Blah

Or,
So flat a pancake looks high.

I was part way through my swim this morning, cruising along, not fast, but better than I have been recently, when it suddenly came to me I'd slipped back to the 'old' normal, and part of the reason was that I was taking little tiny baby breaths. I started rolling a bit more, breathing deeper, and trying to put a bit more effort into it. Of course, when you start concentrating on one part of your stroke the rest goes to shite. Then I noticed my hands were crossing the centre line big time out front and I started wondering how long that had been going on. Things sort of fell apart after that, so I was just under 30 min for 1500 m. Tried some drill. Blah. Nearly drowned. Balance in the water is totally off. Golf scores 84 and 85. The pool felt really long today. Really really long. Suffered through an hour in the pool, and 15 minutes of core work in the dive tank.

When I got home again I went back to bed. I don't often do this, but even getting good sleep most evenings I am not as rested as I'd like to be.

The run, if you want to call it that, was total, utter, and complete shite. I didn't particularly want to go, but drove myself through my normal pre-run routine. I figured it's gotten better before. There I am, running easy at a relaxed warm up pace, wondering:

• why I'm breathing so hard, as in almost gasping


• if I'm going to puke.


• why my feet hurt, when they have never complained before during a run.


• why one spot on my left shin keeps feeling like a bee stung it. A BIG bee.


• why my left knee is going squeak squeak squeak.


• why I can't focus on the run, and my brain keeps wandering away. Good thing I've got it on a leash these days.


• why I can't get any rhythm, no flow, no groove.


• if they did some subtle construction on the path because my feet keep tripping over stuff.


• why I'm being such a weenie about the temperature; it's either too warm when the sun is out, or too cold when its not.


• why I can't even run up a small hill. Like a teeny tiny hill. The one from 37 st back into the neighbourhood.


• how long I'm going to put up with feeling like this before it either gets better or I call it off.

I lasted 18 minutes and walked back to the house. That's probably one of the very worst runs I've ever had. I'm not even going to count it as a workout.

I still can't draft off Susi

But at least I can keep up with her now. Last year when she dropped down onto the aero bars she was gone. Now, I have to pick it up a bit, but she doesn't drop me. However, being behind her doesn't get me anything. A 6'3 guy on 700 wheels without aero bars isn't going to have much luck drafting someone 5'2 on 650 wheels in aero.

Here it hailed and snowed and rained and everything in between yesterday. Highwood would have been a potentially fatal mistake. Today started nice but very cold, and it gradually clouded over. It was about 10 C (50 F) when Susi and I were dressing. And windy. I wore a toque under my helmet for the first time, and just as well. For a while I'd wondered if I'd worn enough. At least the roads were dry.

We scooted out 22X along the Chinook half route, looking for about a 3 hour ride. It's hard to judge when to turn around because the wind can play havoc with your plans. Today was a stiff wind out of the south so we had a cross wind most of the ride. We ended up turning around in the Priddis valley. We started easy, and pushed along at a comfortable pace, since the west bound lanes have a great bike lane till the 22 turn off. We rode and chatted, as best we could between the wind noise and passing traffic. From the 22 turn off we picked up the pace a bit.

After the turn around we picked up the pace more, pushed hard up the hills, and tried to maintain speed on the flats. Susi clung like a burr and actually led for a bit. We got back in 2:44, averaging 25.1 kph overall, which is pretty good given the wind and our easy start.

6:45 transition.
20 minute run for 3 K run nice and easy, chatting most of the way. I just went back through my blog and that run after a bike used to take 30 minutes a year ago, and I remember it damn near killed me. Today I found my legs right away, and maybe could have run it faster if I'd been willing to push hard. I'm never really sure how hard to push these T runs. Less than a half hour after the run, a brief rainstorm swept through. That would have been miserable to still be on the bike, so I think we timed the turnaround pretty well. Snacked and stretched. Showered and ate. Sushi, BBQ chicken, salad, and ice cream with fresh raspberries.

