Run, Cook, Bike

After a fairly active weekend I decided to take Monday of from running and give my body a much needed break. The weather while rainy was still pretty warm so I did make the choice to still get out of the apartment and go for walk. The park near my apartments is always great to have a wander round and even with a light drizzle it was a pleasant walk with the squirrels bounding around and do mock charges at you, still not use to that one, and the big Koi Carp type fish skimming the surface in the lake scaring the heck out of the ducks.

Tuesday started off with a full on down pour and the forecast looked like it was set to stay for the day. With running club in the evening I was already dreading a third run in a row of getting soaked. Through the afternoon the rain was on and off and when I left the apartment there were some pretty ominous black clouds hanging over downtown. But I'm glad to say after getting there and changed and actually out on the Tuesday club warm up, the sun came out and it was a great night for a run around the creek.

With 12 days to go until the Sun Run I'm trying to push hard on the club runs and my one speed work session a week and with some great runners in the club it is easy to find someone to push that bit faster. Due to the creek run being about 1K shy of 10K we added on an extra part to get closer to the 6.2 miles of the race. With the sun hitting the water and a cool breeze it was a good evening for finding that little extra motivation and even though we took a quick break at the half way point I'm really happy with the workout, especially as we almost did negative splits virtually the whole way round (each K faster than the last). The average pace was about 4:08 per K over the 9.6K distance, to get my dream result in the race I need 3:59 min per K. So still a little to go but I'm feeling positive that I will get close. And the best bit of the evening as always was having a couple of beers after and now that we finish before dusk we get to sit my the side of the dock and drink watching the sun set over the city, brilliant!

I've been looking forward to today for a little while now. Ever since I started my month of vegetarianism I have wanted to get Sukhi to show me how to make some authentic Indian dishes from scratch. Having finally got myself organised and found a time we could do, today was to be my cooking lesson. The first thing I have learned is just how many different things go into the dish. With Sukhi help I have know got more herbs, spices and seeds in my kitchen than ever before, they have even now got there own special box.

Not only did Sukhi show me how to get going with the base for a lot of Indian dishes he also showed me some cooking basics which I have been frighteningly lacking, things like how to dice an onion, up until now it has been more like a massacre than dicing.

After extensive not taking and Sukhi making it look so effortless I'm psyched to give it a go on my own. I have a suspicion that it will take a few attempts to get anything close to what I ate today but I'm up for the challenge and what's the worse that can happen, right? :)

And yes what we did today was vegetarian. A spicy mushroom dish which had a great kick and even made my nose run a little. With the meat embargo ending on Friday I shall be adding chicken to these dishes as well but also doing veggie ones as well, I have come to appreciate a veggie option every now and again.

With my cooking class over and a nice tingling feeling on my taste buds it was back to Costco to finally get off the fence and buy a bike. I have chosen to get a cheap hybrid option that will get me around town and then if and when I give triathlons ago I can get a specific road racing bike.

After doing a few laps of the Costco isles and taking pictures of me in different helmets, turns out I look stupid in all head wear, I have got the bike and helmet and weather permitting I shall cycle down to club tomorrow night to test it all out. I shall report how city riding goes shortly.

Finally, having received a fair amount of stick for NEARLY peeing in the Costco sink I will endeavour to get a photo to prove how easy an error it was to make. Only problem with this is finding a moment when the the place is deserted as people sort of get funny when you take a camera out in the restroom, go figure.

Nap Time!

Well the last few days have been a bit stressful. I discovered a nasty little error in my programming for work and have been pretty much awake since then trying to fix it. Well I have had a few power naps in between but you get the idea. Without trying to bore you, the problem was connected to something called Web Services which I have had very little to do with up until know and to be honest I'll be happy if that trend continues. In theory they are very simple little things that allow companies to exchange data behind the scenes so the service you get seems like it is all coming from one place but in fact could be getting information from all over the shop. In the end I put the call out for help and Martin went to bat for me and solved the problem, Basically some files were out of date on my machine and all I need to do was update to the new version, there were a few other minor things but that is what it boiled down too. Computers, Grrrrrr.

Luckily there have been some bright spots too. Thursday saw some very nice spring sun come to Vancouver. The club run was great, just what I need to clear out my head and since it was such a perfect evening, we ran out to Jericho Beach, allowing us to follow the coast line pretty much all the way out and back. People were playing volleyball on Kits Beach and the view across the inlet from Jericho was stunning. Snow capped Mountains behind sandy beaches with forest trails framing the picture, what more could you want?

After Martin sorted out my annoying little glitch today I decided to celebrate in one of my favourite ways, I headed to the movies. Today's' film of choice was The Losers. It is another film conversion of a graphic novel. After I saw Watchmen I felt quite disheartened by this genre but with Kick-Ass last week and now this one, I am coming back around to the idea. The Losers is about a group of soldiers who are betrayed by a shadowy organisation set out on world evil and chaos. It was a little like the A-Team but very cool and funny. It will be interesting to see how the actual A-Team film compares later in the year.

