Family Walk

With summer coming to an end (sorry someone had to say it....) we decided to go for a walk last night because we were not sure how many more nice summer nights there would be.
We went to a trail that is owned by my place of employment

It is a nice little walk in and around the Jock River, and a nice natural setting in a urban area. We got to the trailhead and Keir had to make a ..... errr.... "pitstop"

With that out of the way we set off. BTW Keir decided we should pack supplies for the hike, hence both of the backpacks on the kids. Keir's didn't last long (about 5mins and then he decided it was too heavy). The trail leads you down to the river. Here is what you see looking the "nice" way (i.e. the natural way)

and here is the looking the other direction:

The kids had fun exploring all around up and down:

All in all it was a nice little walk, espcially considerding it was 10mins from home.
Here is the full photo set here

That is all for now
Take care

Ewan

U7 Soccer World Cup

I just realized that I haven't updated much on Keir's soccer lately. Well the Ivory Coast team has improved each week and is actually playing very well as a team, It has been very interesting watching them progress. The one thing that has been constant from week to week has been the rain!!! It seems that Mother Nature has rain scheduled for Tuesday Evenings this summer.
This past week was their last regular season game, it was "versus" (like Keir likes to say) England. And they promptly won it! Nothing like waiting till the last game of the year for he first win :-)
After the last game was the end of season tournament, 3 games back to back on Sunday morning. Sunday morning we awoke to lighting, thunderstorms and rain (thanks Mother Nature!) The kids had fun on a fairly successful day. They tied one game and lost two(but played very well in those games).
Keir said that he enjoyed the season and would play again next year (if his friends played), which is all we can ask.

That is all for now

Ewan

AWESOME

Warning: Star Wars Nerd Alert!!!! (Yes that would be me)
Check out this deleted scene from Return of the Jedi
http://www.theblurayblog.com/2010/08/video-star-wars-blu-ray-return-of-the-jedi-deleted-scene-debut/

Changes

No not those kind of changes, but I have made some changes to the blog, I have added a menu bar above /\ with the different choices of what you may want to look at (Family, Race Reports, Cool Photos) Hopefully it make the site a bit more useful in the end. You can also search the site with the searchbar on the side ->
There is also a fishy surprise on the bottom :-)

Ewan

Race Report

National Capital Olympic Triathlon July 31, 2010
Race Week: A week a felt a little “off”, the only thing I can pin point was on Sunday I was stung by a hornet (which hurt a LOT) then Monday and Tuesday I had a huge headache, consequently all week long my workouts all felt a little off. I even had a cramp in my foot swimming (haven’t had that happen in ages) on Thursday. I was also trying to wrap several things up at work (as I was taking the next week off) so the whole week was a little “off”.
Race Morning: I had planned to get up at 5:15 but ended up sleeping in till 5:50am. I got up and tried to eat breakfast but couldn’t eat much which is pretty normal. I ended up leaving the house a little late (I was biking in to the race venue) I guess it was fair to say I was a little unorganized this morning. Further evidence of that was I forgot my one of my water bottles and my energy gels. LESSON LEARNED: plan ahead, have a plan for the race and race morning no matter the size of the race.
Warm up: I biked into the race (about 40mins) and again felt off, had a small stomach cramp (not a good sign). Once at the race I set up my transition area (for those that aren’t sure what a transition area is: it is a the large area at the race where racers rack their bikes and “transition” between sports, each racer has their only little spot to set up their bike and running shoes and anything else they need). My run warm up was fine, felt good on the run. I got a quick swim warm up in as I didn’t have much time left (see Race Morning Section!)
Swim: My plan was to stick to the outside away from any contact. In a couple of previous races I have gotten boxed in with a bunch of other swimmers and it really isn’t a good feeling. I felt ok after the first 250m, from 300m to the turn around I really struggled with my motivation (not sure why) but I even took some breatsrokes when I really didn’t have any reason to do so. After the turn around  I really got going I think I brought it home fairly strong and swam a pretty straight line. Time : 25:58

SWIM LESSON LEARNED: I could have swam harder. I also have to trust my training  (but I still need more more longer straight open water swims) I keep looking for reasons _not_ to push it in the swim, if I want to get faster I will have to push it more in the swim.
Transition 1: I past 3-4 people on the run up to t-zone, wetsuit came of great, watch strap didn’t go on well (despite practicing it) passed one more person running out with the bike. Mount was OK.
Bike: I wanted to really push the pace one the bike. The course was a 4 * 10km loop course (for 40km) and the out portion was into the head wind and you would get the tale wind on the back portion. On a course like this (closed to traffic and multi lap) my plan was simple: bike as hard as possible and take nutrition on at each turn around. Everything went according to plan, so there is not much to say about the bike. The only problem was that my chain would skip on the bottom three gears so I could use them on the downhills (lost a little time there) and at about half way the hips felt a little tight but the legs felt great the whole time. Time: 1:03:33
Here is the Speed vs Heart Rate Graph from the race:

