascent. It wasn't a steep climb but it was very long and steady with no real breaks or changes in the incline. I could deal with the headwind as I knew it meant a tailwind the rest of the way ("no excuses") and I tried not too go too hard, save it for the later part of the bike.

The first of the aid stations was giving out regular bottles of Powerade, not sport tops, which was annoying, and the race's biggest screw up that I saw, but not insurmountable. Once I got onto the fresh pavement I could drink without spilling too much, although I did end up with a fair amount of Powerade on my bike.

My swim wave started after the 6065+ and M5055 waves so I got to pass a lot of people on the bike. Nothing like getting pumped at passing someone then seeing they're 71!

There were some wicked crosswinds coming down Horse Creek Road as it neared the A1 hwy but after that it was a strong and steady push to the finish. I played leapfrog with a couple of people and tried to joke with one, she didn't quite know what to make of it but I was having fun. When Jean-Yves passed me near the top of a hill I tried to chase him and failed miserably, unsurprisingly, but hit my race speed max of 67km/h.

The course was beautiful and mostly on quiet country roads, but there seemed to be no transition from that to Glenmore Trail with a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam (caused by us!), it was a bit strange.

I had a much quicker T2 as all I had to do was change shoes and head wear and go. Unfortunately my legs felt toasted and heavy on the run. That just-off-the-bike deadness never went away.

I may have gone too hard on the bike, or I may not have eaten enough, but I never really felt light and quick on the run. It was also quite humid, which did not make breathing fun. I tried to initially walk only the aid stations but the run course was surprisingly tough and my lungs weren't cooperating so I had to walk quite a bit. I also had cramps but they faded fairly quickly.

I kept going forward and ran when I could, walked when I couldn't and tried to stay positive. "No excuses" meant I couldn't lose it to panic attacks and frustration like I did in Oliver. I got caught by my bike leapfrog buddy and tried to heckle/cheer her on but she didn't seem to see the fun in it. I beat her in the end, in case that matters!

The last few km were super tough but I realized that I had a PR pretty much guaranteed so wasn't too upset at having to walk most of the last 2 km. I did manage to run for the last few hundred meters - got to impress the fans!

It was an interesting race. Considering the logistics and the fact that it was the first time they ran the race, I think the organizers did incredibly well. There were a couple of things they could definitely have done better, but I'm confident they'll have that figured out for next year. I think it would be a good race for someone who was training for their first Ironman as the race mimics the IM experience quite a bit in terms of the racers prep with the transition bags and level of support. I still like the independent races though!

I enjoyed the race and may well do it again next year, much as I don't like supporting the Ironman brand. If the wind is the same and I have my breathing figured out I could have a pretty skookum time.