Runner Leana

Six Things for Sunday

2009-12-13T22:08:00.001-07:00

Number 1

A little while ago I decided to upgrade my TV in my living room. I had a 30-something inch Acer that had been given to me, but it used to be a demo TV and the screen has issues. So when Costco was running a deal on a 40 inch Samsung LCD, plus get a Samsung blu-ray player for an extra $100 it seemed like a good deal. But now I had four TVs. The first TV I got when I moved away from home that is upstairs in my bedroom. The upgrade to TV number one, a 27” Sony flat screen that is hanging out in my garage for trainer workouts. Plus the Acer and the new Samsung. Four TVs for one person seems a bit excessive, right?

Number 2

So I put an ad out to sell the 27” Sony last week. And here is the response I got back from someone:

“I am looking for a TV to donate to an elderly gentleman in a nursing home. As he doesn't have any family in Calgary nor does it appear he has anyone to visit him, he is always striking a conversation with people going by to find out the highlights of hockey games - for which he is very interested in and loves the game. Due to his eyesight not being what it used to be, he is unable to read the paper. Therefore, a thought was to try to find this gentleman a TV so he can enjoy watching a game and bring a little pleasure over the holiday season.”

So he came by and picked up the TV yesterday, and I’m happy that I was able to give it to someone who will get some enjoyment out of it. The Acer is now hanging out in the garage.

Number 3

Things have been a little bit…arctic…in Calgary this week! Work (and a few fun activities too) sucked up all my time and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday wound up being rest days. Unless you count a bunch of walking that I did to get to meetings or pick up Christmas presents. It has been in the minus teens and twenties around here with snow falling off and on for what seems like about three weeks straight now. November was so beautiful that December is a bit of a shock.

Number 4

I managed to knock off a great trainer ride on Saturday morning. It involved a bunch of gear pyramids, which are always fun, and took me 55 minutes. Later in the day I dropped my bike off at Bow Cycle to have a few things adjusted – the derailleur needed to be repositioned as the chain was rubbing on it. An easy fix though. She’s also getting some new bar tape and will be cleaned and shined up.

Number 5

It would feel wrong to not run once all week, so I made it to the Y just as they were opening up at 7 am. Given that it was -28C (-18F) outside a treadmill run was really the only option. At least I got to run in shorts though! I hopped on for 30 fun filled minutes. I kept cranking up the speed as the run went along and watched the visual display show me as a little red dot running around a track. Talk about boring! You are running on a treadmill, visualizing yourself running round and around on a track…

Number 6

And reserves are coming along. Everyone keeps asking how they are going but it is really hard to quantify. The best I can say is that they HAVE to be done by December 18^th. And that I’m getting on a plane at 8 pm on December 18^th. And that I’ll most likely pass out the entire way after being so sleep deprived for so long..!!

Hope you guys had a great weekend!

Really sockin’ it to my legs!

2009-12-08T23:07:00.001-07:00

Wow…if my legs weren’t mad at me before after yesterday’s stair workout, they definitely are now! Tonight’s spin class with Angie was intense!! We had a big strength night.

14 minutes of single leg exercises.
10 minutes of alternating 30 seconds standing, 30 seconds sitting…simulating a big, long hill climb.
Big gear pyramids – 1:00, teeny rest, 2:00, teeny rest, 3:00 all in a big gear.
2 x 4 minutes at a 40K time trial effort.
1 minute big gear intervals.
Somewhere in there we also fit in some squats off the bike.

It was a tough workout, but I loved every minute of it. In fact, when we were doing the 30/30 stand/sit exercise Angie looked at her sheet and proclaimed that surely she couldn’t have meant 10 minutes. Tara and I looked at each other and said that we’ll need to be able to climb for longer than 10 minutes at Ironman Canada, so let’s go for it! I’m sure some of the folks in my class were shooting daggers my way, but honestly that part of the workout was probably my favourite. Closely followed by 14 minutes of single leg.

Another one of my favourite parts of the class? The music! Every few weeks Richelle e-mails me and asks for spin class song suggestions. We used one of Richelle’s playlists, and it sounded like a Leana’s greatest hits evening! If I hadn’t suggested a particular song to Richelle there was a 99% chance that I had that song on my iPod already. I was singing and bobbing my head the entire class. It was awesome!! What was on the playlist?

Darude – Sandstorm (taking me back to 2001…), Kevin Rudolph – Welcome to the World, Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Dawn of the Dead, Guru Josh – Infinity, Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling, The Watchmen – Stereo

…and plenty more that are slipping my mind at the moment…

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to attempt to crawl up the stairs to get to bed!

Up and up, round and round

2009-12-07T20:46:00.001-07:00

Fact: If it is –20C out I am willing to pay $25 to park in a heated parkade that connects directly to my office building so that I don’t have to go outside. Ridiculous, no?

Since it is so cold outside running isn’t an option for me. It would be great to head to the Y over lunch and use a treadmill or the track, but it is a bit far away from my office. So instead, why not work with what you have available?
I work in a pretty tall office tower, so I decided to hit the stairs for a workout over lunch today. It is kind of like an indoor Grouse Grind workout! Besides just straight walking up the stairs I got ideas for other exercises here and here. I warmed up by walking up about five flights of stairs, then I started in on all different kinds of squats, lunges, calf raises, tricep dips and push ups. With no air movement in the stairwell it doesn’t take long to start huffing and puffing and working up a sweat. There was another girl I ran into a couple of times and she was just walking up and up… I would alternate strength rounds with a few runs up flights. After making it up about 33 flights I took the elevator down and started again, this time walking up 25 flights all in one go.