One Race shot from the race photographer (notice the drafter stuck behind me....he is hard to see as he is stuck to my wheel after I past him, something you are not aloud to do! HINT: look at the second shadow behind me)

T2: very good in and out no wasted time
Run: felt great starting the run I purposely held back because I know that first 1kmcan be really fast especially on this course, I even tucked in behind a guy who started talking about how some guys on the bike hand only done 3laps????) everything was going good and I was feeling really good until a slight downhill at 4.25kms and my hamstring tightend up, crap!@!!! Not good, I kept running but had to slow my pace up a fair bit… I didn’t give up instead I shifted my focus to counting my steps to distract my brain from the hamstring tightness, this seemed to work and after about 1.5kms I was back to normal. But I wasn’t running with a full stride ( I saw a duathalete running who was a pure runner, and that is how I should be running in a tri). A 8.25km left I picked up my pace and passed I guy that had been in front of me for a while, I tried to bring it home as hard as I could, the last km has a huge hill in it and it _HURT_ , with 100m to go you turn of the path and run up a small hill to run to the finishing shoot, I ran that as hard as I could, I running down the shoot I looked up and saw the clock and it said 2:14:33, I had 27secs to break 2:15 and only about 50m left, I put my head down and ran as hard as I could. Time: 40:15
Here is the run splits from the race guess where the cramp hit??

RUN LESSONS LEARNED: I still think I have another notch on the run (avg HR 173 for a 10km it should be closer to 177) it is hard to keep and even pace on this course but if possible I should have done it.


more photos here
 
Overall: Crossed in 2:14:42 good for 10th place I a, Happy with placing and time (about 2min improvement over last yea), but not happy with my swim performance. I think my run could have been better as well.

Cool Contest

I just enter a contest to win a new GPS/HRM watch, you too can enter:
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/08/garmin-forerunner-310xt-giveaway.html
BTW: this is an amazing blog that has quickly become on of my favorite blogs, have a read around.

Holiday Part 2

I have taken a second week of holidays this week (the first week of August), for the first couple of days we were up at the cottage relaxing. We got some really good photos. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Jumping Isla:

Jumping Keir:

Exploring:

My new desktop:


here are the two sets one and two where you can see a bunch more of photos
That is all for now... got to limit computer time while on vacation!

Ewan

First Week of Summer

Keir school officially ended on June 25th, so the following week was his first day of summer.
It was a full week, he had Golf Camp (yes he chose Golf camp as his camp for the summer) and swim team started off on Wednesday as well. Throw in soccer on Tuesday and you can see that by the end of the week he was pretty tired (but has he been sleeping more....not so much, he has been getting up earlier an earlier but that is another story for another blog!)
Jen and I were a little worried about Keir's choice of Golf Camp, we were thinking that Keir's 6yr old attention span and golf might not be a great fit. But for the most part he enjoyed himself. It was a week long camp from 9 till 12, culminating with the camp playing 9 holes of golf on friday!
Typical Keir when asked what his favorite part of the camp was he said it was when he got to drink Coke on the BBQ on friday. This was the first time ever he drank Coke, so I guess it was a big deal.

Lest you think this blog is all about Keir, here is one of my all time favorite pictures _ever_

Swim Meet

Quick post here, today was Keir's swim meet here in Manotick. This is the second year he has done swim team @ Manotick and every summer they have a swim meet. The swim team is called the Manotick Marlins. Keir swims in the 6 and under catagory, which is an advantage to him as he is probably one of the older 6 year olds on his team. Keir has really enjoyed swim team this year and swimming in general (we have been at the pool a lot this summer).
Keir swam in the 25m freestyle, 25m backstroke, and the 25m breaststroke and he did really well (1st, 2nd, and 1st), he also won a medal for best 6year old swimmer! He was pretty happy, but most importantly he really enjoyed himself.
Here is the full photo album
This is one of my fav pics from the album (Keir with his heat numbers)


