Alex Coates

My Video!

2012-01-29T15:55:00.000-08:00

Alright, Paula made a video that you can check out at her blog, and so here is my video on my blog. This isn't a competition. Our videos are of totally opposite nature. While her video is 2 minutes long, and appeals to any 'ol web surfer, mine is closing in on 9 minutes, and so you probably have to like me to some degree to watch it. Secondly her video is fierce, showing the intensity required to run out of the waves wearing fins, or to run slow-motion through the cane fields. Mine on the other hand strives to create an envy for our obviously optimal lifestyle. Whereas Paula is famous across the globe, and random people would probably vote for her video on a given day on a whim, I am.... ok she wins in that respect. So folks, this isn't a competition. But if you want to watch my video ten times so that I get more views, I won't mind.

Maui 2012 from Alexandra Coates on Vimeo.

Maui Week Three

2012-01-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

Here we are already in the third week of our Maui camp! There have been some exhausted days but overall I think the camp has been a great progression, and good consistent training.

Paula on her napping bed

Since the last update we have ridden the rode to Hana. We thought it would take 3 hours, but it only took 2:40. Since I train with crazy girls, we did an extra 20 out and back to make it a solid three hour ride. We then put on our bikinis and went for a little swim in the Ocean.(Don't worry, we did a solid "real" swim before we did the ride). Then Pat drove us all the way back. Thanks Pat!

Quick stop on the rode to Hana

We also did the winery ride, which was very beautiful.

Paula and some pals at the Winery

Our runs have been solid. The heat gives them an added challenge, as the cardiac drift hits you 20 minutes in, and you begin to wonder if your "steady" is really steady at all. You begin to think, maybe this is tempo. Actually maybe this is race pace.

Girls before a run in the cane fields

After my first ocean swim which was a fail, I have done much better in the next two swims. Despite the choppy conditions I have figured out a good ocean stroke which seems to work. Hopefully I can hold onto it.

On top of training we have had two easy days, and so the first day we hit up some shopping and beaching in Wailea.

Kyla and Ellen in Wailea

Cute girls

Yesterday's easy day was a bit more recovery focused. I woke up ten minutes before a yoga session, so I ran over there, and then found out the long way that it was a 90 minute class. I then hit up the Normatech, got a massage, and had a little rest on the local beach. In the evening we went to the movies, and got some frozen yogurt!

As of right now I have no clue if I am racing soon or not, but there is potential that I am, and so I shall continue to train purposefully.

Aloha

Our family BBQ

Maui 2012

2012-01-11T16:11:00.000-08:00

Maui week one is almost over, so I'll do a quick update on how it's been going. Maui is definitely one of the most amazing places on the planet. I always remember that I love it here, but I never quite remember how much.

I have progressed pretty smoothly from school first semester to small break at christmas and now full time triathlete. So far on this trip we have done most of our swims at Kihei pool, which is an awesome pool, although sometimes kind of warm and so in the middle of a hard workout your face begins to explode. We also joined U of A for their last swim in Lahaina, which was fun. We also have done one open water swim, and I saw four turtles.

We have done a bunch of base rides and some harder rides, and have gone up the giant hill to Kula, as well as farther than I have ever gone on the road to Hana, and farther into the West Maui Loop!

Our runs have been fun too. Cane fields, normal fields and even a little jog on the beach.

Here are some pics. I don't have a camera here, as Kyla was bringing her's, but then she forgot her battery at home. These are all iPhone pictures.

Alison on the first ride of the camp

Kyla and the TRX

Paula and Ali in Kula

Ali hiking on Haleakala

Kyla napping

Flower in front of our house

View from West Maui Loop

Update

2011-12-19T12:21:00.000-08:00

Time sure flies when you are having fun, or if you are too busy to rest. This last couple of months have been the latter, but it definitely flew by. I did my first semester ever of 5 courses, and it wasn't optimal, but it is nice to have 5 less courses on the plate. I think I have 11 or 12 courses left of my undergrad. This semester I was in Chemistry (which was way harder than it should have been. Any first years out there, take chem 101/102 while your high school chem is still fresh in your mind!), Exercise Physiology, Health Psychology, Medical Anthropology (which I highly recommend), and finally Golf. Before you laugh at golf, I will say it is required to take 3 activity courses for kinesiology, and we had to do a presentation, a biomechanics analysis of our swing, a midterm, a final and they marked us on our shots. So basically I am whining about having to take golf. Okay now you can laugh. I am envious of Dorelle and Angela in Ontario, who have both finished up their degrees (they started at the same time as me), but the road is full of choices, and I have picked the scenic route. Not to say I regret it. Last year I travelled to Maui, Australia, Mexico, Quebec, San Francisco, France, Spain, and finally Beijing. Pretty neat stuff.

After Christmas it is looking as though I will not be taking any courses, despite my growing anxiety to get my degree done. Need to let go of the ego. I am taking advantage of the fact that Paula is going to the Olympics (Yay!) and plan on (hopefully) following her around and living life as a triathlete. Eat, sleep, stretch, strength, yoga, swim, bike, run. Easy stuff. I look forward to improving on last year. This will be my first time (believe it or not), taking second semester completely off, so I plan on getting super fast. No big deal.

Anyways, I leave you with this picture of us NTC-ers in our new hoodies.

Merry Christmas!!

Fat burning and Performance

2011-11-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

I wrote this brief paper for a presentation I did in Exercise Physiology. I found the research super interesting. I read a lot of papers, but I couldn't fit all the info in my time limit. ANyways, thought I would share it seeing as I think it is cool, plus I haven't written on my blog for a long time and don't want everyone to forget about me. Ps. the below cartoon makes me laugh every time I look at it. Ha ha. Ha

Role of Diet on Fuel Utilization during Endurance Exercise

“Hitting the wall” in endurance sport is a common phenomena, in which there is a definitive point where performance declines. This can generally be attributed to a depletion of endogenous and exogenous glycogen stores, and not a lack of stored energy. One way to prevent this is to increase carbohydrate consumption during extended periods of exercise (McCafferty, 2011). Another way, I hypothesized, would be to increase fat oxidation for as long as possible, thus saving some of the glycogen stores for the end of the race or training session. This paper is aimed at discovering whether there is such thing as “fat burners” and “carb burners”, if someone can change from being a carb burner to a fat burner in order to limit glycogen depletion, how diets can affect fat oxidation and carb burning, and diet’s impact on performance.

In the literature, it appears as though people do tend to be better at either burning fat or burning carbohydrates, making them either “fat burners” or “carb burners”. One study looked at 28 Pima Indian families on controlled diets, and found that family membership explained 28% of variance in 24 hour respiratory quotients (24h RER). This points to a genetic factor influencing substrate utilization (Zurlo, Lillioja, Esposito-Del Puente, et al., 1990). However, more recent research indicates that preceding diet highly influences macronutrient oxidation, and because families tend to share similar eating habits, the 24h RER could have been influenced by the diets normally eaten (Toubro, Sorensen, Hindsberger, Christensen, & Astrup, 1998). Toubro et al. preformed a study with 71 siblings from different families, and found that some factors towards RER variance could be explained by age, gender, energy balance, current dietary intake, fasting plasma insulin and free fatty acid concentrations, however this also had a strong familial resemblance. Another factor which was not considered was physical fitness, which is known to affect RER and which may also be influenced by familial habits (Toubro et al., 1998). Finally, a study done on 61 trained cyclists showed varying determinants to affect RER depending on intensity, but one important conclusion was that training, dietary intake and consequent muscle glycogen content and circulating substrates consistently predicted RER at rest and during exercise, demonstrating that being a carb burner or fat burner may be mostly controlled by diet and training (Goedecke, Gibson, Grobler, Collins, Noakes, & Lambert, 2000).

Diet can be used to modify RER and to increase fat oxidation. Both acute and chronic nutrition choices will play a part. An increase in carbohydrate will rapidly suppress fat metabolism as insulin is released to lower blood sugar, decreasing the release of glucagon (Jeukendrup, 2003). Both acute and chronic high carbohydrate consumption will therefore cause an increase in RER. A high fat diet will increase fat oxidation so long as there is minimal carbohydrates involved, although several days of adaptation are needed for optimal fat oxidation to come into effect (Jeukendrup, 2003). A diet high in protein will cause insulin to be released as well, which also inhibits fat utilization to a certain extent, although not as much as carbohydrates. Using carbohydrate supplements during training is not ideal, as training without glucose allows for greater GLUT 4 response and number, as well as increased basal muscle glycogen levels (Nybo, Pedersen, Christensen, Aagard, Brandt, & Kiens, 2009).

High fat diets and performance are an interesting and much debated topic. Firstly, from looking at various sources, performance in endurance activities of high intensities will generally be more successful if glycogen stores are full (Goedecke, & Havemann, 2008). Therefore, although a diet consisting almost purely of fat will be completely sufficient in submaximal conditions, performance will be hampered at high intensities if resting glycogen stores are not full, and doubly hampered if the individual has not adapted to the high fat diet (Phinney, 2004). Carbohydrate loading, long seen as crucial to performance, has now been shown to be unnecessary, as an increase in carbohydrates one day prior to an event can super-compensate muscle glycogen stores adequately (Goedecke, & Havemann, 2008). However, fat loading is now seen as a new approach, as a diet high in fat for 5 to 10 days, followed by a day of high carbohydrate intake seems to be associated with higher rates of fat oxidation, as well as the ability to draw on glucose stores as intensity rises. This is described as the train low, race high theory. A number of studies have been done on high performance athletes and high fat diets. One study looked at high fat diets versus habitual diets prior to carbohydrate loading on cycling time trial performances. It was found that the high fat diet trial increased total fat oxidation, and reduced carbohydrate oxidation but did not alter plasma glucose concentrations during exercise. Also, muscle glycogen and lactate oxidation were lower in the high fat trial. The high fat diet was also associated with improved time trial performances (Lambert, Goedecke, van Zyl, Murphy, Hawley, Dennis, & Noakes, 2001). Another study using trained cyclists on either high fat or high carbohydrate diets demonstrated that there was enhanced endurance during moderate intensity exercise as well as lowered RER values and decreased carbohydrate oxidation in the high fat diet group. Also, there was unimpaired performance at high intensities, and the rates of muscle glycogen utilization were similar despite lower initial muscle glycogen stores (Lambert, Speechly, Dennis, Noakes, 1994).

All in all it appears as though a high (in healthy) fat diet along with training can help to decrease RER and aid in fat oxidation during exercise, thus diminishing the chances of “hitting the wall”.

References

Goedecke, J. H., Gibson, A. S. C., Grobler, L., Collins, M., Noakes, T. D., & Lambert, E. V. (2000). Determinants of the variability in respiratory exchange ratio at rest and during exercise in trained athletes. American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, 279, E1325-E1334.

Goedecke, J. H., & Havemann, L. (2008). Fat as fuel during exercise. Continuing Medical Education Journal, 26(7), 347-349.

Jeukendrup, A. E. (2003). Modulation of carbohydrate and fat utilization by diet, exercise and environment. Biochemical Society Transactions, 31(6), 1270-1273.

Lambert, E. V., Goedecke, J. H., van Zyle, C., Murphy, K., Hawley, J. A., Dennis, S. C., & Noakes, T. D. (2001). High fat diet versus habitual diet prior to carbohydrate loading: effects of exercise metabolism and cycling performance. International Journal of Sport Nutrition Exercise and Metabolism, 11(2), 209-225.

Lambert, E. V., Speechly, D. P., Dennis, S. C., & Noakes, T. D. (1994). Enhanced endurance in trained cyclists during moderate intensity exercise following 2 weeks adaptation to a high fat diet. European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology, 69, 287-293.

McCafferty, S. P. (2011). Methods to optimize substrate utilization during endurance performance. Glasgow Theses Services. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/.

Nybo, L., Pederson, K., Christensen, B., Aagaard, P., Brandt, N., & Kiens, B. (2009). Acta Physiologica, 197(2), 117-127.

Toubro, S., Sorenson, T. I. A., Hindsberger, C., Christensen, N. J., & Astrup, A. (1998). Twenty-four-hour respiratory quotient : The role of diet and familial resemblance. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 83(8), 2758-2764.

Zurlo, F., Lillioja, S., Esposito-Del Puente, A., Nyomba, B. L., Raz, I., Saad, M. F., Swindburg, B. A., Knowler, W. C., Bogardus, C., & Ravussin, E. (1990). Low ratio of fat to carbohydrate oxidation as predictor of weight gain: Study of 24-h RQ. American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, 259(5), E650-E657.

Globe trottin' 2010-2011

2011-10-12T16:59:00.000-07:00

This past year was definitely a break-through season for me. All years come with a bad race here or there, but looking at the season from a broad perspective, I am very happy with it. I am especially pleased to have achieved my goal (existent since my first year as a junior in 2006) of qualifying for World Championships. Now that's what you call a long range goal!

Following Kyla's example, I am going to do a year in review in pictures.

Started the year off with some cross-biking in Victoria!

Got to participate in an early season (January) training camp in Maui. It was the best camp ever!

In March I did a training camp in Australia, and then finished the camp off by racing the Mooloolaba Oceanic Cup, and surprised myself with a 7th place finish.

Raced the Ixtapa Continental Cup in May, and finished 9th. It was definitely the hottest race I have done to date.

Finished 2nd at Coteau-du-lac in June! This was my breakthrough race for sure, and I achieved the top 5 needed to qualify for U23 Worlds.

Two weeks later I raced in San Francisco! I was tired going into the race, but still finished 4th, which solidified my U23 Worlds team position. I then got to tour around with my Mom and Dad the next day! This is a pic of Matt and Sarah, who both won the races.

Went and did a camp in France in July, and then raced in Banyoles, Spain. It was my worst race of the year, but I gained international racing experience. I placed 19th. This picture is of Matt and I in Barcelona.

In August I came 8th at Nationals in Kelowna, and 4th Canadian. This is me on "the Hill". I think that is a pain face, not a smile.

Competed at U23 Worlds in Beijing at the beginning of September! It was freezing! Finished 10th and was very happy!

Finished the season off by training solo (and by solo I mean with my sister) in order to get my World Cup Standards (Unfortunately I didn't quite get the swim. Soon!) Here I am about to go do a late September swim in Lake Matheson.

In the last post I thanked my coaches and support staff, so this post is definitely where I thank all my sponsors and partners! First off, Nineteen wetsuits supplied me with the amazing wetsuit you see in the above picture! As we do a lot of open water swimming, it was definitely a huge help! Trek Procity and Ridley's (Calgary) always help me out with my biking needs, so thanks guys! Thanks to Tri-It for all of their continued support (I definitely would check out their amazing tri-store if you are in Calgary), you can also order awesome Biknd bike bags through them. Thanks to Kiwami for the awesome race suit, and finally thanks to Spartan Controls for their financial support. All of the logos on the right of my blog are links to the shops sites if you wish to check them out!

Beijing Race Report

2011-09-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

We sure aren't in Kansas anymore my friends! On Tuesday we landed in Victoria, and Wednesday morning we all were thrown back into school without an inch of mercy. My first day went badly. I got to school early, but my internet wasn't working and I ended up missing my first class because I didn't know where it was being held. ROokie move. I finally got my butt over to the library, where I promptly checked my class location on a school computer, and found out I had been de-registered for missing 3 classes! I had emailed my prof ahead of time about Beijing, but apparently she has no heart. I am now 3rd on the waitlist for that class. Day two of school started at 8:30 am with exercise physiology (which is an awesome class that I am awesome at) and ended at 9:30 pm with a chem lab (which is a terrible class that I am terrible at). That is 13 hours spent learning!! Yesterday I woke up shaky from exhaustion, and then made the mistake of drinking a coffee! Oops. Nervous system overload for sure. I may or may not have done the same thing this morning, which is making my typing super fast and erratic, and if you haven't noticed, my thought patterns just as erratic.

Onto my first Worlds experience!

First of all, Team Canada is awesome. The athletes are awesome, the coaches are awesome, and the support staff is awesome. I think triathlon Canada did an incredible job of going above and beyond the norm for this race, allowing almost all the athletes to be in their peak form. We had our fair share of mishaps pre-race, but having such a great team allowed us to get through them.

On the first training day, we had a nice team pile-up on the bike course as we went around a corner that had just been "washed" and was still very wet. No one was seriously hurt, but there was definitely some nice bruises and scrapes. Dr. Keeler went to work that first day, and used up all of his bandages. I did a little slow-mo vault over Paula and my handle bars, but I wasn't hurt other than some bruised palms. The physio/chiro/massage team all got put to work on everyone's jammed shoulders and hips.

The second day Kyla and I were doing some accelerations up the big hill on the bike. Our lungs were really burning from the smog, but we just ignored it. However, a couple hours later we still felt like we were going to vomit from lung pain, and we weren't able to inspire properly at all, and so Doc was put to work again fixing that up. Thanks Dr.Keeler! The final mishap for me happened 3 days out from my race, when I got food poisoning/traveller's sickness. I spent all night awake, and then spent the entire next day sleeping in bed with a light fever and zero energy. The next day I woke up and felt much much better despite the desire to never eat again, and so with 2 days left till race day I went back to work getting ready for my race and forgetting the sickness had ever happened.

