Leslie, I don't think we're in Beiseker anymore.....

I apolgize, for some reason it won't let me break this up in to paragraphs????

First off, I want to let everyone know that Nathan, my brother, is officially a City of Calgary Fireman! He passed his very last exam on Thursday morning and begins training in a couple of weeks. He has been working on the application process for 2 years now, and it has paid off. He is pretty excited, as are all of us! The first question my family asks is 'when do you have the calender shoot?' Ha! Ewww! I do expect a tour of the firehall complete with a slide down the pole after he graduates from training in July! Good job bro!

Well, the week is over. It turned out to be the week of long rides, and a long run. Monday I had a 90 minute ride on the trainer at home, Tuesday was an off day. Wednesday was a hot tub session at the pool and a 45 minute recovery ride. Thursday I biked for 90 more minutes at home with Leslie in which we did hills, 6 sets of 6 minute hills with 4 minutes recovery. I actually went for a 25 minute transition run after too. Friday was another 40 minute recovery ride as well.

Saturday was an off day from biking, but my wonderful girlfriend convinced me that I should go for a run with her. We have been talking a lot about monitoring my heart rate and wondering where it is when I run. I have never paid attention to it, I usually just run, so I figured it would be fun to do a long run (90min) and control my heart rate the whole time.

The goal was to keep my heart rate below 140 bpm. The first 30 minutes went well. I was actually surprised how well I felt. I'm used to running my ass off then feeling like crap for the rest of it. The second 30 minutes went alright but my heart rate was between 145 and 150 for most of it. I felt like I was going soooooo slow but it wouldn't go any lower. The last 30 minutes I had no chance of keeping it low. It would rise, I would slow down, it would rise some more. I struggled to keep it between 150 and 155. Interesting, hey? The good thing is that I ran for about 16 km in 90 minutes and felt pretty good. I think I'll be doing a lot of this in my training for my marathon in September.

The other fun thing about Saturday's run is that I did it all with my shirt off! How about that? I love running with no shirt. I feel so much more comfortable and cool. I did manage to get a little burn though, even with sunscreen!

Sunday was a long bike day. We headed to Crossfield late again and decided instead of biking west to Madden, we would head east to Beiseker exactly 40km from my front door. The way out was great! I was riding a comfortable pace about 33km/hour the whole way. What I didn't notice is how much we descended coming down.....

When we were in Beiseker we rode around town looking for a gas station to relieve ourselves. All of a sudden about a block away we see a giant wind funnel or a mini tornado. We both watched it as it picked up speed and before we knew it, it was coming right at us! We stopped riding unclipped and closed our eyes as it went right through us! It was actually pretty strong. It picked up lawn chairs and slammed them into a guys roof and garbage and a kid's ball were whirling around too! We escaped unscathed, well, Leslie did get rocks blown at her which landed in her shoes and I had dirt in my contacts. Weird. The guy who had the lawn chair slam into his house came over and said 'what the hell was that?!!!' . As quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

We should have taken this for a sign of what was to come on the way home. Holy crap was it windy! We climbed up hill for a good 2 hours home against the wind, which wasn't there on the way out. The sun disappeared, it got cool, and we were dead. I was struggling to reach even 20 km / hour pretty much the whole way back!

In the end, here are the numbers:

Total time riding: 3 hours 23 minutes 55 seconds

Total distance: 82.91 km

Max speed: 57.68 km/hour

Average speed: 24.48 km/hour (it was 32km/hour when I got to Beiseker)

So for the week:

Total riding time: 7 hours 49 minutes

Total running time: 1 hour 55 minutes

Total swimming time: 45 minutes ish

Not a bad week!

Grizzly G.