Ok actually I'm not sure what the "and more" is yet. But I figured I better allow for it so that my title is not misleading. Plus whenever people need to make a pathetic list sound more impressive they add "and more!" First of all, football. No, I'm not instantly a mega-fan but since Winnipeg is in the Grey Cup I at least care to know the score. The real reason I'm excited about the game is that while sitting around glued to the TV, Winnipegers discovered something temporarily more important to their lives than cofffee. And for someone that would normally be serving coffee till 10pm on a school night this is great. Because when the place is dead, my shift is pretty easy-going and I get to go home early!
Alright anyways... I recently discovered the joys of the "next blog" button. As in the one at the top of the screen that will lead you to another random blog. Extreme time waster yet slightly addicting. There are so many blogs out there, some actually interesting, some terrible. I realize that most of my international blog views (from my stats I know this) probably come from the next blog button. But if you are not from Canada, no, make that not from Manitoba, want to let me know where you are from? It would be cool to connect blog views to actual people out there.
Ok now that all that random stuff is out of the way I figure I should share something triathlon related. Since that's basically the reason I started this blog in the first place. We are now entering the first recovery week of indoor season. Recovery week is awesome. Although so far indoor training had been going well. I actually really like the track workouts that we do. It's great to instantly get feedback on how you're doing and to see how you improve over the weeks. Swimming still isn't happening for me unfortunetely. But I won't even get started on that right now. Went for a chilly and slippery run at the park with Erin today, it was a good time. Other than that not too much else going on right now. There will be a track meet on the 10th that the team will be running the 3000m in. Maybe I'm just wierd, but I'm kind of excited for it actually. I promise to write about that when the time comes, and not waste too much more of your time until then.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Sunday, 13 November 2011
The Y. And other things.
As I've said from the beginning, I'm not going to pretend to be an intersting person when I'm really not. That means I won't always have weekly posts throughout the indoor training season because honestly, it's pretty routine. We are still in our first mesocycle which will last until around Christmas I think. I still am not swimming and I don't know when I will. I am continuing to see different people and trying new exercises and things to hopefully solve this problem. A few weeks ago it was all about the stretches. Now it's about stability. Everything is connected. So even though I have shoulder issues I also need to deael with my lower back and neck right now. But apparently I am fixable so we'll just keep hoping. I went to watch the rest of my team swimming this Saturday. It's crazy how bad you want to get in that water when you can't. Anyways, right before that on Saturday I came from the Y. I think that's what I originally meant to blog about but who knows.
So I've mentioned it before but I think it's time to explain what I do from 8:30 to 10am on my Saturday mornings. And it isn't sleeping in. Since last winter I have been volunteering at the EK YMCA with Ashlyn and Bryn. We coach a group of kids under the age of 13. We have a waiting list but usually anywhere between 10-20 kids show up. Before we took on the program it was more of a babysitting service, a place to dump kids and hope they somehow became athletic. Or not. Sometimes the instructors wouldn't show up and the lifeguards were told to look after the kids. Sometimes they did show up and they sat on spin bikes while watching tv. You get the idea. We have transformed it into a program where most kids actually want to be there and the parents sometimes even get involved with their kid's activities. We try to promote the Kids of Steel Series and the Manitoba Youth Team, and have actually had some success with this.
I have realized I love coaching kids. Sometimes I am a very nice coach:
"Great job today guys! You made some awesome improvements, see you next week." or...
"Just try the best you can, you're doing great."
Other times those crazy kids get on my nerves:
Kid: "I don't want to do this. I ate cookies for breakfast and now you expect me to do flipturns?! Do you want me to throw up?"
Me: "Sure, that's fine. As long as you get out of the pool first." or...
Kid: "I don't want to do those warm-ups they look dumb. I'm going to just sit here and stretch." (the "stretch" part should probably be in quotation marks based on what they do sometimes)
Me: "Get up and do the dynamic warm-up right now. Or else I'll give you the whole lecture explaining why, scientifically, dynamic warm-ups are better for you than static stretching."
You get the idea. Anyways, I wouldn't be doing it unless I loved it. I think that's about it going on right now. There were some cross country races going on this weekend that friends did well in, which is exciting. Oh and on our Friday off I hung out with the triathlon girls and we baked a cake. It had a unicorn on it. Mmm, unicorns...