So all in all a great workout! I almost wish I had worn a heart rate monitor to see the kind of numbers I put up. 40 minutes in the stair well and now I’m sure that my legs are very mad at me!

Snow Day!

2009-12-06T22:09:00.001-07:00

When I say I’m taking a hiatus, apparently that means less than a week… But I had to share some of the craziness from this weekend! On Friday we had a winter storm warning – up to 20 cm (~8 in) of snow and wind gusts up to 50 – 70 km/hr (30 – 44 mph). Nuts! At 3 pm our VP sent an e-mail out to the entire company basically telling us to go home. Here’s the scene as I left my office:
Luckily the drive home wasn’t as bad as last Friday’s – that one took 90 minutes and it was a skating rink the entire way. This Friday’s was only about 40 minutes, although there were a couple of white knuckle moments along the way… I even saw a couple of cyclists making their way home in this snowy mess!

On Saturday I hoped to knock out a spin workout then go into the office. I was up at 5:30 and on my bike in the garage soon after. I ran through a pretty good workout that was a lot of high spinning stuff, followed by some standing strength moves. I spun for about an hour and I followed it up with some core work. I turned on the radio and the RCMP were telling people to only make trips if absolutely necessary, but otherwise to stay home. Me being the fraidy cat that I am I decided that a trip to the office wasn’t worth the risk of getting in an accident or getting my car stuck because it was just nuts outside! Instead I watched Star Trek…Pirates of the Caribbean…and just took it easy. As the day went on the temperatures plunged so it became even more brutal outside!

So cue Sunday…and since it was so cold outside there was no way i was going to attempt a run. -18C and –30C with the wind chill. Brr!! And definitely not in all that snow!
So I got back on the trainer for another one hour ride. It was ironically more of the same…one leg drills, lots of high cadence and some big gear low cadence stuff. I have to admit that having the new bike to spin on makes these indoor training rides a whole lot more enjoyable! After that I managed to make my way downtown and put in a few solid hours at the office.
Tomorrow? It is still going to be freezing!! I have an idea for a different workout I can do over lunch though so I can still stay warm!

Be Back Soon…

2009-12-03T21:14:00.001-07:00

Hey folks…it may be a bit quiet over here for a bit. My couple of projects at work are going to be sucking a lot of my time in the next couple of weeks. Workouts will happen when they can and I’m going to guess that you won’t want to hear about all of the fun hours at the office I’ll be putting in. So…nose to the grindstone between now and my big deadline on December 18th.

So just in case you are wondering what I’m up to, this post from last year probably sums it up! Last year I logged over 60 hours of overtime in 2.5 weeks…so let’s see what happens this year.

I promise that there will be some exciting things to say after December 18th though. Here’s a hint…

Image Credit

A Killer Leg Workout!

2009-12-01T22:30:00.001-07:00

I made it to spin class at Bow Cycle tonight for the first time in a couple of weeks! No lie, I was so excited to ride tonight since I’d be on my new bike! Coach Angie had one heck of a routine in store for us too. It was strength night tonight. We did some big gear single legs (2 minute intervals!!!), some more intervals where we would push big gears then get off the bike and do squats and repeat, plus some zone 4 intervals. My legs were feeling that workout, especially the squats!! Wow… Riding felt amazing and it was really comfortable on the bike. Angie pushed us hard, I was focused yet smiling the entire way through. Despite the hard workout it felt like the entire ride flew by, as did the core workout afterward. After that I came home, kicked my feet up and enjoyed a little hot chocolate with marshmallows. Perfect evening!

Brick, run…er…swim??

2009-12-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

I promise, I have gotten in a couple of workouts in the past few days!

Sunday Brick

I spent part of Saturday getting my bike ready to ride. Sunday morning it was time to hop on! I loaded up my Garmin Edge 305 with a great workout called Improve Your Torque 101. The original plan had been to head over to Tara’s house Friday night and spin in her basement, but that plan wound up falling through. A storm blew through in the afternoon that turned roads in to skating rinks so by the time I made it home I wasn’t going anywhere. The workout looked like a good one though, so I ran through it on Sunday morning on my own in my garage. It was a lot of strength stuff – long single leg drills in a big gear and some intense gear pyramids – my favourite as opposed to high cadence spins! It was a great 65 minute workout.

As for the bike? Once I greased up the chain and ran it through its gears the shifting was really smooth. Overall the fit seems pretty good, although the seat feels like it is angled a little too far forward. I am loving the new ride, although I really wish the weather hadn’t turned quite yet so that I could have gotten in a test ride outdoors!

After I hopped off the bike I changed into running gear and went out for a quick 20 minute brick run. Okay, the duration of the run might have been quick, but my pace was not! It was still really icy out after Friday’s storm so I concentrated more on where my feet were going instead of what my pace was. Once my workout was done it was time to head off to the Grey Cup!

Run

The weather on Monday was interesting… We had a really narrow window of time where it was actually nice outside. Luckily that window happened to be over the lunch hour.
I threw on some capris, a long sleeve top and a short sleeve top and took off on 5K out and back run. It was windy out…really windy… And this was probably my last chance to run in capris in Calgary this year. I can’t complain too much as November was a pretty phenomenal month here. The run went well. After I grabbed some food and went back to my office to stretch I took a look outside and all of a sudden it was snowing. Sunny one minute, white out conditions the next. Gotta love that crazy Calgary weather! At least I made it outside for my run at just the right time!

Er…swim?

