Here’s a cool story, it’s a bit of a nightmare to keep track of names I’ll admit, but consider yourself lucky I’ve got 140 names to learn when I arrive in Seattle in 5 weeks.

Neil, Ellen and I went for a short bike ride on Saturday morning and upon the return of Ellen and I to the Yellow-House Jenna had left a message for me with Amy. Amy was
dutifully relaying the message when Jenna called again, obviously so excited by the message she had for me that she couldn’t even wait for Amy to pass it along.

Jenna was in Edmonton for a part of the weekend looking for a house for her and Betty, and I was up for a conference and a bunch of meetings regarding the research group I’ll
be joining in September. I also happened to find time to go biking a bit and visit all kinds of cool people but I was specifically not in the business of looking for a house for myself and the three other people I’ll be living with. A 5 bedroom house came up in the listings a few days prior and Jenna was able to track down someone to show it to her, she got a hold of me after really liking it and I saw the place as well. We managed to get a hold of all of the other people who would be living in that place via telephone and kinda got the go-ahead to keep pursuing it. The connection with the landlord was made around 7:30 pm and we set up plans to met her at Tim Hortons 15 minutes later. A previous pioneer-ranch-camp volunteer, very caring lady and sister in Christ showed up with a huge smile on her face and by about 8:30 there was a signature on the lease!

Now, the process of renting a house doesn’t make for such a great story all by itself but here are a few kickers. Jenna and I had a discussion somewhere in the blur of the afternoon about needing to learn a thing or two about resignation to His plans. A pretty
much continuous stream of prayers were answered to allow the process to move along smoothly (I needed to get to Calgary for Church the next morning), does 7 hour start-to-finish define quintessential smoothness or what? We were even able to get a hold of all parties on the phone. The matter of fitting 6 people into a 5 bedroom home was tidily resolved and really affirmed by a few comments by the landlord! Michelle has somewhere to go when her current lease expires. The only real request for a home made by me was answered in spades! I requested that wherever I live has got to have a proper kitchen and this one rocks: gas range, ceiling height cabinets, excessive counter space, natural light, dishwasher and adjacent dining room.

If this is how God responds to our request for housing that has only begun in earnest recently I can only imagine how great his plans are for the things that have been consistently in daily prayers since January and last summer. I have a crew of friends heading over to Africa for the month of July to work with Christian students in Zambia. The opportunity of that group to foster leadership growth in those students is so unique and has amazing potential. My involvement with the mother-of-all-bike-rides this summer continues to require prayer. Here are a few specific requests:

• For the right route. Give thanks to God for enabling Ed Witvoet, our operations & logistics manager, to finish charting the exact route across the continent.
• For support crew members. The tour still needs a few volunteers to travel with the tour to ensure a smooth and safe journey. Please pray for people to consider this opportunity and apply.
• For increased awareness. Ask God to bless the efforts to communicate and promote the tour and its goals to churches and individuals so far, and to give creativity to organizers to spread the word further.
• For tour sponsors. Pray that those being contacted as possible corporate sponsors will catch the vision and come on board to help underwrite tour expenses.
• For celebration rally planning. Local committees are busy planning the many Sunday celebration rallies along the route. Pray that all the details will come together so these rallies glorify God, unify His church and motivate all to serve the poor.
• For cyclists. Riding across North America is a major challenge and commitment that needs the support of family, friends and co-workers, and the Spirit’s clear discernment. Pray for safety as riders train for the tour.
• For the steering committee. Organizers have a lot to plan with not a lot of time. Pray for wisdom in decision-making and unity within the committee.
• For those living in poverty around the world. May compassion be evident in God’s people and may justice prevail in the hearts of those who govern.

I wish I had a camera when I rolled back into town last night after 120 kilometers of riding in the rain. I was caked in sand and mud from the bottom of my rib cage to the ground. There were little stream-like channels cutting through the dust layer where the water running down my body had preferentially eroded the layer of sediment. It was worthy of Paris-Roubaix.

I was attending a research conference/retreat 60 kms north of Edmonton and opted to send along some dry clothes with a friend and ride out there on my bike. I guess I was just giving myself an opportunity to test out the rain gear. On the ride out I got wet from above but then proceeded to ride the next 50 kms without a ton of furthur precipitation on roads that weren’t terribly mucky. The result was a relatively wet-but-clean individual arriving 10 minutes late for breakfast due to the wind.

