Some Random Meanderings

It's been a little hazy here in Canmore the last few days due to fires burning in BC so this is not a bad shot considering. Somewhere near the Nordic Centre in Canmore.

It is really unfortunate that I had to travel alone this week. I had plenty of opportunities to NOT be alone but it seemed like the race in Calgary fell at a time that didn't work out for other people's vacation schedules and I couldn't afford to make two jaunts away. I could barely afford the one and at the moment I am trying not to think about the gigantic MasterCard bill I am going to get in a month when I know it was already gigantic at the end of last month. I've developed some bad habits in terms of my carpe diem life..... the only way to cope is to just ... not.... look.

So tomorrow starts the ride of the summer: The GOLDEN TRIANGLE. This is apparently an organized ride if you hit it at the right time of the year but I was unable to find any specific information. The ride starts in Banff (although, I believe we are going to start in Canmore) and then we ride to Golden, then to Radium and then back to Banff/Canmore. It will take three days and it will be over 100 km of riding each day...

Yes, Ouch, even I am saying OUCH and, as you all know, I am CRAZY.

And may I add.... on not-a-very-happy-to-ride bike. The Madone will not take panniers not to mention the sacrilege of even thinking of putting panniers on the piece of art that is the Madone, so I rigged up my mountain bike and it is already heavy as hell without all my gear and tomorrow is going to be one massive grind of 150 km. I took it out for a spin in Canmore the other night and climbing hills is going to be painful.

But I thought I would do a quick photographic post in the meantime and let you know what I've been up to for the last week. The Calgary 70.3 race was last Sunday and I had a week to kill out here in Alberta before meeting up with Wayne and Guy, my riding companions of the next three days. Some of that week was spent mooching as much as I could from my kind friends and friends of friends. You already know I spent a little bit of time just outside of Calgary with Maura and her lovely family. I left there on Wednesday and drove out to Drumheller and visited the dinosaurs and a little bit of the true badlands of Alberta.

Nice shadow effect

The Badlands

I then ventured into the city again and spent two nights with a friend/business acquaintance of my friend Mich. It was an interesting two days to say the least. Troy and Candace lead a lifestyle that I could not handle for much more than two days. Think back to the best party you ever went to in your teenage life and then imagine living it every single day. Very good people. Very exhausting. I discovered that it is still possible for me to tire of drinking alcohol. I also discovered that I am a good listener and a good therapist. I can't solve my own bloody problems but toss anyone else's my way and I am a genius. It just requires a little emotional distancing. Candace's family could be a reality TV show.  It was nice to be able to forget about my own issues for a while. Troy and Candace, however, DO have an amazing view from the balcony of their condo.

AHHHH MOUNTAINS

Then off to Canmore where I wandered the town and tried not to spend money. It wasn't hard. Every time I looked at a price tag on something I liked, it read over $150..... sigh. After the aerobars for the bike, nothing of that expense was going to happen. I puttered around on my bike looking for some steep hills to climb yesterday (very much found... 17% grade as a matter of fact) and then popped over to the rec centre to hit the pool (mostly because I needed a shower and the campground had no showers but, YES, I did swim during this period of time of NO-TRAINING-only FUN).

Today I went for a nice "warm-up" hike to prep myself for my big ride tomorrow.

Yeah right.... some warm up. I tell ya, I've never worked so hard on a warm-up in my life. I climbed a mountain.

I did the Lady Macdonald Hike. I didn't quite hike to the peak, mostly because the hike took longer and was far steeper than I expected. It was a challenge that I hope I don't pay for tomorrow. But I'm glad I did it. Now I can say I've climbed a mountain. The view was gorgeous but the day was overcast and there was a bit of rain when I got to the top. And by top, I mean to the "helipad" which was someone's bright idea to begin building a restaurant or a bar and a helicopter pad on the top of the mountain, and then never finished it. OR... as would not be surprising or unlikely, decided the whole venture would not be cost effective. I chose this trail because there was a designated turn around point at this helipad area or "gazebo." There was not a moment of breathing easy the whole way up -- I was huffing and puffing the whole time. I met and passed probably a dozen people on the trail. I guess I was motoring up there faster than I thought. I ended up being the first to arrive at the top. It took me about 1 hour and 50 minutes to climb up and about 1:20 to come down.

Yes, "I am here" The little metal dot on the right is the start. The was the only signage on the whole trail.

Looking down at Canmore, about half way up.

As the trail got more treacherous, these little dudes saved me from wandering astray as they marked the path when none was clear. Inukshuk.

The "gazebo/helipad" area near the top. I literally thought I would never get there. And then all of a sudden there it was.

The view from the top. After walking through the rain for the last half hour, (questioning if I was going to have to SLIDE back down the mountain to get there), off in the Western distance, there is faint hope of the weather clearing.

A nice view on the trail -- nearer to the top as I was on the way down. I thought this was a cool shot.

Me all rained on and sweaty.

