having a day off in the middle of the week always throws me off. i spent all of thursday referring to incidents that occurred on tuesday as “friday’s events”. my brain was confused! i am looking forward to the weekend. there’s a chance of rain for sunday, but saturday is supposed to be nice (a mix of sun and cloud). next week’s forecast is gorgeous. sunshine across the board! negative temperatures, yes, but i can dress for that. my bike and brand new tires have been getting lots of use! any day that i don’t have to take the bus is a great day.

speaking of buses. lots of nonsense going on with the TTC (toronto transit commission, they operate toronto’s bus and subway system). they are raising fares in january by 25 cents. to prevent people from hoarding tokens by stockpiling them now at the current cheaper price (and risking drying out the token supply), they have shut down all the token vending machines and are only allowing people to buy tokens from operators in quantities of 5 or fewer. this is ridiculous! if you take the TTC every day, you will be buying tokens multiple times per week. no vending machines means you will have to wait in line to do this. last year, ttc drivers went on strike. they were legislated back to work after only two (weekend days) off the job. today, riders decided to protest the latest ttc hijinks by organizing a rider’s strike/boycott of TTC services. i participated (though I rarely every take ttc anyway. i specifically made a point not to today in solidarity with my fellow riders).

i think this weekend will mostly be spent relaxing and catching up on tv. i have a few fun projects and tasty meals planned. definitely a twice baked hangry pants squash in the works! maybe some kind of pie or cookies? we’ll see. jon is supposed to be bringing me some fresh apples from the farm, so i may have to do something to finish up the old ones. i’ll keep you posted.

(picture taken by my sister at the dead sea)

why did the camel cross the road?

we woke up early this morning to drive downtown for a fun, unique event: the toronto royal agricultural winter fair. i’ve never been to an agricultural fair, and the toronto winter one is the biggest in the country. holy cow, it was cool. there were tons of animals, lots of interesting farm innovations/initiatives, crazy vegetables and lots and lots of people.

the reason for going was to see jon’s cousin amy participate in the 4H junior beef hereford heifer show. although we did get to see her in the parade of 4Hers, we did not catch her showing. the rest of the family is going to be there to see her tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll have more pictures.

we also had to stop by to see our friend jasmin at her energrow booth with the soybean press that energrow designs and sells. the oil can power diesel engines and the meal that comes out of the other end of the press can be used as a feed supplement to increase farm animals’ protein intake. i’ve seen jasmin take her company from a small idea that started on one of her coop terms when she decided she wanted her own business to this big, very real thing. it’s pretty awesome.

this is a bunch of different beans/seeds that they ran through the press to produce different oils: canola, sunflower, soybean, mustard and flax

these vegetables made me rethink the hugeness of my squash from yesterday! holy wow. 1236 lbs of squash?? this makes 10 lbs look teensy weensy

cutest thing ever. boy lying down for a rest with his cow. you don’t see things like this in the city.

cute animals

two of the coolest things ever: bacon biodiesel (from the cigi biodiesel trailer) and an ipod powered by poop! (cow poop, that is. the only one of its kind!)

there was a bull that reminded me of a wild thing (from the movie)

we had a great day. i got to see some rodeo events – real cowgirls riding their horses super fast around poles and barrels and bull riding, which is just insane.

being a farmer is cool. and. farmers feed cities! don’t forget that.

cyclocross!

