These Race Faces will make you smile!

UBC Tri Olympic Distance

Sometimes I wonder why I keep doing these races year after year after year. This year it seemed to be almost public knowledge (within the UBCTC at least) that Victoria's goal was to beat me at the UBC Tri. She had beat me two years ago already in this race and was ready to lay another digital spanking to yours truelys and anyone else that gets in her way for that matter. Her training proved to be too strong this time, but hey that's just racing sometimes. :)

According to Coach Tia, my swim was a solid 28:06! I almost got disqualified when the official tapped me on the shoulder after doing the first 800m and said that I had to swim ALL the way to the end of the lane before swimming under the lane ropes (not 49ish meters when switching lanes). I had a few people on my tail and this made for a messy adjustment. Luckily I managed to avoid any head-on smashings.

The bike went okay, and the run felt slow. I might have had the case of bricky legs. And yes I have to thank my friends for finding these epic race photos online (Credit to Derrick Lee for the bike photo below).

The standard grimace race face

 

The grimace race face in slo00ow motio00on

 

 

And finally the flying squirrel grimace race face.

 

 

Old legs can still run!

Fort Langley Half Marathon

Result 17^th Overall (but don't be mislead I was 9^th in AG) Chip: 1:30:25

Me, Liam, and Hugo looking like champs!

Woohoo this was first half marathon completed in over a year and also first race of this year. The rust has officially been brushed off. My last one was all the way back in October 2011 (hence old legs). A lot of my pb times now come with an asterisk since it's nearing almost two years since I achieved them. The time this time was nothing spectacular - I was about 2 minutes slower from my pb* and about one minute off from my time in 2011, but this course did have some killer elevation gains at 6 to 7km on 240^th Street and then killer elevation drop coming down on Armstrong Road. 

Checkout the Elevation profile

Since the race location was in the opposite direction of where my friends were, it made sense that I crashed at Liam’s place the night before. We woke up early morning and picked up Hugo. This was my first roadie trip to Fort Langley and the national historic site. Okie, I gotta admit, it was kind of cool to have a race start/finish inside a fort.

We felt pretty badass for not paying admission to the site...IM Switzerland also started inside a private beach

 
Local community races are always fun, and I haven’t done one in a long time. Contrary to my belief of course, it was odd that this race website’s key take-home message read as “This is the most important aspect that will affect you during the race:

[and in bold red…ouch to my eyes!]

Requirement that event participants deviating from marked course and event areas be disqualified from the event.”

Of course this made sense since there were so many short cuts if you did deviate. Trust me, the many placed cones made it nearly idiot-proof to not miss a turn. ;)

A lollipop course with a CCW loop.

Our chips were simply swipe cards minus some holes for us to tie them to our shoes

My race started strong but I died near the end. The first 15km, I was on a decent pace. The wheels came off after the 15km while running along the River Road parallel to the rail tracks. I'm trying to figure out a weak excuse - guess that particular part was too flat and mundane. If you stroll back to the top of the elevation profile - note the end hill was not pretty. 

I was yo-yoing throughout the race with some runners but what hurted most was when I got passed in the final kilometre by two older men, aged 50 and 60 years-old. I was really impressed. This means I still have hope.

Both Liam and Hugo did really well. Both sweeping the AG category and finishing a solid 2nd and 6th overall.

I got my work cut out. Race season 2013 bring it on! :)

Zee 2013 list

Alright I guess if I intend on keeping my new year’s resolutions for this year, this mean I need to have a plan.

Alright zee plan. To be brief, rather than go into detail - I’ve realized it’s best to start with a list.

Alright sticking to zee list. I’m thinking I’m running out of excuses to procrastinate any further. So here it is in the least words possible.

1. Stop procrastinating

2. Smile more

3. Go au natural

4. Be better at being clean, tidy and organzied

5. Eat better

6. Get curiouser and curiouser

7. Pay off debt

   a. Student loans

   b. Car loans

8. Practice at B-Races

   a. Subaru Series

   b. BMO Marathon

   c. Sun Run

9. Perform at A-Races

   a. Chicago Marathon

   b. Arizona IM

   c. Whistler IM

10. Move out (finally!)

 

This should be a good year. I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

The End is Near...almost!

Whether or not all the claims about the Maya apocalypse are true...WHATEVER. What a 2012 year it has been for me! No regrets.

 

I feel I am so lucky to have friends to share so many fond memories in my races this year.

 

From the 8,800 ft in elevation gain at Orcas Island at my first ultra ever in February...

 

 

...and the screaming girls at Wesley College and historic breaking heat-wave at my first Boston in April...

 

 

 

...and the tour de france feel at another famous Heartbreak Hill at Switzerland m-dot in July (luckily we narrowly escaped the waterspout which occurred only 6 days after in the same lake)...

 

...and the last ever 30 year anniversary Canada m-dot at Penticton in August...

 

 

...and many many more races locally...

 

 

...I don't think I can top it off.

 

It's been a blast (hopefully no pun intended).

 

Thank you! You guys rock! You guys know who you are!

 

Keep on trucking.

