Oh heavens…

It’s time for The Vegan Month of Food.  And I have said that I will blog each day about living and eating and being vegan.

Game on! Today I have a tasty, and super simple vegan pasta with spinach spirals, tomato sauce and vegan Earth Island Cheese. I haven’t sat down and tried the Daiya stuff in earnest. And the first time I tried it, it wasn’t my favourite. But I think that was tempered by my reaction to the Chile Rellenos I was having as well.

Who knows.

I love it! I’m declaring this blog post done. I have 21 days to get my moving done. And get my organization done.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

Hi all! This is the briefest of posts to let you know that as you may have noticed, I’ve been out of communication.

I injured myself running and I will not be completing the Ironman this year. I’ve done something to my same right knee, not caring for it well enough as I ramped up into training, and now it clicks when I run. So. That’s what’s so.

And, I’m still completely committed to my health and wellness, and looking to have this blog really track the path there! Not that health is a place to get to, but it’s a good place to be moving towards!

So the training is getting on its way. I now have a training partner (Paul White!), a running group (who are mostly training for the Running For Your Life marathon next summer) and lots of people supporting me!

I ran 10k with RFYL on Saturday, at 6 minutes running and 4 minutes walking. Once again, I forgot to to charge my fancy garmin watch, so it died not long after I started out. However, I do have the data from the run on Thursday (where I got myself up and out with the help of Phil to go run in the cold at 6am)

I went 8.73km with an average pace of 7.0km/h. Not great, but I’m really seeing my endurance get much better. Thank heavens!

Phil is in town this weekend, so I won’t be joining the running group tomorrow (Monday), but I’ll be back on Thursday. I plan to get up Wednesday morning to ride by bike trainer, and again on Friday. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Hi fans,

I got up this morning early (5:30) to make my way out to join the Running For Your Life group that I train with. And, in a big thing for me, I was up and out the door by 5:45. But, two blocks later, and several near misses with my behind almost hitting the pavement, I deemed the ice just a little bit more challenging than I thought was safe for that early in the morning.

So, I turned back, texted the group, and went and did 1 hour of Eoin Finn yoga and then made my way back into my warm bed for another hour of sleep.

So, I’m still down a run. I have aspirations of hopping on the bike when I get home, but we’ll see how that works around my Living Passionately small group meeting at BP’s around 8. As long as Jen doesn’t bring her brownies like she did last week, I should be fine!

Hi all! I’ve definitely been in a flurry of transit and movement for the last few weeks. But, huge and important news to the meaning of this blog:

I HAVE REGISTERED!

Ladies and gents, I’ve plonked down money to register myself into Ironman Canada 2009! So, that’s it. Now all I have to do is train. And I think I’ve said that before, but now it’s real. Battling butterflies went through my stomach as I stood in line in the rain in Penticton on August 25th, and similar battling butterflies were going nuts as I typed in the last few lines of information on the registration website just now.

So, where do I go from here? I’ve joined the Calgary Triathlon Club, and I’m excited about that. Now I have a community of similarly minded folk to train with, learn with and work to a common goal with. And, it’ll get my swimming up and running managed by people who know what they are doing. Huzzah!

As far as training goes, I’ve been doing pretty much none. Not even really eating that well. And, I think this has me feeling more tired than anything else. Just lacking the workouts that I used to live for has me more tired than I’m used to. So, I’m back on the biking horse. Agnes and I will be whipping around town together really soon. And, I need to pull out my schedule for workouts with UCTC, because I have indoor spinning class with them starting really soon as well.

This feels good. I’ve been in some really strong self-doubt (notice how have I haven’t been posting?) and that has had me ducking and hiding. But, I’m going to work to try to post each week, regardless of how I ‘feel’. Let’s see me stick to that.

I did it! This morning, I got up (after hitting snooze a few more times than I intended) and went to run 5k. I went out along the confederation park trail and ran/walked 5k in 36:50. It’s a gorgeous sunny morning, and it’s 11C right now at 9am. There were a bunch of groups of men out on the golf course, a few other runners and several couples with their dogs, including one guy with a baby in a sling, large Starbucks and Labrador. The things I forgot on this run were sunglasses and sunscreen, but I did remember a hair band to keep my rapidly growing mane out of my eyes. And now, I’m off to stretch. I started stretching in the back yard to some Eoin Finn yoga, but the mosquitoes got too much.

distance: 5.02k

time: 35:50

cal: 405

best time: 4:48/k

Hi all. I got back on Wednesday from a week in Chelan, and it was just lovely. I went to the gym three times with Sherry and I rode Tara Elsner’s bike around town and out to the Sunshine Farm Market a few times, but I didn’t run or swim at all as I’d planned. And, it shows.