The same can not be said for the return trip. I changed out of my comfortable dry clothes and pulled on wet bike shorts and knee warmers, put on shoes that were still slightly damp, put a damp beanie on my head and sinched up all of the drawstrings on a wet rain-jacket. I rolled out onto the road and was greeted by some of the hardest rain I’ve ever ridden in and a headwind to work against all the way back into town. I got pretty cold right off the bat and decided that I would warm up if I worked harder. Working harder when there’s a headwind is tricky, I’m still learning to gauge it. Within 10 minutes I had gauged incorrectly, I wasn’t going to make it home at that pace. The sand began to cake on my legs and the water streams made their way into my booties and my feet were then fully soaked. I reverted to old habits of spending alot of mental energy on calculating all sorts of stuff. I calculated garbage statistics on the ride almost continuously for the first 45 minutes as I worked my way through “percentages complete” and “average speeds” and “arrival times” until I turned south following a little west-directed jaunt and was blasted again by the headwind. I considered trying to recruit one of the many pick-up trucks to give me a lift back to the city-limits. I considered taking a break from the rain in some unattended machine shed. After a really rather brutal 15 minutes crawling along at less than 25 kph into the wind I stopped at the side of the road to help water the grass even though the rain was doing a sufficent job of soaking everything anyhow. I decided to take a drink from my water bottle even though I wasn’t thirsty knowing that I had been working pretty hard and was still going to get dehydrated in that weather. I got a mouth-full of grit even after doing my best to wipe off the sand. Rather frustrated by my inability to spit out a spoonful of sand from my mouth I decided to just get going again I pushed off and started pedalling. I soon realized that some bits and pieces of sand had, in the process of stopping and restarting, worked their way under the leg grippers of my bike shorts and were going to chafe and rub for the next 32 kilometers on the way home.

I opted to try and quit calculating at this point because I know it’s a bad habit. I crouched over and put my chin on my handlebars as I tried to gain every ounce of speed that I could rolling down a big hill and barely managed to get up to 40 kph with the headwind, argh! (it’s at least a 60 kph coasting hill with no wind) While I had already rhetorically asked myself plenty of times why in the world I was doing this, it was at about this point (now at the bottom of a hill of course!) that I decided I was going to try and answer the question.

I realized I could sit on the gritty bike seat and answer the question philosophically, or I could try and do it honestly. I figured the honest route was probably harder and since I still had about 70 minutes of riding left I’d tackle that one first (I never can quit calculating that stuff). Besides, the philosophical route is the easy one, I just figured I was out there because it was good practice for the summer. I’d need to ride some wet days and giving the rain-gear at least one full fledged trial run was a good idea.

Honestly though, I had stuff to prove. I had offers to get a ride back into town with people at the retreat that I refused. I wanted to maintain a certain image: the guy who is crazy enough to wake up an extra hour and a half early just so he can bike to the retreat, and will even do it in the rain. The image that I experienced no discomfort from the weather (as the sand worked it’s way further up my thighs), that I was so well-adjusted that I appreciated the beauty of a rainstorm even when taking it head-on. (I had suggested to some people that watching the sun come up through the rain was great that morning – which it was). I wanted all of the people in cars driving past me to have respect for the determination for the cyclist at the side of the road. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to build fitness. I wanted to be able to tell the story of the time I rode 120 kms in pouring rain and cold and mud even though I didn’t have to.

So, the honest version isn’t particularily glamourous, it’s more than a bit selfish and to be honest it takes a bit of courage to write it here for the whole world to read. Luckily I suppose, I wasn’t nearly home yet. I was at 206^th avenue and needed to ride to 79^th. Another opportunity presented itself, calculate my pace-per-block on the way back in and then reverse calculate the average block length. I resisted the temptation (completely this time) and figured I had better listen to what the Big Guy was suggesting. I had a lot of terrible reasons to be out on the road in the rain.

I was going back to a house that would allow me to hose off the mud in the back yard. I had a change of clothes inside that were dry. There was a shower that was going to be warm. I could probably manage to get my hands on a big fat pot of tea within the hour. I wasn’t going to have to go back outside that day unless I wanted to. I’d be able to get the grit out of my teeth with water that was certain to have no grit in it. I had everything working to my advantage and it was pretty obvious once I figured that out.