The race:

The race started with us all lined up randomly on the pontoon, as people chose spots left, right and center instead of stacking from one end as is usual. I ended up about 10 spots from the far left on the pontoon, with no idea who was around me. The gun went off and instantly it was a thrash-fest. I found myself boxed in with girls in front of me, and on either side. Unfortunately I was swimming faster than the girls in front, but had no way to get past. I spent 750 meters trying to get through the wall, and swimming in a diagonal to the right. Finally at the first turn bouy I got to the front, and then spent 300 meters or so trying to get away from the girls sucking on my hips. At the far corner I dropped the other girls and began my solo mission to get myself back into the race. With 200 meters to go I got myself into chase pack, and coasted into transition. I was disappointed to be in chase pack, but relieved that I was there at least, and not by myself behind chase pack.

The bike started off well. It was raining, and the roads were very wet, so we were all taking the corners pretty carefully. We started off at 45 seconds back from the front pack. As we came into transition for the second lap I heard someone yell "25 seconds". I decided they must have meant we were 1:25 down from front pack, as in my experience of racing, chase pack never gains on front pack, no matter how hard you work. Basically in my mind, chase pack = screwed = deal with it. This time though, we were hurtling down the blue carpet and low and behold, there was front pack coming back at us, and only about 25 seconds ahead! We all picked it up even more, and hit the hill hard. On the last half of the hill I broke away and killed it to latch onto front pack. It was probably a waste of energy, as everyone else caught on as well, but it would have been terrible to get so close and not make it in. Anyways, I was in front pack, I was in the game, and the race just became considerably more fun.

The rest of the bike was boring/freezing. The hills were hard, but the rest of the lap was easy, and I found myself getting colder and colder. On lap 4 I decided that we needed to make a breakaway, so I made a plan with Kyla. Lap 5 we coasted up the first 2/3's of the hill, and then I attacked. I went so hard up the hill, had a gap, took the descent as fast as I dared, and then hit the second little hill as hard as I could as well. Unfortunately Kyla cramped on the hill, and so she couldn't help me out. I looked back, and I had a little gap, and then a long line of girls. No one stepped up to get away, and the attack was a failure. Probably was a big mistake, but it would have been awesome if it had worked.

Coming into T2 I was so cold that all my muscles were vibrating, and my jaw was hurting from the teeth chattering. I had a terrible transition as I was too cold to get my shoes on, and so I was one of the last girls running out. I gradually reeled the large pack of girls in on the first lap of the run. I didn't want to surge and catch on quickly, because i wasn't feeling that great, and didn't want to blow myself up. I caught them coming around for lap two, and then settled in comfortably. On the bottom half of lap two, my quads, specifically vastus medialis, cramped up really badly. I don't think I've ever cramped so badly in a race, so needless to say I was freaking a little bit. I didn't feel like the pace was too hard, and so I really just wanted to stay in and go for a podium spot, but my legs were telling me otherwise. Onto lap 3 my quads eased up a little bit, and so I told myself, "Don't think, just run" over and over again. On the hill of lap 3 was where the first little break in our pack happened. Kyla and I weren't good enough at the hill to stay in unfortunately. On the last lap I was hurting a bit, but I tried my best to finish strong and not give up. I ended up placing 10th overall. Initially I was a little disappointed, because I had really wanted the top 8 and I was sad that I felt like I hadn't had the gears on the run that I have had in previous races. Later on though I saw my run split, and I realized maybe I didn't have the gears because I was already running as fast as I could without knowing it! My run split annihilated my time off the bike from Kelowna, and is 10 seconds faster than my ten km best time in a road race! So that made me happy.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of race watching and site seeing. Thank you Patrick for the great coaching all year round. Thank you Neil for setting us up in Beijing with the best support, and for going to great lengths to get us an ice-bath. Thank you Craig for all of your support, and for allowing us to see all of Beijing after the race. Thank you Pierre for the great food, Kim for the massages, Marilyn for the physio, Rob for the chiro, and of course Dr.Keeler for fixing us all up. And thanks to everyone else who helped me out all year round!

Okay, blog post is over. Need to go be hella productive. Later.

Beijing

2011-09-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

A blog post on my experiences and my race in Beijing should be up soon. Unfortunately I am drowning under a mountain of missed school work and stress, so I can't write it right now.

In the meantime, you can watch this!

Kelowna Nationals 2011

2011-08-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

Aah the Kelowna Apple. Canada's most prized race for sprint and olympic distance triathlon. Not only is it located in the beautiful Okanagan valley, but it is always right at the end of the summer, which is a perfect cap off to a season of racing. Come to think of it, some people also seem to like doing it as their first and last race of the season! It also generally falls a week before Ironman, which is convenient for people wishing to keep up the triathlon spirit for 2 weeks straight while simultaneously being on vacation. Because no matter how serious you are about the Apple, just being in Kelowna is a vacation.

I don't remember how many times I have raced in Kelowna, yet I do know that I raced as a Kids of Steel, as a Junior, and as a U23. This past weekend I felt a little overwhelmed because I knew too many people there. I even recognized a lot of the race officials and volunteers! Despite being slightly overwhelmed, It was great having my family, Austin, my friend Jess, and everyone else who knows me, there to cheer me on. I definitely enjoyed everyone who cheered "Go Alex" on the run course! (Apparently they said that for Kyla too...).

My swim was as good as can be expected. I had a good start and spent the entire swim yo-yoing off the back of the front pack. I left the water knowing that I had to kill T1 in order to make it into the pack. I was 9 seconds down coming out of the water. T1 went smoothly, albeit painfully, and I jumped on my bike and hammered away as hard as possible. When the hill hit, I was gaining on the pack, and so I went even harder to try to catch them before the top. Everyone who was cheering on the hill were telling me to dig deep, so that is what I did.

I believe that was my big mistake. Having worked so hard on the swim, so hard running out of the water, and so so hard smashing the start of the bike, by the time I was 3/4 of the way up the hill my body had so much lactic acid production that I began to worry if I would even get to the top. I had basically ruined my chances of catching the front pack by trying too hard. What do you know?

I had nothing left at the top, and watched the girls gradually pull away down into the community, until I couldn't see them anymore. Going down the hill, an American girl caught up to me. I got on her wheel and basically sat there for 1/2 a lap until my body would work again. She obviously wasn't very happy with that, but every time I tried to pull through I couldn't get past her, and I would have to go to the back again. I think I made a little whimpering noise at one point, and so she stopped telling me pull through. She caught two more girls, so I was able to rest with them for a bit, and then by the time we hit the hill for the second time I was finally recovered from my futile chase, and was able to start biking again.

The rest of the bike was good. The girls weren't working very hard, so after that first lap I ended up doing a lot of pulling. I am proud to say that my cornering was awesome! Last year Chantelle Widney and Evelyne Blouin were killing me on the corners, but this year I was definitely one of the best in the pack! On the second last lap I had the opportunity to get away with Martina Wan, as we would gap everyone by the top of the hill, but I didn't take it. I should have as we never saw caught her again. Mistake #2.

Onto the run I knew I had lost a lot of time into the lead pack, so I went out pretty strong. I was imaging myself running up to the podium, the way Manon Letourneau did in Coteau this year. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do that, but I did have my fastest run split off the bike again! I took 10 seconds off my time from Banyoles! I also caught a couple girls from front pack. I ended up placing 8th overall, and 4th fastest U23 and Canadian.

On a historical note, looking back at my past performances at this race, I think I have improved quite a bit, which makes me happy. My first Olympic Distance race was Kelowna 2009. I placed 13th overall, but with a time 4 minutes slower than this year! Last year I did the swim-bike portion of the race (due to my IT band injury). My swim-bike times were similar (well... a faster bike last year, but that was because of a pack consisting of Chantelle, Evelyne and Sarah-Anne! I mean, you can't get much faster than that!), but I know I improved tactically on the swim, and technically on the bike.

ANyways, next stop is my first Worlds of my triathlon career! We leave for Beijing on the 4th! Wish me luck!

Some talk of France and Spain and Racing

2011-08-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

I am currently sitting in my kitchen in Victoria, after having one of those weird zonked out sleeps that you have to claw your way out of. The ones that only really happen after you've travelled for 15 hours or so, and can't figure out what your body is meant to be doing.

My kitchen is lovely. The balcony door is open and I can smell Victoria summer from out the door. I just ate way too many blueberries because it is blueberry season. I am drinking some local tea I bought from the Sydney market before I left. Life is good. The France and Spain camp/race experience was awesome, but there is just something about being home that makes you wonder why you ever leave. (Although to be honest I needed a little break from routine when I left, so I suppose that is a good reason.)

The camp was great. Not only did we have access to physio, physiologists and massage (Thanks Marilyn, John, and Kim) but our house hosts were amazing ( Thanks Jenny and Mike), and the location was incredible. Training went well and I loved the change in scenery, the buildings, and the culture. Although the weather in France left something to be desired.

On our last week, Jon Bird and I went down to Banyoles, Spain for our first European Cup! It was a 4 hour trip to get there, complete with searching a fairly abandoned cat filled town for our hotel, before finding it at least 5 km up the highway (I had to speak Franglish to some locals). Banyoles itself was 15 k away along some tiny country roads.

The race was by far the best course I have ever done. The lake was 25 degrees, a beautiful green colour, and clearer than most pools. The bike course was six laps around the lake on smooth undulating roads, with a fun chicane section at the end. The run was 3 laps on the road with one decent sized hill.

My race didn't go as well as I had hoped. Here is a brief race report. I was ranked 7th going in, so on the pontoon I was lined up to the left along with most of the girls ranked ahead of me. When the horn went off (they forgot to say, "On your Marks" in English as they were supposed to, and so I heard, "blahblah bleeboo HORN!") almost instantly I was faced with choosing to go left with about 5 girls, or right with the mass of everyone else. I chose to go left, seeing as all the girls to my left were ranked top 7. I stuck with them, working hard but confident that I was in front pack, until close to the first turn. At that point our little pack began to merge with the main pack, and I was shocked to find out that we must have veered too far left, and so we were merging at the back of everyone else! This was bad news, because then I was at the back of everyone, with no one to fall back on to. I don't know when I got dropped, but at one point I looked up and it looked like all thirty girls were all together, then a significant gap, and then me all by myself. I did plenty of surges, and when we ran out for lap 2 (It was a very long run out, we think at least 100 meters, but likely closer to 150) I ran as fast as I could to try to make up time. Needless to say I didn't catch anyone, and spent the next lap of the swim all alone.

The bike was interesting. I jumped on all alone, and tried to wrap my mind around biking by myself for 40 k. Luckily at about the halfway point of the first lap, 2 girls caught me from behind (guess there were some girls who swam slower), and shortly after we caught another girl in front of us. The problem with coming out of the water behind is you generally end up with people who don't have much experience, so your bike ends up being slow as well. This race wasn't an exception. I made myself feel better by telling myself that if the girls had caught up to me, then we must be biking faster than I was capable of by myself. For the next 6 laps I spent most of my energy trying to get our little dysfunctional pack to work together, to take small pulls, and in one girl's case, to take pulls at all! Some parts of the ride were good. We ended up losing 4 minutes to front pack.

Onto the run I felt better than usual coming off the bike, likely because the bike hadn't been as hard as usual, and so I ran as fast as I could! I am pleased to say I had my fastest run off the bike so far! Yay, a positive. Because of our 4 minute deficit, it took me until the last bit of the last lap to catch girls from front pack, so that was too bad. I finish the race in 19th, disappointed but with no regrets. Also, it was only a 2.5 hour trip on the way back to France after the men's race, because we took our own route and Jon is a race course driver.

I am very happy that I went down for the race, and very happy that I got to see France and Spain! Matt, Kyla, Jon and I had an awesome evening in Barcelona the night before we flew out, where we swam in the Mediterranean and I had a sangria on Las Ramblas. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Here is a video of Jon's Race that I made:

France-Spain from Alexandra Coates on Vimeo.

San Francisco

2011-07-11T21:13:00.000-07:00

If last race was my best race ever, then this race was my hardest race ever. Every race is hard, but this one definitely had an edge to it. Because I am really tired, and have already written a couple of race reports that then were deleted when they wouldn't load in the airport, this post may lack inspiration. Sorry. Here's my quick recap:

Swim:
The race started off with a pretty messy swim. It wasn't too fast, but maybe because we were all floaty in our wetsuits and in the salt water, we were constantly on top of each other. I spent most of the swim at the tail end of front pack. Right at the end gaps began forming, and so I didn't know where my position was as I ran out of the water.

T1:
I had my worst transition ever, as I was pretty dizzy from the run up the stairs in the wetsuit. The bikes were also very close together, and I wasted time trying to get all my stuff in my box in between the other girls. In hindsight it would have been better to take the 15 second penalty and make front pack, but I didn't think of that at the time.

Bike:
Chase pack formed with a bunch of a girls, but because of the huge wind, and 90 degree corners everywhere, we quickly became a pack of three. On the second or third lap (I got pretty messed up with the laps), Shultz, a new canadian elite caught up to our pack. She definitely was planning on riding straight through us as she had the girls behind us, but luckily my girls were strong and we latched ourselves to her successfully. The next 3-4 laps were just one endless tuck at the back for me, with giant sprints for dear life as gaps formed on certain corners. I was completely dropped a number of times, and then had to do massive sprint time trial maneuvers to get myself back on. It was kind of frustrating as we weren't working together at all, just trying to stay with Schultz the whole time. We rode through a couple of girls, but only Stevie was able to stick in our pack. On the final corner before the hill, Shultz went down in front of us. For some reason I wasn't surprised, and so I was able to calmly dodge around her as she skidded out. She was very tough though and got up and finished the race!

T2:
Because I had lost track of the laps, and the lap counters had counted wrong, I didn't realize we were done the bike until the other girls started un-doing their shoes. Normally I eat a gel right at the end of the bike before the run, but I didn't have time to this race. I also had barely had anything to drink during the ride, so I was feeling pretty bad going into the run. My hands were cramping.

As I exited T2 I took a gel, knowing I would need it. I also thought I would immediately hit a water station, as they had mentioned in the race meeting. Of course there was no water station there, and I ended up having to run all the way to the end of the first lap before I could wash the gel down and try to hydrate a bit. Not going to lie, I was pretty pissed about that. I drink a lot in races usually, and so to only have 3 stations for the entire 10 k was not cool. Especially because they had said there would be two per lap!

Run:
My run felt slow and painful, but I had immediately dropped the other girls from my pack, and was gaining on the girls in the front, so I just tried to give myself positive encouragement. People thought that I was in fourth place, and so they were all encouraging me to catch the Australian girl in front of me in order to get on the podium. I knew that I was actually in fifth, but I decided to just go for it, and I used up all my effort to eventually catch the Australian girl and pass her with about 500 meters to go. Luckily she didn't stick with me, and I was able to cross the line in fourth with plenty of room.

Finish:
To be honest I was just super happy for the race to be over when I crossed the line. I was crazy excited to find out that Matt won! I also was excited for Sarah-Anne, but I don't think I was too surprised. That girl is amazing.
Post race dinner with the Canadians downtown was awesome, and overall I had a great weekend! So fourth race of the year down and in a couple of weeks I'll be racing in my first ever European Cup! Wish me Luck!!

Here are some crappy phone pictures:

Sarah-Anne Winning

Matty Sharpe Winning!

Matt doing a stretch to accept his medal

Race 3: Best Race Yet

2011-06-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

Quick little race report from this past weekend. Overview (in case you don't want to read Another race report): It was my best race in a looooong time. I've had my fair share of crappy luck and just ok races, so I am very happy to have pulled one together start to finish. I am also so excited for the top five finish, as that has been my goal for every race this year! Yay, I finally accomplished a goal!

The race started with my best swim of my career! I really worked hard to come out front pack, and used all my open water tactics. I don't really know how it happened, but around 300 meters I looked up, realized front pack was right in front of me, and I decided I would give myself 50 strokes to catch on. So I did. In previous races I have gotten into front pack only to be dropped again, but this time I really worked on "drafting like a genius" (as Neil sensei would say), and found the pace wasn't too hard.

As we came into the last 250 meters I could feel the pace picking up, but I wasn't entirely able to stay in close, and a little gap formed. Funny thing was Kyla was one of the ones dropping me! Sheesh!

I had a super fast transition, and as I leaped on my bike I knew this time I was catching front pack, so I just hammered as fast as I could. Up ahead Kyla was tanking away, unknowingly making my catch up process much harder! She didn't realize I was trying to catch on, as usually I am not very close to front pack out of the water. The 40k bike was long, and fast and hard. We worked really good together as a small pack of 5, and it definitely paid off for the run.

