Many of you are no doubt aware that I’ve gotten a bit of a racing bug in the past couple years. Since joining the public service, I’ve had much more predictable hours in my work week, which has lent itself well to being able to put in a lot of extra hours training and racing. As a result, last year, I raced in a record-setting 15 different races in the span of 10 months! Not only did I greatly increase my race volume, but my results have been dramatically improving as well. On the adventure racing front, I managed to podium finish a few times, including 2nd place in the 48-hour Quest For a Cure (2-person male category). In the triathlon world, I decided to take a stab at a 1/2 Iron-distance race, and finished with a time of 5 hrs. 11mins, which was a great time for a first try! I’m hoping that this year will find me able to put in just as much passion into racing again, and I’ve decided to yet again try to raise the bar for racing. I don’t mean racing more often, but taking on greater challenges and trying to podium every chance I get 😉 It’s only February, and I’ve already raced in 3 different events! A leg injury has been somewhat hampering my podium chances, but I’m addressing that. So can you guess what the title of my posting means yet? Read on.
Good day all. When you last left your hero, he had just arrived in Puerto Plata and was looking forward to a week of food, drink, sun and fun. Sadly, your hero has just realized he’s getting waaay behind in his blog posts, and may have to shorten a few posts in order to play catch-up! After all, we’ve got the Dominican to write about, a winter poker night in Calabogie, not to mention a crazy weekend of double races! Whew. Given that on average it takes me an hour just to write one posts, well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out I’ve got to speed things up. I wonder how much it would cost me to get a ghost writer to do my posts for me? After all, my plan is that once I’m older, I’ll just dump all my blog posts to a ghost writer who’ll then write my best-selling autobiography 😉 Of course, I’ll have to do a few more interesting things first, but I’m working on it! Anyway, back to the beautiful Blue Bay Getaway in Puerto Plata (Playa Dorado to be exact). Let’s see just what I did to pass those lonely days.
I just thought that I’d post a pseudo-update to a post I made last week regarding obesity. In fact, this post will more closely resemble the antithesis of obesity. Last week, on Thursday, I had the good fortune of taking a day off the daily grind to contribute something to society as a whole. I volunteered at the Ottawa Food Bank. In case you are wondering, one of the elements in my union contract (yup, that’s right, I’m unionized, not by choice, but it has certain benefits) is that I am entitled to a paid day of leave for volunteer work. Personally, I think it’s a great idea, and rather than just pretend I took a volunteer day, I really did volunteer. Some people (okay, probably a lot), just take the day off claiming volunteer work, but don’t do anything, since technically, no one is allowed to question what you did! Actually, come to think of it, I think this is a government-endorsed thing, not a union thing, but I digress. My tasks for the day were quite menial, which was actually fine by me. People that are there frequently complained about how slow 8 hours goes by when you’re sorting food. Personally, I found the opposite. I found it quite enjoyable to do something manual for a change. Turns out I’m quite adept at mindless physical labour. Of course, I knew that from my two years doing shift work at Michelin Tires at the Granton plant close to my home in N.S.
Oh humble reader, feast your eyes on the figure to the right. If you have any experience in classic technique of XC skiing, you’ll note that my technique is horrible, perhaps you may even say absent! That didn’t stop me from pushing for 1hr 40mins in the cold yesterday in preparation for the Winterlude Triathlon this weekend. Yup, I had those skis for 2 weeks now, and that was the first time I took them out. The reason why it took a while was that I had to take a ski waxing course, and buy all the supplies to get them tuned up for the snow. To do that, I took a clinic (free) at Fresh Air Experience where they took us through all the steps in waxing the glide and kick zones of skis for classic style. Looks like I’m in over my head again in a new hobby, although I’ll just call it an addition to my existing hobbies. I spent Saturday afternoon hot waxing my skis, and selecting the right grip wax for the skis. It was kind of fun, but also rather time-consuming. Oh well. I’ve also decided that I’ll have to be okay with coming in last place at the triathlon this weekend. If any of you are interested in witnessing this spectacle, drop by Dow’s Lake Pavillion Saturday around 9am. That’s the start time of the race, which will consist of about 5km of skating, then 5km of skiing, and finished off with 5km of running. Not what I’d call an epic course, but it should be fun. Most participants will likely be much faster than me, but I’ve never tried anything like it. Even the skating has got me down a bit. All I’ve got are some pretty old Bauer Charger skates, which are apparently not the right thing to use. As such, I’ve got my eyes on renting a pair of Nordic Skates to try out. These babies use the same boots as my skis (same binding system), and have really long, narrow blades that easily glide over all the imperfections of ice like the canal. They were designed in the Scandinavian countries, where people do lots of skating on frozen rivers and lakes. They look pretty cool, and would solve my dilemma about uncomfortable skates on the canal as well. Here’s hoping!