My discomfort was pretty insignificant once I considered it. Sure, I was the wettest person within Edmonton’s city limits (even people in the shower weren’t wetter than me) but I had a massive list of reasons why I’d be warm and dry within the hour. The list of people who couldn’t get warm and dry that evening kinda sickened me.

I suppose that’s where I’m going to quit the story though, my conclusions aren’t completely formed yet anyhow. So much for thinking the philosophical answer was “testing out the rain gear”.

While my 201 km ride on friday was on the long end and it was quite hot (somewhere between 28 and 30) the ride two days later on Sunday took the cake with regards to reminding me what it’s like to ride in warm weather. It was easily 30 degrees by 10am and the thermometer on some handlebars recorded 34 at one point which is probably a bit high. A few long dry stretches had relatively low winds so the feeling of getting baked was definately there.

John (Left), Gerald (not pictured, SeatoSea 2005) and Art (Right, SeatoSea 2005), and myself (center in the retro-Tri club jersey) headed south on highway 93 from Elko BC to the American border and back. The road surface was absolutely fantastic and the route is mostly flat with a few stellar hills in the mix. I figured it was downhill both ways which seems to suggest that it really was pretty close to flat and I did plenty of drafting.

I hope to have a few more opportunities to get out and ride when it’s smoking hot before starting out, a bit more acclimatization to summer will help out in that regard since I’ve been doing loads of riding at significantly! lower temperatures than the hot days we’ll experience this summer. I anticipate that when the forecast is close to 100^oF that we’ll be getting on the bikes early in the morning to avoid the heat of the day but nonetheless they’ll still be a challenge for a northern dwelling warm-blooded individual such as myself.

The plan for Friday the 16th of May was to depart Calgary early in the morning and ride as far as I could get form Calgary. The plan was foiled in some sense by a pretty stiff breeze from the south that cropped up after about 80 kms of riding. It got stronger the further south I got and eventually got to the point where I only managed 20 kms per hour for my last hour. While that is a fine pace and is more than respectable it’s not an hour that is going in any of my record books.

The grand total for the day was 201 kilometers and I followed this route south from Calgary until I arrived at the Burmis Tree which is a local landmark in southern Alberta. The tree is long dead and is severely disfigured in it’s growth due to the heavy winds it experienced over it’s lifetime. I had hoped to make it quite a bit further if the wind agreed but it wasn’t going to be the case last Friday and I surrendered to the parents’ van knowing I’d be able to get in a lot more riding if I didn’t push the envelope too far that day. I’ll post some photos when I get my hands on them as well as videos when I download them to the computer.

OK, here are the photos: first is the arrival at the little rest area on Highway 3. Two and Three are rather self explanatory… me my bike and some random tree that looks kinda cool:

This was my second ride in excess of 200 kilometers, the first one I did and documented back in August 2007 when I rode 215 kilometers and it only took me 7 more minutes including my stops! (I timed that with a watch, not an automated bike computer). A couple observations about the ride were that my cadence seemed to speed up as the day went on for about the first 100 miles and then began to tail off towards the end. The cause of that is probably partly due to the headwind but it seems to me that it’s probably a decent indication that my fitness is on par for about 160 kms of riding at what I’ve learned to call a “steady plus” pace (Ask Gordo Byrn about that if you want).

In other Sea-to-Sea related news I have been very encouraged recently by a large number of people making responses regarding the fundraising aspect of my life at the moment. Things are moving along at the moment as numbers add up bit by bit. That $10 000 that has seemed a rather distant goal at some points during the last year might not be as ludicrous at it seems.

A huge thanks to all of the people who recently made donations! I’ll get a new tally of things sometime in the next week or so for an update.

Video Log #6

Followed approximately 3.5 hours later by Video Log #7

I also wrote about this bike trip in another blog entry that can be found here.

Video Log #5

I passed the threshold of 100 hours of logged exercise for 2008 during the bike ride on Saturday afternoon. What does that mean? Well, nothing at all. Other useless stats I know about the last 5 months:

• I haven’t been on Cross country skis for 78 days.
• I am “twenty meters” short of logging 300 kms on my fixed gear bike since Christmas.
• I’ve ridden 953.65 kms on my bike since the handlebar swap, 650.32 of which has been outside on pavement.
• I’m embarrassed about how little I actual rode my rollers this past year, please don’t calculate how little that actually was. On a brighter note, I did pass all my classes as a result.
• Swimming accounts for only 2.66% of my time spent exercising in 2008!