Learning to be Alone

Here I am on my self designed vacation and, for the first time in about a week, I am alone. Well that's NOT me in the picture but you know what I mean. I am much more of an extravert than an introvert so, as you might imagine, I do not like being alone for long. So being in Canmore at present, I am in the lounge of a restaurant surrounded by people and I’ve opened my computer on battery and I’ll type as long as I can until it runs out.


It usually doesn’t take me long to find people. About three years ago I went to Toronto on a trip for which the sole purpose was to escape my marriage and be alone and it didn’t take long until I found people to hang out with. I was in the hot tub one afternoon and I started chatting with this other equally extraverted woman and upon finding out that I was alone, she invited me to join her and her friend out for a little bar hopping evening. So off I went and I met two very interesting people and had a couple adventures to boot. Not to mention some very good conversation. Which for me, is the thing I miss the most when I am alone.

There is nothing wrong with being alone. I like myself just fine and my company is pretty good but I have a pretty heavy dose of that one key characteristic of extraverts. I draw my energy from interacting with others. Without other people around it isn’t long before I am left feeling jittery and nervous and out-of-sorts. In a group I am more likely to seek out being the centre of attention. I’ll be the one telling stories at the head of the table. I can take over an entire room if I try. I don’t always need to be like this but in the right crowd I am always like this.

I believe my whole hatred of being alone got significantly worse when I had a newborn infant. For me, there was nothing more isolating than having an infant child whose mere existence terrified me, be my sole responsibility. I can remember having visitors during this phase and having to resist the urge to BEG people not to leave. The North American culture (and perhaps the majority of the industrialized Western world) is the only culture that withdraws from a mother upon the birth of an infant. Everywhere else the mother is put on a pedestal and other than needing to provide the basic needs for the infant, the rest of the women in the family cared for her and the household. She is never left alone. I needed to be in one of these cultures.

This was a problem in my marriage for certain, especially since my husband had work hours that always had uncertain endings so inevitably, if he was taking longer than I expected to get home, I was making a phone call checking on how much longer he would be. Sometimes more than one phone call. I wasn’t calling because I was mistrusting. I wasn’t calling because I was worried. Nor was I calling because I needed to keep him on a short leash (Good LORD NO). I was calling because it had been too long since I had interacted with another adult human being and I expected him to be the caretaker of my extraverted needs.

For men, this is a really annoying thing about me, I am certain. It is an expectation that seems to be too much pressure on them. Well, some men anyhow. The X used to snap at me about this. And he was an introvert and the first thing he wanted to do when he got home was hide and be alone. Couple that with the fact that I was solidly in denial about hating being alone and you now have the unhealthy mix of two annoyed individuals.

I find myself alone and without my children around two to four nights a week. It is rare that I let any of these evenings go by without some kind of event placed on my social calendar. There are always places to go and people to see. And even when there are not places to go and people to see there is text messaging and email and Facebook because they are all alternative substitutes that feed my need to connect.

I don’t mind THIS kind of alone however – the kind where I type away lost in my thoughts and occupied with a task – I hate that bored and unoccupied alone where you want to be doing something but have no options.

In terms of relationships, it is going on 3 months since I’ve been in that kind of aloneness. It is hard for me to be in this kind of alone too but I know it is necessary to help me rid myself of some unresolved issues and perhaps make choices that are driven by compatibility rather than by.... ahem... other things.

So on this trip I decided to take this week to do what I want to do, to not have to compromise, and to explore. These are the benefits of being alone. I don’t have to cater to anyone else’s will. I don’t have to share decision making and I never have to ask permission. I don’t have to rush around when I want to putter and be slow or wait with taping foot for someone who isn’t ready. The decision making is being left to one strong mind and one strong heart. And for now that is the way it has to be.

Blogger Fame

How do you get a blog following?  Blogs can make you famous. Examples that immediately come to mind include Julie and Julia started by the woman (Julie) who decided to make every item in the Julia Child's cook book and blog about her experience. Next came the book. Next came the likely 7 figure movie deal starring Meryl Streep as Julie herself. Did Julie know or plan for her blog to become an international sensation? I doubt it. Can one really plan for these things?

Or what about my friend the BSNYC? (a.k.a the Bike Snob). His blog also lead to a book deal. The book is doing so well that even Amazon.com is sold out. And he started his blog completely anonymously. I've read that even his wife didn't know he was writing it for the first month or so. How did people find out about it? How did he promote himself? Or did he? It didn't take long (mere months) before he had a tremendously large following. If I could get him alone in a room that would be the first question I would ask: Did you actively do anything to get people to follow your blog? Or did you just post every day and by some stroke of luck and word of mouth, you connected with people and they followed?

Blogger has recently introduced a "Stat's" tab in the Blogger in Draft version (I thank Carly for alerting me to this feature) and when you click on it you can find out (accuracy unknown) a little bit of info about your own blog and the types of followers you have: Where they are from and what computer processing system they are using and who links to you through other blogger pages. (Hmmm is big brother watching more than we think?) 