Weekly summary
Swim 2.0 hrs
Bike 6.0 hrs
Run 3.5 hrs
Total 11.5 hrs plus another hour of yoga and stretching if you want to count that.
Not bad for coming off a rest week and not wanting to pile it back on too suddenly. My calves were still a bit achey for most of the week. The yoga workout on Thursday helped a lot, and the bike and run today has them feeling pretty good.

I picked up the book Chi Running by Danny and Katherine Dreyer, and read it through in one go last night. It certainly seems like there is some good stuff in there, and I'll be going over it more carefully. Have any of my faithful blog readers had any experience with it? How did it work out for you? It seems very practical and sensible.

A nice run in the hail

The good thing about hail is that you don't get wet. It bounces off you and goes somewhere else.

I walked a bit to start, then ran easy. The right amount of clothing was a tough call today. I was expecting rain, and it was certainly cool and windy out. I realized I'd got it right when I started running, and also realized I was going to have a good run. I warmed up for 15 minutes, nice and easy, going at a pace that would have left me winded only a couple months ago. I'm going to have to recalibrate my runs. It started hailing during the warm up, though it didn't really last long. It sort of snowed and hailed and rained throughout the run, as if it couldn't make up it's mind.

Did 3 x 10 minutes hard, with about 3 minutes rest in between. The plan was to run my goal half IM pace, which I can't quite do yet for a whole half IM. So today I just tried for max speed over the 10 minutes. This goal pace is not something I anticipate achieving this year for an entire half IM. I admit some uncertainty as to my exact pace, since I don't have a Garmin. The 10 minute segments felt faster than the Police Half pace, but that's very subjective.

The first 10 minutes started with a good downhill, then flat, followed by a rest at a very easy jog that dropped my heart rate by almost 30 bpm. The next 10 min was flat, then up hill ending about 3/4 the way up. It's hard getting your breath back at a jog when it's going uphill. The next 10 almost got me back home, running hard enough for the last 2 minutes to begin to think about regretting my breakfast. However all was well, and I jogged easy to fill out the hour run. Walked to cool down a bit more. I could see my breath on the air for most of the run, and at the end I was steaming a bit, so I took care not to cool down too much outside.

The ride up Highwood pass is off. (boo!) Here's the weather forecast for the town about 30 K east of the start of the road up the pass. The pass is more than 7,000 feet high. It seems all too likely there will be snow or ice on the road. It didn't take much discussion to decide that taking our skinny tire bikes up the pass would be dumb. We were prepared to deal with rain and cold, but snow and ice is a bit much. Another time! Longview is only a 60 K drive from here, and we're expecting to get snow overnight. What fun!

oops. But it turned out ok.

I know you all want to know about the oops. But first things first.

The last few days have been pretty intensive on the wine front. I bottled the white, and had to make space for that on the racks. At the same time I had to do quite a bit more shuffling to make room for the red. I only have space for 464 bottles, and with the latest bottling, there are 424 bottles, so it's hard to find space for a block of 28 or 29.

While I was getting ready to bottle the white, I noticed lots of the bottles had some water spots, or a bit of guck from the labels, and some had a bit of cork residue, or a faint film on the inside of the bottle. I'm really fussy about my glass. Although red wine is normally bottled in green glass, I use clear. The commercial wines are in green to help mitigate the effects of storing wine in direct sunlight. That's hard on wine. My wine is stored in the basement where it never sees direct sunlight. Plus, and more important, you can glance at clear glass and know if it's clean.

Here's a photo showing the white and red ready to rack into another carboy and then bottle. You can see how clear the white is, and the layer on the bottom of everything that settles out. What you can't see is the glass of wine I was drinking while bottling.


I ran a big batch of glass through a bleach solution, then a cleanser to clean the bleach, then rinsed. The bottles go on a rack to dry. Yes, that's Estela in the background.


The trickiest part of the whole process is racking the wine into another carboy in preparation for bottling. You want to get all the wine, and none of the sediment. What makes it tricky is that you can't see where the bottom of the siphon is. When you're done, you're left with this.


Here I am, all ready to start bottling. Once you start you can't really stop till you're done, so I like to make sure everything is all ready to go.