Sigh…I have come to the conclusion that I am not a 9 pm workout kind of girl. 5:30 am swim times agree with me a whole lot more, as by 9 pm I’d prefer to be in my pyjamas and gearing up for bed. Plus when you start to get poor road conditions due to snow the late night drive out to Cochrane actually scares the bejeebus out of me. Snow, deer that dart out in front of you…feel free to make fun but it really does scare me. So…sad to say…let’s call a spade a spade and just agree that I’ll be swimming in the mornings from now on. Sorry coach… :(

Grey Cup Weekend 2009

2009-11-30T22:15:00.001-07:00

We love Grey Cup in my family. My brother is a big CFL fan so he’s in it for the game. My sister-in-law and I are in it for the party. Back in 2003 my brother’s best man got 8 tickets to the Grey Cup in Regina, SK as a wedding present. At the time I was living in Laredo, TX and trying to get a flight to Regina was no easy feat. I picked the cheapest option on Orbitz that sent me through Houston, somewhere in Wisconsin, Minneapolis and then into Regina. I was on a plane with a bunch of hunters that had never heard of the CFL before, but they sure taught me a lot about flying into Canada with all your hunting gear.
All I can tell you about the game is that it was so cold I lost all feeling in my toes (never mind coming from Texas, it was cold period…-30C with the wind chill), Bryan Adams played the half time show, and we traded root beer schnapps for coffee with the guys in front of us. Oh, and I think Edmonton won?

Ever since then Grey Cup has held a special place in our hearts. A couple of years ago we held the Great Grey Cup-Cake Off to determine the best cupcake bakery in Calgary. Last year we themed our food around the two Cup contenders, Montreal and Calgary. We had Montreal smoked meat sandwiches and some of Calgary’s own Spolumbo sausages (owned by three former CFL players).

This year, Grey Cup was in Calgary.

On Saturday I went downtown with my brother, sister-in-law and niece to take in the Grey Cup Parade. Avery was enthralled with the parade and she especially loved the horses. Yeah, she’s a cutie. Hard to believe how big she’s getting!

I wasn’t really rooting for either the Saskatchewan Roughriders or the Montreal Alouettes on Sunday, I was just hoping to see a good game. For the first part of the game, what was really more interesting was checking out the Roughrider fans:

The beer can mohawk…
Poor frog…
The beer box cowboy hat…My sister-in-law and I were on our own in the end zone, but rest assured…we had a good time!

Oh, and Montreal won in what wound up being a pretty exciting game. And that’s Grey Cup for another year…

Ready to Ride…

2009-11-28T22:22:00.001-07:00

Here she is…ready to go! I got the good folks at Bow Cycle to put her together for me today, then had a 2D fit done. We adjusted seat height and position, and added in an extra spacer at the stem. Without the spacer my aero position was really aggressive and it may not be comfortable on longer rides. This should be a good start and once I ride more I’ll have an idea as to whether additional tweaks may be needed. The guy doing my fit confirmed that this bike does indeed fit me really well.

In the evening I put a trainer tire on, moved my Garmin Edge over from my old bike and did a few other things to get it set up. Wow those trainer tires are tough to put on!! As the weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow I had initially thought I may have a chance to test her outdoors. Sadly snow rolled in Friday afternoon and now there is snow, ice and gravel all over the roads. It may melt later tomorrow, but probably not till quite a bit later in the day. Oh well, I am sure I can find a good trainer workout to do instead!

It’s Here!!!!

2009-11-27T06:43:00.001-07:00

Yesterday morning I got a call from Greyhound that I had a shipment to pick up – my bike had arrived!!! I was originally going to run over lunch but instead I hopped over to Greyhound to pick up my bike and drop it off at home. The guy at the courier desk helped me unpack it and load it into my car. As he took the bike out of the box he asked me, “Is this supposed to make you fast?”

With any luck! ;)

“What do you do when it rains? It doesn’t have any fenders on it.”

So now she’s sitting in my garage…somewhat in pieces. Now to tend to the little matter of getting her put together and fitted! Oh, and she has red accents on her tires to match the red accent on the bike. As my two year old niece Avery would say, “Ohhhh, fannnnncyyyyyy!” (Apparently that is my niece’s favourite phrase!) And I have to say I was pretty impressed with Greyhound’s shipping. Just over $50 to ship and it took about 2 days to get here. I promise a picture of the new addition once she’s put together! Astoundingly I now have three bikes in my garage. How did that happen??

Oh, and I didn’t slack off yesterday completely. I did get to the pool to swim at 5:30 am. I ran through a great 1800m workout that included some drill work (6 kick roll, fist swim and zipper swim), a 400m steady swim and 4 x 25m hard. It actually felt really good to be back in the water and the pool was reasonably quiet at that time in the morning. In the evening I met up with Pam, Tara and my friend Julie for a great dinner out at Milestones and an evening at the theatre. Murder on the Nile is playing at the Vertigo Theatre. I think this is the first time Pam and Tara saw me in a skirt and pretty shoes! Tonight is possibly a spin with Tara…we’ll see!

Happy Friday!!

Disturbing

2009-11-25T20:41:00.001-07:00

Well, today’s trip to Edmonton went not too badly. There isn’t anything like spending 6+ hours on the road for an hour and a half meeting though…driving the Dodge Caravan of style!!

As I was driving north this morning a Honda CRV pulled on to the highway in front of me, maybe an hour out of Edmonton. Her driving was interesting…nothing too crazy erratic, but every once in awhile she’d pull a manoeuvre that made you think she wasn’t quite paying attention.

When we hit the south side of Edmonton we wound up stopping at a light. I looked over at her and she was taking a massive swig out of what was unmistakeably a bottle of vodka. It was a large clear glass bottle with red metal at the neck. Once she was done she grabbed a bottle of water and took a swig out of that. It was 9:30 am. Sad…

On to happy things. When I made it back to town I hit up the Y for a round of strength training. I focused on upper body and worked hard. Once my arms felt sufficiently like jello it was time to go, and I picked up some sushi on my way home. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I can make it to the pool tomorrow morning!