People read my blog. I have 5 followers who reveal themselves. I know many more people that read. Most of these people link in through facebook which means that most of these people reading my blog are people on my friends list. People come up to me all the time and tell me they like what I write. I don't get many blog comments. I wish people would comment more but I'll take what I get. I'm not writing this blog to be famous or otherwise. I write what is driving my soul at the moment and once it is out, it is generally over and I move on. I realize that what I write won't appeal to everyone. I am OK with this. If you don't get it, stop reading.

If you scan the blog listing on the side of this blog you will see I follow about 13 different blogs. I have more that I have hidden in my blog list but these are the ones I like to have quick access too. I could likely follow many more but I sense that blog following could get out of control. The ones listed here are ones that update regularly or they are close personal friends of mine and I like to be able to see when they update. I have not yet been clever enough to figure out how to get emails when they update. I also haven't been able to figure out how to get an email when someone comments on MY blog. 

The Versatile Blogger Award

So imagine my surprise when one of the bloggers I follow, Holli, voted me as one of her Most Versatile Bloggers that she follows. Holli writes the blog called A Life Less Ordinary -- a title I like because the movie by the same name is one of my favorite movies -- about trying to achieve two goals: fighting a kickboxing match in the ring and publishing her first novel. That might be as versatile as she comes.

Versatile, what does this mean? If I may paraphrase Dictionary dot com, I will define versatile as having many uses. So as part of my award I am to, in turn, do the same to other blogs I follow and nominate them as most versatile blogger. I guess one can look at this award system as a pay-it-forward endeavour and perhaps as assistance to help less followed blogs to obtain a greater following.

Here are the rules:

1. Thank the one who gave me this award.

2. Share seven things about myself.

3. Present this honour onto 15 (five, in my case) newly discovered bloggers.

4. Drop by and let my fifteen new friends know I love them.


And here I comply with the rules (to the best of my ability):

I know Holli in person but I believe we have only actually  met once. I would like to change that. We were briefly in the same writer's group and we both attended the same meeting one time at Bread and Circus's. I thank Holli for nominating me for this award and if you are here on this page right now because of Holli's recommendation, then thanks for stopping by. I hope you stay awhile and see what happens next.

As for sharing seven little known things about myself, I did this once already in another entry and I gave you 25. So I will refer you back there as I don't know if I could come up with seven more. Or at least not today when I am mentally and physically on vacation and feeling like I could have a nap.

I will give you 5 blog suggestions as I don't follow 15 new blogs. The ones I choose are the ones that I check into on a daily basis to see if they have a new nugget of wisdom to share with me. These are the ones I connect with and they update regularly enough that it makes it worth it to me point you in their direction. And I have to admit, I know them all well and in person too.

Lisa Takes Flight: Lisa is an avid runner and mountain biker and in a very short time she became one of the best friends I have ever had. Lisa started her blog post divorce and writes on a variety of topics about life and about finding yourself and because we are soul sisters I get everything that she says.

One Crazy Summer: Fellow triathlon junkie and Tribalistic teammate Greg tells us his near daily adventures as he balances family and marriage and training for the triathlon of all triathlons: Ironman. His photos are great and every single post makes me laugh out loud. He can turn a 5 hour solo ride into the adventure of a life time.

The Road Less Travelled: Another fellow triathlete, Christian, mother of 4, student, and recent very good friend and my most feisty competitor, Terri writes about everything worth living about. She is thoughtful and because she is the newest blogger of the bunch I suggest, I am very excited about where she will end up. The real life Terri amazes me and inspires me and her blog is doing that too.

Wife in the Fast Lane: Young and enthusiastic and far from jaded yet (unlike yours truly), Carly writes about everything in life that she loves. And that is A LOT of things. Her passions include triathlon, the outdoors and travel, IKEA furniture, preparing for med school, fundraising obscene amounts of money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation in the name of her aunt who recently died of breast cancer, and enjoying her (newish) marriage.

Winnipeg Cycle Chick: Another good friend Andrea writes about what it is like to be a fast woman in the man's world of cycling and she does it with flare and with humor and she tells it like it is and takes no shit from no one (at least in her blog. The REAL Andrea is sweeter than sugar cane.). She writes about her hatred of pink cycling gear, the conversations on the road, racing and crashing, and about dealing with Bike Shop Assholes who think you know nothing because you lack a penis. I doubt Andrea needs my seal of approval. She's recently had her first blog dissing comment discussion and personal attack and this is a sure sign that you have a pretty big following and you're being noticed when people suddenly find the need to tell you "you suck" and get a life. Rock on Andrea. Show them who's man.

So there it goes. I will now alert my favorite bloggers to this honour and they can pay it forward from there in any way they choose. Please enjoy what they have to say.

