I survived....

Sorry it took so long to write about May long weekend in Penticton but I have been exhausted since I got back..... can't imagine why?

Greg got us these sweet shirts while we were there, I kind of added to mine because I think he forgot a couple of thing to put on them....


Notice the sweet tan lines on my forehead from my bike helmet. Pretty cool, hey?

Ok, here goes...

So we left Calgary on Thursday evening at about 6pm. It was a beautiful day here in the city with cold rain and wind. The lovely Alberta May weather continued for us right up to the BC boarder as we drove through 2 blizzards. Yep, blizzards.

We ended up getting to Penticton at about 1:30 am and had to make a call to Greg to find out where we were staying, since we had forgotten. He text ed us room 52 but we couldn't figure out which hotel we were at though. Sorry Greg. The neat thing was right when we opened up the hotel room door the alarm turned on and started blaring music, in which we thought again we had the wrong hotel since there seemed to be someone in our room! We got it figured out and headed off to bed, expecting lots of fun in the morning...

Friday morning we were up at around 7:30am and were ready to hit the bikes at about 8:30 ish. The plan for the day was to do most of the Ironman Canada bike loop in reverse. We headed out to Green Mountain Road and turned west into the Okanagan outback on the quiet, lush road.



We turned off and headed south after about an hour and started towards Osoyoos. Things were going pretty good at this point. This is when I figured out that I was not as good cyclist as I thought I might be. There was a group of about 10 guys who rode together all weekend, and boy were they fast. I had no chance even remotely catching up and staying with them at all right off the start of the day, but I tried. Too much in fact.


At about the 100km mark of day 1 I crashed. It turns out that I really don't know anything about cycling nutrition. When to take in food, how much to take in, what kind of food to take in, and how to adjust during the ride. As we rolled down to Osoyoos off Richter Pass I felt like crap, but a quick chocolate bar and Red Bull and I started to feel ok.



The ride ended with the 60km ride back to Penticton and boy was I glad we were done. Wrong. Time to run. Ever run after a 6 hour bike ride? No? Me neither. It sucked. I went for a jog with Dusty (my weekend riding partner), who happens to run a 1:20 half marathon, which is FAST! We went for about a 15 min jog and I felt like death when I got back. I was so hungry and tired and already every muscle in my body hurt. The good news is I got to go to Salty's Beachouse (my favorite restaurant in the world) for supper in which I ate about 1 and 1/2 loafs of bread, and a giant plate of Rasta Pasta with Chicken! The night finished with a lecture from Coach Greg on nutrition, in which he stared at me and Dusty for a good part of it! Why???? Just kidding, I know why!

Day 1: 159 km, 5h 56min, 26.8km/h average speed, 72.2 km/h max speed

I woke up Saturday morning feeling completely......... dead. I was so tired and hungry and sore. My first thoughts were how am I ever going to swim and climb the giant mountain (Anarchist) on east side of Osoyoos today?

We headed to Oliver and got ready for our open water swim. By the time I figured out how to get into my new wetsuit, everyone else was already in the water and ready to go. I stepped in slowly. It was friggin' freezing! It was so cold that when everyone started to swim I hadn't even caught my breath yet. Oh well, here goes my first ever open water swim.

I made it about 10 feet. I still couldn't breath. I tried to get under control then swam about another 10 feet. That is when I started to have my little panic attack. Leslie and Susi, bless them, stuck around knowing that I would have a little trouble, and I'm glad they did. After some coaching from Susi, I tried again. Nope. I'm going to go to the shore before I drown. Once Leslie and I got back in and I caught my breath we tried again. It went better. Leslie swam out about 20 m then I would swim to her, then she would swim another and I would go again. I did manage to swim all the way into the shore after that though! Lesson learned, I need some practice in a lake.

After the swim it was off to the bikes and Osoyoos about 20km away. The ride went pretty fast there. We met at the Husky station and toured through town together before we got to Anarchist Mountain. It is a 18 km climb at a 8% grade. It took about 1 hour and 10 minutes to climb in which my legs were SCREAMING at me the whole way. It sucked, in a good way though. I actually enjoyed it. I seem to be a better climber then a flat section rider so I pretty much stayed close to a couple of guys and it went pretty well. Leslie made it to the top not long after and we got our picture at the eagle.

Leslie found this moose statue on the way down, I don't know what she is doing. Dad, you might?

A fast ride down, a strong 20km back to Oliver (in which Claire 'chicked' me and I couldn't keep up), a 20 minute run with Leslie, a talk on race preparation and motivation, supper at my second favorite restaurant The Barley Mill, and I was exhausted and ready for bed at 9:30!

Day 2: 80km, 3h 15min, 24.46km/h average speed, 68.35 km/h max speed

Sunday morning came fast again and once again I was still beat up. We got off at about 8:30 and the plan was to do the Ironman Canada course. The big boys were nice and let Dusty and I stick with them until we were almost 20km into the ride before they took off. Dusty took off too, but I had learned my lessons over the last couple of days. Pace, control, nutrition. It's not a race, it's training was all I could think about so I let them all go and enjoyed the 31 degree weather!

We met up 60km later again at Osoyoos and Dusty and I pretty much stuck together from there. First up was Richter Pass on the West side of Osoyoos. It was a pretty long climb as well but compared to yesterday, I won't complain. Dusty and I got some pictures at the top.

I sure color coordinate pretty well, huh? Blue, orange, yellow, green? Leslie, how do you let me out of the house?

After that were the rollers....

After about 120km into the ride we ended up at the turn off for the out and back. It is a little 20km section of course that is off the main highway to fill in the distance for the race. Mostly everyone else skipped it. I waited for Dusty at the corner and when he came up I asked if he wanted to do it? 'Are you?' he said. My response was ' I didn't come all the way to Penticton to ride ALMOST the whole Ironman course, I'm doing it for sure!' Dusty came too.

It turns out on the way though, Dusty bonked. I waited for him at the turnaround and saw him come around the last corner wobbling on his bike. He un-clipped, but his foot down and like in slow motion fell over. Hhhhmmmmmm. Time to get his blood sugar back up, so off to the nearby town for a Red Bull chug!

After that I stuck about 10 km around Dusty, and made sure he was alright for the rest of the ride since we were almost the last ones on the day. Here are some pictures I took while I waited for him at some places along the last 40km or so. These are just at the bottom of the last climb up to Yellow Lake before descending back down to Penticton.

About an hour later we were almost there. Just one more stop. Right in the middle of the road in Penticton, I slammed on my brakes to take a picture.....


There it is, 180 km of biking. It's kind of like a club you're in. It was a good feeling to see it. We cooled down and road the last few km's back to the hotel, ran, and enjoyed some pizza. Done. I survived.

Day 3: 183.6 km, 6h 43min, 27.3 km/h average speed, 72.2 km/h max speed

This is after we were all cleaned up and showered before we went for a little walk to try and relax our legs a bit.

All said and done, it was quite the experience. I wanted to come to ride the whole Ironman course and I did that so I was happy. I learned quite a bit (I'll blog about this soon) and I met and got to know some great people and amazing athletes. I wanted to test out the weekend to see if I would actually enjoy long course triathlon and I did.

Weekend Total: 423 km of biking, 16 hours 24 minutes of biking

It's been 4 days since we got home and my legs still hurt, I'm still exhausted and I am still hungry all the time. I think I did something right.

This blog is long enough, I'll talk more about it soon!

Grizz