The run was fun. I didn't feel particularly bouncy, but it was fun just running behind Kathy and knowing I was in second! I had passed her on the first lap, but maybe that was a little ambitious, and she passed me back again before the turn around. I didn't let myself believe that I was going to come top five until the last lap, where I finally allowed myself to accept it. Crossing the line was such a great feeling. I honestly haven't had a race to be super proud of in quite some time, but I am very proud of this one. My happiness and excitement lasted the few minutes it took for Kyla to collapse at the finish line, and then that was it. It was a happy couple of minutes though. (You can check out her blog for a report on that near death experience).

Thanks to Mom and Dad and coach Pat and coach Carolyn, and for everyone who cheered for me as I was racing! Also thanks to Rick Say for teaching me to swim, because I finally came out front pack! Congrats to all the girls and all the guys. Be seeing you soon (too soon too soon) in San Francisco!

Here is a video of the race (if reading everyone's race reports wasn't enough!). I do some funny nervous dancing before being called up, and it is extra funny because I don't remember doing it!

IXxxxxtaaapaaa report

2011-06-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

Race number 2 of the season is over and done! It was a long hot trip, so I am happy to say I had a pretty solid race to make it worthwhile. This was my third finish of a Continental cup, and I think I am getting used to the Olympic distance.

Warming up for the race I felt pretty bad. I felt heavy, slow, tired and shaky. And too nervous! Luckily (other than maybe the too nervous part), most people didn't seem to be feeling too good either. It is very hard to feel good in 35 degrees and almost 100% humidity. You pretty much just want to lie motionless in the shade. Probably partly why a lot of the locals were overweight.

Kyle pre-race. He doesn't look too nervous.

Me, pre-race

The Men's race started at 10:00 am, and the women went off three minutes later. The waves weren't too bad for the start and the exit, so that was good. It sucks when you are supposed to be racing and you get owned by a wave on the start or the exit.

Men's start

Before our race started, Manon and I discussed what the best path to the first buoy was going to be, so when I ran into the water I had a pretty good line going.

Manon and I discussing

Unfortunately the first wave hit, and with my short legs I kind of just belly flopped.

That's me in the middle

Somehow that ended up being advantageous (perhaps because while the other girls were still trying to run, I was dolphin diving/swimming), and i was the first person to the far buoy! Hooray! Unfortunately after that girls started passing me, and I wasn't ever able to get into a pack. No excuses, they were just stronger swimmers than me. I ended up swimming alone, just behind front pack, making random futile surges in an effort to catch them. The run out of the water was ridiculously painful. I'll spare you the picture of me running with a pain face. I knew that because the run was so long, I would have the opportunity to make up time lost in the swim. I must have done something right, as I tied with another girl for fastest T1! Woot!

Run to transition

Once on the bike I felt a lot better, and began to hammer to catch the girls in front. I caught two girls, and immediately dropped one of them. The other stayed on, but when I got her to take a pull, I realized she must have been new to racing, as she sat up on her hoods and we slowed down very noticeably. I ended up biking almost the full first lap (20k) solo... well solo with tag along. The front pack got their act together after a couple of minutes, and so I had no chance of catching them. No Spirig trains in this race alas.

Shortly after being caught

After a chase pack caught me, the bike remained equally frustrating, as everybody was in "fear of the run" mode, and refused to do any work. I guess because the bike felt so deathly hot, nobody wanted to waste any energy in order to be able to survive the run. Basically if I were to sum up the pack in one word, it would be "pathetic". We are in a triathlon people! Luckily at the end of the second lap myself and a mexican girl broke away, and made quite a bit of time in the last 3-5 is kilometres.

Start of run

Manon having an amazing race

Run started. I felt like I was going to die. I had mentally prepared for that though, so I didn't really get too worked up about it. The phrase on repeat in my head was "slow and steady wins the race". This kept me from picking it up, which definitely would have caused me to pass out later on, and it made me feel better about my shuffle. "Just shuffling along, gradually gradually catching people. "

They provided bags of water every 500 meters or so, and so I grabbed two every time. I am positive I wouldn't have been able to finish the run if they hadn't of had so much, so THANK YOU race organizers for that!

The water bags

Grant Burwash

Aruss going around for another lap

On the last lap I knew I couldn't pick it up any, even though I wanted to. I stumble twice at the stations, and I felt my legs getting pretty wobbly. I had promised myself that I wouldn't finish the race if I was overheating too much, as I didn't want to give myself brain damage (It is a legit concern. I learned about it in physiology). I really wanted to finish the race though, so I was just keeping it steady. At the very end I felt my body go through a small wave of "the cold feeling", which definitely means bad things are happening, but luckily I crossed the line and got to join the Med tent party!

Me finishing

They covered me in cold towels after the race

Med tent party

I ended up placing 9th overall, which I am happy with. Top 10 woot! Huge congrats to Kyle Jones who placed 1st with a very fast run split in the heat! Also congrats to Brent who came third, Andrew Russell who placed 5th, and Andrew Yorke 9th. Also amazing race by Manon Letourneau who had a great swim and run and took home Bronze! And congrats to all the other canadians! And thanks to Coaches RossAnn and Austin for the support, as well as momma and poppa for the airmiles and the opportunity.

This guy ran the race with a snake on his neck... maybe he killed his baby crocodile in the race last year.

Don't Be Nervous

2011-05-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

I have always suffered from some pretty bad pre-race nerves. I don't know why. No matter how irrational it is, I can't entirely control the feeling of panic I get before races.

When I was young I had a huge mental block against 400 freestyle. My coach, likely knowing this, always seemed to enter me in it hoping one day my fear would be gone. Alas, as I sat on the bus to swim meets, and my fellow team members exchanged pokemon cards or watched Ferris Bueller's Day off, I would be busy wishing that the bus would break down, or that the pool would be empty so that I wouldn't have to swim. I would dramatically stare out the window and hope for natural disasters to strike the pool. Unfortunately it took many years for my swim meet fear to calm down. I think deep down inside I still have a thing against 400's.

Or then there was my first Alberta Summer Games for triathlon. I was only twelve years old, and to me the Alberta Summer Games were the Olympics. I had qualified on a mountain bike, but was borrowing a ten speed for the race. The night before I listened to my whale tape in my purple walkman (even then I was such a pathetic sleeper I needed ocean music to help me fall asleep), and tried not to think about the race. The morning came, and I tried to hold the tears in. I was panicking, and also feeling a little sorry for myself, as my mom wasn't there in the morning to braid my hair. All of a sudden I was standing in the 25 meter pool. My goggles fogged up with tears. The gun went off. I went for it. Despite the fact that I didn't know how to bike (I stood up the whole time), and I never 'trained' for running, so I had a horrible stitch, I ended up winning. That was likely the pivotal moment for me, the point where I realized, hey, who cares if you are crying on the start line? Doesn't mean you can't have the race of your life! (Or in this case, a slightly faster race than the other 12/13 year olds who didn't train either).

I tried to find the picture of me when I was 12, but of course the internet didn't exist back then, so I included the earliest picture I could find. This one is from 2006 (when I was 16) in Edmonton. It was my 2nd Junior Elite race.

Since then I have tried to improve my mental toughness. I don't really get too worked up about workouts or little races anymore. Big races are another story, but I am managing. Going into this race season I have one philosophy: Give it everything you have. If you follow the plan, and race smart but don't hold back, and finish with every ounce of your strength, then no matter the result you can't be mad at yourself. If you go in it to win it, and you end up placing last, you can't be disappointed if you did the 100% best you could do.

Anyways, that is my little mental trick for myself, in order to relieve some of the internal pressure that builds as racing season comes along. You can only do the best you can do. Hope it helps cause I am racing soon!

Later

Times Colonist 10K Race Report

2011-05-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

Funny story. So a couple of weeks ago I was looking at my blog's stats, and I clicked on traffic sources. Turns out that one of the key terms people use to stumble on my blog is "Alex Coates 10k results". ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I mean I am all for looking up people's results if they do a race, but just randomly googling to try to figure out how fast I run a 10k? SO MUCH PRESSURE! I generally like to think that no one cares about how fast I am, and that it doesn't really matter so long as I can preform in triathlons, but apparently everyone else just wants to know how fast I can run a 10k.

Well blog stumblers, today is your lucky day. Yesterday I ran a PB of over a minute, and I am going to share it with you. My new best time is 36:46. Now I just made your google search much easier.

Here is a pic of the start. The only person I can pick out that I know is Grant Burwash.

Anyways, Race Report: the 10k was really fun yesterday. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and for the first time in a road race I raced as an Elite, which was really awesome because I got to put my stuff in the elite tent which was next to the start line! Cool! Apparently there were more than 13, 000 racers.

I drove down to the course at 6:45 am, and was pretty confident that 90% of the people driving downtown with me were headed to the race. Warm up was interesting, and I'm not going to lie, I was kind of panicking when I tried to do some 90 sec pick ups at pace and they felt like all out sprints. I kept looking down at my giant Garmin and thinking, "Are you kidding me?"

Look how pretty the flowers are!

The nice thing about racing in general is you know that you can't ever think about how you feel in warm up, or the day before, or how you slept etc. because you never really know how you are going to feel in the race until you are in it. When the race started all of a sudden my Garmin was telling me I was easily going 3:35's, which was where I wanted to start out, and so my confidence was back and I settled into a good race.

I love Victoria

My goal was obviously to run a 36:40, which is the World Cup standard, and the battle plan was to try to go out conservative, and then to basically even split my km's just under 3:40s.

The race was hilly, so I worked the downhills in order to even out my uphills. I looked at my Garmin a lot, but never really freaked out. I tried to run smooth and controlled. At 5 k I found a guy who turned into my pacer. He was going the perfect pace and I just stuck onto him for dear life. At 6 k the gloves came off (Literally. Someone gets a new pair of sweaty gloves!). At 7k the legs felt a little wobbly, but the nice thing about being a triathlete is you know that that is what your legs feel like at the start of the 10k in a triathlon. With 1500 meters to go I opened it up and really went for it. My pacer guy told me I could catch the girl in front of me, so I left him behind and tried to catch her. As soon as I could see the finish line I looked at my watch, realized I had a minute and ten seconds to make the time, and i just started gunning it! I must have looked absolutely insane. I was sprinting so hard. I was imagining this was the sprint for the Olympic gold medal. I caught the girl with about 150 meters to go. She realized the insane person running past her was a fellow female, and started sprinting as well thinking that I was just trying to beat her. Of course at this point I didn't care at all about what place I was in, and was just trying to pump my legs faster. In the end I crossed the line and knew I had just missed it. Also, the other girl out sprinted me.

Cool race picture of Simon, who place 2nd overall.

It's sad to know that I missed the time by 6 seconds, because really, if for 6 kilometers out of the 10 I had run 1 second faster, I would have made it. 1 second! Anyways, all in all it was a great day and I am really happy with my new best time. Thanks so much to the race organizers and volunteers who put on a great race.

ps. I stole these pictures from the Times Colonist website.

Quoted

2011-04-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

I don't want this post to be all preachy or inspirational or anything. Basically it is just a couple of things I have been thinking about this last week post school, post first race of the year, and post Paula winning in Sydney. I was thinking about different coaches, different quotes, and different approaches, and this is the results of my pondering.

"Be the best you can be, and then find ways to be better." I can't remember who was the first person who said that quote, likely one of my early swim coaches, but whoever said it, said it a lot. I was thinking about ways to be better the other day, and I realized, ways to be better doesn't mean find more ways to be better, often it means do less. For example, over the winter I had a serious, "omygoodness I have taken on too much" moment. I was in school (technically, but I was missing it for camps), had 2 jobs (technically), was trying to train full time, and was trying to study for my personal training exam. All of this equalled one helluva stressed out unsuperalex. Anyways, when you get to that point, you aren't living any more, and you sure aren't being the best you can be at any one thing.
Therefore, the answer for me is: ways to be better = resist temptation to do too much.

"Be Tenacious"

Our grade 6 (?) soccer coach would say this one everyday. Im pretty sure on our first practice of the year he made us go look up "tenacious" in the dictionary. Well one person who is amazingly tenacious, is our famous redhead Paula. Look at her in this pack of runners at the London World Cup Series race last year. Now look at these definitions of "tenacious" from Dictionary.com:

–adjective

holding fast; characterized by keeping a firm hold (oftenfollowed by of ): a tenacious grip on my arm; tenacious ofold habits.

highly retentive: a tenacious memory.

pertinacious, persistent, stubborn, or obstinate.

adhesive or sticky; viscous or glutinous.

holding together; cohesive; not easily pulled asunder; tough.

Paula epitomizes "tenacious". And since everyone should do as Paula does, our first step should be to never allow ourselves to be pulled asunder. BE STICKY fellow triathletes!

And finally, summer of 2004 (grade 9), Kyla and I participated in the ITU solidarity camp in Edmonton. Having busted off my ACL a couple of weeks before the camp, I wasn't running yet, but I was swimming, biking, going to presentations and trying to cure myself of my shyness. There was a number of young athletes who came, although Kyla and I were probably some of the youngest considering we were still Kids Of Steel athletes. That was the first time I "met" Gaby Bolanos and Leonardo Chacon. Apparently Barbara Riveros was there as well, but unfortunately I don't remember her. Anyways, the point is, we had one talk by Jackie Gallagher, whose main quote was, "You don't win by taking short cuts". I remember taking that quote fairly literally, and imagining cutting little corners on runs, and how I needed to stop doing that. But it is true. Short cuts don't cut it. The only thing wrong with this quote is that there is another one that goes, "More isn't always better", and after taking a couple physiology classes and learning about myself, I can attest to that. SO maybe the quote should be, "Don't be a slacker". There you go. That way if you ask yourself, am I being a slacker at this instant, and the answer is yes, well hell you ain't going anywhere. If the answer is "no, I am being smart", then maybe you are doing the right thing.

Anyways, don't quote me. Yet.

Later

Australia 2011

2011-03-30T10:50:00.000-07:00

I had an amazing trip to Oz. The training was great, the teammates were great, the support staff was great, and my race went pretty well too. Everything was great!

Now that I am home I feel pretty weird. Almost as if the world is spinning too fast. On the plus side, whenever I collapse into bed, I fall straight asleep! It is the most amazing phenomenon! (normally I am the worst sleeper on the planet). I just had to drag myself out of bed, literally one limb at a time, in order to get ready for school. And then I got distracted and am posting this!

Yay, much anticipated (do I flatter myself?) Aussie video!

Australia from Alexandra Coates on Vimeo.

Homework

2011-03-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

Before leaving for Australia, I had to finish the video portion of a biomechanics project. The project was titled "Movement Analysis", and the purpose was to use the program Dartfish, along with our biomechanics knowledge to analyze a movement. Unfortunately Dartfish wasn't being cooperative (shutting down randomly and un-tracking my carefully tracked angles), and it made for a very stressful couple of days prior to departure.

For my video I did a swim analysis comparing my strokes to those of "First-out-of-the-water-in-Desmoines-championswimmer-ANDREWMcCARTNEY". Thanks to Andrew for his beautiful technique, thanks to Simon for his video camera, thanks to Rick for filming me, and finally thanks to my lab instructor for somehow exporting the video to me and allowing me to miss so many labs.

Here is the video. Don't get caught up in the specifics, as a lot of the angles/distances/speeds didn't track properly. It's all about the effort right?

In Oz

2011-03-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

It is neat to be here in Australia again. The last time I was here for the Australian Youth Olympics we stayed just outside of Sydney. This time we are staying on the Sunshine Coast. The birds are a bit less loud in the mornings here, but they are definitely still present. So far I have seen some parrots and other crazy birds, as well as a small lizard. There are more clouds here seeing as we are on the coast, but the sun is still pretty darn hot, and it is a lot greener here. I am pretty sure I have gotten the same amount of sun in two days here as I did in a week in Hawaii. The UV index must be through the roof!

Riding on the left side of the road in traffic is kind of scary, and cars don't really give you much room when passing. When you get out of the towns and onto some back roads the stress levels go down a little bit. We saw signs saying watch for Koala's out there, but we haven't seen one yet. We also rode up a 17% grade hill yesterday, which was pretty hard. One of these days we'll try the 20%+ hill that is next to our place. I'm scared.

Yesterday I had this weird foot swelling episode when I finished my ride. I wasn't able to make it up to our apartment, because as soon as I stopped riding my feet felt like they were going to explode. I had to lie down with my feet up a pillar outside the lobby for a long time, and then our physiologist gave me a piggy back ride upstairs, where I then lay on the floor with my feet elevated and ice bags attached. Anyone have any ideas why my feet were exploding? Id rather that not happen again. It'll make racing difficult.

I'm making a video. It probably won't be up until I am home however, because I am supposed to be working on my homework at all times that I am not training, eating, sleeping or stretching.

Later

I stole a picture

2011-02-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

Off the RTC blog

Them boys are looking good.

My weekend

2011-02-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

Well... Over the weekend I successfully passed my Emergency First Aid/ CPR course...

...while suffering from a mild concussion.