More Stats

And if you are curious here are the stats on this blog as of today:

My top five most viewed blog entries (since May) are:

Feelin' Like Bailing (74 page views)
Body Test Kenora Style (70 page views)
What I Can't Blog About (54 page views)
My Life on a Bike (43 page views)
Canola Country (32 page views)

Do I consider these my best entries? Not necessarily but it only goes back to May so some of what I feel are my best were written before that. I like "What I can't blog about" a lot though. That is definitely one of my favorites. As for what are my best, that is for you to decide, so if you have a favorite you would like to point out to me, please post it in the comments below.

It also appears that my Blog has some world wide viewing with the majority coming from Canada (understandably). But my blog has also been viewed by readers in:

Canada 690


United States 81

United Kingdom 17

Germany 16

Denmark 12

India 7

Australia 6

Bangladesh 4

China 4

Luxembourg 2

The hits from Luxembourg intrigue me.  Andy and Frank, welcome to my blog??  (Wouldn't that be cool.) Anyhow if you are reading from afar, or even if you are reading near by, feel free to drop me a line. Thanks for hanging out. See you soon.

Bystander

Have I mentioned that my friend Andrea is my cycling hero?? We have a mutual friend who told her once, under the influence of alcohol and in a hot tub with beer involved, I believe, that I could kick her ass on a bike. This was before he even rode with me so he really didn't know what he was talking about and I was kinda embarrassed that he would pump me up like that and it still, to this day, makes me cringe to even think about it.

But truth of it is that maybe last year we were a little closer together in ability but this year she's flatting my ass on the road like a crepe. Not a pancake, as is the cliche saying, but a thinly squashed crepe.

A week ago today, while once again acting as crit groupie, I watched biking go bad as Andrea had her second crash of her cycling career. This seems to be the summer of the crash. I've heard of so many nasty crashes this year. A truck turning in front of one friend, a friend of a friend who also got hit and was thrown from a bike by a vehicle, a broken arm two days before a big race, two friends going down on one of our group rides when one got his wheel caught in a nasty road crack and was thrown into the other, and of course, the probably numbering in the hundreds of crashes at this years Tour de France. 

We have a dangerous hobby but I think to some degree we all accept this as the inevitable. At one point or another we will all crash. Some of that is because we do things to be faster that deliberately put our bodies in danger. We ride as close on each other's back wheels as possible. We ride in high traffic areas. We ride on sketchy roads. We ride sketchy roads while they are wet. We take tight corners on angles.

I'm terrified of crashing. I am terrified of each and every little nick and uneven bounce and close encounter with tree and rock delivered to me even on a mountain bike. Road crashing is a lifetime's worth of mountain bike crashes all at once. My terror, likely, makes me more at risk of crashing than those that accept the adage: There are two types of cyclists, those who HAVE and those who WILL. Given as I don't don't think my crash into the bushes at age 12 counts... I am in the WILL category. And when you see a crash up that close, all of us who ride bikes see our lives flash before our eyes.

I didn't even know what happened. All I saw was the racers slow down from my position across the field. The pace line became discombobulated. The medic went running. Another friend of ours went running from the opposite corner where he was videotaping the race. Oh yes, there is tape... yet to be watched. I turned to watch those left in the race pound their way to the finish line and as my eyes scanned the racers looking for my friends, there was no Andrea and no Scott. And that's when I went running, flip flops and all, across the field. My kids were at the race. I didn't even know where my kids were.

Andrea said as we sat around and drank too much gin the night after (well, I had too much gin) that she didn't even know it was her that was crashing. She heard the scrape of metal and the thought that passed through her head was "somebody's crashing" and then she was on the ground ("Oh its me") and another rider was rolling over her and the next thought was.... "not again..."

And then it was about 20 minutes of nothing going on, yet... LOTS going on. I'm a nurse and I've been in lots of high paced situations but I would consider myself to be virtually useless on the side of the road. I left hospital nursing to get away from scenes like this, although, ironically enough, that kind of adrenaline rush goodness (or badness, really) is what drew me to nursing to begin with.

On the road, there is no equipment. I want oxygen hanging on the wall and IV's to play with. I worked in ICU for the last two and a half years of my hospital career. I dealt with situations where six people standing around the bed side were not enough to do everything that was needed. Give drugs. Take vitals every 2 minutes. Hang blood products. Up the drugs again. Assist with line start. Intubate. More drugs. Page this person, page that person. More drugs. Chart this. Change this dressing. I can deal with all that. And in ICU we often deliberately render the person unconscious because it medically benefits them. It keeps them calm.

But on the side of the road the most important thing to do is talk. And not say stupid things. And we don't have drugs to keep the patient calm. Scott who stopped his race when he heard Andrea go down, knowing it was her from the yelp she gave -- a yelp he'd heard before just a little over a year ago -- was at her head holding it and this was his job. He did superb. He talked and he was calm. And when someone, a bystander, any of us sitting around her on the side of the road, said anything negative like this looks baaaad (and people did say such things, sometimes it is hard not to when when the mouth is working more effectively than the brain and you are feeling high-strung yourself) he changed the subject. He talked about the bike. He talked about the firefighters. He just talked.

