So I finally have something blog worthy. Today I was biking home from work as I do, minding my own business and enjoying the beautiful weather. I come to W 1st St in North Vancouver - a nice flat stretch of road with limited traffic and a chance to hold a decent uninterrupted pace. I usually hold around 37km/h here but today I was feeling particularly good and thought I would see if I could hold 40km/h. I gear down and hold on to my dropped bars and with a nice tail wind I easily bring it to 40, 42, 44, 45, 46... I hit a little bump and SNAP! Brief panic, wobble, wobble, wobble, coast to a slower speed and take a look at what happened:

I actually snapped the bar right off!

I don't know how I didn't bite it, I guess I'm a lucky guy. The brakes and shifters still worked so I shifted down to an easy gear and coasted the rest of the way home.

Considering my speed and the hardness of concrete I would say that was one of the scariest moments I've had on the bike. I'm happy to still have all my limbs in good working condition but am not looking forward to the repair bill.

I think I may have suckered a few of you in by my title thinking that perhaps my new TT bike would be making its blogging debut. I'm afraid I have mislead you, details on that will be soon to follow. The new ride I am referring to here happens to be my 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan just purchased shown below.

Yes, I have entered the minivan realm. The practicality wins over the need to hang on to the last bit of coolness that I like to think I possessed. All that has been thrown to the wind and replaced with full stow n' go seats. Lots of room for cargo and road trips are going to be much more comfortable now.

In other news, I'm getting close to getting my new bike. It should be built up this week and shipped out so news for that to come soon.

So yes, I haven't updated my blog since the marathon in October, and honestly my training has been much like my blog writing since then - nonexistent, but I'm hoping to still have a good year.

My race season last year was a little disappointing but there were some highlights:

I was able to swim faster and further than I ever had before including a swim from Alcatraz to shore, a 4200m swim at Kits beach, and a 33:33 half iron swim time at Sooke.

My cycling which had been my weakest triathlon event in 2009 became my strongest in 2010. I was able to push harder and faster. Some of the top moments were riding my first imperial century, climbing Cypress in 44:30, and going from 141st place at the start of the bike to 65th at the end during the 38km leg of the Banff triathlon.

My running took a big toll last year mainly due to a major neglect in training but with a desire to change that late in the season I was able to pull out my best Olympic distance triathlon run leg of 43:14 and I spontaneously signed up for the Victoria Marathon with 3 weeks to go and pulled out a new personal record with a time of 3:37. While training for the Marathon I felt a passion for the sport that I hadn't felt all year and I gained a renewed love of running.

My training totals are as follows:

Swimming - 75km, 28.2hr
Cycling - 4009km, 155hr
Running - 528km, 48hr

Sadly, the last time I swam last year was Sept 11, and the last time I ran was Oct 16. On the bright side, I started my new swimming plan today and got a few hundred meters in (man, did my arms ever get tired fast!).

So what is 2011 going to bring me?

Although I am planning on doing Ironman in 2012, I will be cutting back my training and focusing on shorter distance triathlons. I love the long distance, but this year I want to spend more time with my family. Janelle has been a great support to me, watching the kids all the time while I'm out getting in the miles, and I think it's time that I support her a little more. Besides, with Ironman next year, I'm going to need to be training a lot so I should be home more this year to try to make up for that.

So in planning my race season I think the Nelson Cyswog 'n fun is on the list, not sure what other tri's I will do. I will also be doing the Victoria Marathon again with hopes to qualify for Boston.

I still plan on training, just at times that are more convenient for others like swimming after the kids have gone to bed, running home from work which takes about the same time as busing, and going for pre-work bike rides come summer time. I'm not a student anymore. I don't have hours free in every day. Training now is much harder to do than before, but I believe that if I set my priorities and goals, make plans and work at it, I'll be able to accomplish the things I want to achieve this year.

The Victoria Marathon has come and gone and I am happy to report that I was able to complete it in a new personal record time of 3:36:31.