on saturday, we went to go watch our friend jeff in a cyclocross race at a local conservation area. i’ve been wanting to go see a race for ages, but we just haven’t had the time. when jeff told us about a race in the city (at one of our favorite hiking locales) on halloween, i knew it would be fun times.cyclocross is kind of a crazy sport. the bikes are road-like, but much more rugged. they run knobby tires because the majority of the course is grass or dirt (with only the occassional bit of paved area). the courses have run ups and barriers, where you have to dismount, throw your bike over your shoulder, and keep moving. races in ontario run from september to beginning of december, with 1-2 races per weekend (insane! i can’t imagine racing that much). cyclocross was originally designed to extend the roadie season into the fall in europe. it’s quite big in belgium. the ontario cross scene is still small, but it seems to be gaining in popularity.
when i was shopping around for my commuter bike last spring, i was looking at road bikes and hybrids. jon pointed out that a cyclocross bike was exactly what i was looking for. i wanted the sleekness of a road bike, with the drop bars for going fast down hills, but something a little more heavy duty. the average hybrid is just a mountain bike with 26″ wheels that are slightly slick- wouldn’t be useful for doing much offroading or racing (in tris or distance cyclocross races like paris to ancaster). after a few test rides, i found that indeed, the cyclocross was light enough to be fast (i mean, you have to be able to pick it up and run with it) but still durable enough to deal with the runaround of potholes and poorly paved toronto streets, so that’s what i bought. i never actually had any intention of doing any *real* cyclocross racing – races are about 1 hour long, on a course of a few kilometres. you do as many laps as you can. the winner is the first person to come in at the end- i see it as similar to a 10k run effort. now that i’ve been to an actual race, i might just be reconsidering! it’s much less dangerous than i thought – especially on slower courses like this one. the field is more spread out and there isn’t the same potential for crashing as in road racing. granted the race we went to, on halloween, costumes encouraged and prizes for winners in the form of beer and cash, was a little more laid back than most, it seems like a fairly casual, not crazy competitive sport. i think i like it. there is a lot of getting dirty though. you can see one of many mud puddles in the below pictures. i took a bunch of video of the riders splashing through which i will eventually find time to edit. maybe next year i’ll find a fun beginner race to do, since i already have the gear!

the course was very tight. there were tons of really sharp turns, but other than that, it did not seem like a super technical race (which is what keeps me away from mountain biking). the costumes were great and it was nice to see people getting into the spirit of halloween. jon and i squeezed in a quick hike up part of the niagara escarpment before the start.

this week’s meal was kind of the opposite of last week, in that it was sadly shared with no one. i tried to make it every bit as delicious though, even though i was just cooking for myself, as too often when it’s just me, i will supper on the random ingredients of what would be a meal without bothering to properly assemble anything onto a plate.

this ended up taking longer than i planned, but i didn’t have much else to do so i didn’t mind a time-intensive meal. i also made a whole pile of dirty dishes!! thank goodness for the dishwasher.

yikes.

the map: green pin on the right – Brockville (onions), dark blue pin – Markham (raspberries), turquoise pin – Richmond Hill (me! bell pepper), yellow pin – Guelph (eggs, zucchini), green pin on left – Innerkip (corn), purple pin – London (wheatberries), red pin – Jordan Station (heirloom tomatoes, peaches)

the raw materials:

red bell pepper, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, onion (with dirt from the field!), wheatberries, corn on the cob, another tomato

an “extra gros” (extra large, en français) brown free run egg, peach, raspberries that we picked last weekend

process: sautéed veggies (all except bell pepper) until soft and cooked, grilled corn and simmered wheatberries until satisfactorily chewy. shaved corn into pan of veggies, stirred in wheatberries.

dropped the hollowed out bell pepper into some boiling water for a few minutes until it was soft. preheated the oven (well. it was already on from another project), filled the pepper with the stuffing (and topped with some canadian “parmesan” cheese shavings) and put it into the oven to warm through and have the cheese melt.

meanwhile: i peeled and sliced up 6 peaches (no easy task!) and cooked them on the stove for about 10 minutes with some (non-local) sugar, water + some ginger for zing. puréed in the blender, chilled in an ice bath, and then threw into the ice cream maker to create some sorbet.

when you’re as much of an ice cream maker as i am, you often find yourself inundated with egg whites. there are only so many omelettes you can handle (though i may have to have one for an eat local meal!) and angel food cake is a fantastic way to use up a whole bunch (12) at once. only the eggs were local, but i figured since they comprised the biggest volume of the entire recipe, the cake could kind of count as a local dessert. i used this recipe. after the cake had cooled, i cut myself a piece, scooped some sorbet on the side, and sprinkled a few of my remaining unjammed, unfrozen freshly picked raspberries. what an end to my meal! (low fat to boot plus LOADED with protein. this makes up for the lack of protein in my main)

last weekend, in the midst of all our labour day relaxing (a much much needed weekend of rest from a summer’s worth of running around madly), we decided to have another mini farm adventure. we got up bright and early, stopped at our local chez cora’s for some breakfast waffles and hit the u pick farm as soon as it opened for picking (9am). on weekends, the picking rows tend to get really crowded and if you get there too late, you could be out of luck for finding good berries. plus you have to deal with lots of people in and out of your rows and this can sometimes make me cranky!