The biggest mistake that we make as health care professionals is that we stop seeing the person. All we see is the wounds and then we are all experts. Without x-rays we are diagnosing dislocations and fractures. We tell the patient there might be a dislocation or a fracture and we send them into a state of internal chaos. We forget there is a conscious person wondering what the hell is going on. And possibly panicking with the uncertainty.

I sat on the side of the road at her feet and mostly kept my mouth shut. I didn't ask around but in all likelihood I was the most highly qualified medical person there. I didn't announce myself as such. I'm a teaching nurse now for cripes sake.... I am RUSTY. I only pull rank with medical training when another health care professional is being condescending (as I did on many occasions with nurses who wouldn't listen to me when I was hospitalized for a couple surgeries or as I do when trying to get information about family members). So in this situation I just listened and I watched. Mostly I watched for anything that could be unsafe or dangerous to take place and then I would have stopped it. And nothing did, other than a well meaning by-stander who wanted to give her something to drink. But I don't need to be in control for control's sake. If the machine is working well, no need to tinker with it.

When you work in a medical profession you develop the ability to shut off your emotions with this person in the bed in front of you. Patient faces and diagnoses all blur together. It is simply a way of coping with disaster and chaos. But when it is your friend on the road in front of you that is a whole other situation. There were five of us that ride with her regularly out watching (or racing) that night, by some stroke of fait. We just needed to feel useful within our helplessness and we all found our own ways to do that. A couple were content to stand back and stay out of the way. One did the talking. I sat at her feet and watched just wanting to be close by. Another friend was a leg rest for one propped leg and he started out in an uncomfortable squat, fearful of moving because- what if I move and I cause damage?

And maybe that was my fear too? What if I speak and cause damange?

The fire trucks showed up first and the ambulance came next and these are the side-of-the-road experts.They got the neck brace on her and put her on the back board and wrapped her right elbow which was scraped the worst and put a small piece of gauze under her shorts over the tear in her hip. But in terms of bystanding, the best things we all did was call 911, call her family, and just keep her comfortable and still.

And by comfortable I mean psychologically comfortable.

And there is an aftermath for all of us. Poor sleep. Worry. We couldn't all go and hang out at the hospital so it was a waiting game until we got information and that wasn't really until the next morning and, by that time, she was discharged.

I took home her crooked bike and her shoes and her sunglasses and the other gin induced black humoured giggle we had the other night was pulling out her sunglasses for the first time, holding them up to the light, and checking out the CSI-like splatter pattern and scratch marks. Time to call in the team to investigate. Andrea took a very moving photo of her glasses and posted it on her blog and I've stolen it without permission for you here, and I hope she doesn't mind, because the emotional impact is heart stopping.

You replay bits of the normal parts of the night: Chris telling me about the ride from Saturday where it was him and and a bunch of really fast guys and how relieved he was when someone of his calibre showed up. And I laughed because I FELT his relief. I've been in his shoes. Chris wheeling me coffee on his bike with coffee stains splattered all over his clothes. The conversation about being a big fish in a little pond versus being a little fish in a big pond. Meeting Dave's wife and teasing him about remote control cars. Pinning Scott's race numbers for him. My kids pushing each other and fighting at the side of the road. Michael talking about his saddle trouble. Me explaining the tactics to Mark -- big pro that I am now that I've watched 3 races (haha). And how until the crash, the race was actually pretty tame and slow and I felt more actively assured that I was going to buy a licence and try this next year.

Geez it was a typical night at the races. Was there any clue -- ANY -- that something like this was going to happen?

I'd like to try. I'm not sure I have the aggression it takes to do those kind of races. I already know that long triathlons will NOT be my race goal of the near future regardless of how well I did in Calgary and how close I came to sub 6 hours (take that 4 extra km off the bike and I would have been there). I know how happy I am on a bike. I know what a mental struggle it has been to get me to put as much effort into running and swimming when I would rather be biking. And I KNOW how much I admire Andrea's ability and how much she has grown as a rider in a year's time and I want to grow up to be just like her.

But I have a few skills I have to work on first. You could say, I have the desire but I'm not ready.

(One could say the same thing about my love life right now too. I have the desire but I'm not ready. But that's another blog.)

Canola Country

It rained last night and this is the view out the back of her house.

The thing about riding alone is that you can be as lazy as you want or work as hard as you want and post a 6 hour race, lazy is the strict order of the day. So I went out and did a 54 km recovery ride in the Alberta Badlands on the same highway you take to get to Drumheller, otherwise known as dino world.

I'm staying for a couple of days just outside Calgary with my friend Maura and her family and it was wonderfully kind and generous that they took me into their home because even though Maura and I went to high school together, we didn't really know each other in high school. We spent some time reminiscing last night about the people we hung out with, and some of the people she hung out with I didn't even remember. She did date, for a VERY high schoolishly short time, a guy who was ultimately one my best friends -- but I didn't even KNOW or remember this. Then we had a further discussion about classes and it came to light that it was unlikely that we even had any classes together in high school.