Going into this event I had a lot of doubt and uncertainty. Haunted by memories of my first marathon 5 years prior, I figured I was in for a lot of pain and a slower than desired time. I decided about a week ago after talking to fellow UBCTCer Melanie van Soeren to run with her for as long as I could and then finish what was left on my own after she dropped me. She told me her goal time was 3:40 - Boston Marathon qualifying time for females her age putting us at a 5:15/km running pace. Following this pace, the best I could finish would be 3:40 but more than likely, I figured I would come in closer to 4 hours. I had this window in mind and was psyched for race day.

Race day came and I finally found Mel in the pack of runners waiting to start with 1 minute to spare. We chatted for a minute and then came to find out 20 seconds before the race started that her new goal was 3:30 running a 5min/km pace. This was 15 sec/km faster than I had planned for and was faced with the need to make a split second decision to risk burning out and running the faster pace, or sticking with my 5:15 plan and running alone. Well, of course I had to gamble and stick with Mel. It was the right choice.

Before I continue, I need to mention how incredible this race course is. It was so nice to be back in Victoria, running through scenic Beacon Hill Park, and along the water on Dallas Rd and Beach Dr. Mostly flat, with slight undulating hills. The spectators are so supportive and the volunteers were great. It's a well run event and I recommend it to anyone thinking about making the trip here to do it.

Continuing on: We started running and impressively stuck to our pace quite well. We both were feeling great and frequently made comments to each other about how awesome the race was going. I held onto Mel for about 32 km when I knew I couldn't hold the pace anymore, and she seemed to be speeding up. I wished her good luck and cut it back. At this point I was well ahead of my 3:40 best case scenario goal and was quite happy to have that as my new worst case goal - did that make sense?

My pace became slower and slower as my untrained legs began to hate me for putting them through this, but I need to say, the pain was nothing like my previous marathon. I guess although I didn't log a lot of long distance runs this year, my experience that I've gained over the years, as well as all the Half Ironman triathlons I did must have helped. In fact, I never walked (besides through the water stations to drink); well, I sort of did once but found it to be more painful than running so I figured why walk when I can run and get it over with sooner?

I ended up finishing better than 3:40 as mentioned above by 3 and a half minutes. Considering how I signed up for this thing last minute and only directly trained for it for three weeks I am ecstatic about the result!

I need to do a big shout out to Mel and say thank-you for your excellent pacing, without her help I know I would have been a lot slower.  She did great by the way, coming in at 3:30.

I'm waiting for the professional photographers to post race day photos on their website that I can swipe but until then, I've got one photo stolen from Scott's facebook that he took of me at 41.2km.  Thanks Scott and Celeste for cheering me home!

41.2 km in and still this good looking!

Thanks to my Garmin I've got my splits as follows:

1 - 5:14

2 - 4:48

3 - 4:54

4 - 4:49

5 - 4:57

6 - 5:03

7 - 4:51

8 - 4:47

9 - 5:00

10 - 4:54 - 50:01 10km Split

11 - 4:54

12 - 4:51

13 - 5:03

14 - 4:52

15 - 4:44

16 - 4:45

17 - 4:55

18 - 5:02

19 - 4:51

20 - 4:51

21 - 5:01 - 1:45:09 Half Way Split

22 - 4:45

23 - 4:53

24 - 4:55

25 - 4:51

26 - 4:51

27 - 4:53

28 - 4:52

29 - 4:51

30 - 4:47 - 2:29:04 30km Split

31 - 5:07

32 - 4:58

33 - 5:17

34 - 5:07

35 - 5:29

36 - 5:34

37 - 5:28

38 - 5:56

39 - 6:02

40 - 5:40

41 - 6:03

42 - 5:26 - 3:36:31 Finish

I think it's pretty obvious where I really started to hurt. I hadn't trained my body beyond 30km in 5 years and it shows but it doesn't matter, I'm happy. I actually dropped a minute from 20 to 30 km so I think that's cool.