I find it very ironic that I, the clumsiest person on the planet, am now certified to save people's lives. Watch out. I also think that everyone around me should have to take the First Aid/CPR course.

If you were wondering how I managed to give myself a mini concussion, here is the story. If you are a cyclist, stop reading now. I was doing some intervals with the ladies, and ended up riding off the road (that is another story, but it actually has a fairly good explanation). I unclipped, got back on the road, and started riding to catch up. Unfortunately my bike shoes + pedals were covered in mud, and I wasn't able to clip in. I was racing to catch up with everyone while trying to clip in, and I must have been staring at my feet, and suddenly I found myself hurtling for the second time into the ditch. This time i was going much faster, and although for a moment I thought I could use my cross biking skills to ride it out, I ended up going over my handle bars. I was fine and did the rest of the workout, but the next day I couldn't think straight and I had a pounding headache.

I probably shouldn't have taunted the karma gods in Maui. After hearing Sam had a concussion from a rogue wave, I exlaimed, "I may crash a lot, but at least I never hit my head." I think I may have also said something about it being due to strong neck muscles. Anyways, that is the last "triathlete" moment you will see from me. Yessir, from now on I am going to be the most attentive cyclist you ever knew.

Seriously though, going back to first aid class, although I couldn't think straight I still think I was the best CPRer in the room. Well maybe that is just me being cocky, but I did remember to brace the mannequin's neck after he was hit by a "car". No one else remembered that.

ANyways, it was an eventful weekend and tomorrow I hopefully will be able to re-join training land. I count my stupidity as only slightly worse than Ian's. haha sorry Ian!

Good night!

Also, if this post doesn't really make sense... well hey, you know my excuse.

Some Triathletes are Strange

2011-02-12T13:26:00.000-08:00

Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a personality disorder which is characterized by a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.^[1] People with OCPD may feel anxious when they perceive that things are not right. This can lead to routines and rules for ways of doing things.

Thank you wikipedia.

I currently know two people who in my opinion have a form of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. One of them, I live with. The other one I train with. I love them both. Now, I don't want to make light of this disorder, so instead I'll be calling it SOCPD. Semi obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

When you first spend time with someone with SOCPD, it seems pretty swell. You'll come home, and magically the house will be tidy! OOooh the house elves came! (side-note, don't actually say that to someone with SOCPD). Or you'll leave for the weekend, and upon return all the shelves will be reorganized, with little sticky notes indicating what goes where. SOCPDs love shelving and hooks, and so often nifty ways to store things will appear when you least expect them.

After a period of time though, you'll come to realize that living with someone with SOCPD isn't all it is cracked up to be. Just because these people are awesome cleaners doesn't mean they enjoy cleaning. What they enjoy is having an absurdly organized and spotless house. When the fridge is left with larger things in the front so that it is more difficult to reach items in the back, SOCPD's brains hurt. Laziness. When folding clothes, one must fold them perfectly. There is actually an art to folding, if you weren't aware. Also, underwear is not exempt from folding. SOCPD's can spot fingerprints on the fridge from a mile away. A stove top not wiped down with stove cleaner before bed? Laziness. A pan with grease still stuck on the outside? BRAIN EXPLOSION!!!

SOCPDs are very efficient cleaners. They can clean the house in less time than it takes for a normal person to wrap their head around the fact that they should probably tidy up. Perhaps this is why they can't comprehend why cleaning the house is on the bottom of our list. They don't realize how much time it takes for a normal person to mop the floors.

SOCPDs are also very all-or-nothing type people. This causes a lot of stress, as they couldn't ever half-ass a job. It is either perfect, or not done at all. Poor SOCPDs.... it is why school is so much harder for them. Not that we normal people ever half-ass our homework...

FInally, SOCPDs aren't fully aware of the extent of their 'uniqueness'. They don't realize that us normal people aren't at all aware of the things they pick up on. It is not that we are lazy, we simply do not see how something is a problem until it is brought to our attention. We didn't realize that the 25 year old pan was able to shine that way. Or that it was worth the effort.

In the end, if you are living with an SOCPD, don't fret. You are not alone. You must simply be constantly on the lookout for things that might be seen as messy in the eyes of an SOCPD. As you walk around day to day, try to carry the motto, "I must not change anything about my environment." And then your little SOCPD will be happy.

Maui Week 3!

2011-01-28T22:20:00.001-08:00

Go Big or Go home!

Final Chapter from Alexandra Coates on Vimeo.

Maui Week 2

2011-01-19T20:23:00.000-08:00

Untitled from Alexandra Coates on Vimeo.

Maui Week 1!

2011-01-15T12:31:00.001-08:00

Untitled from Alexandra Coates on Vimeo.

Maui Week 1 from Alexandra Coates on Vimeo.

Uh Oh. A Video.

2011-01-02T20:54:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! I had a great time at home. We spent 3 days in Calgary, then went out to our cabin where we did swims at Radium Hot Springs, ran in the snow and cross-country skied. We are now quite sore.

Anyways, I made this crazy video while xc-skiing. At one point I held the camera with my teeth, and at another it was stuck in my jacket. I also didn't know how to zoom smoothly. So if you feel like puking due to motion sickness... well don't say I didn't warn you!

Yes. I did film upside-down. And no, it wasn't on purpose.

Twas 5 days before Christmas

2010-12-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

December has been interesting. Lots of strengthening, studying and swimming. I'm hoping that I'll work my butt off through this camp, take a couple of rest days, and magically be an amazing swimmer! Hey, miracles happen. Right Santa?

Here are some December pictures.

The Boys at the christmas party

Speech from santa

Ladies

Secret Santa

Austin's 22 birthday

This is the entire cake I made, it was pretty good

It's the German Chocolate Cake from Elana's pantry. Made from Coconut flour!

I can't wait to get home and play in the snow. Only 4 days and 11 practices before home :)

Some Awesome Primal Dinners

2010-11-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

Last week I made up a dinner chart so that Kyla, Austin and I could each make dinner on a separate night. I think it is a great idea because of these reasons:

Pros:
- It makes sure we have dinner every night
- No one can complain about having made dinner more often than anyone else
- No one can walk around feeling old and superior for always making dinner
- We (so far) get awesome dinners as we are all highly competitive people. Plus you only have to make a good dinner on your night, so it shouldn't be crap.

Cons:
- There are 7 days in a week. 7 isn't dividable by 3 (is dividable a word?). I kindly put my name as the 7th day, but every freaking second day I have to make dinner! Gosh

Luckily Austin and Kyla generally help me out, so it's even.

Anyways, here are some dinners. The pictures suck, because the lighting is gross at dinner time.

Primal Pizzas! We put smoked salmon and shrimp and brie cheese!

This was Austin's night. We had shrimp cakes and grilled eggplant (in salmoriglio dressing- don't know how you pronounce that) and Austin's awesome yam fries (which actually are awesome)

Kyla's dinner: Salmon and Asparagus salad and roasted pepper salad.

Last night my dinner was a rosemary apple chicken (which I undercooked a little, but so far we aren't puking, so hopefully it'll stay that way), and yam potato salad and avocado salad!

Aren't we such impressive little cooks.

On another note, we got a composter! It's awesome. Haven't fully set it up yet (actually haven't started setting it up yet), but it is going to be awesome and eco-friendly :)

Night

Random: Bonus points for anyone who can guess what the word of the day was in this post.

Winter Training Camp

2010-11-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

We just got back from a great training camp in comox/courtenay/cumberland. Our days consisted of waking up, x-biking on some beautiful (and very gnarly) trails in the mountains, eating, swimming at the courtenay pool, eating, and running either through the forest or around our hotel. We also went out for dinners, relaxed in the outdoor hot tub, the boys had their second annual NTC cup (soccer), and had impromptu HP seminars.

Here are some pics:

Kyla is still doing trainer rides :( Poor Kyla

Team walk-run

Fancy dinner the first night

200 TT

The pool + hot tub

Sushi restaurant- while waiting an hour and a half for food

still waiting

Hot tub

Our HP vs. UnHP chart.

Speeches

And Games

As Primal as possible Thanksgiving Dinner

2010-10-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wanted to go camping, or hiking or adventuring, but unfortunately we had too many things to do. Instead we went grocery shopping. I wanted to make a turkey, so we went and looked at the ginormous birds in the store, and all I could think of was how un-free run these birds looked (not too mention how hormone-y and antibiotic-y). Instead we found these tiny organic game hens, and Austin made them instead! Not as yummy as turkey, but hopefully healthier.

We decided that we were going to only cook things we had never cooked before. So first off I made a squash soup. It said to use butternut squash, but I didn't know what any of the squashes were at the store, so I just picked a yellow one. The soup didn't look super pretty, but it tasted good.

Squash Soup with Walnuts

I made cranberry sauce ( it counted as an original recipe seeing as i have never made cranberry sauce before). I also made an indian sweet potato salad and a kale salad that was quite salty and I wished I had just made the Kale salad that I liked (but that wouldn't have been original!)

We also had a Syrah wine, which was the first time trying that. I honestly couldn't tell you the difference, but it was good.

And then I made this awesome dark-chocolate orange grain free torte! I wanted to make the pumpkin cheese cake recipe on Elana's pantry, but after looking at it I was too confused, and so settled for this.

Yay for blog posts solely about food. I am now going to cry over how much we spent on groceries.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Quick Life Update

2010-10-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been a little crazy, but I think I am settling into a rhythm with school etc. which is good. I think lists are easier to read than paragraphs when you are jumping around topics, so here is my life update list:
- Screen-printing is way harder than I thought it would be.

- Getting back into swimming has been a little harder than I thought it would be.

- (side note: I just ate a bad pecan, and now I can't get the rotten taste out of my mouth).

- I went from having 0 jobs to too many jobs in the span of a day or so, but I am sorting that out right now. Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing back to back sessions of swim coaching (as a substitute instructor) with 5 year olds for an hour and a half. It was exhausting! It was also pretty fun though, we started off as super heros, then kicked over to distant planets in our space ships, than rode noodles as cowboys... yes I did run out of games at 30 minutes and had to stretch my brain for the last 15, but in the end I don't think the kids noticed. And they were all actually quite better swimmers by the end of it so I give myself an exhausted pat on the back.

- Umm... I had to drop out of my camping class (yes that is right- I was in a camping class, and yes it was for my degree) that was going hiking on the Juan de Fuca this weekend, which sucks but you gotta do what you gotta do. I didn't want to not be able to run for another couple months just because I pushed my knee too hard in the healing phase.

- I am now going to hop on the trainer and watch Glee for a bit. As well as try to wash rotten-pecan taste out of my mouth.

Happy THanksgiving!

Oh ps. I am thankful for a lot of things, and I am sure you don't want to read the list, but I think thanksgiving is about being thankful, so no whining for the weekend!
Oh ya, and good luck to all racers.

Later

5 Things I Made

2010-09-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

1. I successfully made my first screen for screen printing! It is seaweed. (It only took me a month to get it right.)

2. I successfully made my second screen for screen printing! It is a whale.

3. I made dinner which consisted of beet-spinach-goat cheese salad, fish sticks and stuffed peppers. It was good. I'm also making Noa's Zucchini muffins (In loaf form), which will also be good.

Don't judge the wine glasses, they are the only ones we have.

4. I made up my mind up about rowing- I'm never doing it. I watched my friend, Elise, compete in the national rowing regatta this weekend. She placed second in the B finals. I witnessed many athletes with "Track-Hack" afterwards, counting one guy who made himself puke. (Guess it's called something else if it's not from the track- cardio cough?)

5. I made myself heal, and therefore I can swim tomorrow :)

Take that Primal Diet!

2010-09-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

Austin, Kyla and I reached our ultimate primal potential this evening! Check it out. (This post is also to make Alison and Matt jealous for not coming over due to prior commitments)

We started off by heading down to fisherman's wharf, where we met some friends.

Manny the Mammoth Seal

He would do tricks for fish!

We also ran into this famous kid:

But he couldn't come to dinner and was in slightly different attire

We also picked up Ed, Ned and Fred.

We went home and began making our epic-ly primal meal. Here's how it went:

Kale salad

Roasted vegetables

AND...

Poor poor Ned. He was dropped into not quite boiling water. Luckily he wasn't quite awake after a jaunt in the freezer, so hopefully he didn't suffer for long. The temperature change made Fred's claws crack off. It was gross.

But hey, not much is more primal than making a meal out of live animals! Except if we had caught them ourselves I suppose. (Poorpoorednedandfred- I wanted to go set them free, but they were too darn expensive!)

I then made two different types of primal powerbars. Not sure if the nutty-er ones are going to stay together.

Then, (and this is the best part!) perhaps inspired by Lauren's celebration brownies, I made some "primal" brownies. They are made with dark chocolate, almonds and eggs (that's pretty much it). Here is the recipe found at Elana's pantry. It's an awesome site! I generally only use half the agave her recipes ask for though.

I haven't quite entered the realm of being a chef-triathlete, which seems to be the rage, despite this picture filled post. On top of not properly killing Ned, I also shoved my hands into just-off-the-burner melted coconut cream. I also still don't really like cooking, but I like eating good food, so maybe it will grow on me. Hope you are burning with envy Mattali! (haha I like that... Mattali... )

Night

Dear Blog

2010-09-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

I am writing this blog post because I am frustrated. What do triathletes normally do when they are frustrated? They go for a run. Or a bike. Or a swim. I CAN'T DO ANYTHING!!! AND I ALREADY DID ONE-LEGGED PUSHUPS!

I am exaggerating my anger levels. I'm just kinda miffy because my screen-print try #1, after 2 days of getting it set up, was an epic fail and I just spent an hour and a half trying to clean the screen, which was also a fail. arrrggggg.

So in order to vent, I am doing what normal people do. DEar Diary....

Anyways, life Update. First off, it is World Championship Weekend, and so that is taking over most of our time. We successfully watched the Men's race VOD without knowing who won before hand (using techniques I created for Kitzbuhel), so that was super exciting! I am so excited for Kirsten, who put together an awesome race in the cold and rain! Silver medal baby! I am extra super excited to watch Paula and see how the Juniors do tomorrow! Good Luck to: Alison, Christine, Joanna, Gaby, Alexander, Matt, Cole, and Paula!

I had my first week of school this week. I had to drop a couple of classes when I realized that they don't count towards my degree at all, and so now I am in 3.5 very easy courses. I tried every single possibility to fit another class in, but nothing worked. Normally easy semesters would be a good thing, but I like to have harder first semesters, so I am actually disappointed. Well not tooo disappointed.

ALSO, I had my IT band surgery on Wednesday. I am healing up quite well, and have officially ditched the crutches as of today! The surgery itself was weird. I don't know what I was expecting, but I don't think I really took the surgery seriously until I was put on a stretcher, hooked up to an IV, doped up on pain killers, my contacts taken away (making me very blind), and not having eaten since dinner the night before. I also felt weird because as I was laying on the stretcher for hours, isolated in my blindness, I came to the realization that I was doing this procedure purely because I want to do triathlon. Other people have to have surgery when they have diseases, cancer, bad bone breaks. My Aunt recently had a double mastectomy. And me, well I was doing it because I want to be able to run. I felt selfish.

Also felt hungry ;)

I am very grateful to Dr. Nelson for getting me in! And for Kyla and Austin for waiting around for me, and then making me dinner. I am grateful that I don't have a disease that forces me to lie starving on a cot with an IV on a regular basis. I am grateful to be able to do triathlon.

venting works.

Oh yes, and if anyone is wondering, the primal diet is going great! I feel healthy and energetic!

Anyways, off to fight with the screen-print again.

ps. SOOOOooo excited for the races tomorrow :)

Island Adventures

2010-09-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

In Pictures

First night in Tofino at Mussel beach

Exploring Tofino

Austin and his Vibram 5's

Breakfast in Ucluelet

We took a ferry to Vargas island- this is the path entrance

The path across the island

We arrived at this beach, and no other human in sight

Austin's first attempt at a good bear hang

Me and my interesting wood chopping technique

Our campsite in the wild

Austin's next bear hang- this one worked

Beautiful secret beach

There were wolves in the area

It wasn't a lie. Looks like a wolf slept next to Kyla's tent!

Morning on our island

Heading Home

Too Many Exciting THings are happening!

2010-09-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'll start at the beginning, and mention things worth mentioning.

Firstly, I raced the swim-bike in Kelowna a week and a half ago. It went pretty well, and I was happy with it. My swim was front of chase pack, same as in Coteau. Our pack was pretty big at the start of the bike, but was widdled away to 4 girls pretty fast due to THE HILL, the corners and the overall very fast pace. For me, the bike was the hardest bike of my life, and not because of THE HILL. It was actually because Chantal Widney was such a tank on the bike, and Evelyne Blouin was such a tank on the corners that the end result was me hanging on for dear life. I actually was happy every time THE HILL came around. I think the reason that we weren't gaining on the leaders was because Sarah-Anne and I didn't share the load much. I think if we had implemented a "drop back"pace line instead of "pull-through" pace line, we could have kept the pace rolling and Widney and Blouin could have had more breaks. I never said anything at the time though, mostly because I was the annoying one sucking wheel at the back, and I didn't feel it would go over well. Also I don't know if I could have talked. Anyways, our group successfully rode through 4 girls, and maintained our distance from the leaders until the last lap, when Blouin, Sarah-Anne and I were dropped from Widney. We then lost about 30 more seconds, but my race was over anyways, so I wasn't too worried. I came into transition in 7th place. And was happy.