i tried to get a picture of my awesome picking getup, but apparently clearly failed (see top right). i had a rainbow belt on my (belt-loop-less pants) holding up a white 4L basket with two quart plastic ziploc containers inside the basket leaving both my hands free for picking. i was advised to do this by my expert picker (top left) who managed to get at least twice as many berries as me (hey, he has had more practice!). this is a fantastic trick and i highly recommend you try this out for any kind of berry picking that involves standing up (i’m not sure it would work so well for strawberries). i remembered my ipod, and rocked out to some feist and imogen heap while i piled my baskets full of fruit.

we got about 12 pounds of berries. i froze 5, made a raspberry pie, 7+ jars of jam (4 all raspberry, 3 raspberry/ginger/peach, inspired by bella eats) and kept a couple quarts out for eating (in smoothies, on yogurt, with granola, on top of angel food cake). yum! at $3.50 per pound, this was a whole lot cheaper than buying raspberries from the farmer’s market, where a pint (approximately half a pound) can go for $4-6 depending on the month. frozen raspberries and the jam will keep me happy through the winter until we can go pick again. it was the perfect way to spend a sunny morning.

(this post is meant to be funny. please do not be offended)

since the title of my blog is “training to live”, i have decided that i need to do more of the training and experiencing, primarily of lifestyles other than my own. first up is my migrant labour fantasy camp experience. to be clear, i did not have *the whole* experience, i just went for the starter camp. the full package includes waiting to get picked up in a home depot parking lot, then get taken somewhere where you proceeded to pick fruit and veggies/do construction to later. the final step is being raided by immigration. i did not experience that part, nor do i hope i ever do.

apparently, people pay good money for these experiences. case in point.

anyway, last year, i went on a super hippie trip with the toronto locavores to a winery in eastern ontario to help with their harvest. they fed us lunch (a slow food lunch, all locally sourced), let us drink lots of wine, and we picked buckets and buckets of grapes. i pretended i was an illegal. (sorry about the quality of the pictures. this is when my old camera started taking pictures in funky colours. ie: blue and green)

well, i enjoyed that experience so much that i decided to go for round #2. the boy’s parents have a farm (also in eastern ontario) and sometimes in the summer, we try and go visit and help out because there is always so much to be done on the farm. our efforts are rewarded with delicious food and all the veggies we can pack into the car. plus in between work, there are kittens to play with and horses to feed. idyllic, almost. most migrant labourers do not have it this good.

this time, in addition to our usual picking help, we also got to spend a day at market, helping to sell the fruits of a season’s worth of labour. i jumped at this opportunity, because as a farmer’s market-a-holic, (i seriously do have a problem. see thursday updates on twitter on how much i have to lug home) i always dig being on the other side of the table. i love talking to the farmers and oohing and ahhing over the beautiful peaches. i try and scope out other farmer’s markets when i travel (i found two in boston!) which is always fun.

of course, real migrant labourers do not take cameras out into the fields with them, so i don’t have any actual picking action shots to show. i did manage to get away from the stall at the farmer’s market, to photograph it and add to my collection of market pictures from all around. the day was fantastic. we had lovely (unseasonably dry and sunny!) weather. i loved seeing and talking to all the customers. there were only a few grumps that complained about prices being too high. i wanted to tell them to try picking beans on your hands and knees for an afternoon and charging less than $4/quart, and see how that feels, but i kept my mouth shut and just shrugged a “sorry”. if you want dirt cheap produce, you’ll have to go elsewhere. it was crazy busy at times but i loved it.

we got to snack on butter tarts, made by the lady a few stalls down (she makes killer pies!) and juice that jon’s grandma brought us. i’m sure most labourers do not get treated so well. we were lucky.

half of our double set of stalls. lettuce, potatoes, beans (yellow and green), snow and snap peas, and more potatoes

the other half: grandpa (and the van i sometimes get to drive) with the cauliflower, carrots, beets, onions, and various cukes (english and field and slicers).

an organic farmer (sadly my market does not carry anything officially organic) plus meat! also not available at my market.

live entertainment

i liked the berry stand the best.

jams! and salsas! and other canned things. looks like my cold store my labels are prettier. and my stuff is all local. this guy had some pineapple jam. what?