You can't really see the siphon wand, but it's clever doodad with a little valve at the bottom of the tube. As long as it's sitting on the bottom of the bottle, the wine will flow. As the wine fills up the bottle and the level moves into the neck, you lift the wand and the flow stops. It's at the perfect level.


Here's how you get the cork into the bottle. You can see the bottle underneath, and the top of the cork. As you press down the lever it compresses the cork and inserts it into the bottle. You saw the corks sitting in a bit of water in an earlier photo. Being wet helps the insertion process.


Here's the 29 bottles I got, plus there is another 3/4 of a bottle. I normally get 28 bottles from a kit. They say it makes 30, but that's only happened a couple of times. You'd have to be really really good with your racking to do that.


Now I'm putting on labels. They are provided in the better kits. There are different ways of doing this, here I'm peeling off a backing paper, and the label is already sticky. I suspect it's going to be a bitch to get the label off again when I'm cleaning the glass. The general rule is that the easier the label goes on, the harder it is to get off. Some just soak off. The Australian Verdhelo is a plastic label that just peels off, sweet! Some I soak for a while, then use a tool that is normally used to apply cement for ceramic tiles to shred and scrape it off.


Here's the label stuck to the bottle and ready to be pressed down.


Last is a shrink wrap cap to go over the cork. Some people don't bother with this, but my thinking is that with the shrink wrap cap, you KNOW the cork and glass rim is clean, regardless of how dusty your basement is. And I have to admit (hangs head in shame) our basement is dusty. Plus, if you ever give your wine as a gift, having the shrink wrap on it makes it look nicer. Every now and then we let our financial advisor drop by and pick out a case. Lisa K, if you're reading this, don't think about us giving gifts, and your upcoming wedding. (Fans of a recent blog by Julie, look in the background.)


There it is on the rack, to sit for 3 months or so. We're sampling the 3/4 of a bottle I mentioned earlier, and it's pretty good. A bit sharp and raw, but it would be perfect if we were having something spicy for supper, like an Argentine steak in chimichanga sauce. Which, oddly enough, is on the menu for tomorrow. You can see the dust on some of the bottles. This is the rack where the last few bottles in a batch end up. I think our oldest wine is more than 5 years old, and in some cases, it's almost heart breaking to drink the last one.


And now the oops. No, I didn't forget to put on my swim shorts. I forgot to take the bag that has the swim gear, towel, ect. I dropped Linda off, then drove to FOMC, and was staring stupidly into the back seat after parking. It took a minute to sink in. After I got home I did an hours worth of yoga/pilates/stretching/massage stuff. The more I had thought about it, the less I liked that wooden feeling my legs had yesterday. I figured something different would be good, and it was. ooooooooohhhhhhh. I needed that.

After some breakfast and puttering about doing wine stuff I headed out for a bike ride. This was an hour of easy spin at low effort and trying to keep my heart rate down. Over the entire hour my average rpm was 85. I didn't care about speed and rode around in Woodbine, Woodlands, Canyon Meadows, Oakridge, and Cedarbrae, just looking at the world and having fun. While I never got lost, I did spend some time on streets that I've never been on before. It was beautiful out, warm and sunny. People are out enjoying it while it lasts. The forecast for the weekend sucks big time. Can you see the S word? But the bike ride will go ahead as planned, unless it actually is snowing. No such thing as bad weather, only poor clothing choices.

Pinocchio legs

As soon as I got in the pool I promptly forgot the workout plan. I knew there was stuff in it, drills, golf, intervals and such. Maybe senility is approaching; that's twice now I've totally spaced on the workout. They aren't THAT complicated.

Maybe it's just as well. I was mostly done my warm up and was thinking about what to do next, when the pool big dog got into my lane. Not surprising, I was swimming along in an orderly way, just a hair quicker than 2 min per 100 m. Everywhere else was chaos, with lane walkers, people trying to swim, the talkers (who are well behaved, btw), and some people trying to do something else.

