Ile Bizard Blizzard Run 2012 Race Recap

It has been a few weeks since the last post, and I think the best way to go about this is to start at the most recent events then go back.

From Ile Bizard and new FB pic!

Last Sunday I competed in the Ile Bizard Blizzard Challenge 10K. I decide to do this run really as just a fun run, and it isn’t too far from me. I had been planning on running it at a pretty casual pace…but then I checked out last years results. In 2011, there were only 17 people who competed in my age group (25-29), and a fair amount were over an hour. Since I know my easy pace is about 6:00/km, I figured that if I push myself to even 5:00/km I could potentially break into the top ten of my age group.

I should also point out that I didn't want this event to disrupt my Training schedule, so I still went swimming the night before, and did 90 minutes of spinning the morning of the race. Anyhow, the race started and I got off to a pretty decent pace. The run began with a long uphill before winding into a forested area, turned back for the first 5K, then repeated.

The race was tough to be honest. I haven't done much hill training, and I was definitely running faster than I normally do for such a long time. At the end of the first 5K, you had to run to the base of the hill and then climb to the top before catching a break and leveling off.

In the end I finished in 47:10, a time that I was pretty pleased with, and I thought I probably made it into the top 10 of my age group. NOPE! I guess my age group got faster because I only came in 16th!
Either way it was a nice race and I enjoyed the challenge. My coach actually had a 10k time trial scheduled for this Saturday anyway.

I'll give a training update in my next post later this week, since this is getting a little long as it is.

I hope you've enjoyed reading, and Keep Tri-ing!

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Suicide Run Drills

This past Saturday, I decided to accept a friend's challenge to run suicide drills from his house to our old school, which is about 1.5km away. This was a bad idea.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, a "Suicide" is a drill used most often in basketball training. It's a pretty simple exercise that basically goes like this;
1) Line up at one end of the gym
2) Sprint to the the first line or a cone, turn around and sprint back to the beginning
3) Sprint to the second nearest line or cone, turn around and sprint back to the beginning
4) Continue until the farthest line, then build back down.

In a gym setting, this is a pretty tiring exercise because the athletes are going at a really high intensity the whole time. The challenge that I accepted was to do a Suicide, using city blocks as my markers. I originally had it in my head that I could do it in a half hour. Obviously I had not done the math, because it turns out that this 1.5Km stretch becomes closer to 15 when you are running it Suicide-style.

I did the run at night, because there are less cars on the road ( I live in a pretty quiet neighbourhood), and I wanted to run on the street since the sidewalks were pretty icy. Oh ya, it was also somewhere around -20celsius while doing this. It was so cold that the display on my Timex Global Trainer stopped working.

The drill is called a Suicide because it is extremely intense. On the road, it is pure torture. I had to run the same path over and over and see the same scenery, the same parked cars, so many times that I still see them in my dreams. My pace wasn't spectacular, which is pretty expected considering all the stop-and-going that I had to do. Also, I was for some reason unable to connect to GPS so I'm basing pace on my footpod, which I find to be a little off. However, I think I ran around 13KM in about 1:20, which come up just under a 10min/mile. Not fast but I'm satisfied.

Oh, in other news, I am officially registered for the Lake Placid Half Marathon ( see countdown on the right). I didn't realise that it happens to be the same weekend or right after my local Spartan Races, so I don't think I'll get a chance to try those out this year, but a Half in a  beautiful new location works for me! Hopefully I'll get to PR with all the training I'm doing now :) .

The next week should be interesting, as we are starting to ramp up the duration of our training sessions.
That all for now, keep Tri-ing!

PS. Shout-out to Tamara! (she definitely didn't ask to be mentioned)

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Back to Recap and New Races

It's been a little while since my last update, so I figured I would shoot off a post before hitting the sack.
Training has been going fairly well overall. I've been slowly increasing the duration of my training sessions, and have started doing brick sessions with the team. In case you don't already know, a brick session is where you go from one activity in triathlon to the next immediately, simulating race conditions. Its is more common to do bike-run bricks, simply because its harder to find access to a pool with stationary bikes nearby.
Anyways, last Sunday was the first brick session that we did, with an hour and a half on the bike, and then a half hour run. It went fine overall, and I think I made somewhere around 6 or so kilometres on the run, but something weird happened to my knew and it was kind of hurting for the rest of the week. To let it recover, I stayed away from running last week, and limited myself to swim and bike training sessions. Unfortunately my HR monitor is going to be out of the picture for at least a few weeks until Timex repairs it and sends it back to me. Though this is somewhat annoying, it is interesting to get back to training solely by Rate of Perceive exertion (RPE). It forces me to be more in tune with how my body is feeling, and to trust my body.