i signed up for erin’s keep it local challenge for september. this ties in perfectly with my addiction + my commitment to supporting local farmers (especially since i have seen first hand how hard it can be). i have decided that i am happy to up my grocery spending dollars if they will go towards the above and to organic dairy. i am working on other areas of improvement. i am always open to suggestions.

so there you have, episode 1 in my experience series. episode 2 should be especially entertaining. i am taking requests for future experience weekends. is there anything that i really must do? tell me!!

it’s hard to believe that it was just a week ago that i was at logan airport, waiting for my flight. here i am, another sunday, wearing my HLS tshirt & enjoying the last few hours of rest. but let’s start backwards.

last sunday started the way many of my weekend mornings start: with a nice, long run. the difference is that usually, i am solo, and this time, i was joined by some 20+ other lovely ladies. how refreshing to be around so many other people just like me. i think that was one of my favorite things about the summit – the company of so many people that do the things that I do that most of my real-life friends think i’m crazy for (like 10 mile runs on a saturday morning or baking my own bread etc).

(picture courtesy of Tina)

we split into two groups: a 3 mile group and a 6 mile group and we took the boston river-front by storm. i joined the 6 mile group, as i have a half marathon coming up and need to start kicking up my long runs into high gear again. the 6 mile group further split into a faster bunch and a slower bunch. i really really should have gone with the slower group as i was *hurting* by the end of the 5 . something miles. i was proud of myself for keeping up with the super fast girls for so long but after 4 miles, i needed to slow it down a bit.

after some stretching in the park with kath and one of the most refreshing showers ever, we gathered for breakfast at finagle a bagel on the grass in the boston commons. picnic breakfast! it was really nice to just chill out. my bagel (i got the french toast bagel, which was SOOOOO YUMMY and probably the most dessert-like bagel they’ve got) was perfect with a packet of swag barney butter squeezed on top. around noon, we had to split to either check out of the hotel or hit up TJ for a restock of goodies.

i found another farmer’s market, this one near harvard square. i got “lunch” (a white peach and half a pint of giant raspberries)

    

i walked around harvard and then took the T to the MIT stop where i would either catch the shuttle to the galleria mall or just walk

since the weather was so nice and the water looked lovely, i opted for the walk, map carefully in hand.

ta da! i made it without getting lost. yay map skills. going to the mall with a gift card in hand was lots of fun. it was like christmas!

so the gift card i won in the operation beautiful draw at the summit was for athleta, but it was also good at any of the gap family of stores. the card indicated that it was only valid for use in the US, and reading carefully on the athleta/GAP/etc websites, i discovered that they will not ship to canada. i hoped to find an athleta store in the boston area to go to, but it seems as though they are pretty much just online. i decided not to make myself wait/go through the hassle of ordering stuff and having them shipped to someone else and then have them shipped to me, i decided to just go ahead and check out the other, non-athleta stores, like Banana Republic and GAP. as it were, the workout wear section of my wardrobe really is the most well stocked part! what i really need is more grown-up type nice clothes to wear to work, instead of the threadless tshirts that i have that say things like: “stupid raisins, stay out of my cookies” or “stop destroying our planet, it’s where i keep all my stuff” (although both of these are good conversation pieces).

BR was great. I’ve never really shopped there much before (although now I know I should, especially since I have a grown up job and I probably can afford it). GAP also had nice stuff (I got new jeans!). My only complaint is that most of their clothes are made in 3rd world countries (like bangladesh and vietnam). Being able to get all the things I wanted without thinking about the price too much was like setting a kid loose in a candy store. I left some operation beautiful notes in the dressing rooms, though I totally forgot to take pictures of them!

The loot:

As you can see, I got some boy stuff too. my boy always reminds me about my inner and outer beauty. he has also taught me to be less judgmental of others (everyone is beautiful!) and to love myself as i am. besides, it was a good excuse to sneak in some argyle into his life the tshirt is the softest one BR makes. I’m sure I’ll be stealing it from time to time

Shopping was great. the cambridge galleria is bigger than any of the malls around here, and although i don’t usually enjoy going to malls, it was nice to just focus on me for a bit (instead of crazy running around doing errands, getting watch batteries and buying socks). thanks again, athleta and operation beautiful for making my day!

back to boston for a quick supper and getting the train/bus back to the airport.