Happy birthday to my mom!!! Thursday is her birthday. And to all my American friends, I hope you guys have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Flats of another kind

2009-11-24T21:13:00.001-07:00

Tuesday night = Tuesday night spin at Bow Cycle with Angie! Except tonight it just wasn’t meant to be!!! I’m off to Edmonton for work tomorrow so I had to pick up a pool vehicle before heading home. It is a pretty wicked Dodge Caravan…*cough, cough* When I got the vehicle the low tire pressure warning light was on. By the time I dealt with that and made it home it would have been tough to change, load up the bike and make it to Bow. Instead I set my bike up on the trainer in my garage and ran through a great workout with a little bit of everything – single leg, high cadence and low cadence stuff.

If I learned anything tonight though, it is that if I got a bigger vehicle I’d have less space in my garage to spin! It was a really tight squeeze next to that Caravan!

**And, just in case you were wondering…Debbie called my pumpkin and butternut squash dal in the top three of all the dishes I’ve made for her so far. Woohoo! I’d definitely recommend that you give it a try!

Monday Randoms

2009-11-23T21:34:00.001-07:00

The Ironman nightmares have started! On Saturday night I dreamt that Ironman was TOMORROW and the hotel I was staying at had accidently taken my wetsuit for dry cleaning. The swim was a gong show and I had to drive from the swim to T1 and never found it.
I picked up a bunch of kale from the Farmer’s Market recently. I tried making two things – a kale, sausage and white bean stew
and a sweet potato and kale soup. Both yummy. Kale is supposed to be really good for you…and if you prepare it properly it tastes really good! Honest, it isn’t just a garnish at the salad bar!
On Sunday I learned that you should not put chicken into a tandoori marinade just before going to bed. You will be lying in bed and all you can smell is tandoori.
Today I grilled up my tandoori chicken and made a pumpkin and butternut squash dal (an Indian dish made with yellow split peas). The recipe calls it a soup, but it comes out quite thick and tastes great over a bit of rice. It is a bit time consuming for a weeknight recipe, but it sure is tasty. I served it with a bit of plain yogurt and mango chutney.
I met Kelly for our lunch time workout today. My shins were slightly unhappy with me, but otherwise it was a good run. We’ve been lucking out with some fantastic weather this November – it was gorgeous and sunny out, and you have to love it when you can run in capris and a short sleeve shirt here at this time of year!
Congratulations to Molly and my teammates Sarah and Nola on their great races at Ironman Arizona!!

Filling in the blanks…

2009-11-20T01:01:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you don’t realize how much you would really like something until you aren’t sure if you can have it. Take Ironman for example. My good friend Tara realized that she really wanted to race it next year when all the community fund spots filled up at the end of October. All of a sudden 147 new spots appeared online a few weeks ago…no idea how or from where…but all of a sudden the opportunity opened back up and now Tara will be racing next year along with Kelly and I.

When I first bought my bike back in April 2008, a Kona Lisa road bike, I wasn’t sure how much I would even use the thing. I hadn’t ridden a bike in ages, so I had no idea if my bike and I would be occasional friends or if I would really fall in love with it and want to ride all the time. Ha, as soon as I brought my new bike home I took it out of the car and promptly went on an 8 mile run… It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with my bike though and somewhere between April and August I started to think sprint triathlon…half Ironman in 2009…Ironman in 2010. And colour me surprised that the bike is my strongest of the three events.

So to be perfectly honest with you, I had no intention of looking at a new bike for Ironman next year. For how hilly the course is I wasn’t sure if I would see a benefit out of a tri bike. Maybe after Ironman I’d think about a fancy new tri bike.

And then on Monday I stopped by D’s blog. D is selling her bike…an absolutely beautiful 2008 Cervelo P2C. 51 cm. Hmm, I fit a 51 cm bike… We exchange e-mails, but since I’m in Calgary and D is in New West I can’t exactly test ride her bike. Maybe I can find the same bike to test ride out over here? On Tuesday I e-mail Kelly to let her know that I brought my gear to run in case she would be interested in meeting up. Kelly and I never run on Tuesdays, but we both have our gear and are keen to hit the pathway. Swiftly the conversation turns to bikes and I ask Kelly what she rides. A 51 cm Cervelo P2C. Really? And oddly enough, Kelly actually has it downtown with her that day, on the roof of her car. She wouldn’t normally have it with her, but today just happens to be my lucky day. I see her bike and I fall in love… At a bike shop I am able to confirm that this would indeed be the right size for me.

As I thought through the idea of a new bike, I told my parents that I figured I’d get a new bike after Ironman. My mom asked me, “Why wait?” After all, there is no question as to whether I’m going to use a bike now. Pretty safe to say that I love biking! It all just felt like kismet, from Kelly having the exact same bike with her for me to try out that day, and for D having the “perfect for me” bike. Someone threw their name into the hat for the bike before me…so I waited in anticipation… I figured if it was meant to be it would happen, and then I got the good news this evening that I lucked out!! Thanks D, I promise to take good care of your girl!! Training for and racing Ironman Canada is going to be fun!!!

Preoccupied

2009-11-19T06:33:00.001-07:00

Things have been ticking right along this week. I have no structured training this week, so anything I want to do is up to me. Or perhaps anything I don’t want to do is up to me…hmmm…

I took Monday as a rest day after the Last Chance Half. I was actually expecting to hurt a whole lot more on after the race but I think that the swim and putting my feet up on Sunday helped a lot. I navigated the up and down of stairs with ease. Good times!

