A mid week training rant.

I had this great plan to blog about how I'm learning to run and how cool it is.  But it's 10pm on Tuesday night, I just finished nursing the baby and cleaning the kitchen after doing my tri-training.  Tonight we did a 15K bike followed by a 5K run (option to do half that distance).  This morning I did a yoga class and last night I ran on the track, timing my splits.  Well actually Mark was timing my splits for a 5K while the kids either ran around the track themselves or played on the near by park.  So that was a very long winded reason why I'm not going to blog about running.  I am dead on my feet, my eye lids are randomly dropping even as I type this.  This Sunday I am running my first race of the season, the Canada Day 5K!  I don't think I'll be doing much more running till then, not sure if that's the right training thing to do, but I will call it a "taper".  I'll swim tomorrow and do yoga on Thursday!  Rest Friday and then bike/easy run on Saturday morning.  That is the plan!  Wish me luck.

  ps. tonight for my pre-workout snack I made a smoothy with protein powder, oatmeal, coconut flour, frozen berries and soy milk!  It was perfect, not to heavy but definitely fueled the workout!

From Market to Table!

Yup most of the strawberries were eaten on the way home.

Friday means farmer's market day (well so does Wednesday and Saturday morning) but I love doing it Friday morning because my favorite farmer "Ray" is at the booth and he is so wonderful. Taking the time to answer all my OCD questions.  "What do you do about rabbits?How do you get rid of slugs? When do you pick your garlic? Where do you plant the kale?" etc.... I really do pester him that much.  But lets me honest, he loves it!  The poor man spends all day (except friday in the field) from sun up to sun down! And so does his poor wife!  They both love their days at the Market!  I got my eggs, peas, tomatoes and strawberries from him today!  Salsa, kettle corn and bagels from others!  I made an omelet (or frittata, what ever you want to call it)!

Here are the pics.  I also used my own garden produce to make these!

The guy who makes this sells it :) fun!

The owner of this company is soooo sweet!  she knows me (ok well I go every week for my bag of sweet and salty) and she gives me double stamps on my cards sometimes :)

Random shot! Our garlic is almost ready to be picked!  Some of them are the size of baseballs already!!!

A little red onion that I pulled out accidentally when weeding, so it will go in my omelet!

I just thought everyone should see what asparagus looks like (during the off season), that tall wispy plant in the middle of this shot is what an asparagus sprig turns into. 

Very fern like, it needs to go into this "flower" phase to regenerate the roots so that next spring we can get a whole new batch of wonderful asparagus!

My super awesome herb garden!  Random tree growing in it (I didn't plant it, it was a seed planted by an animal and I let it grow).  For my omelet I picked kale, oregano, parsley and basil! and chives for the garnish!

Goes on the bottom of my frying pan! (or skillet, not really sure what to call it)

I used a tiny bit of this grated!

All the ingredients were chopped up, mixed and and cooked on the stove (med-low heat) till the bottom started to bubble, then I put it under the broil and added the salsa and cheese!

It did in fact come off the pan that easy!

Added the goats milk yogourt and chives!

Delicious!!!

This Moment

Clean Fast food (from a can and the freezer)

Ok I get it, we are busy, too tired, feeling blah, long week... etc... So today I made my cheat meal.  So good and healthy and something that you can find in the freezer at the grocery store and with the cans!  Seriously the places we are told to stay away from. 

Try it, mix them together and warm in a pan!

All fast food is served in a fast food container.  In our house giant coffee mugs are the dish to be had!  Served with Multigain chips (Food Should Taste Good)

And Desert!!!!!

Triathlon training con't: step 4

Just to review steps 1-3 were,1- find a group to train with, because everything is always better in a social group, 2- find a bike (preferably a road bike, but doesn't have to be) and 3- get in the water and swim.  Today I'll be addressing learning to ride a bike!  Disclaimer: I am not a certified tri coach (obviously) so don't take my word as the law, at one point in my life I was a competitive swim coach, but that doesn't mean I know how to train for a triathlon! So moving along...

Step 4:  Learning to ride a road bike.  I guess because I had no idea what I was getting myself into, so NO preconceived notions of the difficulties in riding a road bike (really stupid of me, btw) I just bought a road bike, got the peddles changed, put on my spin shoes (the ones I had been using at Goodlife to do the RPM -aka spin classes) and got on the bike, tried to clip in annnnddd FELL!  Soooo not the romantic start to my biking career that I had envisioned.  Then I decided to back up a few steps, again I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before falling, but this time I got Mark to adjust the seat.  From what I understand when positioning a bike (again from my RPM days) is that you want your leg that is pushing the peddle all the way down - while you are sitting- to be almost straight, and when your foot is up at the top, there should be a like a plumb line running from your knee joint down to your ankle.  Disclaimer: I don't know if this is in fact the true measurement for a road bike, but it is for a spin bike.  Now this time I took it for a spin around the block using my running shoes!  Much better idea.  I literally went around my block 10 times, playing with different handle bar positions, learning to change my gears.

120$ for 25 year old steel road bike!  Needed new inner tubes and tires!