This past weekend has been solid in terms of training. I went for a good hour and a half run on Saturday night, and covered just under 15K.

As you can see, my path overlaps a few times. I avoided my usual run because of the weather. Although it actually wasn't too cold, a lot of the ground was slippery, and it was expected to snow heavily. I figured it would be safer to try so stay near my house.
Again, because I don't have my HR monitor, I don't know exactly where I was in terms of Zone, but it was a nice easy pace, and one that I feel I could have kept up for a good period of time.

1/2 ??? Been there, done that! Time for the full distance!

Oh, big news before I forget! I've registered for the Montreal Rock 'N Roll Oasis Marathon. The full distance this time! It will be tough, and need a lot of training, but I think it will be a fun challenge. I was also going to race in the Ottawa race Weekend Half Marathon again this year, but due to scheduling I wont be able to make it. I'm trying to find other nearby races that are close to the same date, and I am currently looking at the Lake Placid Half. It is a much smaller race with a cap of 2,500 participants, but I hear that it's a beautiful course and fun event. Not sure if I mentioned it in a previous post, but I also re-registered for the Cornwall Sprint Triathlon. I got DQ'd last time, and I need to take revenge on the course.

That's all for now,
Keep Tri-ing!

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Facebook profile

I was working on a new facebook profile pic, only to realize that since the new timeline came out, Its not the right dimensions.
At least I can post it here.... don't forget to donate!

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Tacx Speedmatic T1810 Trainer

If you follow my twitter @FoxontheMove, you may have noticed that I had been promising to write a review on the Tacx Trainer that I bought during the boxing day sale season. Finally, I've had a chance to ride with it a few times, and feel like I could write a fair review of my thoughts and observations about the trainer.

I bought the trainer from ProBikeKit.com. They routinely have pretty decent specials on a wide assortment of bike-related products, and I have bought a few different things from them. They happened to have a deal on the Trainer, which aside from having a reduced price, came with a free Tacx Training Tyre! Having a training tyre is important because using the Trainer causes a lot of heat on the rear wheel, and will quickly wear out your regular, possibly racing-specific tyre.

I received the tyre and the Trainer separately about a day apart, which gave me time to figure out how to change my tyre. I found youtube to be pretty useful for instruction guides and tips:

Unfortunately, even with youtube on my side, I managed to pinch my tube right at the valve, which made one hell of an explosion when I was pumping it. The result was this;

This is why you should check for pinches

Anyway, I managed to get my replacement tube on properly, and then waited eagerly for the Trainer itself, which came the next day. I don't know who is to blame, but the box that I picked up from the mail depot was pretty much just the standard package with some tape around it a few times. It had clearly not been handled properly, and there were holes and cuts all over. 

Right off the bat, I should say that the instructions that are provided to assemble the Trainer are pretty complicated. There are some pictures and then a lot of writing which consist of IKEA-esque labelling. "Attach component A to part C and push on Tube E". Kinda nonsense, but you should be able to figure it out for yourself since there aren't too many pieces. Once built, the Trainer is pretty sturdy. With your bike locked in (with the Tacx wheel spoke, provided), your precious bike has become stationary. 

Now that's a pretty sight

One thing that I was worried about was that the Trainer would make a lot of noise, which I had read was a problem for many Trainer. I don't know what everyone is talking about, because with the Training Tyre, the unit makes no more noise than a desk-fan. The Tacx Trainer has a controller that attaches to your handlebar, and offers 10 levels of resistance. Personally, I don't always notice big shifts between the different levels, but it satisfies my needs, and I can usually cruise around level 6. The one thing that I almost definitely cant do with the trainer is stand up and peddle. Even on level 10 and with my gears shifted down, trying to stand and peddle would cause the back wheel to spin too fast, and slip from the resistance roller. Not a big issue, but it  is usually nice to stand and stretch  from time to time on long sessions.