My biggest pull

So intense. Need to work on my "serene" face.

After Kelowna we went and hung out in Penticton for a few days and did some climbing and resting. We saw a little black bear out in the bluffs.

Then on thursday we headed to Vic, and by Saturday I was back doing what I do best. I've done a bunch of light swims since being back, a heart-attack-ishly hard swim in the lake yesterday, and one motor pacing effort on the bike.

Now for the New exciting things. 10 things to be exact!

1. Currently I am designing T-shirts, because we just acquired screen printing supplies! Woot. Look out for the AAK printing co. coming soon.

2. Tonight is the NTC year end BBQ hosted by Carolyn and Dean. Yay

3. We are going to Tofino to hang out and maybe do a little surfing on Thursday.

4. I am currently 100% primal. ( Well almost.... I haven't stopped brushing my teeth with toothpaste...) I did wash my hair with Austin's weird Baking soda and vinegar stuff. It made my hair feel very nice actually.

5. We have an awesome business plan that is slowly coming together for the future. (Not going to tell it to the whole wide world just yet). It doesn't have anything to do with T-shirts.

6. I am excited to watch Budapest

7. I get IT band release surgery on the 7th. Exciting?

8. School starts on the 8th. (I'm a tiny bit excited for school. Mostly because I bought a pretty red notebook for one of my classes. )

9. One day I am going to finish my arbutus tree painting, and it will be pretty.

10. I am trying to slowly go barefoot. I want to be able to run sans orthotics. The only problem is I looove the my orthotics. So stable and pain-free.

My Morning

2010-08-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

I got out of bed at 8:30 this morning and realized two things:
#1 I have the whole day ahead of me to do whatever I want, and #2 I can watch the Kitzbuhel Women's WCS race right now!

I rushed over to our supercomputer ( A computer with a very large monitor that we use as our TV) and anxiously got it all booted up. Next came the hard part, getting to the WCS video on demand site without seeing who won! In London Jairus came over to watch the men's race, but unfortunately as we got it set up we both ended up glancing at Triathlon.org's main page and saw Gomez crossing the line. Only Austin got to watch the race and be super excited when Gomez out ran both Brownlees. This time I had a plan. I grabbed a large canvas off the kitchen table (part of our 3 part painting we are working on), and walked over to supercomputer with squinted eyes. Then I clicked on the triathlon page and held the canvas over most of the computer screen. Then, making sure my eyes were very squinted and cross-eyed, I clicked on the VOD button and was safely able to un-squint and put the painting back on the table. YES!!! hahahahahah mission accomplished.

Unfortunately I had to repeat that a couple of times because the VOD wasn't working super well, but eventually I got it going. yesyesyesyesyes. I made sure not to check any social networking sites, or my phone, and then all systems were a go!

The swim started. I felt sick to my stomach. In general I get sympathy nerves for the whole race, but the swim is always the worst, because it is the hardest and if it goes badly the whole race is ruined. I watched as the girls ran out of the water.... Paula was on the tail end of front pack, and the giant make or break question was, is she going to get in or not???? I watched as one of the ladies came to a dead stop out of transition, put one foot on top of her shoe and started scooting forward, as another girl swerved head down trying to put her feet right in her shoes. This was good. Anything to slow them down just a little. The first lap of the bike started, and where was paula? where was paula? And then I saw her name. HUge sigh of relief. All was good. Funny thing was Barry thought she was in chase pack for a whole lap after that, but by that point I had already seen Paula leading up the hill in the front pack, so I wasn't worried.

Austin walked in from his run. "DON'T TELL ME WHO WINS!!! " I yelled. "Can I turn this down, it's really loud," he replied. "WHAT?" I yelled. Austin turned the sound way down. I could still hear it fine. oops.

The run started. Paula was in the front. SHe can do it. SHe can do it. I bounced around the house. The commentators kept saying Lisa Norden looked tired, but I didn't think she did. Paula looked amazing, but what if Lisa pulled out some insane sprint and won? WHY CAN'T I RUN LIKE THAT!!!!!

And then Paula puts on her surge. No problem, no worries. I die on the couch. Coolest thing ever!!!!!!
WHy doesn't the world understand how coool that was! Why isn't the top trending on twitter not Paula Findlay ????? gaaaahhhhh

Anyways, Congrats Paula on another super exciting race :) That was my take on the race. I'm sure everyone else watching was just as excited.

peace

5 Tips of the Day

2010-07-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

Today I was riding solo again, and because I can't seem to zone out, I came up with these tips. Here is my How to Train Solo if You Are Spoiled and Generally Train in a Group:

#1. Wear a heart rate monitor. That way you can tell if you are working hard enough, or are working too hard. I tend to feel as though I am not trying hard enough, and this causes a very long mental battle: "Work harder, Relax, Work harder, Calm down, Work harder, Shut up!" That's why I wear a heart rate monitor.

#2. If you don't have any music, try to get a good song in your head. Otherwise your brain will come up with a bad one half way through the session. My brain came up with "It's Raining Men" today at an hour into my ride.

#3. If you can, bring music.

#4. Plan out your training session before you go, so that you don't have to think about it while you are out there. This reduces the possibility of taking short cuts, and also stops you from having too many fights with yourself over when to turn around.

#5. Do not think about time in any way while training solo. For example, when you get to a certain spot on your ride, don't say to yourself, "Man that felt like an hour to get here, and it was only 15 minutes." Also do not look at your watch very often because time passes slower when you are alone. If you follow #4, you won't have to check your watch unless you are doing intervals.

Be HP. Dream Big.

What's new with me?

2010-07-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

Oh not much. Just getting fit.

What's not so new with me?:
- Went to Coteau and proved that I don't have to quit triathlon just yet
- Went home to see a friend visiting from Aussie. Did a mountain OW swim which was decently awesome
- Trained
- Went to San Francisco and watched some extremely intense races that left me a little worn out. Then Austin and I saw the Broadway Wicked, which was wicked, as well as walked all around San Francisco.
- Went and had a $500 knee consultation.
- Trained
- Watched Hamburg WCS. twice.
-Went to Saltspring for the day! It was charming
-Trained!

Also, as Kelowna approaches, I'm getting some happy vibes! Here are some EPIC summertime pictures from last year post Kelowna.

Bear

Rippin it.

There are two Horns way up there.

Well, the waterfall was very hot.

Coteau-du-Lac Pics

2010-06-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the weekend. The race was a great success for almost everyone. Not often that pretty much the whole team does amazing. Poor Austin hit the ground, and is sporting some pretty intense road-rash. The pictures don't do the "carnage" justice because the medics are covering up all the bad spots. I did the swim-bike portion of the race, and was very happy with my effort.

Thanks to Kathy and DJ for hosting a nice BBQ, and to Phil for taking us downtown!

Whoop whoop

2010-06-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited to Watch Hy-Vee World Cup!!! Always my favorite event to watch by far, plus this year I've got a sister and a Paula and a Jeff to watch out for! As well as two Andrews, a Kathy, and a Kyle! Not to mention how sweet it would be if Simon won again!
Unfortunately the races are taking place while us homebodies are volunteering at the Victoria Youth Triathlon. My strategy is to set up my laptop in the McKinnon building, and then our team can do a rotating shift of volunteering and watching. Maybe be the pace bunny for two laps, watch for two laps, type deal.
I've also got my final nutrition exam on Monday, which means I can't just focus on watching the race, I'll have to be memorizing the functions, symptoms of deficiency and toxicity etc. for all the vitamins and minerals. While being a pace bunny...
Bring it.

Anyways, here are is a little clip from Triathlon Canada magazine online:

ITU Hy-Vee Des Moines

June 10, 2010By rogerhospedales

Many of the world's best triathletes will be in West Des Moines, Iowa this Sunday to grab their share of the $1 million dollar (US) prize purse at the fourth annual Hy-Vee ITU Triathlon Elite Cup. The winner of the men's and women's events will each receive $200 000.

The field includes three Olympic gold medalists (Simon Whitfield - defending champion, Jan Frodeno, and Emma Snowsill), the current ITU number one ranked male (Alexander Brukhankov) and female (Barbara Riveros Diaz), four former world champions, and defending women's champion Emma Moffatt (AUS).

Other Canadians to join Whitfield in the event include: Kathy Tremblay, Paula Findlay, Kyla Coates, Kyle Jones, Andrew Russell, Andrew McCartney, and Jeffrey Phillips.

Hy-Vee Triathlon.com will carry a live video stream of all the weekend's events. The elite women's race starts at 12:30 pm (CDT), and at 3:30pm (CDT) for the elite men.

So Exciting!!

Sugar lumps

2010-05-31T21:06:00.000-07:00

At the track the other day, after my walk-run, I had this song stuck in my head. A bit different from the general triathlete music we are used to. I was going to do the dance at the start of the video, but everyone else (who were doing run-run's) were suffering too much, and were past the point where a comic relief interlude would be appreciated. (ps. you don't have to watch the full video. It just gets really silly)

Not much else is new in life. Online courses are lame.
Swimming is coming along, biking is happening again,
and run-walk has begun! All I need is a little sun.

Ramblefest

2010-05-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning very grumbly. I usually wake up grumbly, but today I was especially so because I haven't been falling asleep this week. This is self induced as I have been going to bed too late, which causes me to not be able to fall asleep. ANyways. The purpose of this post is to show how my day turned around!

I woke up grumbly, but went and had a decent swim #1. I then went to physio with Paul ( I have been waiting for a month for this appointment!) and I came out super happy because he says he thinks that if I do all my exercises, I can start a run-walk program next week!!!!!!! He definitely knows his stuff, and he helped pull my SI joint back into place. He also gave me IMS, which was my third needling of the week. I swear everyone is becoming too needle happy these days. Thank you Brent and Carolyn for encouraging me to go see him.

Today was official move-out and inspection day at the other apartment, and so I arrived at the apartment an hour early (What.... early? Alex Coates? No way) in order to clean out the oven properly, and the inspection guy was already there! He said he thought I'd be there at around that time. He's the second psychic person I have spoken to this week. Anyways, I played it cool, didn't mention the oven, and we got our whole deposit back! ( I have a can of oven cleaner that is still sitting in my purse). He also offered to be a reference and said it was a long time since he had done that. Sweet- I think we owe it all to my amazing carpet cleaning skills which kept me up past bedtime. It has nothing to do with Austin's OCD cleaning skills...

I missed my time slot to do my double swim at commonwealth, so I need to go find a pool. I was thinking the Ian Stewart, but don't know if I am brave enough to swim outside yet. Maybe I'll wear my wetsuit.

Also, I watched Glee last night, and I have now been cleaning my house while breaking out some decently awesome (if I do say so myself) dance moves. I think NTC boys should be afraid for next years dance competition, because I am fairly certain the girls are going to annihilate. That's right. Annihilate. ps. Did I ever mention that Vanessa Fernandes "liked" (facebook "liked") our dance. My life is complete! (see this years competition courtesy of Kirsten's blog)

Almost everyone is racing this weekend, so good luck to them! I guess the start times have been changed back, and the elites will be racing in the heat of the day. I love the sun, but 40 degree races are dangerous. For everyone that is racing: make sure you are hydrated and are full to the brim with electrolytes! And then pour water over your head at all opportunities, never skip a water station (drink at every station, even if you aren't thirsty, or you only have 400 m to finish), and if you feel like your head is going to explode you are already losing brain cells. We want no one to pass out or come back brain damaged! haha Now everyone is excited to race! Oh and watch out for them crocodiles, jellyfish and sharks! Heard Cole got a jelly to the face? Hope there aren't any large swarms of jellyfish during the race.... haha. Seriously though, stay safe.

Good luck from the number one fan : SuperAlex

Ten reasons why our house is more HP than yours:

2010-05-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

#1: hella swim cords! (Courtesy of Dawn Horn, Thanks Dawn!)

#2 : And sweet swim cord set up! (in compression of course)

#3 : The Trek corner: really awesome bike rack from Trek Procity

#4 : Clean Air Plants (..that always seem to bounce back to life)

#5 : Healthy things routine for when you are sick (Including flintstone gummies!)

#6 : Kyla takes her healthy things in a wetsuit. (Just kidding- she was just trying it on for the first time!)

#7 : We drink really disgusting smoothies

#8 : We shop 98% Red Barn!

#9 : physio corner

#10 : One word: NormaTec

Double Trouble + Adventures

2010-05-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some double swims lately. Rick Say and Pat have been working on my strokes, and I think I have the potential to swim very well! Presently the nice stroke only works when I am wearing fins, a snorkel and am going 0.1 km/h. Today we did our usual tuesday swim, and I tried to keep my strokes together, but it was a lost cause. I'm back in the water really soon though, so I'll do 3 k perfect at snails pace and maybe tomorrow will go better.

Here are some pics of Danika, Paula, Kyla and I on a grand adventure last week:

We missed the turnoff, so we started our adventure by attempting to bushwack

(I like this one!)

We quickly came to this cliff- as well as a wall of impenetrable bushes, and so we jumped back into the jeep (good 'ol Fergus), and backtracked a little and finally found the trail

Same picture except I focused on the cool cactus plant! (Completely on purpose of course)

So pretty

Kyla hauled our "nutrition" and rain jackets even on the rock climb. We were prepared.

Looking for creatures

Awesome little beach

Our rainbow of rocks

Oh Beads!

2010-04-22T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today was an excellent day! The sun was shining, I felt good in the water (by the end of practice), AND Kyla and I went and made beads! Now that we have finally found a place to rent torches, and it didn't cost as much as I expected, maybe we can go more often. I hope the beads don't all break in the kiln, and I hope they look good!

After bead making, I went to see Dr. Guan, and I think I'll soon be healed. If anyone has the magic I need, it is Dr. Guan!

On a similar note, I think my swimming has hope. I have been improving ever so slowly. Who knew breaking a bone in october could have such long reaching effects! As Lauren mentioned though (seeing as she is going through the same thing), the positive is that I have been able to completely re-analyse my stroke. I know my stroke is far from perfect (very far...), but I feel as though I finally understand what I need to do to make it perfect.

Note: (this note is for the 1% of people that read my blog that live in Victoria or close area and are not on the team.) TriBC's annual Casino night fundraiser is this weekend, so make sure to attend!

Recent Adventures

2010-04-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Connor ( Our dear youngest rookie), Kyla and I met for our ride at 3:30. Everyone else who either a) are not in school or b) were skipping school, went to the 2:00 brick workout. Anyways, we got a call before the bike saying we could do it as a trainer ride (seeing as it was raining pretty good), but since we didn't find out until we were all suited up and ready to go, I voted we just getter done outside. It is also easier to stay motivated outside.

Anyways, the ride started out fairly nicely. The roads were wetter than expected, and we were instantly soaked, but it wasn't too cold. Workout started with an observatory climb, and 4x30 sec accelerations. All good (minus mud spray to face).
Onto the workout, which was 4x6 minutes of "harder than race pace". The first one went well. I stayed on Connor's wheel for 5 minutes- it's just like motor pacing! The second one we decided to head north, with a plan of coming back on the third interval, and heading for home on the fourth, giving us still time for cool down and then run off the bike.

This is where the adventure begins. Connor starts his interval, and Kyla and I are immediately dropped (due to starting the interval in the middle of a big hill- I take credit for that mistake). We hammer for 6 minutes, begin our easy portion, and Connor doesn't turn around. We extend the easy. No Connor. Fine, he decided to do another interval in this direction (the wrong one). We can't just leave him out here by himself, so we'll have to do another interval as well. We see glimpses of his red jacket ahead of us. 6 minutes hard and 4 minutes easy later, and Connor is completely out of sight. And we have reached the airport!

I decide we should start riding easy back, and he should catch up to us on his last interval. We ride for awhile, and finally pull over to try calling him. At this point you should be reminded that it is still raining, and getting more and more windy (read "headwind"). The socks are drenched. The gloves are drenched. And we are at least 40 minutes from home. The shakes have begun, and the numbness is setting in.

(switch tenses)

After not being able to get a hold of him, I finally voted we abandon Connor to his fate, and we started riding back. Since being in Victoria, I have had to learn how to stay tough while riding in horrible conditions. This was definitely one of the worst times. I couldn't change gears, I couldn't get my legs to work, I was laugh-sobbing...
We race-pace/tempo-ed ALL the way back. And this is another tip I picked up while living in Victoria: the only way to unfreeze your fingers is to bike really really hard. Right when we got back to the Observatory, I began feeling my fingers again!Just in time for the real (glycogen) bonk to hit as we rolled into the parking lot.

And that was our recent adventure.