So I've mentioned it before but I think it's time to explain what I do from 8:30 to 10am on my Saturday mornings. And it isn't sleeping in. Since last winter I have been volunteering at the EK YMCA with Ashlyn and Bryn. We coach a group of kids under the age of 13. We have a waiting list but usually anywhere between 10-20 kids show up. Before we took on the program it was more of a babysitting service, a place to dump kids and hope they somehow became athletic. Or not. Sometimes the instructors wouldn't show up and the lifeguards were told to look after the kids. Sometimes they did show up and they sat on spin bikes while watching tv. You get the idea. We have transformed it into a program where most kids actually want to be there and the parents sometimes even get involved with their kid's activities. We try to promote the Kids of Steel Series and the Manitoba Youth Team, and have actually had some success with this.
I have realized I love coaching kids. Sometimes I am a very nice coach:
"Great job today guys! You made some awesome improvements, see you next week." or...
"Just try the best you can, you're doing great."
Other times those crazy kids get on my nerves:
Kid: "I don't want to do this. I ate cookies for breakfast and now you expect me to do flipturns?! Do you want me to throw up?"
Me: "Sure, that's fine. As long as you get out of the pool first." or...
Kid: "I don't want to do those warm-ups they look dumb. I'm going to just sit here and stretch." (the "stretch" part should probably be in quotation marks based on what they do sometimes)
Me: "Get up and do the dynamic warm-up right now. Or else I'll give you the whole lecture explaining why, scientifically, dynamic warm-ups are better for you than static stretching."
You get the idea. Anyways, I wouldn't be doing it unless I loved it. I think that's about it going on right now. There were some cross country races going on this weekend that friends did well in, which is exciting. Oh and on our Friday off I hung out with the triathlon girls and we baked a cake. It had a unicorn on it. Mmm, unicorns...
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Race Season 2011 in Photos
How is it that it's so easy to just whip up a new blog post, yet so difficult to finish up an essay for school? While sitting at home sick all day and a deadline approaching you would think this is the perfect opportunity to get that assignment out of the way. But I really needed a "homework break" and while doing this I somehow ended up reading some other blogs. As I have mentioned before, many other athletes and friends have blogs and saved in my favourites are over 30 that I occasionally read when I'm bored. I came across one in particular that had a "race season in photos" and thought this was a great idea. I began blogging right after the race season and never mentioned much about it. So here goes...
Started out in March 2011 with a solid 17-day training camp in beautiful Tucson, Arizona. Lot of good times living in a house full of guys and also getting to know the Alberta team. This would be the famous Mount Lemmon, which was one of our many long rides.
High School track season was a lot of fun. I was happy with my improvements and it was great to be able to show this with a bronze medal in the 3000m at Provincials as well as a new PB of 11:30.
The first Jr Series race of the season was held in St. Malo, MB and it was awesome to race with the home support! This wasn't a great race for me, as I fell apart a bit on the bike and run, but a decent start to the season. I finished 20th out of 27, still better than last year.
My next race was a big one, PATCO! It was in Edmonton and it had been a goal of mine to qualify for it at some point, so after only one year of Jr Elite racing it was great to be able to go! I was happy with my race, especially my run. I placed 28th out of 48 girls from North and South America. Made lots of friends too!
After breifly going home it was back to Kamloops for the Western Canada Games. Overall it was a great experience. Lots of fun with new friends as well as really proud of Team Toba for giving it their all. Bringing home some hardware wasn't bad either.
This year we continued running through cross country season, and this catches you up to where I started my blog. In zone meets I placed 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 1st and at provincials got a 7th place overall (out of about 250), which was enough for a AAA bronze as well as a team bronze. So much fun!
Started out in March 2011 with a solid 17-day training camp in beautiful Tucson, Arizona. Lot of good times living in a house full of guys and also getting to know the Alberta team. This would be the famous Mount Lemmon, which was one of our many long rides.
High School track season was a lot of fun. I was happy with my improvements and it was great to be able to show this with a bronze medal in the 3000m at Provincials as well as a new PB of 11:30.
The first Jr Series race of the season was held in St. Malo, MB and it was awesome to race with the home support! This wasn't a great race for me, as I fell apart a bit on the bike and run, but a decent start to the season. I finished 20th out of 27, still better than last year.