Tuesday I met up with my friend Kelly over lunch. I was interested in an easy recovery run. Kelly wanted to work on her technique for race walking. While we aren’t working out together I love the chat on the way to the pathway and the motivation of just meeting someone for a workout. I was originally going to head out for 30 minutes, but holy smokes the wind was whipping around! In fact there wound up being wind warnings issued that day. I figured 20 minutes would be a good goal for a run in such windy conditions, and the legs felt great on the run. I was especially keen to get a run in since I couldn’t make it to spin class that night. A good friend of mine and former coworker from San Antonio is in Calgary on business. We haven’t seen each other in about 2.5 years, so we got together to catch up. I was also in charge of finding some good local food for her to try, so I took her to Spur Gastropub. It is a pretty interesting spot downtown and the bison dry ribs, PEI lobster mac and cheese and the beef sliders were fantastic…

Wednesday I met up with Kelly again for another run. We both aimed for about a 40 minute workout. Rather than sticking with a fairly flat route along the river I went with something a little more hilly in the neighbourhoods along the north side of the river. It was a lot less windy, the sun was out, and it felt great to run. After Kelly and I were done we ran through some step ups, squats, and dips.

So that has been my week so far! My mind has been a little preoccupied with something or other this week. I’ve made a big decision…hopefully I’ll have some interesting news to share with you soon…

Last Chance Half Marathon – Race Report

2009-11-15T20:11:00.001-07:00

First off I have to say that my coach Angie deserves a huge congratulations. She had a stellar race at Clearwater yesterday, coming in 7th in her AG!! Way to go coach!!!

So…the Last Chance Half… Given that I really didn’t train for this race there was no way I was running for a PR. I didn’t want to risk getting injured, and despite the fact that I am uber-competitive with myself I knew trying for a PR would not be a good idea. There was something that I did want to focus on though. During too many races I have allowed negative thoughts to creep into my mind and have let it affect me. I’ve placed a lot of expectations on myself this year in races and I’ve had times when I’ve cried and times when I’ve wanted to quit. I really need to find those positive mantras that will get me through tough times, especially as I approach Ironman! So my goal was to stay positive the entire race!

It was supposed to be 8C (46F). I prefer to underdress rather than overdress, so I went with capris, a long sleeve tech top and a short sleeve top. What I wasn’t expecting was the wind though! I stopped to get gas on my way to the race and was surprised by how windy it was. Hopefully the wind wouldn’t be too cold and I’d be dressed okay! I got to the race site, managed to exchange my medium shirt for a small with another racer, and hung around waiting for the race to start. People were dressed to the nines!! Running tights, jackets, gloves, woolly hats, you name it! Oh well, I was committed to my outfit and it wound up being the right call for me.

We took off from the Eau Claire Market and headed west along the south side of the river. Just as the race started the winds really picked up from the west. They were gusting up to 50 km/hr (30 mph). My goal was to keep my pace in check for the first 3 mi and the wind definitely made sure that happened! We crossed the river, went a bit farther west, then turned around to run east along the river. I planned to take advantage of the wind at my back and I was feeling awesome! I sucked down a mint chocolate Gu and it definitely gave me an extra spring in my step. When we got to around the zoo…probably about 7.5 miles in…the pathway got to be a bit more hilly. We hit another turn around at 9 mi and my energy was starting to flag. Probably no surprise given that my longest distance in awhile was 8.5 mi. Time to really turn on that power of positive thinking! I imagined the finish line, and thought that there was a big string extending out from the finish that was tied around my waist and pulling me back in. I kept thinking that I was so thankful that I was out running today and enjoying the race. Just one foot in front of the other…that string was pulling me in…I was doing it and I was feeling great!!! (Or at least that was what I kept telling myself…)

So sure…definitely no PR…but I felt like I really did work hard on positive thinking and it helped me out a lot today. After I stopped running I did feel like my body absolutely hated me though! My legs were functioning…barely…and when I coughed it just hurt all throughout my torso (there is something about exercising in cold weather that seems to induce a bit of a cough once I stop moving). I put some sweats on, grabbed my breakfast, then headed over to the Y to stretch. And since I haven’t been to the pool for ages I then swapped out sweats for a swimsuit and knocked out 1500m. Then home with my feet up for the rest of the day!

Congratulations to my teammate Sharon who came in third in our AG, plus I saw Jordan and Susan out there. Great to see you ladies!!

Chip Time: 2:12:47
Overall: 355 out of 452
Females 30-39: 79 out of 107
Females Overall: 177 out of 257

**And in addition…this was actually my second fastest half marathon of the year. Although the two slower halfs were at the end of a half Iron distance triathlon…so…. And sadly my ankle was a casualty of those nasty timing bands. I have a wicked wound on the back of my ankle from where the timing chip cut in, along with a few spots where it looks like I’m allergic to the band. Pretty, eh?

Never Say Never!

2009-11-12T22:20:00.001-07:00

One of the things I love about the industry that I work in is that you meet some really interesting people. When I was working as a field engineer in Laredo, TX one of my favourite characters was a company man called Frank. He is just how I would figure a lot of oil field guys in Texas would be. 10 gallon hat, chewing tobacco, gruff and someone that you didn’t want to piss off. But for as scared as a lot of guys were of Frank I enjoyed working with him. He worked for a small company and every once in awhile he’d bring his wife and little Dachshund Jorge (pronounced George) out to location and he just doted on that little dog.