Dessert first, in the park, from cheesecake factory. Holy whipped cream! I could only eat half of that.

A picture of me next to a monument, near the hotel, which sadly got completely chopped off.

My delicious cup of legal seafood clam chowder. A boston favorite, every time I visit.

The T ride back to the airport was smooth. I ran into a fellow summit attendee who confirmed by transportation instructions (thanks!). although I thought my flight was 40 minutes later than it actually was, there were no lines and I got to my gate in plenty of time. i changed into comfier flying clothes and chatted with my dad on gchat as i waited for take off.

Once again, my plane was super empty. Apparently no one flies from toronto to boston on the weekends. Who knew!

although i had an absolutely fantastic, fun-jammed weekend, it felt good to be landing at home. the toronto airport experience was super quick. i whizzed through customs and came down the escalator to the baggage belt, to see my luggage right there! i picked it up, waited 10 minutes for the next bus home and made to bed in no time. actually getting to *sleep* was a little harder because it was so hot (i had to turn the AC on!) and because i was still wired and excited. early morning work on monday was a whole other pile of fun

so yes. as you can see from above, parts I and II of my boston experience, the summit was a huge success. i had a great time being in boston, getting to meet so many cool people and enjoying a city that is not my own. i can’t wait till HLS 2010 and will do whatever it takes to get there. big thanks to all the people who worked so hard to put everything together. i loved it.

whoa. that’s all i can say!!! too bad this is taper week for me because that looks like some awesome running weather. oh well. race day (sunday) looks fab, so i’m keeping my fingers crossed that nothing big changes. i’m not a big fan of downpours.

this past weekend was adventure weekend #5 in a series of 9 and boy was it crazy. the boy had a 24 hour bike race up at a mountain biking park/outdoor ed centre place, where we’d been for a normal mtb race, not too many weekends ago. the life$tyle$ of the rich and famou$ race is a unique 24 hour race where cabin accommodations, shower/bathroom facilities and food is all provided. (ordinarily at these events, you have to camp, bring your own food and have your own volunteer helpers to support you while you ride). we did it last year and it was a ton of fun. last year the boys came in #4, so this year, the determination to podium was like a fire on their rear wheels. they had 3 new team members (on a team of 5), including a girl, who threw them into the “mixed” team category, increasing their winning chances manyfold, as she has the speed faster than most other girls around.

we arrived on friday evening so everyone could preride the course and we could get ourselves set up for the race. the weather didn’t look great (cold and rainy with lots of mosquitos), but that didn’t stop us from drinking beer and rocking out to some tunes in the big bike tent we set up.

saturday morning after bowls of oatmeal and a general meeting to go over rules (no cheating, time penalty details, only one rider on the course at a time, etc), we headed back to our cabin to strategize riding order. jon was picked to be anchor, since his performance at last year’s le mans start (where the riders are all behind a line and their helmets and bikes are about 100 metres away. it is insanity) was awesome. this year, the organizers decided to go for a regular race start, with everyone on their bikes at the line. jon pulled out in 4th or 5th place out of the 135 riders, but after the first lap, he was in 1st. it was really exciting. 2/5 of the team were on single speed bikes and although people had a lot of doubts of team doppler effect’s awesomeness at the beginning, after the first few cycles through, everyone was talking about those fast university of waterloo guys on their single speeds. by nightfall, it was clear that there was no real competition and they were a shoo in to win, so team DE decided to see just how badly they could beat the next team, busting out hot lap after hot lap. their slowest times were faster than the next team’s fastest.

i had a great time as team support again. last year, i stayed up and outside for the entire 24 hours, but this year i decided that sleep would be good. i had the bunk above jon’s and i went to bed right after his first set of night laps and woke up just as he was getting ready for the break of dawn round. i headed out to the fire pit to hang out with some riders to see him come in before i went off on my long run, without music or any way to measure distance. i ran for an hour and a half so i could be back in time for breakfast. by 9:30, 4 laps ahead of the team behind them (our laps were about 40 minutes long), nearing the end of a rider cycle, we discovered that the 36 lap goal the team had set before the start was within reach. although we were 2 riders down, we did some calculations and figured out cutoff time points to see if sending a rider out for one final lap before the finish gun at 12:00. the second to last two guys each shaved an extra minute or two off of the times we estimated for them, which gave us a little bit of extra buffer for the 37 final minutes allotted for that last lap. at 11:21, jon was off! the countdown was exciting! we waited at the finish line with celebratory beers as we cheered for the final riders coming in. jon reached the finish with 5 minutes to spare!!

