Running in a winter wonderland...

Toronto is a world class City in virtually every respect except when it snows. A little snow fall and everyone acts like babies. Without a word of a lie, I've seen them tell students not to come in tomorrow because the weather man says it may snow. Truthfully, I think they just want snow days. Coming from Winnipeg I laugh at what they call a snow storm. Today was no different, it snows a little and everyone gets into a lather. The good think about it snowing was that on my run I got the sidewalks all to myself. No people, no dogs. On my snowy, sand like run I realized that it has been a long time since I've had an injury. When I started getting back into shape I was injured all the time. I think with all the training and especially the weight training and extensive stretching after each workout I've turned back the hands of time on my body. I actually feel that my body is now has the strength and flexibility of a 20 year old. As a matter of fact this Christmas I challenged my 15 year old weight training nephew and my best friends 17 year old son, who plays in the WHL with 21 year olds and is going into the NHL draft this year (he's all muscle and trains all the time), to a push up contest. Now of course I had a few beers before hand (which is my spinach), but that didn't matter, I beat them both. What I didn't tell them was that I had been planning and training a little for this contest for some time. They thought it was spontaneous and that they just got wasted by a 43 year old. Ha, Ha.

Tempo Run: 40:26 / 5.08 miles / 7:57 pace

Learning and churning...

I got a lot of emails today cheering me on about my transformation and telling me that I'm starting to motivate them to get in shape. It's humbling. One person wondered how I do it? They wondered if I had a job? Which I do. I put in a solid 8 hours a day like most people, typically eat lunch at my desk, respond to emails from home nights and weekends and do most of my training in the evening after dinner because I'm not a morning person. But the comments got me thinking and I realized that I live more than 24 hours in a day because I multi-task. For example, tonight I went for a run, listened to music and thought about work stuff. I was thinking so much it took me three Bee Gees songs to realize I was listening to the Bee Gees before I changed it. Then I had a bike ride tonight and I watched some TV, read Lance Armstrong's blog, surfed the net and then watched an hour of the Apple Keynote speech at Mac World 2009. I learnt so much about what Apple is coming out with. Stuff I got to get, like the new iPhoto that has face recognition to help organize your photo's. Then I realized by multitasking I'm doing more and making my day more productive and adding hours. That's my theory anyways. The highlight of my run tonight was to watching a guy training a seeing eye pup, he was so gentle and I wondered if the little dog realized he was going to have a very important role in someones life. What a beautiful dog. Both my training sessions tonight were moderate effort with a heart rate not to exceed 135 bpm. These are supposed to be the easy, relaxing workouts and the off season, yeah right, it doesn't feel like it.

Mod Run - 40:53 / 4.77 miles / 8:34 pace

Mod Bike - 1 hour 45 minutes / 29.4 miles /16.8 mph

It's those small wins that feel great...

I finished and published my book today. Finally! It took me over three months in my spare time to put all my blog entries into a book format and edit all the pages and photo's. It was a lot of work, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it when I get older and want to relive this time of my life. 

Tonight I did a 3 km swim and weights. Since winter started I feel like I need to hibernate. When I got home from work and after I ate, I fell asleep on the couch for 90 minutes. When I woke up I really wasn't motivated to train, especially swimming. Unexpectedly the swim was a highlight of my night. At the pool, a very fit, with a swimmers body, Speedo's, and a racing shaved head was in the lane beside me. I've seen him before and he always swims faster than me and although at times I've tried to say hi, he never really looked my way. Tonight was different. I out swam him. I was catching him and passing him consistently. At one point when we had a mutual rest, he looked over at me and said hi. It was a win for me, I never have passed anyone at the pool who looks like a real swimmer. After the swim I did weights. It was the first time I've done weights after a swim and it was much harder on my upper body than usual. I was struggling to push the weight I normally do. I finished when the YMCA closed and was the last person to leave. It was strange only seeing my lone truck in a parking lot that is usually full.

Long swim - 62 min / 3000 meters

Weights - 35 minutes

Smelling like Sweat...

I was at Blockbuster last night and some young girls walked by me and I think I overheard one of them say they smelt sweat. Now I'm a very clean person and I shower everyday, but I realized I had my Ironman hat on and I work out with it and it has gotten sweating and I haven't washed it in a while, maybe I did smell like sweat. Today we went out and I was wearing the same hat and very self conscious, I kept asking Alice if I smelt like sweat. My training schedule had a 2.5 hour bike ride. I like biking but I wasn't looking forward to the ride. I put it off and spent the day driving around with Alice, checking out Tattoo shops, doing the open house thing and visiting a $2.5 million dollar home (to see how the rich live), and getting a speeding ticket. When we got home, JB called, we caught up and we ordered pizza. The family decided they didn't want our regular Sunday night steak. After eating 5 pieces of motivational pizza (I now needed to burn it off), I got on the bike and did my ride at 7:30 pm. I set up the laptop, surfed the web, watched YouTube and TV. The first time I looked at my watch it was 90 minutes and it felt like 2 hours. I really had to mentally struggle to get that last hour in. I find that the training is harder mentally and physically than the Ironman if you put in the mileage. Reid came down near the end and said the basement smelled like sweat. I asked him what he meant and he said it smelt like his hockey locker room. Now I'm really self conscious.