 

Persistence is Key

Sometimes when you truly believe in tackling something in the best way possible, I’ve come to accept that taking harsh criticism is just part of territory. It is so easy to make judgements and offer unsolicited advice on meeting tunnel-vision-like objectives. But the bigger picture seems to be always a miss. It is persistence that keeps me going. Your gut knows best when comprising for the bigger picture.

It is just frustrating when people don’t want to listen and assemble virtual walls up. Over time, I’ve learned to be patient and hopefully one day those walls would come down. Otherwise failure is almost inevitable. It is a soft skill they don’t necessarily teach in school but rather a skill that is developed over time.

Usually I take my training zen-ny habits and apply them to the work place. And not vice versa.

But in this case, I think I can. My Victoria Marathon time was about 11ish minutes off my goal time. My mind wanted to go, but my body was just beat after a long race season. I peaked during the IMC race in August. My foot started aching during the race in Victoria and I felt an uncomfortable injury was coming had I pushed it. My gut knew the bigger picture would be to keep injury-free, and comprising this one race objective would be okay.

8888.8 km - Awesome!

 

3:05 Maybe? @Victoria Marathon

(Source: http://everaevolving.blogspot.ca/p/my-runningquotes.html)

 

 

 

Ironman Switzerland

I am thrilled with my result. 

Awesome placement of "x"

Zee "short" report

And now the super late one...

A pb time of 11:18:47 on a day that showed scattered bits of strong hail, heavy rain, and sunshine. At times, I was soaked, I was dried, then I was pegged by little cannon hail balls, and finally I was back being soaked again. It wasn’t the most pleasant feeling. The weather gods couldn’t quite figure out what to hand us; luckily it wasn’t a waterspout that occurred only a week later in the exact swim location at Lake Zurich! 

Coming into this race, I knew my biking was by far my biggest challenge. I had little peace in mind. Did I put my bike together correctly? Also, just days before the race and biking in Europe for the first time, I began to question myself whether I am still a semi-competent bike rider, despite not speaking the language and not knowing the abundance of heavy Swiss-German signage nor being familiar with the traffic rules. The next round-a-bout could very well be the next round of butt beatings for me.

That wasn’t my only problem. Just like my experience at the Victoria half this year, buoys and swim caps were EXACTLY the same bright colour. Brilliant! Sighting will be a lot like finding where’s Waldo. 

We unintentionally skipped the pre-race dinner safety briefing too. Yikes. Meeting up with a friend (blame Max) got me distracted and we totally forgot. Oops, trust me I don’t usually pass up on opportunities like this to get food often. I was still in travel mode.

Considering execution on race day is almost 90% mental, I wasn’t faring well at this point prior to the race.

Luckily it did pan out!

Pre race, Brendan was very smart and got a taxi for us. It saved us a lot of time and we had plenty of time to settle the nerves.

Race bibs had to be worn on the bike, since there were no body-markings. This affected jels placements. Timing chips must be worn on the left ankle. 

There was a big talk in German, then English, then German again. Then they told us to shake hands to random athletes around us. The Swiss anthem was played shortly before the gun started. 

The swim was a unique setup. The beach start actually begins in a private beach park. Separated by two pontoons strips, there was also a section courted off for ladies only start, which I haven’t seen before. Firstly swim a rectangular loop. Swim under a little bridge and then run onto a little island to get a checkpoint. Then complete the hypotheses length and the remaining triangle as a second loop. Swim under the bridge again, while getting funneled in by lane ropes.  Then hop out on the other side to transition, and finally enter T1 on the public side of the beach park.

The swim sure felt a bit like those theme park boats rides hitting each other. 

The first 30ish km around the lake was nearly flat. Then as we deviate from the lake into landwards, there is a series of climbs leading the Beast, which is the largest climb of the course. My legs wanted a break, they were exhausted. I had to keep going because people would yell “bop bop bop bop bop bop!” It was a very technical course with questionable weather conditions. At one point my arms were barely holding on because of strong hail. There were a couple of instances when we had to ride over boards covering some rail tracks. Eventually the course meets the coast of the lake and heads back towards transition. We don’t turn at transition but tack on an extra 5km further out with a last minute steep stinger known as Heartbreak Hill. Boston had a Heartbreak Hill too, man oh man did I pick the right races in the same year. Both occurred on the latter parts of the course which probably give them such a reputation. The signage was what got me through the bike course. I was impressed with the multiple series of signage as you approach a particular turn. Then again, repeat for a second loop. Every component was tougher the second time around.

The run was a 4 loop course. It was crowded at times, but this made running feel blistering fast. There was always someone next to you. Aid stations were great, nuts and fresh fruit made my day. It was a mental challenge to run past the finish area 8 times before actually finishing. I was "yo-yoing" with a few guys until the 3^rd loop. It somewhat annoyed me because they wouldn’t hold a steadier pace. Hahah I know I'm a running snob when it comes to getting pass. We were always checking out the number of arm bands on each passing athlete which indicated the number of loops you were on. These couple of yo-yo guys were on the same lap as me!  On the final loop, I just hammered it. At times, I even shut my eyes to conserve every bit of energy. I didn’t want to get passed by the yo-yoers again. It worked, and ran the 4th lap a few minutes quicker than the third.

I don't think I could had pushed harder. 

Heartbreak!

Overall it was a fantastic race-cation. 

Slush Puppies - the Swiss equivalent to slushies