I’m finding other equally rewarding ways to stay involved. For example, this weekend I volunteered at a water station at the Ladner Half marathon. It was great to see everyone out there! As a bonus, we were stationed way out on the country farm roads right beside a self serve farmers kiosk with beautiful purple, yellow and orange tomatoes.

I’ve also been using my bike as a way of traveling lately. Commuting is a great way to get in the training, even if you don’t have a big race that scares the pants off you.

My all time favorite motivator for getting out there is being outdoors. With no racing bug to focus the speed and distance, I’ve been enjoying the settings even more. I have really appreciated my favorite trails and especially the swims in Boundary Bay. Getting outdoors is what it’s all about!

To get these photos, and the associated film footage, I rode behind a pace car with driver, photographer and cameraman hanging out the back.  As I mentioned, it was quite an interesting experience.

The Belcarra ride

Wednesday night out at the races route -
South Dyke Ride

Stanley Park Route

Tour de Richmond

Commuter Routes

The longer way home from UBC – via speedtheory

Bike commute to/from UBC – starting at Zaber

Zaber to UBC

UBC to Zaber

Granny bike to run group

Mountain Bike Routes

Delta Trail Ride

Get Yer Cyclocross Bike Out

**note If you see a “this workout is not available for viewing error”, find the – amp; – in the URL and delete those four characters – then the links should work. Stupid WSIWG editor is screwing up my links

**I took the Triathlon Community Coaching course this weekend. I made some great new contacts/friends and took away some great practical tips about safety. On that note, I’m going to go buy myself a RoadID right now. If you don’t already have one, do the same!

Here’s what my Feb totals look like so far.

Bike for 182.1 km in 08:43
Run for 25.1 km in 02:22
Total Duration: 11:05

Day 1 – 1:02:19, 22km – nice ride, mild weather
Day 2 – 1:20:51, 27km – soggy bike in the am, nice in evening, also had a quality run session
Day 3 – 1:01:18, 17km – all over downtown

Wednesday night I was super tired, so went to bed early. Man it’s awesome when you actually get enough sleep. I so rarely feel well-rested. Tonight, is a bike commute home through the city. I’m going to meet up with a few of the other bike challenge ninnys for company.

Shoot.

On my bike commute in this morning, I was thinking to myself that this wouldn’t even be a challenge (and people wouldn’t think we’re crazy) if we all lived in Amsterdam – where bike culture is part of everyone’s life.

On that note, we started the year off right with this ride.

I’m not sure what’s with all this media attention that I’ve been receiving lately. I think it might have something to do with my ability to say, “Sure, I’d be happy to help!” I’m exhausted from 3 days of talking and filming. I will be glad to get back to some training.

3:27:05, 83km
24.1kph Avg, 51.3 kph Max
129 Avg HR, 160 Max
86 Avg Cad, 113 Max

Stan took some pictures from the brunch so I’ll post ‘em up here tomorrow – when I remember to bring my camera and the cable … here they are!

Race Day morning started really early. 4:30am or 5am or something ridiculous like that. I’m not a fan of the early wakeup. Since it was so early, we decided that it was a dumb idea for Torbin to come with me to the start. It’s tough being a spectator – because you can’t go anywhere I go – and I basically just hang out with my triathlon friend and/or focus on the race. So his plan was to sleep in and then come see me later in the afternoon. Good plan, worked out well, especially since I know that his support is there every day!

Ok, so now we’re at the swim start. I’m a different swimmer now. Much faster, so I wanted to get a spot near the front. I was in the first row… but way out on the side. The strategy worked well. As you can see from the picture, it still was a bit crazy but I was way more comfortable. I like the new one loop course. My time was 34:03 (last year 34:54) – Hmmm, maybe I was a little too comfortable and probably should have gone faster. Oh well, no biggee, it was comfortable.

After the swim, we had a 500m-650m run to transition. It wasn’t too bad… kind of a nice opportunity to get your head back from the swim and get ready for transition. There was one bike gone from my rack, and this helped me to think, “OK, race starts now, let’s get going … catch her on the bike.” I was really ready for this part of the race. Confident, practiced, and really looking forward to putting it out there. My goal was to repeat the 2:55 that I knew I could do from my TT during training camp.

I biked hard, focused on pedaling technique, kept the heart rate up, and felt great during the whole ride. I was disciplined on my nutrition – except for one section second loop of the bike where a pack of drafters moved me into a distracted and annoyed head space. I think that’s something I have to learn… that racing comes with distractions … because I think I paid for this lapse in nutrition on the second half of the run. Previously, I’ve just kind of cruised on the bike. Racing was a real nice change. I’m really proud of how well I did on the bike, but it does come with extra set of distractions that I’m sure some more experience will help me deal with. Oh yeah, and another thing, pretty much every girl that I was riding around had an aero helmet. What’s with that? Shoot, I guess I’m going to have to get a dorky hat.

Official results, 2:50:24, 32.7km/hr average = Awesome! I’m really excited by this new personal world record for race day average speeds. Silly, I know. But I can’t stop smiling. FYI – that’s over 14 min faster then the last time I raced Oliver.

to be continued…