The warm up had gone well. I'm still not feeling really strong, but I was feeling smoother. Once he started, I picked up the pace a bit. I was lapped quickly since he had started just behind me. I got into his draft, and hung on for a length. He does a fast flip turn, saw me right behind, and grinned. The bastard GRINNED at me. And stepped on it. I was slowly slipping out of his draft at the end of the next length, and that was all. I slowed down a bit. Then we did it all again next time he lapped me. I caught a look at my watch and did a 45 second 50 m lap, with him slowly pulling away. That's pretty close to my top speed, and I don't normally do that in the middle of an ongoing swim. I called it done after 1 K, 19:30. That felt fast for today, though I've gone faster. Did some drill, and one golf 84. Yuck. Cooled down. Long session in the dive tank working on core and stretching. This was about an hour overall.

I feel a bit smoother, so maybe my swim has learned something from hanging out with Kelly's swim. My arms and shoulders are still feeling a bit weak. During my last ride, I was paying attention to my shoulders and arms. I think I might have been tensing them up, and that's why I ended up with that soreness.

Breakfast and puttered about the house for a bit, then dressed for my run. I looked at the plan. More slow builds. Oh Dear. It turns out I still suck at slow builds. I warmed up with a walk, then a slow run, and gradually found a nice pace. But my legs felt like wood. It felt like a very stiff run, there was no flow. There was also no gradual build. I could pick it up a bit, but it was a jump from one speed to the next, and today I didn't have it to keep that faster speed going any longer than a few minutes. I've no idea how fast these paces actually were.

Once I got going, I warmed up, and it felt ok, but no better than that. My feet felt fine, but my legs were heavy and stiff. Normally, I'd say the run was barely ok, but I was doing a route where I used to get to a certain point in an hour. I added an out and back in Fish Creek to this route, right at the very west end of the park, up the escarpment. When I'm doing serious hill run repeats, I'll come here. It's steep enough I have to walk my bike up and down. Anyways. I'm not sure how much the out and back added, maybe another K. Even after doing that, I got back to the place where I normally ended at the hour point, and ended there at the hour point. Which made me pretty happy. Improvement has happened.

What the run ended up being once I got going was alternating between my faster pace, and slower one. One of the things that did go well was running up the hill out of Fish Creek. Last time I ran this it was a high high zone 3 plod. Today is was a fairly springy low zone 3 or so, based on my breathing. After an hour I walked the rest of the way home, and stretched lots. Had my feet in the air for 15 minutes or so. I'm going to call this a 75 min workout, since there was a brisk walk to warm up and cool down in addition to the hour run.

Wind + Hills = HARD!

It was windy today. Or so I found out *after* I started my bike ride. I went down Road to Nepal to get in my hill workout, and the way down was wind wind wind all the time. I tried to keep my head down and power through. It was strong enough that I was about 25 Kph slower than normal going down hills into the wind.

I wasn't feeling strong, so it was turning into a bit of a suffer fest. One hill I was barely making 5 Kph and a sudden gust had me ready to unclip because I nearly stopped. All I could think about was that the way back I'd be able to sit up, relax, and be blown all the way home.

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. I still had to pedal, and it didn't help me downhill as much as I thought it would. Max speed was only 84.6 Kph. I'd been getting a little chilled riding into the wind, and was warming up a bit coming back. The very last part of the ride I could feel my legs coming back and starting to feel a little stronger.

It took 1:17 to get to the bottom of the road, and 1:01 to get back, for 2:18 total, which is 22.3 Kph average. Except for the wind, it was a beautiful day for a ride.

Getting back at'er

The swim was pretty good today. I did a long warm up and some drills. My shoulders are still a bit stiff from the ride. I didn't push the pace, just tried to relax in the water. I didn't feel strong, but was fairly smooth. Tried some 100 m intervals. These were mostly 110 seconds, and there were some good laps in there. I could feel the scales of rust falling off. I tried a golf and ended up with 85, which is certainly nothing special. Called it at 45 minutes, then did another 15 minutes of core and stretching.

Run was good. 60 min easy with strides. Did a bit of stretching first, especially my calves. Ran really easy for 15 minutes, settled into a comfey pace, and started strides. Started easy, and gradually built speed and distance. Some I ran really fast but for a shorter distance, others were a strong run for a little longer. Ran easy the last 15 minutes, and did a cool down walk. Stretched while chatting with a neighbour.

My legs felt really good. I think the rest did them lots of good.