All kinds of useless facts like that can be logged on the website I’ve been using to keep track of my training this season. I decided around November that I’d benefit from keeping track of these things. I sorted through about a half-dozen websites that do this for you before settling on which one I was going to use. It’s kinda like a marriage, once you commit to one you’ve gotta stick with it, even if it turns out to have a few flaws it’s way more work to go and start out with a new one. All the time investment in the system warrants continued commitment to it. So, just like choosing a wife (because I am very well experienced in that department – ha!) I auditioned a few for about a week and tested out all of their different features. I settled on using a website called Tri-Fuel which allows me to give my own “definitions” to a bunch of sports and then log things under each one. I decided that the top three characteristics I was looking for in a partner were: simplicity of use, flexibility and ability to extract statistics. I needed something that would allow me to fill out the “time” and “sport” of one workout and leave everything else blank if I didn’t know it because half the time I don’t really care that much about heart rates etc. I also needed something that would allow me to log fixed gear bicycling separately from freewheel cycling. That’s not a feature that is as universal as you might think unfortunately.

So, I’m using this website: www.trifuel.com/log/ to track stuff. If you’re looking for one, I would recommend using the tri-fuel training log to anyone who is interested in logging aerobic fitness, it would be brutal if you wanted to keep track of weights etc but it was never designed for that so it’s no surprise that it wouldn’t work well.

I managed to speed on my bike along three stretches of road that had different speed limits today. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite eclipse 80 kilometers per hour along the other stretch of road: I only made it to 74 kph. I’m sorry, I promise to do better next time. I wouldn’t want to set a really tough top-speed for the season so early in the year that I can’t break it for the next 3 months, that would just be disappointing. Anyhow, I clocked 38 kph through a playground zone, 53 kph along a minor road, and 67 through a 60 zone without even pedaling, just placed my chin on the handlebars and went for it after 50 kph.

I also rode the bike with any amount of weight in the front bag for the first time today, probably 2kgs: a litre of water, some snacks, tools, gloves and jacket. It certainly handles differently with weight up front. I spent a while getting used to the straight fork of the cervelo compared with the fixed gear steamroller but I don’t notice it anymore, I assume it’ll be the same thing with weight in the bag, a bit of getting used to and then no problem at all.

Bam! Marks from the last semester finished trickling in sometime in the past few days. Upon my last inquiry I had finally received the last grade for the last of my courses to be completed. That means I’m actually done. Bam! a few more illuminated pixels on the computer monitor and it’s now over.

Plenty of people have been asking me how it feels to be done and really it’s even more anti-climactic that you might first guess. No-one expects you to say “finishing my degree changed my life” but I’d guess that the question is supposed to have an answer there seems to be an expectation that finishing school is a turning point in life, really it wasn’t at all. Getting the Iron ring and making a pledge to pursue a career with professionalism did give a little dose of perspective change.

Why not? I don’t think it’s because I’m returning to Grad School. While that in some sense does make a difference regarding whether or not I see the end of a BSc as the actual end of school I think it’s mostly due to another reason. It’s because I’ve worked hard at putting school way down the totem pole of important things in life. Obviously I haven’t removed it from that hierarchy, because I did still bust my ass hard enough to keep the grades essentially flawless. I have however done a better job recently, especially the last 16 months or so, of putting many more important things first. School doesn’t even make the top 5 anymore: That is success.

Race morning arrived when the clock ticked over to Sunday morning from Saturday the 3rd of May. I was still 75 kms out of Edmonton and heading home for a race that was to start in only 8 hours. A wedding the evening before in Calgary posed a bit of an issue with leaving myself the option to try and get 8 hours of sleep. I decided that I would resign myself to that as pre-race sleeps are never that good anyways.

After arriving at the house I unpacked, repacked race gear, mixed up gatorade, swapped my leather brooks saddle for my tri-styke neoprene seat, swapped the race wheels onto the bike and checked all the gears. I then discovered that my bed’s mattress had been stolen by one of my room-mates who decided that it was a good upgrade while I was out of town. So, at around 2:15 am I crawled into a sleeping bag on my pullout couch and set my alarm to go off in just over three and a half hours.