On Tuesday I had a big meeting with some partners regarding a project in the works for next year. One guy is a super straight talking kind of guy. I’ve been a little intimidated of him in the past but in this meeting I felt like he really listened to what I had to say and respected my opinion. At one point in the meeting he said to me, “Leana, never say never as an engineer because as soon as you do you’ll be wrong.”

So, never say never my friends. I had written off running the Last Chance Half. Longest run to date in the last few weeks? A 90 min 8.5 mi run. In fact my last run was the Edworthy Park XC race on Saturday. I had spent the 11:00 hour this morning convincing myself that it was too cold to run outside. I had finished up lunch and had just swallowed a fun-size Snickers bar when the e-mail came through. All of a sudden that little Snicker bar felt like a rock in the bottom of my stomach.

“…Leana is the next person on the waiting list so you can sell your bib to her…I’ll let the two of you work out the financial details but send me an email to confirm the change…”

Um…excuse me? My name just came up on the waiting list for the Last Chance Half? GULP!!! What to do? Well, here are the reasons why I think I should run it:

The weather…knock on wood…is supposed to be really nice on Sunday. And a race is a good excuse for a long run, right?
I have a ton of Gu in my inventory right now. This is a good opportunity to use some up, right? (Yes, I keep my Gu in a massive beer stein.)
The breakfast after the race is phenomenal.

So…guess who is running a half marathon on Sunday? Within 4 hours of finding out I was running I had my race packet all picked up. Wish me luck!!

I <3 new bike toys!!

2009-11-09T21:32:00.001-07:00

I fully admit it, I’m a numbers nerd. I love my Garmin. I don’t live by the numbers during a workout, but I do like to know how far, how fast at the end of the day. I did have a Sigma bike computer earlier, but it went belly up back in July. Then I picked up the Garmin cadence sensor so I could use my Forerunner 305 as my bike computer. After all, GPS, cadence…what’s not to love?

But the battery life on the Forerunner would be sketchy during an Ironman. Typical life is 10 hours so between the bike and the run it may be touch and go. I was originally wowed by the flashy new 310XT. Waterproof? A 20 hour battery life? Sweet! But for a retail price of $400 Cdn it is a little tough to justify for just a bit of extra battery life.

Enter the Garmin Edge 305. A slightly nicer price point, and it is bike specific. It attaches to your stem or handlebars so it is easier to read and it records cadence, heart rate, speed, altitude… Awesome! And thanks to *cough, cough* eBay *cough, cough* I got a pretty good deal. It arrived in the mail earlier in the week and I set it up. Quick and easy! Isn’t it pretty?

I really wanted to take the Edge out for a spin, but not just any old spin on the trainer. I wanted to take it outdoors! And since Saturday it was sunny out I decided I could brave the chilly wind and bundle up for a ride. By the time I got going I didn’t have a ton of daylight left, but I managed just over 15.5 mi in an hour. I haven’t ridden outdoors since maybe September but it felt so good to be outside! Sure, the wind was chilly and seriously a bear (up to 35 kph or 22 mph). Going up and down the hills north of my neighbourhood was a lot of fun though.

And the Edge? I love it! Everything I love about my Forerunner, but just better for the bike. I need to play around with the display a little more though. If you pick four fields to display the two on the bottom are fairly small to read, especially if one of them is cadence.

Sunday I hit up the Y to do a little strength workout. It has probably been a year since I actually did some strength training at the Y?? It felt good to pump some iron (haha!!!). What didn’t feel good? Finding it next to impossible to pull up my emergency parking brake in my car this evening!!! Hello DOMS! Alright, it is 9:30 pm…I may have skipped swimming thanks to working late tonight, but now I need to get to bed!!

Edworthy Park XC Race

2009-11-07T21:44:00.001-07:00

When fall arrives, so does the start of the Calgary Road Runners Cross Country series of races. I’ve been wanting to try one of these races for ages but I always seem to be training for something that prevents it. With no marathons on the horizon there are no excuses, so I showed up for the Edworthy Park XC race today.

We’ve been fairly lucky with the weather in Calgary as of late (knock on wood). No snow for awhile and sunny and dry all week. This made for some fantastic conditions on the trail as it was dry out, no snow, and just one icy patch. And since it was supposed to be up to 8C (46F) I figured capris, a short sleeve tech shirt with a long sleeve on top would be perfect. And it did feel nice outside…when the wind wasn’t blowing! The wind was positively icy, but I figured as soon as the race started things would be okay.

I ran into Dawn and Karen at the race start, chatted with a few other runners and soon enough it was go time! There are two options for the race, a one loop 4K or a two loop 8K course. I decided to go for the 8K. This being my first XC race and all I lined up near the back and vowed to not look at my Garmin. The course was a whole lot of up and down and it sure was fun! There was one flat section when we were running along a field and wow…it felt like all energy was being sucked from my legs. Definitely prefer the up and down trail as opposed to flat. There was one big hill that we got to hit twice where I didn’t even attempt to run, I figured I was best off just to walk it. Sure…I came in somewhere near the back of the pack, but no matter. It was still fun! I can see how these races are addictive and it would be fun to get better at cross country!

After the race we all head to the nearest community hall for a social. Bring a bowl, mug and spoon for soup and coffee, plus bring a dessert to share among all the racers. I had a bowl of black bean and pasta and chatted with friends. For $10 for race entry you can’t beat this as a way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Garmin Time: 53:00
Gun Time: 53:04
Overall: 97 out of 103
Females 30-39: 7 out of 7

Healthy food needed, stat!

2009-11-05T21:24:00.001-07:00

I think my brain has been feeling a bit overloaded on left over Halloween candy and take out meals. I needed something fresh and healthy this evening!

