Happy Birthday Isla

It is summertime and I have not posted in ages on this blog, but what better topic to blog about than our little sweetheart's birthday! Isla turns four today, that is very hard to believe, and even harder to believe is she will be starting school this fall!
Here are some photos from the all four (five if you count the day she was born as a "birthday") birthdays:
The day that started it all:

First Birthday:

Second Birthday:

Third Birthday:

Fourth Birthday:

Happy Birthday Isla!

Take Care 

Ewan

National Capital Triathlon 2011 Race Report

I have done this race three years in a row and have improved my time each of those years. This year I was hoping to continue the trend. I thought I was in 2:12-2:13 shape and maybe close to 2:10 if all went really well.

This was also the first race triathlon race of the year (I had hoped to do some earlier races but it didn't work out). This year I am racing on the Planet X USA Tri Team and it was the first race for the new bike my Exocet, which I have called "Darth Velo"

Week leading up: Hard to describe but I felt a little off. Had a headache and felt fuzzy, and tired and legs were heavy from Tuesday on, workouts were not up to par, took Friday off totally.

Morning of: woke up at 5:30, slept pretty good woke up at 4:30 for a pee. Found it hard to eat and ended up that I didn't eat all of breakfast(SHOULD EAT MORE NEXT TIME), left home @7:00 and biked in to race venue.

WU: biking in felt good, just nice and eazy,  got in set up and went out for a run (about 3.5km) strides, bum scratches, and strides, back to bike final check list for bike and nutrition, gel before heading down for swim. Very short warm up as I didn’t have much time (go down a little sooner)

SWIM: gun went off, and I dolphin dived 4 or 5 times and settled into swimming, swam strong until the break in the buoy line. I seemed to be in with more people this year. In the past I have swam off to the side by myself as I have had some panic attacks before. This swim was the most contact I have had in a while, but wasn’t really a lot maybe five or six contacts with one kick in the face. I really slowed down  after the buoy line break (not really realizing it) I did make a conscious effort to go out hard and then back off, but looking back I backed off too much. I just sort off plodded along. The swim seemed long but maybe it was just I was swimming slower than last year. Swam wide around the turn around buoy and made my way back.  Swim back was much of the same, plodded back (but not realizing I was). Stood up at the beach when I was done and heard the announcer say 26min…WTF that was slow! Not the start I was hoping for.

SWIM Lessons Learned: need to have a plan for the rest of the swim, esp for an oly swim: set hard sections. Also training needs to have some hard longer sets (i.e. 3*500m hard, 4*400m hard)

T1: running up the beach I ran past a guy that I worked with several years ago, weird place to run into him! T1 went really well very quick and efficient

BIKE: Plan was to bike it HARD as I could, which I think I did. I passed a lot of people and was only passed by one person at the very very end of the ride. I knew I was having a good ride by gauging my progress against the other riders (who were ahead of me) as they not gaining time on me and I was gaining time on them). I felt great the whole ride. Took sips from my nutrition bottle at the back turn of each lap (maybe a little light on nutrition only drank about 2/3 of bottle … about  100cals). Just before the turn back to the transition area someone past me, I had actually passed him on the last “out” turn

Ended up with a time of 1:05 here is the bike output:

 T2: quick and efficient, I think my transitions were really good this year, I put about 15 secs on the guy who passed me on the bike

Run: the plan was to take the first 5km not full out(around 20min for 5km). The course is two 5km laps. felt good coming down the hill to the turn around, but after the  turn around I had weird stomach cramps, which made me decided to back off (mistake) the back part of the run loop is mostly uphill. And my pace slowed to 4:15s 4:20s. Ended up with 20:47 for the first 5km. after that I tried to pick it up but  could never get the sub 4:00 pace I wanted even on the downhill sections. After the aid station at 6.5km took water on my head and eload drinks, which made me feel better.  When I checked my wacth at 8km and saw 33:xx I was a little disappointed and mentally/physically slowed down . At 9kn I saw 37:XX  I was very disappointed cause I new sub 40 was out of the picture. I tried to pick up the pace up the final big hill but was still a slow pace. with about 500m to go the same guy that passed me on the bike ran by me, I tried to but in a big effort to go with him and took 5 or 6 good strides but my left hammi said NO and cramped, slowed really down and made my way to the finish line. Jogging down the chute I saw 2:18 and was pretty disappointed.

RUN Leasons Learned: A little more cals and electrolytes on the bike. OLY runs should EFFING hurt was not willing to go on the pain train. Need to race more to get used to hurting more and teach the central governor to deal with it!

Run output:

Actual Race Photos Here

Results Here

Overall: still dispite the slower time I still enjoyed myself, and enjoyed racing again.

Overall Leasson learned:

Even if not an A race still need to have plans for swim and run.

Ended  1^st in my age group and 6^th overall

That is all for now

Take Care

Ewan

Manotick 10km Road Race

Been a while since I have posted on the blog (hanging out on Facebook too much), but this past weekend I ran I my first race of the season, a 10km Road race in Manotick. It was great doing a race in our community!! Below is my race report, it has some notes to myself for future races about training and pacing, you can ignore those if you so choose.

Manotick 10km Road Race

Pre Race: had a great sleep on Thursday (our power was out so I went to bed when the kids went to bed and slept in, could not ride bike in dark), nutrition was not great on Thursday (no power so we ate at McDs). Training for the week was good, and I had a fairly big bike weekend the weekend before (Easter Long Weekend).