36 laps over 24 hours = lots of fun and lots of super tired/sore muscles! i showed everyone some good yoga for cyclists poses (like half pigeon, downward dog with one leg to the sky) while they cleaned up for the awards ceremony. doppler effect came in 1st in the mixed category with 36 laps, the team behind them having 31 laps. even if they had been in the men’s category, they still would have been in 3rd place (winners had 38, 2nd had 37). the winning solo man pumped out 27 laps (can you imagine? 24 hours of almost straight riding only stopping to use the washroom and quickly eat?) and the solo woman had 23 or 24. both were on single speeds!

some highlights:

how many 11 year olds do you know who could handle a 24 hour solo race? this kid is TEH CUTEST EVAR. he rode with his mom and they did 5 laps, which is just as many as each of the women on the 3rd place women’s team did. did i mention he’s only 11?

you have to dismount, run to your next teammate and touch them before they get on their bike and start the next lap

team doppler effect: from the left, 4 people in strting with shawn, jon, jasmin, jeff and nick. champions! they’ll be getting leader’s jerseys in the mail. awesome job guys! i hope we get to come back next year.

yesterday was victoria day, and like proper canadians, jon and i did a bunch of yard work (after we did a lot of sleeping). we mowed the front and the back and got my vegetable patch ready for next week, when i’ll be bringing back my plants from the farm. back to work today (though i am working from home, waiting on mr fedex) and another super busy week! my race is on sunday, so we’ll be heading out to the odot on friday or saturday. i’m excited and a little nervous. my training got a tiny bit derailed in the last two weeks and i never got in a really really long run in, but i’m confident that i’ll be able to finish the 21.1km without a problem, and hopefully smoke my old PR. i’m hoping to shave off at least 7 minutes this time. we’ll see!

i was almost relieved that monday came after crazy weekend #3. i need a weekend from my weekends and although work is as far from relaxing as possible, it was a welcome change.

the boy and our houseguest arrived really late on friday night after going to see a fellow cyclists’ band play (i sadly had to miss this because i was in the wrong city). i woke up early for my weekly long run. 16km was the plan. the forecast said it wouldn’t start raining until “late morning.” i left the house at 7:30 and figured i’d be safe. i briefly considered taking my cellphone and decided against it.

8km in, at the halfway point, the sky opened up! i did my turn around and RAN. like the wind. i was seriously flying. and getting seriously wet. there’s nothing like thunder and lightening to kick your ass and make you faster. at the 13km mark, 3km away from home, i saw a familiar car pull over and stop for me. even though i didn’t really tell him where i was going to be, jon came and found me. i felt warm and fuzzy inside, even though i was cold and wet on the outside. it was a really good run anyway though. i’m almost sad i didn’t get the last 3km in (but not sad enough to not take my shining armour rescue). my ipod wasn’t as happy, though. i thought that after her first encounter with the h2o last fall (after an accidental trip through the washer that she miraculously survived) that maybe skye (or robin) liked being wet! i hoped for another miracle, but…no deal. i did manage somehow to get my run synced to the nike+ website though, which i am quite pleased at. replacement nano is in the mail, currently on a whirlwind vacation (started off the morning in lantau island, going to disney and checking out the pink dolphins and is currently in anchorage alaska, probably doing some dog sledding. i’m not sure what will be next!) we should be reunited by friday. apparently i manage to epically kill my ipods (first one went through the washer and dryer, then died. second one went swimming in the rain. i should take bets on how this next one will meet its end)

sunday morning was another early one, as we had to leave the house before 7 for jon’s 9:30 am race. someone miscalculated driving distances or maybe just forgot to account for the fact that 7am traffic on sunday morning does not exist, but we got to the conservation park at 7:40. it was chilly! by 10ish, it started to warm up and i enjoyed hanging out in the feedzone in my camping chair, giving jon fresh bottles and cheering him on. even though the course was pretty wet and muddy, he still managed to do awesomely in the single speed category, coming in 2nd out of 21.