First up I roasted some parsnips in the oven with some olive oil, salt, pepper and some fresh ginger. Parsnips are one of those vegetables that I really detested as a kid. Now as an adult I’m trying a few new ways to cook them up to see if I can change my opinion on them. After all, they are supposed to be good for you!

While the parsnips were roasting up I made the other half of my meal – Tassajara Warm Red Cabbage Salad from 101 Cookbooks. Red cabbage, raisins and feta cheese. What’s not to like? I followed the recipe, but added in a some sliced apples to the cabbage and sprinkled some pomegranate seeds on top. Pomegranates just came into season so I’m going to have to see how else I can incorporate them into meals.

It was good stuff and just what I needed! Happy Friday everyone!!

Wednesday Randoms!

2009-11-04T21:18:00.001-07:00

This is the time of year when I get to know the folks who come and clean the office in the evenings. Sigh… A busy week at work has made this a run-focused week since I don’t really have time to make it to the pool and had to miss spin class last night. Oh well, that’s the way it goes! Despite the extra hours I’m actually really enjoying work. I have a great project I am working on that has me super excited.
I got a 30 minute run in on Monday over lunch on my own. Went not too badly!
Got a 45 minute fartlek run in with Kelly today. I think we both had reasons to bail on the run but we kept each other accountable and each got a great fartlek workout in.
Ryan passed along the best idea ever – the nutella and orange marmalade sandwich. It is like heaven between two slices of bread!
Crate and Barrel has opened in Calgary! I loved that store when I lived in the US. I got the most awesome sushi plates from there today. Plus they have some super cute Christmas ornaments.
From Crate and Barrel it was on to Willow Park Wines – where I found out that they have Pike Brewing Co. beers in stock from Seattle. Yum…

And to answer a few of your random questions:

Is that a gong? Why yes it is! Direct from the gong factory in Bogor, Indonesia. (This is an interesting article if you want to read about the place.) I don’t seem to have my pictures here from my visit to the factory back in 1994, but my parents picked this gong up for me before they moved from Indonesia back to Canada a few years ago. My friend Pam really wants to come over to my place to spin and gong the gong whenever we have to spin up.
Have I ever bobbed for apples? I think so…maybe?? I seem to remember a Halloween party when I was in Girl Scouts that involved bobbing for apples.
No carving of pumpkins, but what about trick or treating? Um yeah…I could probably count the number of times I’ve been trick or treating on one hand. But with good reason. I left Canada when I was three in lived in a bunch of places that didn’t really have trick or treating (or at least at the time) – Australia, the UK and Bogota, Colombia. I do remember that my school in the UK organized a list of families that all lived nearby so the kids could go trick or treating. And I remember my last Halloween in Colombia where we were living in an apartment tower complex full of expats. We rode up and down the elevators of the different buildings trick or treating and managed a great haul… I didn’t make it back to Canada until I was 15…well past the respectful age to trick or treat it seemed.
Have I started training for Ironman yet? I am decidedly not training for anything specific right now. Just focusing on running and speed and working on my technique in the pool. I suspect that things will get a little busier on the Ironman training front sometime in the spring, but I’m not trying to look that far ahead at this point in time.

This is post number 668!! How did that happen? All of your comments and support along the way mean a lot to me. Thanks so much for reading!!!

The good, the bad and the sad

2009-11-02T20:29:00.001-07:00

I had a 90 minute run on my schedule for this weekend. I woke up before 6 am without an alarm on Sunday morning thanks to the time change. Since I figured my neighbours wouldn’t appreciate me banging flooring in that morning I quickly got dressed and headed out for my run. Despite the fact that the sun wasn’t up yet it was actually quite nice out. 0C. You guys are probably laughing at my definition of “nice” but these days if the temperatures aren’t below 0C then it is actually kinda warm!

The Good

I haven’t done a 90 minute run in I don’t know how long. Probably back at Lake Stevens. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I actually felt great on the run! I kept getting progressively faster throughout the run, with the exception of the last mile which was uphill. As the sun was coming up it was turning out to be a beautiful day. What a great morning for a run!

The Bad

This being the morning after Halloween you could tell that some neighbourhood kids had been up to some mischief the night before. Running through one little cul-de-sac some kids had taken all of the carved pumpkins that people had put out and smashed them all in the street. What a mess!

The Sad

I run past this one house quite frequently and they have a medium to large hairy dog. Not too sure on the breed. I’ve noticed that they often have their dog tied up to the porch which is really just a set of steps and a concrete square in front of their front door. Basically it is just large enough for this dog to lie down on. Yesterday when I ran past their house it was probably just before 7 am…still dark out…and I could see a fuzzy shape by the front door. It was 0C outside and this poor furry fella was probably sleeping outside all night. It just broke my heart.

Does November equal the start of the holiday season to you? The Christmas coffees are coming out at Second Cup and Starbucks and I saw my first Christmas shopping related commercial last night. Anyhow, I figured this was a good time to try out my Vanilla Gingerbread holiday GU. Hmm, not my favourite. In my opinion it is way too sweet for me and I found the gingerbread flavour a little too overpowering. I’ll stick with the chocolate mint I think!

What were you for Halloween?

2009-11-01T19:46:00.001-07:00

I dressed up as a handyman for Halloween. Like an honest to goodness one as opposed to when I was a stud finder a few years ago.