After a little nap when I got back I headed to the gym to carry on with my speed training for the Vancouver 10k Sun Run. After 6 reps of 1k at about 10-15 secs faster than my goal pace I am starting to feel that I'm making some progress. I'm hoping to run the course before race day so I have an idea of it and so I know what I'm facing and how the two bridges will feel.

I've actually got quite an action packed weekend hopefully so I should have some activities to report on soon. Right, off to bed, early start in the morning.

Past Few Days

To finish off my splurge of blog writing for the day I will just do very quick recap of recent activities.

Over the weekend I started off my 10k training plan for the Sun Run on May 9th. My first run back on the treadmill for a while went well and the speed felt pretty good so here is to hoping that the next few weeks go as well.

Saturday night was a trip to the cinema to see Kick-Ass. Definitely not a kids film. A touch of Tarantino-esque violence and some humour and action thrown in for good measure. A film I would happily recommend if you like that genre of movie.

Sunday morning had me up early again but not as bad as the last couple of weeks. Some friends from PRR headed out on the trails up in Lynn Canyon. It was my first trail run in a few months and my first real go with new trail running shoes, Montrail Masochists. The shoes did a great job and the weather turned out well, we did a lap around Rice lake and then up through the long Lynn trail. Going through the trees and streams and over the rocks was amazing fun and it would have been an awesome morning if it weren't for the fact that Ed who was just ahead of me, stepped badly onto a rock and turned his ankle. From my view point it looked quite nasty and from the colour of Ed's face he felt just as bad. Fortunately we weren't to far from the end and through a combination of people helping and Ed limping, we got him back to the car.

Tuesday's club run was fun, with me trying to keep up my pace not going brilliantly but still fair and the new guy Ben running us all into the ground. Also Sarah has caved and now joined Barry, Sukhi, Ross, Ed, Jackie, Bill, myself and others by purchasing a Garmin. With all the GPS going on in the club now, we will have all of Vancouver mapped in no time.

Today I popped out for the cheap matinee showing of How to Train Your Dragon 3-D. It is a good fun kids film but saying that there were only adults in the audience when I was there :)

While I'm still not 100% convinced by 3-D it definitely works well with this film and I'm just amazed at how far animation has come. Really amazing.

With 9 days to go with the vegetarian month I have been putting some though tin what May we hold in store for me, I have some ideas and will let you know when I have chosen a good option. Although if anyone has suggestions I will gladly listen. I did like the idea of having done a month on no meat maybe I should do a month with no vegetables :)

One last thought for the day is that I'm toying with the idea of trying to set-up my own 5k race near to where I live. I have been thinking about it for a while and I'm intrigued to see what is involved. Will update you if I pursue this idea.

Bite Size Blog

In my attempt to shorten my blog entries to make them a little more concise and quicker to read I'm going to try updating with more frequency so not to have information overload when I do update. I would say this though. The reason my entries are on the wordy side is that I don;t just want you to know what I've been doing but what I was thinking at the time I was doing it, that to me is normally the most interesting part :)

This week I have decided to drop the idea of running in the Vancouver Marathon. Towards the end of my training for LA I was just burning out a bit and had started to not enjoy my runs. I have already got a couple more marathons lined up for later in the year and so before I start training for them I decided that I should spend the next few months having some fun and doing shorter races which will help me increase my speed while decreasing my weekly mileage for a while.

I have the Vancouver Sun Run 10k coming up in the second weekend of May and would like to start working on my target of breaking the 40 minute 10k. I have achieved my first target of the year by breaking 20 minutes for 5k at Birch Bay so now I just have to do that twice, easy. My personal best (PB) for the distance at the minute stands at about 41:07 so I have a bit of work to do.

To this end this week I have just gone out and ran at the PRR club nights without having to think about training the next day and I have had great fun with it. Tuesday was my fastest Macdonald & 3rd Ave run I've done and tonight my fastest False Creek run. Now the times are okay nothing crazy but for a change I wasn't thinking as much as just enjoying it which was great, even when the high winds were pummeling us coming over the bridge.

So between now and May 9th I will be doing a lot more speed work, trying to drop some weight and for the first time training for a 10k. This should be new and fun.

Today marks the 1 week stage of my month of vegetarianism. It has been an interesting challenge so far but one I have enjoyed. I have definitely not gone hungry and in most cases I'm concerned that I may have been eating more. I have found it difficult finding things to eat for lunch, where before I would just have a chicken sandwich or a small portion of what I had cooked the night before it has not generally worked like that for veggie meals. Before anyone suggest a cheese sandwich or tuna I would remind them I'm not eating fish and cheese is a topping not a filling. I have been informed that humus will rock my world so I will try that but I remain dubious. I was taken to a great Chinese restaurant called Wild Rice, I had a great meal and even tried tofu for the first time, it is in no way a meat replacement but saying that I have had meat that tasted a whole lot worse. The challenge continues...

For those in Vancouver, on my way home tonight I did stop in to the Bay and look around the Olympic store, massive discounts on everything. I have snagged myself a bargain bamboo running shirt for $15 and lots of stuff still available at 50% discount.

Good luck to my friends running in Rotterdam and Paris Marathon this weekend and look forward to hearing about your adventures.

I'll leave you with a sign I saw on the Sky Train this week. Am I the only one who sniggered childishly when I read this?