Rest days and a slug

The training group got smaller today as Simon and Kirsten left for Austria to race this weekend in the World Cup there.  Jones got back today and will be doing training/recovering here for a week before heading off to England with me to meet Joel and the other two for the Salford WC.  We have been pretty lucky this year as our BAMF training group has not been split up that often going to different races as it usually does at this time of the year.  After this stint of races we will all convene back in Victoria to train as a TEAM and get ready for the World Champs and Beijing WC.

These last couple days for me have been recovery (easy swim yesterday, easy swim this morning followed by a 2 hour trainer ride watching the tour because it was raining outside and I melt in the rain).  I also got a 2 hour massage today to help with the recovery.  I have been having some pains in my shoulder this past week so Kim worked good in that area and it feels much better already.  We will test it out tomorrow in the open water swim workout.  Although the start of this week is recovery based, Joel said that the end of the week is going to be SOLID.  We will see how solid SOLID actually is... ;)

I will leave you with a tale of a slug that I have been hunting in my suite for some time.  Well a while ago I noticed that there were these weird marks on my wall by the sliding door.  I thought that they were just water marks from a big rain storm last year that flooded my suite a bit and I had just not noticed it.  Then I noticed the same marks on the ceiling coming from the sliding door.  So I followed the trail along the wall, on the ceiling all the way into my living room, down the wall and behind the TV.  That is where I lost the trail and there was no sign of the slug anywhere.  Well yesterday when I was vacuuming (yes I do clean once a year) I noticed that there was a little trail on the carpet in-front of the DVD rack coming down the wall.  The trail went into a little crevice beside the TV stand and lo and behold there is a really hard shriveled up crusted onto the carpet slug.  Let me tell you that the journey it went on must have taken it at least a week...it went a pretty long distance for how slow they move.  It must of made its journey when I was away at a race.  Well I just got a knife and cut of from the carpet and chucked it outside.  Maybe during the rain today it plumped up back to life and continued its journey...

I am quitting triathlon for this....

blog blog blog

I could write a lot of what's been going on these last couple weeks but I will keep it short...my bed time is coming up quick.  Last time we talked I was sick.  Well I got better, had a wicked week of training, and so far this week has been just OK training.  And that is it.

I am confirmed for Salford to be my next World Cup.  I head over the Atlantic to a little island known as UK.  Lisa is coming with me also, I meet up with her in Toronto for the flight to Manchester but I will be in First Class enjoying the high life while she is in the back with the rift raft.  We are staying with some of my family while we are over there.  Should be a good time.

Other than training I have not been doing much.  I could clean my suite...but that takes away from recovery and watching HEROES.  I am half way through the first season...it is a good one!

OK, its bedtime...and oh yea, yesterday here in Victoria was the hottest day on record.  It got up to 36.3 degrees Celsius...HOT HOT HOT.  It felt like I was in an oven when outside.

"you PLAY, you PAY"

That was one of the favorite sayings the coaches at McMaster University used to say come morning swim time when half the team would come hung over from a night at the pub.  Well after the race last weekend in Edmonton a group of us went out for a bit and ended up at a karaoke bar singing with the Aussie team.  The next morning my throat was sore and scratchy...I just thought it was because of my awesome singing the night before.  Well it turned into a sore throat which has evolved into a head cold and today I am not feeling so hot.  I am not sure if it was because of my once a year going out stint but boy oh boy I feel like I am paying for it now.

We started back into some hard sessions today.  The swim this morning was a 6 rounds of 5x100 descend by effort and pace time.  I felt like a bag of smashed apples but was trucking through doing OK.  Others were doing much worse then me so after 4 rounds the coach made us throw on paddles and pull buoys and we did a 1000 straight to finish off the workout.  Got some breaky in me and hit the hay for 90min before I headed to Commonwealth for a treadmill run.  30min WU then the set was 8-6-4-2-1 descending pace.  I barely made it through the 8min'er, then on the 6min'er.......KABOOM.  Done..."wow you really do look like a bag of smashed apples" says coach.  "Just warm down and get outta here!".

I AM POOPED!  rest rest rest sleep sleep sleep drugs drugs drugs and some more drugs to make me feel all better and salvage this week with some wicked ass training this weekend. 

VIRTUAL OLYMPIC SPOT!

Heck yea I now own a third spot for Canada for the Olympics...although it does not mean squat right now I still think that it is cool!  I moved up in the Olympic Rankings after these last couple races to be ranked 52nd.  Only 8 countries can have three athletes represent their countries next year in Beijing...and I have now earned Canada that last spot to have three athletes.  We are fighting with a couple other countries to keep that 8th and final spot to send a full mens team.  This next year is going to be tough to keep it but the Canadian Men are doing good right now.  You can check out the Olympic Simulation here.

A quick recap of the last couple races:

Des Moines World Cup - Lisa made her way to meet me in Des Moines for the weekend to watch my race and be my support crew...it was great to have her there with me!  Other than that Des Moines sucked!  The city is dead on the weekend as everyone lives in the suburbs (Joel calls it Urban Rot).  It was hot, hot, hot!  I never really felt that good right from the start.  The swim I was able to hang in but my turnover was getting really slow on the second lap.  The bike was tough and the run was tougher...pretty brutal!  Not pretty.  But then again a third of the field dropped out so but I ended up finishing.  The run felt like a jog...hard to keep moving forward.  I felt like I was melting out there!

Edmonton World Cup - After Des Moines I flew the next day to Edmonton and stayed at Paul Tichelaars condo for the week.  He let me have the whole place to myself and he stayed at his girlfriends place a couple blocks away.  Over the next couple days my recovery seemed to be taking forever.  I was feeling really tired all the time and my workouts were sucking.  But by Friday I was able to have a good treadmill run which gave me hope for the weekend!  In this race I felt a lot more sharp then last.  The air and water were pretty chilly so it took me a while to get the feel for the water but I kept strong for both laps.  Hopped on the bike and made it to the front pretty quickly and a group of about 18 formed and worked pretty good for the remainder of the bike putting 2 minutes on the chase pack.  I ran the first loop of three with a group of runners that were much faster than me.  I just wanted to last one lap with them and see what happens from there.  I got dropped from them after that first lap and suffered on the second lap from the fast pace of the first.  By the third lap I had recovered a bit and was able to finish strong in 13th place.  I was happy with my performance on the day.

So far I have done 7 out of the first 8 World Cups this year.  I knew coming into this year that I would be doing quite a bit of racing to get as many points as I can.  Last year my best placing at a World Cup was 21st.  So far this year I have four top 20 results with one of them being in the top 10!  I am really pleased with how this year has panned out for me.  BUT there is still lots of work to do to get ready for the next block of races.  BRING IT ON COACH!