Yes folks, anyone can give their living room a facelift in one weekend if I can! I’ve been wanting to replace my living room carpet for quite awhile. No doubt this action will not please Finlay who has been working really hard to make this solid carpet a polka dot one instead…ahem. So that’s the before shot. Just your generic beige carpet. A couple of weeks ago I found out that my uncle (? ex-uncle? family friend? not sure what to call him…) would be willing to come out to Calgary to help me install some flooring. So I went on a hunt for the perfect flooring and put an order in. I went for a really nice Pergo laminate that comes with underlay attached already. Sure, it is more expensive, but by the time you add in the cost for purchasing separate underlay it evens out at the end of the day. So Uncle A made it out to Calgary just after 4 pm on Saturday afternoon. Once he got here we got to work pulling up the carpet and underlay, pulling the staples out of the floor and removing the base boards. Luckily we were able to salvage the base boards to reuse once the new flooring was in.

Sunday morning was all about laying the floor and it actually went really quickly. Since my room is pretty square it required minimal special cuts. After that the baseboards were reinstalled, along with a new transition piece between the laminate and existing tile by the front door.

By 3 pm today we were all done! I spent the rest of the evening reassembling the room and there we go…

This is actually phase one of the project. I need to repaint the base boards and paint the walls. Since my living room has a pretty high ceiling that will probably wait until the new year sometime while I figure out how to tackle it.

Sadly I missed out on seeing my niece as what I’m sure was the cutest little ladybug ever and handing out candy to all the trick or treaters, but such is life! Hope you guys had a great weekend!

What’s your pH?

2009-10-29T23:09:00.001-06:00

I remember when I was younger I was fascinated by the Dove commercial where they compared the pH levels of different soaps. And me being the science nerd that I am I used to love playing around with litmus and universal indicator paper to read pH back in high school chemistry class. pH, pOH…I still find it fascinating. Anyhow…this morning I actually got out of the house on time and made it down to the Y just as the doors were opening at 5:30 am. I wanted to knock my swim out asap so I could hurry into work. I was the second person on the pool deck, but the lifeguard wasn’t letting anyone in the water just yet because the pH had just tested high on the water. Apparently the pH was at 7.8 and ideally it should be around 7.5. 7.8 or above and the pool has to be closed.

At this point in time an older gentleman who had already put his earplugs in wanders onto the pool deck and starts getting in the water. The lifeguard tries to stop him but he seems pretty nonplussed about the high pH. When the first lady on the deck sees him get in she gets antsy and asks what the detriment of swimming in high pH water would be. Apparently really bad skin irritation is the side effect and that wasn’t enough to scare her off. I chose to wait around until they got their second test back…where the results came in that it was still a high pH, but that we could swim. I was just advised to shower really well. Hmm, excellent.

So much for getting to the pool early, but at least I still got my swim in! My workout was a good one. Just what I needed to reinforce body position and technique in the water. Lots of fingertip drag, some flipper work, concentrating on decreasing stroke count. It was good!

And hey, guess what I did tonight? I carved my first ever pumpkin! Pam and I picked up pumpkins a couple of weeks ago at the Farmer’s Market. We got together this evening for some yummy Indian food and to create our works of art. Sadly my pumpkin was a little overripe and the inside was a bit liquidy. The pumpkin was still good to go for carving though!

Pam’s is the one in the middle. You can tell this wasn’t her first pumpkin. She even free styled her carving! Mine is the one on the right. He has shifty eyes, uneven ears and some wonky teeth. Plus he’s rotten, but he’s mine anyway!

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and a great Halloween!!!!

Bringing back the lunch run

2009-10-28T21:24:00.001-06:00

It has been a good week so far, and a really busy one at that! I felt like a little old lady on Monday as I was super stiff and sore from Sunday’s hike. A recovery run ought to do the trick, right? Reminder to self, do not attempt to gather running clothes together prior to 5:30 am before rushing out the door for work. I gathered what I thought were running capris, a long sleeve and a short sleeve tech top. In reality I accidently grabbed winter running tights from the laundry hamper instead of capris. I realized my error just before leaving on my run so I had two options: wear the tights and be overheated…or I had a pair of blue Adidas soccer shorts that I keep in my filing cabinet for physio. I opted for the shorts. And just in case you were wondering, Jergens original scent body lotion is an acceptable substitution for Body Glide on short runs. Who knew?

I met up with Kelly over lunch for a great 30 minute run. Our paces are different, but I wanted to take it easy so we wound up running together. It worked out really well as I got a recovery run and Kelly got a tempo run in, plus the company was great!

Tuesday night was our second spin session out at Bow. It was high cadence night…not normally my most favourite thing, but I actually really enjoyed the workout. Being around the team and chatting with friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in ages, really set the stage for a great time on the bike. This was my second time trying out my cadence sensor indoors on the bike. I turned off the GPS function so that it would calculate my speed based off of the sensor instead…and I have no idea what went wrong but it figured I was averaging 4.2 mph??? I know my wheel size has been calibrated within the Forerunner so I’m a bit stumped as to why my speed and distance calcs are so off. Hmmm….

Kelly and I met up today for another run over lunch. We both had 45 minutes on the schedule so we decided to do an out and back so we could start and finish together. We wished each other good luck and I took off. My legs were tired from last night’s spin but a little speed was feeling pretty good. I ran west along the river and almost made it to Tri-It before I had to turn around. On my way back there was a girl up ahead in a black and white lululemon jacket and I made it my mission to pass her. Nothing like finding a little incentive out there! I caught up with Kelly right at the 46 minute mark. Another excellent run in the books!

On tap for tomorrow is a swim on my own at the Y. I feel like I’ve been learning a lot from Richelle and Angie at swim class in Cochrane on Monday nights. I really need to make sure I get my second swim of the week in, otherwise I feel like I take one step forward and two steps back as it takes me awhile to remember all the little tweaks I have to keep in mind. After all, this is the time to be working on technique, right?

I hope everyone had a great Wednesday!!