So how is that I came to be at her home which is on a rural road just outside Calgary close to Airdrie and Crossfield, 21 years after high school ended? Well... Facebook of course. What else? I knew who she was in high school but that is really about it. I just told her mother this morning that I remember Maura as being someone who ran to the beat of her own drummer. My high school self, however, was (at least socially) conformist and succumbed to peer pressure on a fairly regular basis. And let me tell you I am enjoying this reuniting and finding out who she has become.

Well Maura will know that I say this lovingly but she gave me somewhat wonky directions to her house and I ended up driving 20km out of the way through Canola fields and other crops which I cannot name. Canola is the yellow one. The one I thought was mustard my whole life. But after I called her and got the route straightened out, as I drove back all I could think was, I have to get on my bike and ride these roads tomorrow, because I am obsessed and crazy like that.

So the ride starts like this:

This is after I did the downhill and the steep climb to get out of the valley. This farm is right across the road from Maura and down at the lowest point of the valley and they affectionately call it "Old MacDonald's Farm". Maura's house is at the top of the hill you see although you can't actually see the house in this picture as it is behind the trees. What I didn't really realize as I set out was that I was facing a pretty hefty North wind with a touch of it from the West. So I knew I was going to have to climb this hill with that hefty wind in my face. But, it all turned out well.

The final destination was a little town called (and because I'll never spell it right, I'll let you read from the photo):

And despite the town skunk mascot, there was nothing smelly about the place.

They even had beer along the route:

Not bad for Hutterite country, I passed at least 2 colonies along the way.

So I am happy to say that the recovery ride went well. I was darn slow coming back in the wind but the point today wasn't to be fast. And as proof of the wind velocity (a check when I got back said the winds were 26 km/hr from the North) check out my hair in this self portrait.

And me searching for the pot of gold:

The Big Race

I love this city. I told my parents this past week that, if I could, I would move to Calgary. But life circumstances have me stuck where I am so I won’t. I’ll just have to be content to come out here and play once and a while.


So in the last instalment of Kim’s half ironman training saga I was ready to bail. I was psychologically and emotionally having a bad month and it was hitting me at all my weak and insecure points and my big psychological weakness in terms of fitness is running. It is ironic that running is my weak point. I started into athletics as a runner.

So on the day after the race I sit here not too worse for the wear. I have a headache which I attribute to no coffee yesterday and a bit of dehydration. I’m sipping on a Grande Starbucks as I type and the headache is dissipating. My quads are tight and it takes them a while to loosen up when I stand up to walk. My left knee IT band is probably the most painful part but I only feel that when I roll out of bed. My back is a bit stiff between my shoulder blades likely from the fact that I bought new aerobars here in Calgary the DAY before the race and I put them on roughly in the place I thought they would work and I did a short 20 minute test ride which felt OK, but after about 30km into the race, I could tell I was stretching a bit in that position and my back and shoulders are paying for it.

There is an adage that we preach in triathlon and all sports: Nothing new on Race Day. I broke that rule in about 5 different ways for this race. New Aerobars. New drink set up. New electrolyte solution for my fluid. A couple different new gels that I’d never tried before. Thankfully I have a strong stomach.

I crossed the finish line in 6:07:29. And I was astounded and very emotional at the end especially given the dread I went through to get myself to the start line. And this is how it played out.

3:30 a.m. is Really Really early

I set three alarms and one of them failed so I was glad for the back-ups. I slept OK and all my stuff was ready so it was a matter of getting up, getting dressed in my race gear, and walk the kilometre from my hotel to the Westin to catch the shuttle to ghost lake. I shared the hotel room with my friend Jen who was here, coincidentally enough, for her cousins wedding. It saved us both some cash and it gave me someone to hang out with for the weekend. And most importantly, it kept me from wallowing in my misery over this race. I was very very glad to have Jen’s company. She sacrificed her wedding day beauty sleep to get up at 4 a.m. and come out and watch the race, cheer me on, and take most of the photos you will see in this blog and it meant a lot to me to have someone to watch for at the transition points. Thank you JEN!!

Sunrise at Ghost Lake

Swim

The start of the women's wave 6:32 a.m. EEEK.

Well I forgot my goggles at home. I also forgot my race belt. So I bought new goggles for the race and they are the large 180 degree kind and they cost a fortune but did they ever make a difference. I swam in the 3rd swim wave which was relegated as “all females.” Don’t let the all female designation fool you. I still felt like I was getting beat up in the water at the start. And because this was the biggest wave I’ve ever swam in, (about 250), it was the first time I’ve been in a race and had feet to follow for such a long time. With all those bodies in the water it was like being in one big draft. I could have sworn there was a current. It was also the clearest water I have ever swum in. Beautiful. And it was freezing. Jen said she overheard a spectator say the water temp was 18 degrees. Thankfully though I got used to it fast.

Cold: Thank GOD for neoprean

Off to wetsuit stripping

Bike

Off to Bike.