that is all for now take care

Ewan

Smiths Falls Triathlon Race Report

Been meaning to write this up for a while but I have had the time yet. It is a race report from a triathlon I did last weekend. I did write much (or any I think) race reports last year for the blog. I do write down some of my thoughts on what happened for all the races I do, so it really doesn’t take much work to turn those thoughts into something for the blog. So without further delay here is my race report for the Smiths Falls Triathlon.
Pre-Race: was fairly normal and I trained throughout the week as if I didn’t have a race on the weekend. It wasn’t a standard training week as I had to travel to Toronto for a meeting which messed up my swimming schedule. So knowing that I focused on the run during the two days I was away and managed to swim a little when I got back. On Saturday, after training in the morning, we went down to Jen’s parents, who live just outside Smiths Falls, and it poured rain as we were driving down: hopefully not a sign of things to come tomorrow. Jen and I got to go out for an early supper at a great restaurant called the Goodwood Oven. I had a great sleep on Saturday night; I fell asleep reading to Keir @ 9pm and woke up at 6am. A normal breakfast and then I got my stuff packed up and biked into the race.
Day: Sunday June 20th 2010
Here I was floating in the water waiting for the horn to sound. The start of the Smiths Falls Triathlon is a couple of minutes away and I could help but reflect on the my first ever tri which was also here (but over 6years ago), the feelings were much different. During my first tri there was a _Lot_ more nerves and fear, this time around a was really excited about racing (even the swim!). The count down started 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…. GO!
Swim 500m:

I had positioned myself pretty well, just on the outside at the front (the red dot on the map) which worked out to be a pretty direct line to the turn around buoy (marked C on the map). I started out great, and got away clean (no bumping) but about 75m in my goggles started to leak something fierce. I was faced with a decision, do I stop and fix them or keep going? Since it was a short swim (should be under 8mins of swimming) I figured I would just tough it out. By now my right goggle was almost totally full of water and the left wasn’t much better. When swimming in a triathlon one of the more important things to do is sighting your swim, this is really just looking up every now and then to make sure you are swimming towards your target in a straight fashion. Well sighting with goggles ¾ full is hard as it turns out, and I soon started to swim in a zig-zag line and ran into another competitor. That was my sign to pull out to the side and re-adjust my goggles. One of the safety kayakers asked if I was ok, and I tried to make a joke about my goggles. Not to worry I thought this will just cost me a tiny bit of time but won’t set me back to much… well it happened two more times that I need to stop and fix my goggles. I guess I rushed it each time and never got the proper seal. A little frustrating and it probably cost me about one minute to a minute and a half. Apart from the goggle mix up the swim felt good but not great, never really got into a rhythm (because of the goggles).
You exit the water and have to run about 200m up to the transition area to get on your bike. I got to my bike quickly and started to peel the rest of my wetsuit off, I heard Jenny,Keir and Isla cheering me on. Keir told me he had seen his friend Preston and I tried to think of something funny to say back to him but after sprinting up 200m the best I could come up with was “that’s great Keir”. Helmet on, race number on, Watch on and I was gone.
Bike 26km:
This year I have really been working on my biking (not running a marathon in the spring helps your biking a lot) and wanted to have a good bike split. The plan was to bike as hard as I could for the 26km, “red-line it” so to speak. The course is a nice course on open roads and it takes place early on Sunday morning so the roads are fairly quite. It took a couple of minutes to get out of town and then I was able to really open it up. The bike ride was uneventful, I did pass a lot of people and was able to keep my pacing were it needed to be for my “Red-line” level of effort. The last 10km was into a head wind on some rolling terrain so my speed did drop but my effort was still high. Here is the proof:

I was happy to get back to the transition area and managed to ride 2min faster than the last time I did race (in arguably tougher conditions).
Run (5km)
The run is usually where I make up ground, so I was pretty confident heading out onto the run. The run at Smiths Falls is all up hill for the first 2km and then basically all downhill after that. I felt good on the run but never felt great. It was very hot out by the time the run got going and there was a couple people out on the run course try to help with that: there was one guy with a super soaker water guns and another guy had a water hose spraying people who were asking for it. With a km to go I tried to push it but I never felt like I got going up to speed.

Overall:
I was pretty happy with the whole race, very happy with my bike, ok with my run and somewhat pleased with my swim. I ended up in a time of 1:11.56 which was good for 14th overall. I am pleased with that coming in I thought top 20 was possible (my previous best was 32nd). I have some good ideas of what to work on in the coming weeks. I really did enjoy the race and am looking forward to the next race. After the race was over I met up with Jenny and the kids, got Keir and Isla some bananas and bagels. We didn’t stick around very long as it was really hot and the kids were ready to leave.

Full Results Here: http://sportstats.ca/display-results.php?lang=eng&racecode=46494
Full Pics here: http://www.zoomphoto.ca/eventgallerysearch/11927/112/1/

Ewan

World Cup 2010 - the U7 edition Rd 4

Italy 1- Ivory Coast 0
When it rains it pours. It was just starting to rain when we were having supper before the game. Not to worry we thought, it is just drizzling not to worry, well the rain just stronger and stronger. As per the league rules, the only time they will cancel a game is when the is lighting, so we played on in the rain.
The game itself was kinda a mess (like the kids uniforms after playing in the rain)but the kids are starting to get the concepts of passing and defense. Keir just about scored the tying game! He hit the post in the second half with a great kick!
The kids all had a blast playing in the rain and were all soaking wet when it was all said and done

Ewan

OSU U7 World Cup Rd3

Back with another World cup update!
Ivory Coast 1 - Spain 1
I actually am filing this report with second hand information as I missed the game because I was driving back from Toronto (for work). So having said that details are little sketchy from my 6yr old source!
Keir did play goalie for one half(all the kids have to play goalie at least once so we rotate them through on a weekly basis). He did let the one goal in but it didn't really seem to bother him, and he made several other saves. He even asked me if he could play goalie again next week.
I also know that Charlie (who is one of Keir's best friends) scored our goal. Other than that details were a little vague.