that’s my boy! i was sad he took off his sweet jersey before the award ceremony. hopefully he’ll get some more podium action later this summer.

jon and i spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon chilling out in the sunshine, watching our friend race (and feeding him) and playing with our other friends’ adorable new puppy. we came home and bbqed, drank beer and ate some homemade ice cream. that’s what good days are made of. i did send my mother an email, but besides that we didn’t really do anything special for mother’s day, since both of our moms were far away. (i have gifts for my mom when she’s here next month). i cut myself a nice bouquet of tulips and other wild flowers from the garden because even though i’m not a mom, i do a lot of mom-like things and i like flowers.

just when i thought work couldn’t get any busier, BAM! insane doesn’t even begin to describe it! plus one of my coworkers is going on his early honeymoon for the next week and a half and my supervisor has been ordered by her doctor to only work from home (she has kind of a high risk pregnancy and the next few weeks are supposedly critical). i have a bunch of new responsibilities and the opportunity to shine. keep your fingers crossed that things don’t go the other way.

it’s tuesday morning and i’m still at home! it’s awesome because i didn’t get that much of a weekend. we had to wake up early (5am ish) both days AND i was outside in the rain for a good chunk of sunday. all day i was wishing wishing that i didn’t have to go in to work on sunday.

someone was listening! i got a call from my manager on sunday evening saying that the crazy storm that blew through here on saturday did some damage to our office building and that it would be closed for a few days- wahoo!!

i’ve been taking full advantage of these totally free days. yesterday morning i got my speedwork run out of the way before it got *too* warm. (it was 28°C/~86°F yesterday afternoon!) this week was 3X 1 mile at 8min/mile. i was strong and consistent. then i had a funday monday. made a summer salad lunch to watch with lost, went shopping and picked up a few cute shirts + a new immersion blender (i killed my old ones trying to make rice crackers. bad call) and had a nailpolish party (cute fingers and toes!). a bit of cleaning, some laundry and email catch up – bonus PLUS a walk in the neighbourhood with my camera, capturing spring flowers and trees. it was a pocket full of joy. i came home to a fresh bowl of homemade raspberry fro-yo. it doesn’t get any better.

backtrack:

the weekend was super hectic. we had a houseguest AND a super early morning race to drive to, an hour and a half away. a lot of my time was spent preparing food and getting things organized. for the first time ever, though we had a start time 4 hours earlier than normal, that everything went REALLY smoothly. there was no yelling, no short tempers, no frustration. breakfast was ready to go, lunches and snacks were prepacked in the fridge, bottles were made + chilling, gear was set out and ready to go and bikes were cleaned and on the car rack. i hope we can keep this up for the rest of the summer!

jon got a new bike last year after his old racing bike fell off the car rack and got run over by the woman behind us (it was tragic). this one is single speed! i need all the gears i can get on my bike, so he amazes me extra these days. anyway, he did awesomely in his new category (against all the other guys on SS bikes) – came in 4th out of 30, missing the podium by only 40 seconds. i did a great job of waiting for him in the feed zone, handing off fresh bottles and cheering him on (he does this for me at my races too!). i’m looking forward to the rest of the summer. hopefully the other races are not as wet.

my first bike race ever and i survived! let’s start from the beginning of the craziness.

before

on saturday, we had to drive about an hour west to ancaster, the finish line of the race, to pick up our packets (timing chip, sample eload which is gross, and an eload gel) and drop off our friend’s car. then we drove another hour back to waterloo to the boy’s apartment to spend the night there because it is closer to our starting points. the boy requested some yoga for cyclists (!) and we went on an easy hour long ride (when we accidentally ended up at DQ and accidentally got some cones). the evening was hectic because we had to scramble around and get everything ready to go. i really had no idea what to expect and was probably being more difficult that jon needed to have to deal with at the time, but he was super awesome and patient anyway. he cleaned my bike for me and gave me some last minute pointers.

super bright and early sunday morning, we packed up the car, picked up our friend and headed to st. george. although my race from st george didn’t start till 11:45, the other two boys needed to be in paris by 9, so i had about 3 hours to kill outside the south dumfries community centre in teeny tiny little st george. i had very little on me (because everything i brought would have to go on the bike with me the whole race!) but i did have my ipod, the second breakfast jon packed for me and a camera (that i didn’t use enough!). i did some more yoga for cyclists on the grass (i took yoga anywhere! i’m sure people thought i was a little crazy but my muscles were way better stretched than theirs’ come the start!), watched some sex and the city on my nano and rode around, checking out the competition and their bikes. it was relaxing and nice to not feel rushed.