I am incredibly proud of my bike. You can view the details here. When I was trying to estimate what my finishing time would be, I accounted for a 45 minute swim; 3 hour bike and a 2.5 hour run. The only one of those estimates I doubted I could achieve was the 3 hour bike. It is 94 km and hilly. And I was going to have to average over 30km per hour to do it in under 3 hours. But, it turned out to be easy. The roads are great and it is a course that is downhill heavy. There are some very good uphills too but the hardest most consistently uphill portion of the course was the opening section and somehow, I still averaged over 31 km per hour in the first 30 kms. I passed a lot of people. With the wave start it is hard to know how many, but I probably passed a 100 women and another 100 men. When I rolled into the T2 location, I was with a bunch of 30-44 year old guys who started in the swim wave 12 minutes ahead of me all on fancy TT bikes with Zipp deep-dish wheels. This made me smile.

Done!!

Into T2 at Glenmore Reservoir

I lost my chain on the bike at km 56 right in the middle of a steep uphill while I was down shifting to my lower ring. It fell off to the inside so it meant I had to get off my bike and manually fix it and then get back on and ride uphill. This is hard and I lost a bit of time but the most humorous part was that at some point later I cleared my nose and ran the rest of the race with bike grease marks all over my face. Cute.

I met a guy on the bike too... haha.... not like that. I passed one guy fairly early in the bike and he yells out to me. Hey, Tribalistic, from Winnipeg so I slowed down beside him and we chatted for a bit. Turns out he’s moving to Winnipeg in the fall and he’s looking for a club to join and had been researching on the internet and recognized our logo as I passed him. So hopefully we will see Graham again in the fall. Welcome (back) to Winnipeg. I told him I would see him on the run and I did, he passed me around km 11 or so.

One thing I can say about the bike is that there was really no one monitoring drafting on the course. I will admit that I took a moment here and there to get on the back of some guy’s wheel and just recover for a short bit. Never for long, maybe a minute or two, and lots of people were doing it. There was only one crazy downhill. My max speed was 57 or something. I heard last night from some of the race organizers and the guy who was in the lead car, that the guy who won the event hit 70km/hr.

Right after that downhill, I saw ambulances rushing in the other direction. There was apparently a guy who ran himself off the road. I saw the ambulances right before I had to make a sharp S turn and given my present paranoia about crashes, it made me take those corners a lot more sensibly. The pavement was wet too as it rained through about half the bike portion. I also heard a story about a guy who got a flat and got eaten so badly by mosquitoes while changing it that he had to DNF and get Benadryl shots. Unbelievable.

Run

Leaving T2

I was amazed at how good I felt running. I wasn’t a fast run (see here) but it was what I could manage. And I KEPT running. I walked here and there on some of the massive steep uphills and through some water stations. But for the most part I kept a steady pace. I hit the lap button on my watch at every km mostly to keep my mind on something while running. I got passed, A LOT. I got passed by fat people. But I just haven’t found it a priority to become a faster runner this year. I was satisfied with my run. Someone told me that you can take your half marathon time and add about 15 minutes to it and that will be your half ironman run time and that was pretty close to what happened. The cool temperatures saved me though. And Coke at the water stations. That saved me too although it was about 7 km in before I discovered they had it. Did you just say you had Coke! I think I actually back tracked a few steps to get it.

Yes, I really am smiling and running at the same time.

The Aftermath

Will I do this again? Not next year, I don’t think. But I’ll never say never. I didn’t feel awful at the end. But the memory of the training obligations hasn’t left me. For a while now I’ve been craving NOT racing and just doing fun crazy things, and doing fun crazy things while training for a half ironman interferes with the training plan. Thankfully I was trained for this race by the beginning of May before life took a turn and killed my motivation. But I also know if that I was that close to 6 hours on a course where the bike was long and the transitions were big, that I could be under 6 easily. That little nugget of a thought will weigh on me for a long time too.

So for now I plan to hang around Calgary for another week and then meet some work friends for a little jaunt through the mountains. Hope I don’t break the bank on this adventure. Oh well. I think I already have.

What I Can't Blog About

When I started this blog, nearly one year ago I called it spo(R)ting life for a reason. I didn't want to be limited to blogging just about sports -- or, more specifically, I didn't want to be blogging about just cycling or just triathlon. I am like any human soul. I am fickle, and periodically my passions change. And I would like to believe there is a little variety and depth to my psyche.

Confused? Think I'm on drugs?

Geez, Kim, I don't mean to point out the obvious or anything but the word SPORTING is in your blog title.

I know, I know. But the idea is that when it serves my purposes you are supposed to remove the bracketed R from the title and then it becomes SPOT--ing life... get it.. get it???  And yes I know it is spelled wrong but if you saw how much yellow appears on this page when I finally get around to spell checking the damn thing you will come to accept the fact that I am perfectly OK with this misspelling.