My next race was a big one, PATCO! It was in Edmonton and it had been a goal of mine to qualify for it at some point, so after only one year of Jr Elite racing it was great to be able to go! I was happy with my race, especially my run. I placed 28th out of 48 girls from North and South America. Made lots of friends too!
Next was a mini-training camp in Kamloops to familiarize ourselves before the Games. The hills in theis place were insane! The water was freezing and the weather wasn't great but Emily Unger made the place look beautiful with this photo!
Ok so if you're following this correctly, no we still haven't been home since PATCO and Kamloops... it was quite the adventure. This race the water was choppy and the bike course was interesting with many small loops. I had another great run and ended up finishing 11th Jr (13th overall) out of 22 (24).
After breifly going home it was back to Kamloops for the Western Canada Games. Overall it was a great experience. Lots of fun with new friends as well as really proud of Team Toba for giving it their all. Bringing home some hardware wasn't bad either.
Nationals was in Kelowna again and the race was going great until I almost got hit by a car on the bike course. It sucked to walk away with a DNF and crazy road rash but at least I was able walk away from it (once I got out of the ambulance that is), because it could have been a lot worse. Not an ideal end to the triathlon season but overall it had been good.
This year we continued running through cross country season, and this catches you up to where I started my blog. In zone meets I placed 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 1st and at provincials got a 7th place overall (out of about 250), which was enough for a AAA bronze as well as a team bronze. So much fun!
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
My shoulders suck
Well indoor season has officially began. As I mentioned in my previous post I was actuallay quite excited for this. This is the time of year where we get to do speed stuff. And short, fast sets on the track can actually be really fun. Yesterday we started with nothing too crazy, 4x150m with 250m jog recovery. But I was feeling quite good and did 25s for the first two and 26s for the next two. Hard to compare that to anything right now though, especially since it's kind of an awkward distance. I'm glad we get to start with this kind of stuff though because last year I was dealing with injuries and missed most of the speed work on the trrack. I felt like I was missing something once I was good to go and we switched to longer distances. Speaking of injuries, it's not always the good news that makes it onto this blog...
My shoulders suck. That's pretty much the only way of putting it. I have been dealing with these injuries for about 3 years now and it's not fun. I have solved some of the problems like range of motion. There was a very depressing time when I couldn't lift my arm high enough to brush my teeth (uh oh there I go talking about brushing my teeth... but I promise this once it is relevant!). I also had issues such as bicep tendonitis, deltoid bursitis, rotator cuff strain, and more with nice complicated names. To put it into simple terms: it hurt, it sucked. So now we are going through extra screening and xrays to try to solve this problem for good. It may now be an issue with my neck, or also partly because of my crash in summer. Because I haven't been swimming since then and it's gotten worse, to the point where it was causing headaches and I was on painkillers everyday. I was quite sad when the rest of my team began swimming and I could not.
We are also having meetings this week with parents/coach/psycologist/athlete. I'm struggling a bit with filling out the form, with goals specific to individual sports. I'm tired of putting for the swim: 'get un-injured finally and swim.' Or something along those lines. It's depressing. It seems like such a pathetic goal but what else can I really ask for? It's not like I can start improving my technique or hitting time standards until I can actually get in the pool.
My shoulders suck. That's pretty much the only way of putting it. I have been dealing with these injuries for about 3 years now and it's not fun. I have solved some of the problems like range of motion. There was a very depressing time when I couldn't lift my arm high enough to brush my teeth (uh oh there I go talking about brushing my teeth... but I promise this once it is relevant!). I also had issues such as bicep tendonitis, deltoid bursitis, rotator cuff strain, and more with nice complicated names. To put it into simple terms: it hurt, it sucked. So now we are going through extra screening and xrays to try to solve this problem for good. It may now be an issue with my neck, or also partly because of my crash in summer. Because I haven't been swimming since then and it's gotten worse, to the point where it was causing headaches and I was on painkillers everyday. I was quite sad when the rest of my team began swimming and I could not.
We are also having meetings this week with parents/coach/psycologist/athlete. I'm struggling a bit with filling out the form, with goals specific to individual sports. I'm tired of putting for the swim: 'get un-injured finally and swim.' Or something along those lines. It's depressing. It seems like such a pathetic goal but what else can I really ask for? It's not like I can start improving my technique or hitting time standards until I can actually get in the pool.
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