But wait! (You ask) What happened to Connor? Apparently he arrived in Sydney and called for a ride. We are happy you weren't getting hypothermia on the side of the road with a broken spoke (as was my theory).

It's that time of year again

2010-03-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

Time for MENTAL toughness training. Into race pace, full on efforts! (Due to the written practice, or my ego. Both apply)
Today I got my heart rate up to 195 chasing Polly up the observatory! How does she do it????? I'm pretty sure my max heart rate (according to a VO2 max test) is only 198!

I also am fairly sure my blood lactate was higher than ever recorded in the swim today. Too bad they weren't finger pricking really. I don't know if it was supposed to be that painful or not...

The key to being mentally tough is to sleep a lot. So I'm going to go do that now.

Putting in the work.

zoom zoom

5 minute study break

2010-03-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

And 5 things I have learned Recently

1) Semi-understanding material prior to cramming is essential for cramming. Copying down class notes while writing study notes is not optimal.

2) Riding with music and a HR monitor is the only way to do 30 minutes of solo steady state and hill repeats

3) Only 3 ish more weeks of school before exams (although I'm not even halfway through my online course, so that'll be another couple weeks/months)

4) Online courses are too much work. Not worth it.

5) Race pace efforts make you tough.

oh and 6) people can't resist the charm of baby bunnies. Bundles of tennis ball-sized joy!

ps. NTC-ers are working hard- watch your back.

back to le epic cram-sesh

2010-03-04T17:48:00.000-08:00

Quick Update because I have a huge midterm that I am supposed to be studying for!! Tucson camp ended and on Friday we all flew home :(. Luckily when we got in my Mom was in Victoria! The next day Austin, Kyla, Momma, and I went over the Vancouver for the day to catch some Olympic action. Unfortunately we didn't have tickets for anything, and it was raining a lot, and the only thing playing in the live cities and tents was the curling (not that I have anything against curling, but it isn't exciting enough to sit in the rain for), and so we pretty much just walked around a lot. It's funny because that day Canada won 3 gold medals, and we were in Vancouver for them, and we only saw it on the tv's when we stopped for lunch! Although it was raining, there was still a ton of people on the streets, with 90% of them decked out in Canada gear. It was pretty cool just to feel the energy and get a feel for the venues and to put yourself in the athletes shoes.

I think it is amazing how much national pride the 2012 Olympics invoked. It was the most exciting Olympics that I have ever seen. Beijing comes close to being the most exciting (because of the triathlon!), but Vancouver wins because the whole thing was OUR olympics. Being in Vancouver to experience some of the patriotism was really a neat experience. Here are the pics!

Rows and rows of inukshuks

Austin, Mom, Kyla in front of the pretty trees!

Sumi on the ice

The Cauldron

Mom and Austin in front of an igloo building

One of many sweet buildings

Athletes village

Kyla and Mom

wannderful

2010-02-23T10:55:00.000-08:00

Imma be imma be imma imma imma be.... check out the dance off on the NTC blog if you don't know what I'm talking about. Just watch the girls video though. The boys one doesn't do the boy's dance justice because you can't really hear the music in the background. THis is likely because there is an "oh-no-ing" hyena in the background. So just stick to the girls video.

Having a great time here in Tucson. TOday was sunnnyyyy in the pool! Woohooo! We had two days of swimming in the rain. Swimming in the rain is actually really fun, but biking isn't. So I'm happy the sun is back. Polly (paula findlay, I just call her polly) and Rachael left to go back to academic land today. I'm still trying to pretend that school doesn't exist. ANd now our huge house only has four girls in it. Well at least we have room in our fridge.

I like it here. I think I'll stay.

cute picture- also taken off NTC blog- from Marc's 18th Bday. We almost drowned him about 10 minutes prior to this picture.

Tucson update

2010-02-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

I'm in Tucson! It feels great! The mornings are cool, but the days are very nice. Yesterday I thought my head was going to explode because the pool was so hot! Training has been good so far, and everyone isn't super tired or anything yet, so we are all still having fun as well! It's nice to get away from school and rain and finally see some sunlight.

Later

Kara Goucher and Tucson

2010-02-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

I just read a huge article on Kara Goucher in the Runner's World magazine, and it was awesome! (that's all I wanted to say on that...)

Also, I am heading to Tucson after all! Leaving tomorrow morning! If all goes well I'll be able to build into the camp and hopefully be swimming, biking AND running super fast by the end!

Here's to great camps for triathletes in Tuscon, Florida, and Cowichan Bay! (and anywhere else fellow athletes may be)

Alex

PS. as mentioned before, GOod luck to Dorelle and Team at Brazil Fast Triathlon, which will take place at the end of February.

Status

2010-01-27T11:39:00.001-08:00

Biking: good
Swimming: improving ever so slowly
Running: some days
Injuries: hopefully slowly diminishing
Health: not Sick!!!
School: not much
Chiro: more than school
Physio/massage/acupuncture: plenty
Rest: should cut down on appointments
Mental/Emotional status: verging on bipolar
Goals: plenty
Ability to achieve Goals: possible

Result: one hell of a lot of work before summer. Just gotta keep ma chin up

Here's a Great Picture, taken during Sooke Triathlon last year:

lattes, beads and physio

2010-01-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

Today I had coffee in the morning before school. Then after class we stopped at Penn runners and I was bonking (not truly "bonking" as in bonking during a 3 hour ride, but bonking as in really badly needing food), so I stopped to get food in the coffee shop across the road. The soy chai latte was calling my name incessantly, so I bought one, but unfortunately they made me a soy latte (mostly coffee) instead. Apparently I can only take so much coffee in one day, because I feel like I am on speed (not that I would know what speed feels like). I can't stay still!!!! I can't even think still!

I am currently getting behind in school because of my excessive physio/massage/acupuncture/chiro/orthotics appointments. I have been falling apart lately. I think it is because I took time off during my collarbone injury, and now that I am back training full time, by body isn't adapting fast enough. It'll adapt soon though because I am forcing it to! (oh and I'll catch up on school soon enough- i'm a quick reader)

Yesterday I was cleaning out my room, and I found all of my jewelry that I have made over the years. Lately, whenever Kyla and I go to our cabin (so once a year...) we have been renting tables at Bavin glassworks, and making beads. We then make bracelets out of said beads. I have decided that I am going to rent a table at an art fair/market on a sunday some day, and hopefully make some money to support some of my many physio/massage/acupuncture/chiro appointments.

i can't wait to be fast! I just can't wait!! aaarrrrggg I just want to be fast again. soon my friend. soon.

Here are some pictures of the jewelry and of Kyla making beads.

Month in Review

2010-01-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since my last post- so here is the brief overview. I finished exams and a solid week of training before heading home for Christmas on the 17th! Home was great, Christmas was great and everything was great. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a bit more time in Windermere/Panorama, but you can't have it all. On the 26th we returned to Vic for training camp!

Training camp started off on Sunday with a 60 minute run starting before the sun was up, followed immediately with a 6 k swim and then a 2 hour break before a 2 hour bike ride. None of the practices were too intense, but going from one-a-day easy workouts on my own to three workouts killed me! The next week continued along those lines except with added intensity. Before Christmas I had only been doing about 4 k of swimming a practice due to the collarbone thing, so swimming 6+ k a day was hard, and I am definitely one of the slowest swimmers of the gang. I know I am improving even though it can be pretty discouraging. I struggled with glute/hamstring/IT band/knee pain on the runs by the end, so I am hoping to get in some good treatment soon so that I can do all of the workouts this week. The hardest workout of the camp was 6x harder than hamish loop at Beacon hill desc 1-3, 4-6. I only ended up doing 5 of the repeats because coach must have noticed my lack of body functioning. The other hard workout was the last swim of the camp, which for me was 7 kilometers, but for everyone else was 10k. Everyone worked hard, and the atmosphere was very positive- good camp.

Anyways, camp made me feel a lot stronger, and I can't wait for Spring training camp! It is coming up fast. (Not as fast as Hawaii is for the senior squad, seeing as some of them leave today! Lucky...)

Yesterday was my Birthday. Austin, Kyla and I went and saw Avatar! I loved it! Definitely worth seeing! And then we went out for dinner with the team at Milestones on the water. Thank you ALi for being the best friend ever and organizing it! And thanks everyone for coming- hope everyone had fun.

Today was the first day of classes. I haven't bought my books yet.... I even forgot to bring a pen! Funny what a month off does to you.

That's my life in review- Later

Oh to be a Leader

2009-12-07T17:07:00.000-08:00

I took EPHE 252 this semester. It was a course on Leadership. I spent about 5 days writing our final report. I am fairly certain she isn't even going to read it, because it is too long.

Today me and Austin did our long run. I was mad at him the whole time because he was always about a foot ahead of me. He was mad a me the whole time because I kept surging or else running behind him. We didn't talk the whole time. It was definitely a long run. (don't worry Austin, I forgive you ;)

I coached today. We played Penguin for ten minutes. Ten minutes of me saying words that sound like penguin, and then them jumping in when I said it. In out, in out, in out, for ten minutes!! Sure was fun!

Now, being serious. Charlie Brown Christmas music is the best.

hohoho

superalex

one more week of school

2009-11-28T12:23:00.001-08:00

ONE MORE WEEK OF SCHOOL!! That deserved caplocks. I still have exams after that, and I think they are going to require some madstudying, but all I can think of is ONE MORE WEEK OF SCHOOL!! yessssssss....

On a different note, I am almost a real triathlete again. I Ran Tuesday, Thursday, Friday this week, biked Wednesday and Today (saturday), and half swam in there as well.Oh ya, and weights twice and yoga once! I say half swam because even though now I can swim with both arms, it sometimes starts to hurt my collarbone, so I revert to one arm. I am doing stretchcords with both arms though, so I think I'll be able to swim properly soon.

I did my first real run workout with the team yesterday. It consisted of 20 minutes warm up, 10 min fartlek, 15 min ss, 10 min tempo and then cool down. I felt like my legs were going to fall off by the end. My hamstrings were completely locked up! It was fun though.

Anyways, that's my update. Can't wait till Christmas break!
Peace

TODAY

2009-11-14T22:19:00.000-08:00

Today I went to weights at 8:30. ( I may have been there at 8:34... I have trouble being exactly on time). Then I biked for 75 minutes at PISE on the trainer until my butt couldn't take it anymore. Then I went home, ate, danced, and went to Swimming!
Today I swam ( one armed) for the entire practice! I did 2500 m one arm!! I am the fastest right armed swimmer ever! Or so I like to think.
Then I went straight to accupunture. It was more painful than usual today, but it sure helped. Then I ate some dinner and headed out to meet my dance team. We practiced on our dance for two hours! It is awesome. I think it has a lot of shock factor for what is supposed to me mostly a cultural dance (don't tell the rest of the class!). I'll try to post it after we perform of Friday. (for anyone who doesn't know- I am in EPHE 109 for Kinese, and it is a dance class, in case you were wondering)
Then I came home, and now I am sending out some sponsorship letters so that hopefully some kind soul/company out there will decided to help me out!

That is what I did today. It is more activity than I have done since I flew over my handle bars a month ago.

Later!

Thetis Lake Pics

2009-11-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

Our Thetis Lake Relay teams did awesome! Our Men's A team came first, our Men's B team placed 2nd and our Women's team did really good- I don't know the exact position, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was first for Women. All four guys on the A team ran their 5k's under 15:45! Crazy! Here are some pics

Small- not very interesting- post

2009-11-06T15:33:00.000-08:00

I'm entering (almost) into week 4 of broken clavicle, and I can now put my arm mostly above my head. I can't wait for two things: this semester to be over (3 weeks now??), and for my training to get back to normal. Being a broken, extremely stressed out- student really sucks. I've been following my Weights program, developed by Lowell Rockliffe, and I've been doing a fair amount of stationary biking and water running, but it'll be nice to start doing real work again.
Not going to lie, i am nervous about how hard it is going to be to get back into it.
Today Kyla and I taught our PE dance class the Hula! I think it went well, we'll see how well it went when we get our peer teaching mark back at the end of the semester. As for reading break this week- I think it'll be spent completing my mountain load of homework.

Good Luck to everyone who is racing! Our high school gang out in Vancouver doing Provincials for X-country, Austin who is supposed to race the cross bike tomorrow, and Andrew Russell doing the World Cup in Huatulco.

Pumpkins and Pectoral Girdles

2009-10-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

So with two midterms tomorrow and practically zero studying done for them, I thought I would update my blog! I'm not training right now because I broke my collarbone last wednesday during our first cross ride of the year. I was riding around our little obstacle course, and I was getting cocky because for the first time ever I was clearing the little wood plank with BOTH wheels. ( I suck at cross biking if you haven't already guessed) I was going too fast, and I don't remember anything except jumping, screaming (unintentionally) and landing. I think I landed with my front wheel turned and got thrown over my handle bars. The funny thing is that the log was small enough you could just ride right over it. The ironic part of this story was that I had just finished writing a test on the pectoral girdle before going biking!

So I haven't done any physical activity for a week minus my armless water running which was painful. I did go to Jasper for thanksgiving which was amazing. Kyla and I won a pumpkin carving contest - I'll post our winning pumpkin! I'll also post our family thanksgiving picture- Evan looks funny in it because he looks funny in 90% of pictures (sorry Evan, it's just the truth)
Later

A day in the life...

2009-10-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, mid-afternoon, I headed out on my run. I ran up cook street, around beacon hill, and back home. While I was running down cook street, I joined up with this guy who was running barefoot down the sidewalk, and carrying a backpack. I thought he was just a wierdo who was late for an appointment, but after a couple blocks with the sound of his slapping feet behind me, I realized he was actually on a run. So at an intersection I asked him if his feet hurt.
Nope.
Had he ever tried barefoot running shoes?
A couple.
Didn't like them?
Not as much as real barefoot running.
Cool, see ya. And I accelerated off not wanting to be slower than the guy with a backpack and no shoes. I got to Beacon Hill and ran up to the top, where I stopped to stretch my iliotibial tract (i'm in anatomy this semester) and look at the ocean. It was sunny, the water was sparkly, and there was absolutely no clouds. Quite amazing!
Then I ran off through the gardens, where I ran beside a peacock for awhile and I looked at these insane flowers that looked like huge upside down bells.
And then I ran back home, passing all the little coffee shops and cute stores.
Yup, Victoria is pretty sweet.
Then I went out for sushi with some pals (sushi in victoria is also amazing just so everyone knows), and then we hit up the climbing gym. Apparently Victorians have much better things to do on a Friday night, because it wasn't very busy. Like Kyla pointed out, "the city did invest in public street-side urinals..."

I have way too much homework to do.

Elite Nationals really late race report

2009-09-09T10:44:00.001-07:00

The Kelowna apple is always my favorite race, and this year was no exception. No matter what happens in the race, you are in Kelowna afterwards!
This race was different for me this year, because it was my first Olympic distance race, as well as being elite nationals. I was pretty nervous because I hadn't been feeling very good in training and I didn't know anyone (other than the three ladies who came first, second and third of course) that I would be racing against. My biggest fear was that I would exit the water last, and then have no one to draft off of, and then ultimately either get lapped out or come last. Luckily that didn't happen!! Whew

My race played out pretty well. I moved my way up in the swim and although I somehow managed to smash into the ground while diving in for my second lap, overall the swim didn't hurt too bad. Somehow I was first girl in chase pack out of transition, and it wasn't really until THE hill that I was caught by the rest of the chase pack. The hill hurt a lot, but it was definitely my forte. I mostly hung on to the back of the pack, and I did a lot of sprinting after corners, because I was at the back and my cornering sucked. On the third lap I believe I got dropped on a corner, but luckily I got swallowed up by the second chase pack, and even luckier we caught right back up to first chase pack! From then on my cornering improved drastically. On the 5th lap I tried to take my gel and I dropped it! Big mistake number 2 or 3....

Onto the run I felt amazing on my first lap. I was trying to hold back, but it just felt so easy! I began taking my second gel, and somehow I managed to drop that as well! Biggest mistake yet! By the second lap I was already bonking. On the third lap I actually stopped at the spot where I had dropped my gel, picked it up and ate it! I think it kicked in in the medical tent after I finished, but hey, I finished! I was disappointed with my run, but I was pretty happy with the rest of my race. It did feel long, but not too bad really. I'm excited for next year. I also wasn't too disappointed with my result. I came 13th overall, but I was also surprised to find out I got to go on the podium, because I was 3rd U23! It definitely made the race worthwhile.

After the race Austin, Terral (Austin's older brother), and I spent 5 or 6 days climbing the Skaha bluffs, then we went to Squamish and did some more climbing, and then we finished of the vacation with surfing in Tofino. It was awesome.