I hope this review is useful. If you have any questions just shoot me a message and I will respond as quickly as possible.

Thanks, and keep Tri-ing!

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First Run Interval Training

So today I got a chance to go for a run with the TNT triathlon team, which is nice because I tend to not be able to make it to the run sessions, and also because it wasn't the bitter -30c cold that we have been getting lately. Our coach introduced us to speed intervals today, where we run at about 90-95% of our max heart rate (HR) for 2 minutes. we did this twice over about 6k, including warm-up. Below is a graph of my pace (blue line) and elevation (green line) for the run. 

I learned some interesting things from these intervals. You can pretty clearly see that the two peaks about a third and two-thirds of the way through represent the interval periods. In the first interval, I pretty much bolted right out of the gate, immediately hitting my peak of a bit fast than a 5minute mile, but was decreasing pace over almost the full two minutes, reaching a 6:41 at the end. The lesson learned is that I may have been pushing a bit too hard early on. Sure I was in the lead, but I heard footsteps not too fair behind, and I would have definitely been passed if we kept going much longer.

During the second interval, I decided to try to pace myself a bit better. I started out not quite pushing myself all the way, but still at a good cadence and decent pace. As you can see, I kept about 6min/mile for the entire period. Unfortunately, my HR monitor is currently broken (hopefully just needs a new battery), so I was not able to properly monitor my HR zone. Nonetheless, I still felt tired out after the interval, but not the crash-and-burn that I felt in the first.

The graph from the 5k run that we did (above) after is somewhat less informative. My pace was a little spastic, though I managed to keep an average page of about 9min/mile. Interestingly, my pace actually increased on most of the small uphill climbs. This wasn't really intentional, I just try to maintain a solid 90rpm cadence on hills.

Anyway, I will likely be taking the better part of the week off, as I will be travelling a bit for work.
Oh, I also got on my Tacx trainer for the first time for 2 hours last night, Ill write a little review about that soon.

Thanks for reading, and keep Tri-ing!

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Holidays Training

I hope that this new year find everyone in lots of health and happiness, and a shiny new PR.
Personally, I hate the idea of making a New Year’s Resolution. Resolutions are stupid in general, because they are made too general. It’s easy to say “OK, this year I’m going to be healthy”, maybe go to the gym once or twice, then fall back in to old unhealthy patterns. If you do make resolutions, they need to be S.M.A.R.T! That’s Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. So a better way of making that same resolution would be to say “In order to live a healthier life, 6 months, I am going go to the gym 4 times per week, and try to lose 10 pounds a month for 6 months by eating more vegetables and less junk food”. Of course, you also need to actually follow through.

I prefer to say that I make a New Years CONFIRMATION. This is because I don’t see a point in choosing one day to change my life. I know that I want to lead a healthy life, and generally I try to do whatever changes need to made to get there (diet and exercise, duh). This means that when Jan 1 hits, all that I’m really saying to myself is “OK keep going”, instead of “let’s change everything now”. Leading a healthy life is hard to do, especially with work, school, family and many other commitments, and it is the gradual changes that I find to me more effective. It is said that our will is like a muscle that needs to be exercised. Trying to immediately cut out all junk food, sodas, chocolates and fatty food is too much all at once, but by slowly eliminating these vices ones at a time, you will make you will stronger over time, and it will be easier to say NO to bad food. Of course, having a small cheating dessert from time to time cant be too bad, right?

Anyway that’s all I have to say about New Years. Back to my diary update; I used my Xmas and New Years vacation days to do a fair amount of training. I went for a nice X-Mas day run with my TNT coach on the mountain, had a nice spinning session or two, and got in some good distance in the pool. I also took advantage of the boxing day sales to order a Tacx Speedmatic Trainer, (more on this on my next post), which will hopefully be coming in the next few weeks.

I’ve gone on a couple nice outdoor runs as well, and realize that it is definitely the way to go, as long as the mercury is above -15 C. I’m not crazy, and with the windshield factor anything colder than that is just too much for me.

Fundraising for St. Anthonys Triathlon with Team in Training is also going well, to date I have a bit over $500. Still a long way from $5K, but a good start I think.

That’s it for now, check back soon for my review on the Tacx Trainer.

Keep Tri-ing!

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