during

11:45 came pretty quickly and all of a sudden, there were 400 people at the starting line, waiting for the go gun. the start was one of the scarier moments for me. once we got out, we had a few kilometres of paved road, which was awesome. i got behind a bigger guy (bigger than me anyway) and drafted off of him until we hit the dirt roads. the rest of the race was insane! i managed to stick with some of the same few people throughout. most inspiring were the little kids – some riding their own bikes and some on those ride-along fake tandem things with their parents. seriously awesome.

we rode on rail trail, through some organic farms (that smelled like poo but had the best spectators), dirt roads, hiking paths, single track (jon says it is really double track but i have no idea) and paved road.

there were two gigantic mud pits, that ~1500 riders had gone through before me. it was soooooo sloppy and gross. obviously i couldn’t ride down or through, so i had to pull my bike. this resulted in a bit of a pileup/traffic jam. the amount of wet mud that collected at the tops of my wheels was ridiculous and there were times when even just walking was hard because my feet were sinking in the mud. sllllurp, i had to pull up hard. there was a significant amount of climbing which made my quads burn. i had to walk a couple times up some hills because i just couldn’t do it anymore. the singletrack was the most terrifying for me because i don’t ever mountainbike and i have very little in the way of good handling/technical riding skills. my arms and hands were really tense for a lot of the race because i was afraid i was going to crash.

i didn’t though! the headwind was MAD. i tried to stay close to people so i wouldn’t get knocked off my bike but that was quite difficult. i’m certain my time could have been at least 15 minutes faster without it. also, i unfortunately left my bike computer at home, so i had a very poor concept of distance. the event staff that kept telling us “you’re almost done! just over that hill and you’re there!” (all lies) didn’t help. i think this resulted in me not pacing myself very well. still, i managed to finish and gave it my all. i didn’t feel sick like i often do at the end of running races – the thought of eating was actually very appealing, and i was able to drink a 24 oz bottle of hammer heed. my camelbak was amazing because during most of the race, i couldn’t take my hands off the handlebars to pull out one of my bottles to drink from. i didn’t hydrate enough (my face was so salty at the end!) but it wasn’t terrible. my new tropical fruit flavoured hammer gel (i’ve been using espresso but decided it was time for a change) was awesome! so much better than espresso (i think because it doesn’t clash with the citrus flavoured heed). i didn’t manage to eat my shot bloks or sharkies while riding, but i did get at least a serving and a half of gel (stored in my devil bottles) which gave me good boosts of carbs + caffeine.

although my time was a bit slower than i wanted, i think i did really well (especially given the wind). i think my expectations were unreasonable anyway, given that this was not only my first race but my first time riding on single track, on soft wet grass, through mud pits, and in a pack as well. i finished in the middle of my category. i was in awe of all the people that did the 60km race because i thought my half was incredi-hard. a lot of them finished in the same time as i did (jon was actually 12 minutes faster than me and he was riding on a single speed bike – no gears!)

after

i’m experiencing some soreness today but it’s nothing too bad. nothing a little yoga with dawnelle can’t fix right up. i feel great about my accomplishment. if i’m around this area next year, i’ll definitely do it again! there’s only one way to go and that is up. i’ll be more prepared for the climbs and will know what to expect. this was kind of the perfect race for me because although it needed some handling skills, it wasn’t overly technical. it was long enough to be long (took me 2:30 to finish) but not crazy long like a 200km race. plus it wasn’t as scary as a road race (where people crash into each other left and right) or like an mtb race (where there are big rocks and trees in the way).

for once the rain didn’t make me sad. a) it’s turning all the grass etc green and b) it makes me feel less guilty that i am not riding my bike to work. thursday should be sunny. i left my cute helmet in jon’s car, but luckily i have a spare somewhere in the basement. i’ll have to suck it up and not be stylish, for the sake of my brain, i *guess*.

last week my running kind of took a back seat to time on the bike, so i’m hoping that this week i can get in at least 2 of my 3 scheduled runs plus a swim. we’ll see!