Good Luck to Paula and Andrew M. and Andrew Y. racing U23 worlds tomorrow in Australia, and then good luck to our National team guys and of course good luck to Matt and Ian and Connor and Kyla and Rachel and Alison in Junior worlds on the 13th! Which is the 12th here in case anyone wanted to watch the race on triathlon.org.

ps. first day of school was today. I was late for my first class. classy

Random updates and Orange skies

2009-07-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

Sooo.... thought I'd write a new post, cause the depressing one has been sitting there for too long. Basically training is going well, although I've been going through a period of insomnia which sucks. We biked up Hurricane Ridge on Friday which was super fun! My mom was out here and she got volunteered to be the support vehicle! I wasn't feeling very good, so my time will be extra easy to beat next year.

Yesterday we did the Thetis Lake Swim for MS. About half the team did the 3000 m, the other half 1500m, 2 (Kirsten and Brook) did the 5 k and 1 person (Brook) did the 5 and the 1500! I did the 1500 and I felt pretty good in the water but I made a rookie mistake and didn't get with the pack that I should have. I ended up swimming with some old (er) people in wetsuits while watching the rest of my team swim away! I still think I swam pretty well, and i don't think I would have had trouble sticking with the pack if I had just gone with them to begin with.
I am extremely sore today. And very very tired too. Hopefully we'll get a bit of a break before the "race" on Sunday. It'll be my first ever Olympic! And it isn't draft legal, so that means 40k by myself on the bike! gaahhhh. Hopefully I have magically gotten better at tt-ing on since last year!
Also, team Manitoba is here training with us this week, which is cool. Our track practice yesterday was really crowded and I kept trying to run lanes, but nobody would do it with me. Also the Oak Bay track isn't set up for 200's, so I was pretty much just cheating.

Anyways, I have included pictures of the sky seen from my Balcony on Saturday night. We had a sweet storm thing going on, and the sky turned orange.

Just letting it out

2009-07-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

Funny thing the way life works. I made some goals at the start of the year, they were:
1. I will make the National Team and be competitive at Worlds.
2. I will win Canada Summer Games
3. I will not get sick

Now these were highly optimistic goals, but they left wiggle room. A decent finish at the Games, just qualifying for Worlds, and reducing the amounts of time spent sick in bed, that is what I really wanted.

Needless to say none of those goals were accomplished. I'm finding it kinda hard to get my head wrapped around the fact that I blew my season so badly. In years past I've made goals, and they haven't worked out, but I didn't get too down on myself. I guess just training all season with these ones in the front of my mind, and then coming to the realization that I don't have any more chances to achieve them is really hurting.

I guess you just have to make new goals and move forward. Ups and Downs, they happen to everyone. Injuries happen, and sickness happens. Even just plain old crappy races happen. Sometimes luck isn't on your side either.

I still wish I could have a re-do though.

Anyways, that is over. Time to move forward and not think back, yet take what I have learned with me. Grow up I guess. Start training like a U23 athlete. Focus a bit more on school.

All that jazzzzzz

Junior Nats and Such

2009-07-15T17:49:00.001-07:00

Just a few minutes ago I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about in this post, but my brain just shut down so I don't think this post is going to be as extraordinary as it was going to be. I also think it may be full of run-ons (such as my semi run-on previous sentence).

Anyways, Nationals was last weekend in Gatineau, Quebec. The morning of the race it was pouring like you wouldn't believe! The type of downpour that makes cars pull over because their windshield wipers don't go fast enough. We're talking instantly drenched! I had trouble eating breakfast again, which is a re-occuring issue. I have an awesome plan for next race that will need to be tried out. It involves excessive antacid taking as soon as I get to race place, and pro-smoothie making! I'll also try to shove some real breakfast down my throat, but I haven't been able to count on normal breakfast the last couple of races.

Warming up went well, the bike wu wasn't as good as usual because it was raining so hard, but the run and swim were better than usual I think. My running felt pretty heavy in warm up, but I tried not to think about it too much. One again my great teammates tried to save me a spot on the beach as I was ranked 10th, but this time they wanted us to stay in order. I had an awesome start despite the not super optimal start-spot, and before I knew it I was swimming right alongside Alison! The rest of my swim felt really good and I finally exited the water right with the front pack girls! (Although we were 20 sec back from Hilary).

The bike didn't feel as good as my swim. For some reason my legs just didn't have the energy I am used to. We went around a corner and Stevie and Christine made their much anticipated break, and although Alison, Marianne and I stepped it up, I don't think we realized how important it was to stay with them. As it was we never caught up to them again, and we ended up being swallowed by a much larger chase pack. This was a semi good thing because my two other domestiques, Gaby and Kyla were in that pack! I know now what a mistake it was to not put the hammer down and catch the two powerhouse riders though.

T2 was kind of crazy as I wasn't in the front like I should have been. I got out of transition around 4th in the pack though, and I quickly ran up to the leaders. I led our little pack until about 1.25 k, which was when Gabrielle Edwards caught us and the pace picked up a notch. It was about at this point that I wished I had fricken taken my gel on the fricken bike! When will I learn! Anyways, for the rest of the run I gave it everything I had, but it wasn't the best. Last year I ran 17:50 on that course, and this year I ran 18:24, so I am disappointed :(.
I have two excuses for this- one is that I am dumb and seeing as I can't eat breakfast before races I really really need to take a gel on the bike. Excuse two is that after I sprained my ankle 2 weeks previous, I hadn't had any good runs leading up to the race, so that could have been why my run wasn't completely up to par. Anyways, excuses aside I gave it everything I had on the day. I am decently happy with my race, even though I didn't prove myself the way I had hoped to.

Now I don't know what the rest of my summer will look like! I am almost certain that that was my last Junior Elite race. My season definitely didn't go the way I had planned but I'm learning a lot. As Kyla says, you don't really learn anything from winning anyhow, you learn better when you mess up. So seeing as I have messed up so much I think I should be a genius by now.
Also, I am excited to race U23 in Kelowna! It'll be my first ever Olympic distance race.

I gotta eat dinner. I'm starving. Congrats to Alison on an amazing race and to AMac who came 2nd at the PanAmerican Cup in SanFran and also congrats to Stevo who came 2nd at the international Vancouver half on Sunday and good luck to Austin who is racing this weekend.

superhealth

2009-07-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

So Kyla is sick, Austin was sick, and I feel off. Great! Especially since I'm finally feeling ready to race!
So in order to not get sick here is what I did today:

9:00 am -get up and go swimming. (took some zinc and some elderberry supplements) Extra 2 hours of sleep should be a good thing.
11:30 am- massage! Felt great
12:30 - home. Ate some eggs and a big salad as well as a zinc lozenge. "Lysoled" all surfaces and tried to only touch things with my pinkies. I soon gave up on that one.
1:30 - physio for my ankle
2:30- green tea from starbucks at which point I got a bit of a headache accompanied by spots in my eyes and had to drive pratically blind to my next appointment. That was a negative on my health meter for sure.
3:00- acupuncture with Christine. I told her about my migrane-thing and she kinda fixed it.
4:30- home. made a health smoothie! It contained raspberries, tons of blueberries, a banana, some papaya juice, water, ice, hemp protein and maca. It made me feel better instantly!
4:45- finishing this post and going to take a nap cause I need it. Also am coughing cause I just overdosed on oil of oregano.

So that was my superhealth day. Please please please please make me healthy! I've been good!!!

Sooo Amazing!!

2009-06-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

Des Moines. Amazing. that's all.
Okay not really....

First off Lauren running her way up to third!! Like holy cow!! Me and Austin were taking bets- "Can she do it?? She's got it I told you so!!" LAUREN IS ON THE PODIUM AT DES MOINES!!
$25 000 cha-ching! ( I think that's how much she got...)

Next watching AMac swim!! He came out the water in front on the first lap and we were like, " Aagg he should have drafted on the first lap and saved himself for the next one", and then watching the mass of limbs and heads popping out of the water we were fairly sure Andrew was the guy in second going the Wrong direction!! But nope ANDREW MCCARTNEY IS OUT FIRST!!
$5000 in the bank cha-ching!!

Then watching the guys on the bike- we had Simon, Kyle, Brent all in the front-ish pack with a ton of all the other best athletes in the world and who knew what was going to happen. Onto the run and somewhere in those 4 laps a pack of 6 guys Whitfield, Kahlefeldt, Frodeno, Gemmell, Shoemaker and Gomez forms, with all of them refusing to make the break, and McMahon right on their heels! And then coming into the finish I was like, Yup SImon is going to win- I know it! AND SIMON WON!! He can thank me later- as it was obviously my faith that got him his:

$200 000 Cha-ching! and a car...

oh man!! I'm Sooo pumped. I'm also overloaded on Jubejubes. Apparently watching the most exciting races ever with a bag of Jubejubes on hand is a baaad idea. Oh well, they are gone now.

Can't wait for the relays tomorrow!!

The Montreal Adventure

2009-06-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

So last weekend we raced in Montreal- Coteau du lac to be exact, and it went pretty well. We stayed in this little inn in a small town called Rigaud, where we took up most of the rooms. Unfortunately there wasn't many options for eating dinner, and a couple of us ended up eating at this fairly greasy restaurant two nights in a row. The first night didn't bother me too much, but the night before the race it really did, and I was suffering a bit race morning.
Because of that, I couldn't eat as much as I should have seeing as our race was at 12:30, and that might be why by the end of the race I was bonking so hard. Anyways, here is my race report:
I started off in a good spot on the pontoon thanks to my loyal teammates who saved me a spot!! Thanks guys! It really helped because I was swimming in the front pack for a good while. At one point Kyla and I were on some feet and we realized she wasn't holding on to Alison, Christine and Hilary, so we had to swim around her. Coming around the buoys a pretty good sized gapped had formed, and although I was swimming my hardest I couldn't catch back up again, although Kyla did. If I can get my swim to the same level as Kyla's by the time Gatineau roles around I'm positive my race will be excellent.
Despite swimming by myself for the rest of the lap, I came out about 30 seconds from the lead (Hilary) and about 20 seconds from making lead pack.

Onto the bike I was solo for a bit before the Edwards Sisters caught me. I think we were working pretty good together, but at the turn around point of the second lap we were caught by this Maassive chase pack. The pace was way faster, but also easier seeing as there were more girls to draft off of.

Onto the run I immediately felt really weak and wobbly. That was probably because I worked harder than usual on the bike, but as the run progressed I began to feel weaker and weaker, and I was wishing that they would give me a gatorade instead of water at the aid stations. I think I should have taken my gel with me onto the run- something to think about next time if I have trouble eating in the morning. ANyways, I still managed to run up to front pack, and so I came in fifth which is in the race, unlike Winnipeg. Moving up one step at a time! Joanna Brown who was also in my pack ran herself up to second! So congrats goes to her for sure. She was also killing it on the bike.

We watched the elite men and women race, and it was pretty fun to watch. I think the biggest congrats go to AP, Paula, Kerry, and Frank.... and JP... okay and probably a ton others. There was definitely some really awesome races. Austin and Amac didn't have their usual pep- so they'll get that back for San Fran!

We had a whole extra day in Montreal to explore (while the Des moines team trained) and so we spent the day walking around old Montreal and some of New Montreal before meeting everyone for dinner at a Mexican restaurant! It was super fun. We- the non-Des moines guys, had moved to a hotel right beside the airport so that we could spend more time downtown. We had a grand adventure trying to get back to it after dinner. The "adventure" included two trains, a bus, an extended walk in no particular direction, and then finally a taxi.

Anyways, that's my race report-ish. I've got one shot to prove myself at Gatineau now, and I think it's finally all coming together. Got my fingers crossed!

The Superalex fail

2009-06-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

So here is the story of my worst race ever. I feel like I've had my fair share of bad races, but this one is the worst. I think i may pull a Sco-dag and "retire".
(at least till tomorrow.)
This morning I woke up and felt pretty good. My stomach was bothering me as usual ( I need to get that fixed!!) but otherwise my cold that's been hanging on ruthlessly since Monday was pretty much gone. I took some tums and a tylenol cold and was feeling pretty good.

I was ranked 4th ( I'm trying not to imagine what my ranking is now), so I got a pretty sweet start spot in the water. Unfortunately there was more girls than space though, and even with my sweet start spot, I got crushed when the gun went off. We were all dolphin diving like mad, and I think we were all just pushing off people, not the lake's bottom. My first 200 went exactly as planned ( minus the goggles getting filled up with water) and I sat right up in the front pack. I couldn't breathe from the cold (The water temp was 13.2 degrees), but I didn't let myself panic because I knew everyone was in the same boat (or... water). After the first buoy I still sat in the front, although now I was just hanging on to the tail end of the front pack. As we swam back to the beach my arms and legs felt like they were made of lead, and the gap between me and the girls I needed to be with grew and grew. I probably started to panic, which made breathing even harder and swimming even slower, and when I finally came out of the water I was nowhere near where I had wanted to be.
The run up to T1 was torture, frozen legs, no breathing, panic, arms unable to undo my velcro behind my neck, and when I finally got to T1 I couldn't get my ice block legs and feet out of the wetsuit.
Eventually, after one of my most dramatic transitions ( Not counting the time that I hit Kyla in the head with my bike...) i jumped on my bike and tried to put my feet right in my shoes only to have the left one FALL OFF!!! Gaaahh. So I circled around, hopped off my bike, put my shoe on my foot, re-hi-hoed, and started again. Finally off on the bike.

Along with Worst Race Ever, I think I can honestly say Worst Bike Ever as well. I started off on my own and then caught a couple younger girls and we were riding together for a bit. My legs were really cold and weak. After about 2 km I turned to spit and shocked myself by puking! (Sorry girl behind me) I puked once more after that and then my left leg cramped up really bad, probably from the cold. For some reason I told the girls that we needed to start taking shorter pulls and working together, and so they did, And I got dropped. I think that was the biggest failure of my race. I could have held on easily but my leg was hurting so much that I just wanted to feel sorry for myself and drop out and I think I just let them go (although it didn't feel like that at the time). I ended up biking at least 6 km by myself, until Abbie Miller from sask and I believe Mackenzie (sorry for the bad spelling) from Alberta caught me and they were really supportive and I stayed on their wheels for awhile. My leg was really hurting and at one point I let a big gap form between me and them, and then I sobbed for a bit and contemplated pulling over and sitting on the side of the road, and then I HTFU-ed and stood up a caught them again. (surprisingly quickly actually).
After that point the race got better. My left leg relaxed and stopped hurting with about 4 k to go, I got a bit of energy back, I had a really good T2 and then when I started running I felt really fast! My legs felt smooth and I didn't really think the whole time, I just ran as fast as I could. The whole race was over pretty quick, (as sprint races are) and our whole team did really awesome, so I'm trying not to be a downer.

Things I learned/ Can take from it:
-tighten cleats
- Don't get dropped on the bike because biking by yourself is worse
- Even when you don't think you'll be able to finish, sometimes it gets better

Postitives: Good first 400m of swim, Good hi-ho silver x2 and good T2 plus run.

The End

Oklahoma Patco Championships 2009

2009-05-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

Patco 2009 is over, and although I had hoped the end of Patco would reduce the pressure for the rest of the season, the opposite happened. I went into the race with a goal: to win. I decided that although I've been on the podium a couple times, I've never won an important race, so this was my opportunity. Also, winning Patco would secure a spot on the World's team! Unfortunately the race didn't go the way I had hoped. On the second lap of the bike my wheel got stuck in one of the many cracks/or seams in the road, and I hit the pavement. It wasn't just the crash though that ruined my chances, it was the fact that my wheel got pushed right into my left brake pad, and when I went to sprint and join in the tail end of the pack, my wheel barely moved. I ended up having to stop and fix my wheel 3 times during the next lap. I came onto the run and knew that my race was over, so I just decided to give it all I had and finish the race the best I could. I was sooo happy when I was running out on the first lap to see Kyla in front coming the other way. She was followed very closely by the Mexican Enriquez and a bit back from her was Marianne. I also was super pumped to see Gaby running right along with them. The worst feeling is to be having a crappy race and to see that your team mates are also having a crappy race. To see everyone doing so well really lifted my spirits. On my second lap, about at the turn around point I could hear the race announcer going crazy because the first place finisher was coming in. I heard Kyla and then Enriquez and in my head it was a sprint finish between them. (Although in actuality Kyla had made a pretty good gap on her). I slowed up so much and then when they announced that Kyla was the 2009 Patco Champion, I was as happy as can be! Although we had talked about winning, and we knew it was possible, having it actually happen to one of us was an amazing feeling (getting twin-ed out yet?)
At this point I realized that I still had 1.25 km to go, so I picked it up again and finished my race. I ended up coming in 28th out of 41 girls. I also had the very fastest T1 split! ha ha beat that Kyla!

Although I'm sad that my race didn't get to be as magical as Kyla's was, I am still pretty happy with how strong I felt considering just 2 weeks before I had been sick in bed. I know I can train harder now, get faster, and prove myself in the next races to come. I'm excited for more racing and am thoroughly enjoying being a triathlete at the moment. I hope that my next races can be a good as this one was (if you minus the crash).

Watching the jr Boys, and then the elites race was also very inspiring. Congrats to everyone and good luck to our boys who are racing in Austin, Texas this weekend.