So you will also note that there was a huge gap in missing posts for about 3 months in the life of this blog. Well that was when I could have been blogging but it would have made you cringe to read. Same with the recent month of June. Two posts. Again, what I could have been writing about, would have made you cringe. And my last 5 posts have been about cycling and triathlon because these are safe topics. I mean, I've dropped hints about my state of mind here and there but you blinked while reading, I guarantee you would have missed it. 

TMI

Sometimes when I write things, I assume you are reading my mind.

I don't write a blog entry daily. I couldn't. I write one and it pretty much wrecks me for a day as I obsess over every word and the message I've sent and the response I'll get. So I've wanted to delve into more intense topics but I am terrified they will go down paths that produce huge amounts of third party embarrassment for you, my faithful reader. And I have to admit that I am a little trigger happy when it comes to what I write. I have one friend who blogs who is very good at letting what she is writing sit and ferment for days-weeks-months before she posts and releases them. I am not so patient. When I am immersed in a topic I'm trying to get it out of me like it is a virus I need to be rid of. I am a stream of consciousness writer. I begin a post with one fragment of an idea and it often festers and multiplies in all different unplanned directions.  And then when I edit it after (and censor it) I start to see the pattern of what I am really thinking. I do much of my blog-fermenting inside my head before I even begin to type. I think my friend works differently. I think she types and ferments at the same time.

Two different distillers and two good beers.

So, with that in mind, I will now reveal a series of fragments of ideas I've had of late that I COULD write about but won't because they will just end up in really BAD PLACES.

The good breakup.  I've told a mini story to a few of my close friend recently about the best dumping I have ever been through (and trust me, there have been many). The irony of this good breakup was that it happened at a time of my life when I was too inexperienced to be able to handle ANY breakup let alone a good one. And don't get me wrong, just because I say NOW that it was good, does not mean that my teenage heart wasn't any less shattered than it would have been in any other breakup. But I didn't know that at the time because, at the time, it was the most despicable breakup that any girl could have experienced. See, the guy broke up with me over the phone and I thought this was the most horrid and cowardly thing that one could do when breaking up with someone. Keep in mind this was the 80s and there was no email and no text messaging options and who knows how this breakup would have gone down if those two options had been available. But what made this breakup good was that it was direct and it was honest and it was quick.

And, of course, the inevitable path of this topic is that it begs that you need to talk about the bad breakups.

The high road. You know what I mean by this right?  This one is so dangerous a topic that I can't even talk in a generalized fashion about why I was taking the high road. Except to say that I did it proudly and bravely. And the view is pretty good from up here. 

Evolutionary Psychology. A very close colleague of mine teaches this course. He spends a lot of time talking about relationships as part of the core content and as he is researching his class material he frequently pulls research studies and shares them with me for my entertainment and his amusement, that show things like how lap dancers make the most tips during the ovulatory period of their menstrual cycle. (Ooh I just wrote the word menstrual in this blog -- twice). And how being on the birth control pill can change your pheromone scent which might not turn out well for your relationship if your mate doesn't like your natural smell. Or about the Red Queen Effect, which I have experienced before, which supposedly draws one, via scent and pheromones, to a mate that is most likely to produce a very strong offspring and propagate the likelihood of the survival of the human species. Or the many many tables he has shown me to provide solid evidence that the odds of me finding a mate are lower than average because I am too smart and I make too much money.

I could solidly refute that last part of that last sentence (money). I can't refute the former part (smarts). I refuse to pretend I'm not smart.

Rebound Relationships. I've been in many as both the rebounder and the reboundee... And for the reason why I can't write about these kind of relationships I refer you back to my discussion on the good breakup.

Neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it. Performance anxiety: I could tell stories about showing off on the diving board and doing a belly flop instead, or about screwing up a skill while my nursing teachers were watching, and you would smile and say: That's nice, I went through that too. But all the examples I could give would simply be euphemisms for the big gigantic performance anxiety of life. In 99% of life circumstances I am the most calm and collected and confident person I know. I stand up in front of lecture halls with 90 students in front of me -- sometimes on camera -- I can write entire novels and they are clever and cool and smart (well, after a few drafts and lots of fermenting).

But in 1% of situations I feel like I am about to explode and it makes me obnoxious and I try too damn hard and I say stupid things and I might act "bizarrely". It is like self-sabotage. A negative compensatory cycle -- the act of compensating to the point that you  make things worse. You're body does this too, when you are in severe cardiovascular shock.  But I can't write about my need to prove myself now or about why or about what I need to prove myself at. It would be very very uncool to do that and it would require me to leave my nice view from up here on the high road. All I can say is that, I don't mean to act like a weirdo sometimes. Hopefully you haven't noticed. But my anxiety level in this particular situation is 13/10 and "people" are watching who want me to fail. So for now, I'll just work on being me.

Weight loss. I've lost 7 pounds purely from wishful thinking. I could tell you how?

Between the lines. I write tons of shite between the lines in all those white (grey?) spaces that look blank. Yes, yes, I do. Everything is connected. We are all connected. And that is how she festers in unplanned directions.