I want to put a big congrats out to Winston Guo for reaching his goal of qualifying for Boston with a time of 3:07:53 and to Vincent Lavallee for running a blistering 2:58:14 and becoming a true runner. Good job guys, you inspire me. And with that said, my goal for next year - qualify for Boston (3:10)!

Days until the marathon: 8

Lately I've been debating for race day whether to run fast up front and put some time in the bank but resulting in a really slow pace at the end, or starting slow and trying to hold that pace the whole way through, theoretically finishing at the same time. The second option seems like the better one but it's also so risky. I haven't ran longer than 30km in 5 years so I have no idea how my body will respond when I hit that point. Will I even be able to hold the slower pace? I might be a snail at the end either way.

To test out my options, today I ran 22km at a slower than normal pace with the hopes that I could judge how I felt at the end to see if I could hold this pace for much longer. At the end I was starting to hurt but could still pick up the pace to sub 5:00 min/km if I wanted to which was a good sign but I still don't know how I'll feel after 30km. I guess I'll just have to wait until the marathon to find out. I think I'm going to try the slower steady pace.

Since I'm not competitively running this marathon I had an idea that might be fun. I'm thinking about taking my camera with me on the run. I'll take pictures of my friends at the start. I'm thinking about taking a picture of my face every 5km just to see the progression of pain. Also, instead of spectators taking pictures of me, I'll take pictures of them. It's like a club where the outside is the inside, and the inside is the outside. Doesn't that blow your mind?

Days until the marathon: 13

About 20% of my year's total running mileage has occurred within the last month. Continuing my current training plan all the way until the marathon, that number will change to 30%. Surprisingly, it actually feels kind of good to be pounding the pavement a lot more again. Prior to triathlons, I started as a runner, and my running was my strength last year. This year I spent most of my time focusing on biking which paid off well but my running suffered as I hardly did it at all.

Today I decided to join up with the UBCTC for their Monday evening run through the UBC Endowment Land Trails and ended up running 10.5km at an easy 5min/km pace.  What was great about it was two things:

1. There were tons of people there, maybe the largest showing I had ever seen at a club running event, more than last year anyway. Actually, I didn't recognize more than half of them. It's nice to see so many people expressing interest in triathlon and in my opinion, finding a great group of people to train with.

2. How easy it was; we had done 8.5km and were almost done the run, I had to peel off to make it a little longer because I didn't want to stop. Sure we weren't going fast or anything, but I started to feel like this kid, or at least how I would feel if I were wearing such a sweet costume, hmmmm, Halloween is coming up...

It's great to see the progression and really fall in love with running again. I was starting to think of myself as a cyclist but now I see there is no way that I could give up running.

Sure, my training has started too late to make this marathon turn out amazingly, but I hope, that when the marathon is over, I can keep this motivation up and keep on running. It's exhilarating.

Days until the marathon: 14

Yesterday I set out on my longest run of the year.  Having ran 25km the week before I wanted to up it to at least 30km with the possibility of 34km. With rain the days previous I had been psyching myself for a cold and wet morning but as it turned out, it was quite lovely. It was a nice cool overcast morning, then the sun came out, and then there was a light breeze. With the day being as nice as it was I really had no excuses I could pull out.

I guess there's no need to drag this out into a long story.  Simply put, I ended up running 30.5km. It was slow and painful and tiring and it made me start to regret signing up for the marathon. Thinking about having to run another 12km at that point did not appeal to me. Trying to get into marathon shape in 3 weeks apparently wasn't the brightest idea. Oh well, too late now.  I'm not dropping out and I will finish, I just might be walking like a cowboy for a week or two after.  I guess I should be working on my Howdy's and Yee-Haw's.

My self designed training plan says it's now time to taper. No more long runs.  I plan on doing about 10km on Monday, 12km on Wednesday, and 22km on Saturday.