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.