Race morning: Woke up at 5am to ride the bike 45min (3*2min hard and 5 *30secs pick ups). After that it was breakfast, watching cartoons with the kids and lots of bathroom visits( tummy felt un-easy )

Warm up: Because this is a truly local race I was able to run over to the race(2.6km). Most of it was at a nice EZ pace but with a couple of drills and strides thrown in. Once at the race site I did a little more running warm up with some pick ups to race pace.

The race start was delayed 20mins but it was no big deal as it was such a nice day. The start was announced so we lined up at the front and I was ready to rock.

1km: went out fast first 500m and I kept seeing 3:30 pace, after that consciously tried to slow pace down, slowed down too much saw 4:05, still went through 3:44. I was running in second place, the first place runner was way out in front(about 20-30secs)
Gun has gone and I am in first place

A second or two later and I am still in first place, but not by much ;)

A couple more seconds later and the lead is all but gone, and that would be the closest I got to the leader for the rest of the race!

2km and 3km : felt good settled into nice pace,  3 to 4 was a little slow 3:47 running on the gravel bank on Bankfield 

Went through 5km at 18:56 feeling pretty good.

6km  slowed down through park area lots of turns on wet mud(isn't mud always wet??) with no traction.

6 to 7km is was the only “bad” km should have put the gas down but backed off for some reason.

8km 9km got back in the game and started trying to catch the lead runner again, could have still pushed couple of secs faster.

9 to 10km dropped the hammer ran 3:37

Ended up 2 overall
Crossing the finish line

Happy with the race overall missed 37:xx by 2 secs lost that km 7. I think I executed the race well, but could have “raced” it better but I have run an open 10km in two years so a little rusty on pacing a 10km.

A pic of Keir and Isla "monkeying" around at the race

and finally Isla being silly for the camera (actually I think she is eating something here but she just looks so darn cute)

Full results here: http://www.sportstats.ca/display-results.php?lang=eng&racecode=47827 

That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Guys Weekend

This past weekend was a "Guys Weekend"...  no not that kind of Guys weekend, but it was more a Keir and Dad weekend.
Jen took Isla to her parents for the weekend and that meant that the boys had the rule of the house.  What does a "Guys Weekend" involve you ask? Well like I said above it wasn't a true "Guys weekend" with beer, wings, and chips. It was just a real nice weekend with my 7yr old son.
Keir had a birthday party on saturday morning but after that we went for a walk late in the afternoon on because Keir wanted to take some pictures.  Here are some the fruits of his labour:


Here is the photographer at work:




And I took a couple of photos as well

The Spoon:


After that it was super time, we decided to make our own pasta for supper, Keir documented the process
Starting:

Rolling it out


Finished product:

My supper (Keir's was a little different)

and finally Keir enjoying his supper and reading his Lego book at the supper table ... cause that is how we roll when there are no girls in the house ;)


It was great to have Keir all to myself for the weekend and I think Keir really enjoyed himself. Hopefully I can do this with Isla as well soon.
That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

TDIH March 16th

This photo isn't from March 16th exactly (I think it was posted on the 18th) but it is close enough. It is going way back to March 2008:

Holy Cuteness!!!!

Ewan

Camp Night

This past weekend we had some really wild weather, on saturday there was 15mm of rain and then over night it turned to 10cm of snow. Only problem with this was Keir was supposed to go on a overnight camping trip with his Beaver/Scout group. With the 15mm of rain  we put the kibosh on that so we improvised and camped out in our family room. We set the tent up and put out our sleeping bags.
Here is the tent set up in the "spacious" family room:

 

Here are the "neatly" set up sleeping bags:

Keir playing in his sleeping bag:

What do you do when  you go camping? Have a campfire of course, here is Keir and his "big fire" (in case you are unclear were the fire actually is, it is the pile of stuff on top of my brown slippers):

Isla even joined us for the camping,

If you look real close at the previous picture you can see that the tent played some weird tricks on her hair. It must have been some serious static, here is a closeup of the crazy hair:

I am glad to say that we survived the night in the "wilds" of the family room, we were not eaten by any bears, mountain lions, or mosquitoes.

Here is a picture of the early at the camp site:

I guess that is what you call making the best out of a bad situation.

That is all for now

Take care 

Ewan

Hockey Night

Last friday Keir, my Dad and myself went to an Ottawa Senators game. The tickets were part of Keir's Xmas presents and he had been looking forward to it for ... well since Xmas ;-)

We started off with supper before the game, we got Keir a hamburger and fries, he proceeded to have about three bites and two fries. I asked why he wasn't eating, his response was that he wanted to save room for "hockey food". "What is hockey food?" I asked. "Giant Pretzels!" Keir said with a smile.

The game was against the Boston Bruins, ironically it was also Chris Kelly (a long time Ottawa Senator, that got traded to the Bruins) first game for the Bruins. It was also Thomas Caberale first game as a Bruin, the Bruins were very active in the trade market as they seem to be stocking up for a playoff run.

We made it out to the game and eventually found our seats, here is Keir happily waiting for the game to start:

Before the game started the national anthems (American and Canadian) was played. They  started a tradition a couple of years ago, the traditon is while the Canadian National Anthem is being sung, they pass around a really, really big flag:

Keir enjoying the game:

Keir enjoying more "hockey food" timbits! Not sure how those are hockey food but that is what he asked for:

We had great seats (probably some of the best in the arena) in the second ring of the arena. You really got to see the game, but were also close enough to see all the action. The seats below us are technically "better" than ours (they are more expensive) but the glass and the netting can obscure the play.

Here is Keir and Grandpa near the end of the game.

The Sens ending up losing the game (they have lost a ton of games this year, although they actually played fairly well all things considered) but most importantly we all had a really good time.
That is all for now
Take care
Ewan