Bam! it was suddenly quarter to six, I chowed down on breakfast, pumped my tyres, and was out the door. I claimed what I considered to be one of the top 5 spots in transition, set things up and went off to get marked. In contrast to previous years I opted to skip out on trying to be warm and resigned myself to a cold bike ride. I set out only my triathlon club jersey and helmet. I had neoprene gloves attached to my handlebars with elastic bands and shoes pre-clipped, only 3 things to do in transition, that’s the minimum requirement for a pool swim: cover the torso, put on a number belt, and clip the helmet. I can go one better for open water races: remove wetsuit, put on helmet. I’ve been frustrated in previous years by clothing that sticks to wet skin, sand on my feet, toques, sunglasses etc. etc. efficiency was the order of the day and I was prepared to suffer the consequences as I reaped the benefits. I cannot shave any more seconds off in transition, I’m confident about that.

I was registered when I arrived but wasn’t on the start list, so I got to re-state my expected swim time. I pared it down from 17:30 to “16:00 or 16:30″ with the desire to get pushed in my lane, I felt ready to go hard in the pool even though my total swimming for 2008 to date had been 2900 metres.

I had been convinced by tri-club members to start the swim with a backflip off the start block because the club’s past president was supposed to be counting laps in my lane, unfortunately an impromptu lane swap resulted in some rather intimidating women counting my laps, I was scared they’d make me swim extra so I gently entered the water and got to work.

Upon exiting I had passed everyone in the lane once and doubled up on one girl, I turned out to set a sprint-swim PR of 14:25 (60th out of 145 places).

Transition was quick and I was out on the road, there didn’t seem to be any quick cyclists around (you only pass the slow ones, it’s not really a surprise but always a disappointment) and I was out onto the 4 lap course. I have had success making race “plans” in my head regarding motivation and focus for the course. It started out last summer with the half-ironman on the run: I broke the 21 kms into 4 pieces with different labels, “get your running legs” followed by “hold back” (A reminder that I’ve still got a long race ahead) then “let’s go” and finally “hold on” (don’t waste the success thus far).

I decided (while driving in the dark the night before) that it wouldn’t hurt to try a similar strategy for both the bike and run portions. The race plan was therefore “pay attention” (get cadence up, start drinking, note locations of potholes), “focus on efficiency” (don’t drop the hammer quite yet), “remember this is a race – go!”, “Cycling is awesome” (reminder to not waste any seconds on the bike leg which is my strongpoint) followed on the run by two sections “it’s only 5 kms” (there isn’t time to get used to the brick feeling, you’ve just got to start running) and finally “leave everything on the course”.

I suppose there’s not much to say about the 4 laps of the bike ride and the out and back run other than I kept to the game plan and was well under the 38 minute split I was expecting (including 2 transitions) at 37:12 on the bike. The run split hurt a ton and I wasn’t very fast but I did my best to put in a solid effort resulting in a 22 minute split for 5 kms.

The grand total time was 1:13:36, I was more than pleased with that, having shaved time off of last years race, amazingly in the swim and swim-bike transition.

So, how does a hard 75 minutes of effort play into the Sea-to-Sea preparation?? 75 minutes of work isn’t going to get me over the Cascades on Day #2 in Washington State. Basically it’s fun, and marked the middle-end-ish of a tough week of work. In theory it would have wrapped up the first periodization of the spring. Of course, things work better on paper or in your head, it was obviously modified a ton. Half Marathon Sunday, road ride Monday, hill run Wednesday (bonus: swims on Tuesday & Wednesday). I nailed a rather hard 75 kms bike on Thursday, and ran 10 kms medium pace on Friday. Monday following the race I fit in a very windy 50 km ride immediately followed by 6 kms hilly run. 10 kms run on Tuesday to finish that off, the moving average for weekly volume passed 10 hours for the first time this season (12.5 hours max)!

I’ll be keeping intensity down for a short break (conveniently aligning with the snowfall today) and then will begin period 2. The focus is on volume with the idea of packing the hours in, hopefully pushing volume beyond 15 hrs/week consistently, I don’t really know if I want to consistently eclipse 20 hours; when I did last summer I wasn’t useful for much else other than cooking and eating. I’ve got a long weekend in southern BC planned followed immediately with a week of training with triathlon club members in Edmonton while spending days in the research lab and then potentially a day in the mountains.