Sunday, September 07, 2008

The Past Week and a Bit

For the long weekend I went on a nice little walk the some friends - gaining 1050m in elevation over 6.5 km of trail described as "mostly well blazed but at times can resemble little more than a route and is often no more than 2 boots wide. Often, you're left balancing yourself precariously to get up a section with a large drop on one side of you. Its prudent to exercise caution." Yeah, a bit of a scramble, made more challenging by the two days worth of food and booze I had packed poorly in my backpack (note to self, next time don't put the wine, eggs, and other heavy stuff at the top of the pack).

Turns out that triathlon training does not prepare you for hiking, especially four hours of hiking downhill. Three days after hiking down I was still hobbling and hurting.

The upside of the crazy hike is it keeps most people away from a truly beautiful spot. No, wait, we don't want any more people up there. Lake Lovely Water is ugly and smells like poo - don't go!!

Masters swimming is back on after a two week break. The YWCA pool was closed so I've been taking a break from swimming, unless you count my hurried dip into a glacial lake on the long weekend. Paul was away on Wednesday so Peter, who teaches the TI method, took his place. It was an awesome session, the technique work was great and I have a totally new understanding of the body roll. You use the hip roll to drive your arm into the water and instead of going faster by speeding up your arms, you speed up your hips and let your stroke catch up. Very different way of thinking of things. Now we just have to see if it'll make me faster.

This weekend I have a very leisurely ride with the ladies, then a leisurely coffee, a nap and a movie with a friend. A nice mellow day.

Today I played my first game with my fall ultimate team. Yes, I played ultimate. After saying I'm done, retired, etc. for the past few years, I somehow ended up on a team this fall. I did swim beforehand as 1) I was excited about the new techniques Peter taught and wanted to try them out and 2) I was scared I'd forgotten everything I knew about ulti so I wanted to do one sport today that I'm reasonably competent at. Turns out I haven't forgotten everything about ulti, although it helped to have some seriously kick ass teammates!

What else? Oh yeah, Team Pink got me drunk on Friday and conned me into signing up for a race.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I purchased the TI method in print and would love to take a weekend course. Maybe this winter. Good luck with the stroke as I have heard only good things.

Also, your sister has posted a great how to blogging piece. The audience of teachers is a good one. We find that teachers could benefit from technical insights like this.

Alison said...

I have the TI book and got about halfway through before I lost interest. Somehow, self-help books just don't work for me. I will, however, keep an eye out for any sessions Peter is teaching.

Yeah, Claire's blogging course was very thorough and very good. And we just saw the stuff she posted on the web, that was just the backup material for a 6 hour classroom session.

Believe it or not, I got her into blogging - she's thoroughly surpassed me now! Not sure I want her to get into triathlon ... :)

Kathryn said...

I may have to join you and Bryan and Amy at the Brewskedaddle in Oct!!

Alison said...

Do they sell running leiderhosen??

Hope you can make it, it should be a blast!