Long Bike - 2.5 hours / 40 miles

The house is a LOT louder...

I've decided January is going to be a healing month. I'm going to take care of my body and liver. I was hoping to get up early this morning to train but I even though I was in bed by 1 am, I didn't fall asleep until around 3:30 am and woke up at 10 am. There was no time to train because at noon we had to pick Reid up at the Hamilton Airport. We left him in Winnipeg to play with his cousins. Once we picked him up, it became real apparent that Reid makes noise. All types of noises. When he got home, he couldn't stop talking and started bugging his sister and they both started making noise. The house has become a whole lot louder with Reid back. It was a sanctuary with TV shows we wanted to watch and now it is a Circus with the Disney and MTV channels playing all the time and loud. With that said, I'm not complaining, it feels good to have the Reid home. I know Alice was really missing her little buddy, it's that Mother and Son bond.

I started my training mid afternoon. I had a full agenda with a long run, tempo swim and weights. Plus I had to drop by work to pick up some stuff I forgot on Friday. It was a fairly nice day, at least compared to Winnipeg. It was around - 7 C. It was the first time I was doing a long run in the Escarpment in a long time, plus I think it was my first one there without JB. I could tell I was running hills right away, my pace was slower than last weeks flat course run. For the first half of the run I averaged a 8:25 pace, then on the second half, which was down hill I was able to bring the overall average down to 8:07 and for the entire run kept my heart rate under 140 bpm. To do it, I had to walk a few times. It was still a major improvement, my previous runs on the same route were between 9:07 - 9:30. After I picked up stuff at work, I went to the YMCA to do weights and a swim. The weights are easy, the swim is tougher, at least to get started. Once I got swimming, I felt great, I could really feel my technique improving. I didn't have my watch with me to tell if I was going faster, but it felt fast. I was really rolling from side to side and reaching long. I was proud of myself that I did the swim, even without my watch.

Run - 1:29:13 /10.98 miles / 8:07 pace

Swim - 48 min / 2250 meters

Weights - 30 minutes

I don't know what day it is...

I didn't want to get up this morning. I was tired, my body needs to recuperate from all the holiday partying. This year with the days that the holiday's fell on, it didn't feel like a Friday. For at least January I've committed myself to eating better. To help me, I downloaded the Livestrong App for my iPhone. It helps me keep track of my calories and the best part is that it is free. I postponed my swim and weight training session tonight to go in and out of sleep while watching TV on the sofa. This year has been the first year in a long time that I need after work sleep. I think it is the lack of sunshine. Over the winter months I tend to get a little down, I think I'm going to try one of those SAD lamps. I also did my resolution for this year. I only did one. For me, as I get older, if I set too many goals or resolutions I can't remember them easily. Now I pick just one and make some sort of mantra out of it. I'm keeping it a secret because I find if you tell someone your resolution that they never come true. There is a power in internalizing it and keeping it a secret. It was a pretty relaxing evening, sleeping, watching TV, sleeping, surfing the Apple Apps Store (there is so many cool free apps), sleeping and Googling stuff. What would we do without the technology.

It didn't take much to get the heart rate up...

New Year's ended for us at 7 am this morning. We figured we should get to bed once we saw the sun coming up. We had one of our best New Year's Party's ever, it was just Alice and I hanging around our bar in the basement. We started off ordering some Chinese food, played some pool, talked, watched TV, talked, listened to music, talked, researched some artwork on the internet, danced and talked. At one point we became private detectives and tried to find the phone number of the person who built our bar. Three years ago when my cell phone was put in the washing machine I lost my entire address book and his name was in it. At first it was tough to remember his first name, then Alice remembered it, then we went through every drawer that we thought the name would be in, then I got all my old day timer's and to do books. Nothing found. But we did remember the street he lived on, so I did a reverse look up and got all the names on the street, there was at least 200. Then I started drinking and dialing and at 9 pm on New Years Eve I started calling everyone with the initial A in on the street. After about 7 calls, I FOUND HIM! We wanted to talk to him about making some adjustments to the bar so you can sit at it with your legs under the counter. He was really good, very slow and extremely cheap. It was a combination we could live with.

We got up today just before 3 pm. I was feeling a little groggy after drinking my 24 Christmas presents. But that didn't prevent me from getting on the bike to do my tempo ride. Afterwards Alice, Alyssa and I went out to dinner and a movie. Without Reid being with us, everything is so quiet. Alice is really missing her little "buddy".

Tempo Bike - 1 hour / 17.5 miles

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