This morning, I had intended to run 10k in the Open Minds run. Last week I dropped it down to 5k, because I realized that 10k would have me either walking much of the way or pushing my body more than it was really ready for. But, I let things come up last night and this morning, including my disaster of a living space and impending travel throughout the rest of August, convince me that the time to go run was more than I had. So, I didn’t go, and stood up two great friends (Kat! Amy! Thanks!) who went to go surprise me and cheer me on. What rock stars.

So, what I’ve accomplished instead today is a real purge of a lot of junk in my room. I have a full garbage bag of clothes to donate, a duffle bag of clothes to freecycle at the VB retreat next weekend near DC, three boxes of schtuff to donate to the Diabetes Association and a garbage bag of papers to recycle. So, that part of my space feels much better. And, I’m committing to going to run 5k by myself tomorrow morning. I’ve been reading “Triathlon Training” by Michael Finch and it has me thinking about the Maffeton formula for a bit. The idea behind this is to get your target heart rate by subtracting your age from 180. Then, you modify this number based on your general level of fitness (I’m a 3/4, so I just go with a target of 156). The idea is to keep your heart rate at this level, which over time will cause you to have faster times as you get fitter.

I’m interested to see how it works. So, tomorrow, I’ll run 5k in whatever time it takes at 156 heart rate. My fancy little toy (the garmin 305, and never fear, MEC had it on sale) has all sorts of cool features that record my route, give me a GPS location and my heart rate over the course of my work out. But, so far, I haven’t downloaded any of the data, because Oscar the computer has a broken CD drive. We’re working on that, so perhaps soon maps and little charts of what I’ve been doing will be up here.

What I did do today, after cleaning, having a lovely coffee with Karen Duerden and cleaning some more was to do 1 hour of Shiva Rea yoga and 20 minutes of strength training. I’m struggling a little to push myself in weights, but on the other hand, this was the first time I’d done any in ages and ages. So, I think I need to find some balance in stepping outside my current level of zero strength training towards something more focused. I’ve also found myself dealing with the monologue in my head that kicks in sometimes (when running and doing weights most notably so far) along the lines of “what are you thinking? you can’t keep this up”. So far, I’ve been able to either ignore or hear without taking in this voice. But it’s a peculiar one. I think at least as far as weights goes, I’m somewhat better suited to doing them with a partner in crime. But I really would like to be able to work myself the same way on my own. We’ll see how that goes.

So, today, what I did was:

3×12 bicep curls at 2.5lbs

3×12 tricep overheads at 5lbs

3×12 forward flys at 2.5lbs

3×12 side flys at 2.5lbs

3×12 supine tricep at 5lbs

3×12 back flys at 2.5lbs

3×10 lunge dips on each leg with 5lbs in each hand

I’m thrilled for the return of my newly thesis defended physical trainer to get me with some kind of structure for these. (Ranjit! come back to my country!) And, the next task is to find myself a swim team to work out with and start finding myself some Calgary based people training for the Ironman as well. Vitality in community!

that’s all for now. I’m off to have an emmer, kidney bean salad for dinner. Yum!

An auspicious way to start my first blog post. Where I stand right now is that I’m completely committed to registering for and completing Ironman Canada 2009. And, as far as my experience, I’m a commuter cyclist with nearly 5000km on Agnes my bike, I swam semi-competatively all through school growing up, and I’ve never completed a 5k running.

But, as you can see, I have 417 days, and given the incredible support that has been showing up from every which way, I’m certain that I will be able to do this, and do it in a way that has me have fun! I’m currently running 4 days a week. What that looks like, is I am completing the Couch to 5k training program along with a long run on the weekends, biking to work, climbing when I can convince people to take me and so on.

I completed week 4, run 2 this morning. And, because I stayed with Robin and Sarah last night (after my bike seat broke off my bike last night, and they came to rescue me) I ended up running barefoot this morning. I’ve done some reading about barefoot running, and I really enjoyed it. Next time, I would hope to be on some flat, soft grass for barefoot running, because the pavement was a little rough, especially when avoiding broken glass, but overall, it was my most enjoyable run so far. The sun was up, there was a light wind (enough to keep the blood sucking mosquitos away from my already reddened skin) and all was well in the world.

I followed the run with 45 minutes of Eoin Finn yoga, and now I’m feeling great and like I could use a nap. Which I might just do because it’s Canada Day and I can.