Ps. The pics at the top are half stolen from various locations, and half from my own camera.

Champion of the World

2009-05-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma is coming up real fast- as in Not this Weekend But Next- fast. I've decided that I am super stoked. Some of my best races, actually ALL of my best races, have been when I've gone into them pretty relaxed. (I'm never actually relaxed going into a race, but relaxed in a sense where I am not putting too much pressure on myself.) As long as I race as fast as I can race, and I write down before hand what my goals are, and the 5 things I need to do to have a good race, then I can just let it go. If you hit the steps, you get the results. For me the biggest step is always have a good swim, and then have a good T1 and get in that pack. From then on I know I can have a good race.

Another thing I have learned is that trying too hard doesn't guarantee results. The first time I learned this was when I was 11 or so and I was trying to get an A time in 100 back. My best time was only a second or less off, and so I was determined to get it. Every meet and time trial my coach made me do it, and every race I wanted it so bad that I would give it 110, no a billion, percent. Imagine lactic to the point of not moving, that is how hard I tried. And I never got it.

One day for some reason I decided to go easy, and all of a sudden I got it! It didn't even hurt that much. I learned then that as paradoxical as it sounds, trying your hardest isn't always the best way to go.

That is why when I swim in Oklahoma, I am going to swim smooth and strong and fast but not hard. I'm going to be relaxed and I'm going to have fun. If you aren't enjoying the moment, the adrenalin rush, the excitement, then you aren't having a good race that is for sure. When the excitement starts to slide and the pain predominates, I always ask myself: " Do I want this?" and I always answer "yes". Why else do I train so much? And when it comes to a push, I always ask myself, " How badly do you want this?" And then I push stronger.

Or as Neil says, " YES, you can. " ( Well I guess Bob the Builder says that as well, but Neil says it differently.) You can get through the pain, you can come out of the water with the pack, you can catch those bikers ahead, you can out-sprint that racer, and you can finish this race. You can. Do you want it?

As sick as I've been, and as crappy as I feel in some of the workouts, I'm not too worried. Worried never helped anyone anyhow. I think that having a good attitude is the key to success. Look at Kirsten Sweetland! ( Hi Kirsten haha) She always has a good attitude, and is always successful!

Coincidence? I think Not! ( I believe that was a quote from The Incredibles right there)

So there you have it. My motivational speech to myself perhaps, but also some mental goals for the season.

I am now going to eat a big salad because I've been reading "Eat to Live" and it makes you want to become a vegetarian. I haven't finished it yet though, so I'm saving my overall judgement for the end. Later dudes

Getting Happy

2009-04-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

After getting back from Tuscon I felt fast, I felt fit and I felt happy. It lasted about three days before the full homework attack hit me. Although it was made worse by the fact that I had just missed a week and a half of school, I think that the week would have been hell regardless. It was the two midterms, one paper, one final paper (40 pages!) and one final exam that really killed me. Needless to say my training volume dropped, and my hours awake sky rocketed! I think I got to bed before eleven one night last week (counting last night), and had one 3 am bedtime. When I did get to bed semi on time, I had trouble sleeping. Even though I did a good job of only taking things one at a time, the general anxiety got to me. I couldn't even nap! (still can't, I just tried.)

On top of that my lack of training and up-coming workouts have been stressing me out as well. The only good thing is that even though I have had a mental breakdown before every workout, I seem to be performing fine! I had one of my best swims of the year on friday morning, and Gaby and I really pushed ourselves on an hour long race-pace brick workout on saturday. I'm getting really excited to race.

My plan for the next couple weeks is to get a lot of sleep. Hopefully now that I have 1.5 weeks to study before my next exam, I can relax a bit. I think I'm going to have to re-teach myself to relax. I also need to rest so that I can train hard again, because right now I just feel too burnt out to train. I also need to clean my house.

And get my happy back.

More Tuscon and Back in Vic

2009-03-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Here's my slightly longer re-cap

on our training camp last week.

The camp was great!

Last year in Tuscon I felt as though the training I did was too haphazard to actually feel like progress, and other than having fun in the sun I didn't really get much out of it. (This is likely because I came later than everyone else, and missed the necessary training cycle) This year though was totally opposite.

Right from the start we had solid workout after solid workout. We swam at the U of A pool and while I was there it was short course yards, which is a treat for me. I still think I have a lot more work to do on my swim before I'll feel confident, but this camp did help get me back up to where I was.

Right up to the camp I had been really sick, and I remember the swim workout with Carolyn the day before I left was horrible. We were doing 300's draft pack and I had to stop because I was being dropped and couldn't breathe. Carolyn told me, "It'll all come together in Tuscon." I was a little skeptical, but she was right. As soon as training started in Tuscon I felt a lot better both physically and mentally.

Another reason why I enjoyed the U of A pool in Tuscon was because we started integrating with the senior team, under coach Phillipe. Although I was the slowest swimmer, it was fun to get away from our routine swim workouts, and try out some different ones. I think Phillipe has a gift for making hard workouts not scary. You work hard, but don't freak out about them before hand. I'm also the world's worst puller, so with the amount of pull we did I must be getting better at it!

The bikes were the main part of the camp. We did probably 2.5 to 3.5 hours of biking a day. Mt. Lemmon was awesome as usual, but we only got to do it once while I was there, and no time- trial. I'm happy to have just done it once though - it is pretty tough. I think the funniest ride was our 3 hour "base" ride that we did one morning right after swim practice. I think it was probably base for Simon and Kyle, Austin, A-Russ, and maybe some of the other guys, but it sure wasn't base for me! I thought it was humorous because we all were cursing the big guys at the front, but no one was willing to drop off until we were told to after about 2 hours. My worst ride was the shoot-out ( a 100 k race ride). The first 45 minutes were warm-up, and then it turned into an all out sprint. I was expecting the sprint, but I had no clue it would be that hard to stay in the pack! My theory was if I can draft behind a car or a motorcycle, it should be easy to get to high speeds in a huge pack without getting dropped! Wrong! I was immediately shot off the back when the sprint started! I was already totaled from the "base ride" (see above) of the day before, but I used all my sprinting power to catch onto the tail end of the pack. I was finally back in when the guy I was drafting off of dropped off, and then that was it. I didn't have enough reserves to sprint around him and catch back on again. My shoot-out experience consisted of 45 minutes easy, 2 minutes hard, rest of the 80 k ( because when you are dropped you take the short-cut route) as pace line work with my sister, Aaron and some randoms.

The most epic ride was probably our hill repeats up the steep side of gates pass. We started a ways down from the hill, and so in my opinion the worst part was trying to go fast for around 8 minutes of steady incline and rolling hills before hitting the actual hill. The time trial was really painful, and then we grouped up and did it again two more times! We were really dead by the end.

As for running, I had one good 10x4oo's track workout. It felt nice to be on the track again. I also had a good run in the desert except for 2 things:

#1 I stepped on a cactus and it went through my shoe and into my foot and it really hurt

#2 I didn't see any desert animals

Now I'm back home and wishing I was still in Arizona. I think about how the guys are still training super hard and practically all I am doing is random workouts while studying madly and I get uber jealous! You guys have no idea how lucky you are ;)

At the same time, I'm sure people say that about how lucky I am to have gotten to go for the 12 days that I did.

Happy Birthday MoM.

Tuscon (quick update)

2009-03-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

We just got back from our second training camp in Tuscon. It was excellent, and I am really jealous of all the guys who are still there! I think I made a great shift in my training, and I am now feeling almost race ready! I'll put up some pictures and do a better post later, when I don't have so much homework! Basically, I feel so much better on the bike, quite a bit better on the run, and am almost there on the swim- so all positive!

wish I was back...

Alex and A-game head for the hills

2009-02-20T16:38:00.000-08:00

I thought I better but up some pictures of our adventure! Last weekend Austin and I went to Mt. Washington. It was a great weekend.

As you can see it was absolutely gorgeous weather!
Austin gave me some lessons- even though I didn't want to be taught, I think I improved a lot!
Our only attempt at a picture with both of us.
Just chillen
This was the first place we stayed. We got a massive kitchen and living room and bedroom. We were really spoilt.

Australia

2009-01-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

Whew! Alrighty, I know I haven't blogged in a long time! I knew the time would come when school + training + life would take over, and my blog would suffer. I really shouldn't even be blogging right now! It is 11:30 pm, and I have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow for training. The problem is that it is only 6:30 in the evening back in Australia, so I'm not really tired.

I was looking over some pictures of this year, and I have gotten to go to some awesome places this year with sport. I'm disappointed that I never did a blog entry on Cross Country Nationals in Quebec because it's the missing piece of my travels.

Maybe I'll randomly add some Quebec pics for the fun of it later.

As for now, here is Australia in Brief! It was an amazing amazing experience. The racing was fast and of a very high quality, the environment/country was so neat, and meeting more triathletes from around the world was also really cool. I am really happy with my race as we are not in racing season and I was pretty stressed out before hand. I had a solid swim, and even though I didn't make the first pack on the bike I think I did the best I could in getting into the second pack where most of the fast swimmers ended up. The bike was interesting... Kyla and I were torn to shreds by the Aussies as we were slow in picking up their drafting technique. I think I heard "COATES, MOVE LEFT!" yelled out at me at least 10 times in the pack. I was frustrated by the biking because if we had formed a double pace line ( which is what I was doing until everyone started yelling at me...) then we would have had two girls pulling instead of one, and our pack would have gone a lot faster. I eventually gave in and the rest of the bike was pretty easy as our pack was big enough that no one would get dropped. ( I even ate half a gel!) The run was goodish. It didn't feel fast, but it ended up being fast enough. Kyla was slow in transition, but after about 2 km she caught up to me, and we ended up running to the finish together. We came in 8th and 9th- which is decent I think.

The relays were fun, but definitely need a little work. It was a lot harder than I was expecting as I did the 10km bike by myself so the 3k run hurt! Despite lots of biking this winter, I still suck at tt-ing on the bike. Our boys got a bronze medal, which was really exciting. They worked extremely hard for it.

All in all I am so grateful to have had this experience and hope for more in the future.

Back Track- Stanford

2008-10-14T21:20:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd better put a couple more pictures up from Stanford, as the last ones were just of San Francisco. These are of the race, Stanford University and the dinner after. Hope you like 'em. Ps. i stole these from team mates....

Olympia

2008-10-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

The boys racing- U of A vs. Vikes

The top ten girls getting certificates

Top women's team!

The course in the morning when it was still very cold.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So yesterday we celebrated thanksgiving with Austin and Peter and Deirdre and Adam and Neil and James. Neil was the master cook, and so thank you for the wonderful food Neil!

I really wish I could have gone to Jasper with my family, but we had a good weekend nonetheless.

On friday afternoon we headed over to Olympia via the Coho ferry, and got there just in time for supper. We stayed at a really fancy hotel, and I really appreciated it f

or the one night we stayed. We woke up the next morning at seven, and I was surprised at how cold it was! I wasn't expecting it coming from Victoria. There was frost all over the ground, and the snow covered mountains made it seem that much colder.

I did my race warm up in all of my clothes pretty much, and by the time the race was about to start I was finally warm. The air had gradually warmed up as well, and at 10:00 when the gun went off we were all in singlets and shorts.

I raced the first lap really conservatively, because I didn't want to go out too far as I did in Stanford. After that I just tried to stay loose and positive. I think it worked because I ended up finishing very well. Here are some pics!

The ladies pre ferry trip

Pictures from San Francisco and my day

2008-10-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

So the terrible week is almost over! Two more assignments due on Monday, and then I think I get a bit of a break! Wohoo! Training this week was pretty tough, and the run today was epic! Kyla, Kerry and I did our run after our swim, but Brent came out and gave us the workout which was really nice. The main set was 3x 2 km. Each 2k was composed of 1 km of fartlek ( 2oo @1500 pace, 100 ez, 300@pace, 100 ez, 200 pace, 100 ez), and then the next km was a loop at 5km pace. What made it so epic was that we were running around Mt Doug field, in our spikes with torrential rain and blasting wind, all by ourselves. It was a good workout for me- I descended my km's from 3:50 to 3:40. In blasting wind might I repeat- haha. Anywho- today is a great day!

Ummm... oh ya- yesterdays pot luck with the Vikes girls was super fun. We ate very fancy food, and then pretty much sat around and sang songs like a cute little family :). We we can call it a jam sesh. And I better tell all other cross teams out there- if we don't win CIS, at least we could take you guys on in a talent show! Our team has a lot of talent! Laura is pretty much the coolest singer I have heard in a long time and I can't wait to buy her CD. She just has so much vibe that you want her to sing forever. Shauna is just as amazing, but with a completely different style- classical-er. I've heard Marilyn is amazing, and I'm pretty

sure she is in the victoria opera or something of the kind- Somebody feel free to correct me here. So she is- like- pro! And then Adrienne is really good too, and all of them can play guitar and piano and or flutes and stuff- and then with the rest of us girls as back up dancers- man we couldn't be beat!!

Anyways, dinner was really cool. I have a bunch of pictures from San Fran which were taken by Laura, and I stole them of Facebook without permission

. I am giving her credit though- these pictures were all taken by Laura Mitic.

Present

2008-10-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

So I haven't written in a long time, but not because not much has happened. Mostly because life gets a little crazy sometimes- and then even if your random thoughts come fast and furious, you just gotta suppress them. SUppress! Technically I should go to bed right now, but I'm the queen of doing things when I should be going to bed, and I wouldn't want to lose my sovereignty!

Last weekend we had our first cross race of the season just outside of San Francisco! It was pretty awesome. We flew out friday morning, raced saturday, drove into San Fran and saw the bridge saturday afternoon, ate dinner at an everything garlic restaurant at night, and then flew home in the morning! It was pretty wicked. The race itself was decent, and extremely painful. I'll try to take it out slower next time, so I don't die with half of the race still to go. Next weekend is a race in OLympia. I'm kinda scared, not going to lie. I also wish I got to go home for thanksgiving, because I miss Jasper thanksgivings sooo much :( Oh well.

This week was crazy with midterms and stuff- but I think it should get better for a bit now. And awesome friends have made this last week extra special.

Okay, that is my update. Night

Neighborhood

2008-09-21T15:39:00.000-07:00

Self realization. Who am I? Really? Turns out it's not good to dwell on these questions too much. You get all tangled up in the fences: I'm logical, therefore I can't be impulsive, so I must be practical, but that doesn't generally fit... you get the picture. Putting everyone in different yards is fun, but never realistic as no on fits one particular description. And by trying to define yourself, you often end up getting trapped in the words.

I thought for a long time today on my run about how I could be grouped. I realized that in general, people are what you make of them. I don't think anyone is interpreted by others perfectly, or even are capable of interpreting themselves perfectly as they are constantly changing. So who am I really? I like just Alex. Just Alex is who I am as a whole, constantly changing, shimmying from one yard to the other, maybe over a couple rooftops. Fun and boring, smart and silly, and sometimes not so smart, mature and immature, strong and weak. Just Alex.

or maybe just SuperAlex :)

Today

2008-09-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

Today I swam better- although practice was considerably easier. And then we played water polo, which I enjoyed. I can't seem to feel right. Is it possible to overdose on healthy stuff? I think my Oil of oregano, Vitamin C and Virus E-blockers are not combining properly. Either way I'm going up and then down on the health meter. One second I'm perfectly fine, and then the next I feel like I can't stay awake.

But guess what? I've been living in a one person apartment with two other sick kids- and I haven't gotten sick yet!!!!! This is big news! BIG NEWS! I've lasted probably more than 7 days, and I'm still fighting. I mean- this is Alex Coates we are talking about- the kid with the worse immune system on the planet! But I can do it- I can do it!

Go immune system I believe in you!!!

Okay, off to do get stuff accomplished, you know, or else take a ten minute nap...

What a world we live in.

2008-09-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

So back at it. Back to the homework stress, the school stress, the training stress, the racing stress, the making sure I am healthy stress (which is such a counter-productive stress I know!), the being the best I can be stress! Whew! Ya I'm a little stressed. No harm done.

These last couple weeks have been pretty sweet. Running with the Vikes and then doing all other workouts on my own sure allows for more free time! And it has been bee-utiful here in Victoria land.

But workouts started, I panicked, and now I'm here. After a very near death experience where I sent in my assignment, which was due at Midnight, and it ended up going through at 11:59, and probably 52 seconds if I were to guess correctly! WHEW close one.

And then after a near mental breakdown while getting lost in translation in a physics lab. It's not the physics. It's the lab instructor who doesn't speak english, and doesn't seem to speak lab manual either! AAH! Why can't I just follow the book? I don't UNDERSTAND YOU!!!

Anywho, that's over. And sleep will follow. And good things after that. Maybe Peter will move out and I can have some space ;) No problem with Peter- just the space.

Haha. I also hope everyone learns to be at peace a little better. Maybe it's just me, but I think some Being Peace Lessons are in order to the general society. As I said though, maybe it's just me. Breathing and smilin' :)

I'm attaching a pic of me smiling.