Tune in next week as Ivory Coast takes on the powerhouse Azzurri (Italy)

Ewan

World Cup 2010 - the U7 edition Rd 2

World Cup u7 round 2
Ivory Coast 0 - USA 2:
Well the second game of the season was last night, and Ivory Coast came up on the short end of the stick! It was actually a very good game on our part , some excellent passing (which tends to be a rarity in u7 soccer) and defending but we just got some bad luck on the USA's two goals.
Keir still seems very interested in the games, he even had had a small break up the field (all be it when he was supposed to be playing defence, as a side note: I have come to find out the positions in u7 soccer are really just a suggestions or better yet a starting point for the kids as they tend to "clump" up around the ball).
We even had our first soccer scar, when Keir fell down in one of the "clumps" and was accidentally stepped on in the melee!
Next week we take on World Cup favorites Spain!!!!!

Ewan

We do have a daughter as well

Just so you don't think there is too much Keir on this blog ... here is a couple of photos of Isla

More teeth Photos

I just posted the last photo really quick on thursday morning of Keir's missing teeth. Now that I have a little more time here is a little more info. I would say that Keir has been very late in loosing his teeth, I think most of his friends in his class have lost at least one tooth. Keir's teeth are very closely spaced, so we always thought that was the reason it was taking so long for his teeth to loosen. A couple of weeks we noticed that one of his lower front teeth was a little loose. Then about a week ago we notice his adult tooth coming in _behind_ his baby teeth. This meant a visit to the Dentist. Here is what the teeth looked like. I guess usually the roots of the old teeth get broken up by the incoming teeth, but because there was so little space, Keir's teeth are so closely spaced the roots only got have broken up.

This is the best part, here is Keir's note to the Tooth Fairy. Apparently you write letters to the Tooth Fairy outlining what you would like in exchange for the first teeth you loose!


This is smiling Keir after he got back, lip still swollen from the freezing.



That is all for now

Ewan

two down....

Pics

Just going through some of the photos on the memory cards and found this one from last weekend (Victoria Day Holiday), it embodies what I think of when I think of the cottage.

I also found this one of Keir being silly:

World Cup 2010 - the U7 edition

World Cup 2010 - the U7 edition
So Keir will start soccer tonight. This is the third year he will be playing soccer. So far his team names have been the Blue Jays, the Orange Dragons. His team shirts colours were... you guessed it Blue and Orange.
This year the local soccer organization has decided to tie into the World Cup and name the teams after the teams competing in the actual World Cup. So Keir's team is representing Ivory Coast. Stay tuned to see if Ivory Coast can bring home the Cup!!!
As a side note: I am an assistant coach on the team, which should be an interesting experience: trying to get a bunch of 6-7yr old boys to direct their collective energies at the soccer ball and not the "inset name of whatever shinny object here". Hey if we can just make sure they get their treats after the game I think _they_ will think we are doing a great job.:-)

Edit: updating this for the final score for all you people who have the u7 world cup pool ;-) the final score was Argentina 1 Ivory Coast 1.

Ewan

Kids say the funniest things part2

as requested by my mom here is another installment of Kids Say the Funniest Things:

Scene: My mom was watching Isla on Wednesday, and they were getting ready to go out and my mom asked Isla if she ready. Isla's response was:"Let's Rock and Roll!"

I am affraid I might be responsible for imparting that pharse to my daughter

btw: the photo is not Isla, it is just what I came up with when I googled "Let's Rock and Roll"
Ewan

Happy Easter!

This past weekend was Easter weekend, which meant I got a four day weekend and Keir also had the friday and monday off school. We are having unusually warm weather here, I think it got close to 30 on Friday!!! We had a great weekend with lots of Chocolate of course!
On sunday we were at Jen's parents place and were playing around with some bubbles. It was a really windy day so the bubbles would blow themselves just by holding the bubble wand up to the wind.
Here are a couple of my favorite pics from the bubbles:
Isla and Jen blowing the bubbles (and yes Isla is in a "Fancy Nancy" too-too):

The kids wanted to chase the bubbles, here is Keir in full flight after the bubbles:


And here is a close up of Keir chasing the bubbles,I like to focus in his eyes:


Off to get more chocolate!
Ewan