 Ohhhh the gears!!!!  stupid gears!  I was totally spoiled on my hybrid bike, because all you had to do was turn a little dial and voila! gears changed, nice and smooth.  Well not so much on a 25 year old road bike.  I have these two levers between my handle bars, and they like to stick, and make noise and they do not like me very much!  so that aside, I rode in circles until I felt confident on my new seat position and bent-over-arms-reaching position.  Then I put my spin shoes on (they have a little metal thingy on the bottom).  I sat on the bike, holding onto the van door and just practised clipping in and out.  I've done it a bit in the past on a stationary spin bike, you have to torque your heal outwards to unclip.  However again spin bike..., stationary... road bike... being held upright by two tiny wheels and MY BALANCE! 

Gear shifters!  I am not a fan! But can't complain for such a cheap bike!

My 2 year old spin shoes that miraculously fit in the pedals I got at Bikefest for 1$

Took the old pedals off and put these on, you can still ride with running shoes too!

Now I was ready to take my bad boy (because it's steel and blue) out for real test ride with shoes and clips.  I was smart and did take off and practise getting in and out on our front lawn, then I just got on the road and went around the block another million times.  In terms of speed I didn't notice a huge change.  And I do remember seeing road bikers pull up the the curb to unclip so they keep one foot in and balance on the unclipped side, so I practised doing that! 

Fast forward a few days and I am not setting out for my first "big" ride, something far from home!  My plan is to ride to Mountain Equipment Coop because it's has a bike shop and they are open till 9PM.  So shoes on - check, helmet on- check, water,phone and credit card in camel pack - check, cute lululemon shorts- check, MEC long sleeve moisture wick shirt on- check, black fleece overtop- check... I take off...  On back roads to get to Brant street.  Now little did I know how steep the freakin incline is on Brant street (here in Burlington), I've always been in a car!  What a shock! My bike speedometer/computer was clocking me going nearly 50kms an hour!!!  (ok really 47km and hour) but still.  Holly cow!  I was fn petrified I was going to die, seriously seriously scared.  I did push my breaks a bit, but then I got scared they wouldn't work properly (which was why I was heading to MEC in the first place to get a tune up).  So I did the only thing I could think of... flex my abbs like I was going to die...  I just locked everything in, had a death grip on the handle bars, and hoped to GOD I wouldn't hit some grate in the road or something else.  And finally I made it to the store!  In one piece!  So by now it's about 8:20, not dark out but overcast and rainy.  I got them to look at my bike and do a half tune up on the spot (because for a real tune up, they would have kept my bike for a couple of days).  Since I was at MEC anyway, I decided to buy a pair of bike shorts (because even that short 10K to mec- downhill) was enough to convince me of their value.  Another thought that occurred to me was the fact that I didn't want to get hit by a car, so I looked for the brightest vest they had (I could have worn one of those orange targets - you know the crossing guard ones- but couldn't bring myself to the dorkyness factor of that) so settled on a really bring yellow one!   Good heaven's, I bought the cheapest shorts and vest and the cost was almost as much as I paid for my bike! 

Anyway, now I am the proud owner of some swanky bike clothes, a steel bike (aka... really heavy), and shoes and clips.  As a side note, last weekend was Bikefest at Spencer smith park held my MEC so they were getting rid of bunch of second hand clothes and equipment,(you know returns and such that they didn't want to store anymore) and I totally scored a stupid amount of amazing gear for next to nothing.  Got my bike peddles for 1$ (a 50$ value) just to give you an example.  My camel pack was a prize won my my super awesome daughter for a bike runner race they had!   Note to self!!!  must return next year for Bikefest to stock up again!

Holds 2L of water!  and it was FREE!!!!  thank you MEC

You can't really tell but I swear the yellow actually glows it is so bright in reality.

Tuesday night was our first "official" practise for the tri-club.  It was a 15KM hills ride and a 2.5K run.  Apparently this type of workout is called a Brick workout, because after biking your legs feel like bricks!  And as I mentioned before I didn't really notice the difference the bike shoes made, until this practise!  They were sooo useful on the hills because they make the "up-stroke" so much easier.  I was passing people going uphill on mountain bikes!  And I'm not a very good cyclist remember I just learned to ride!  But the clips made all the difference, and on the way back to the track, I continued focusing on the "up" motion of my feet and wow again a huge difference in speed! So much more power to be had.  Everyone can push down that's the easy part, but now add in the element of pulling up and pushing down = magic.  And I also had to force myself to shift down and stay sitting while going uphill.  This was new because I like to muscle my way through stuff, but as Coach Nancy said "triathlon training is different because we are doing 3 consecutive races, we need to focus on saving our legs!  So gear down down and increase your pedal speed while climbing a hill".  (I think that the right way, still not sure of the lingo yet, gear so it's easier to pedal going up hill, and more difficult to pedal going down)

Frimp Cabobs!

So my almost 3 year old son still calls shrimp `frimp`, I think that is the cutest thing ever.  I so I don`t correct him.  Tonight I marinated some shrimp in lemon juice, oregano, dijon mustard and some broth from a soup I made.  Then skewed them red peppers, cherry tomatoes and broccoli (stems and flowers).  So good!  Oh and the best part was the drizzle of garlic and hot pepper infused flax seed oil, after grilling of course!  (I wouldn't want to lose any of the healthy EFA's to the heat)

I love love love this new find!!!  I got it at organic garage in Oakville!  13$ - I normally keep my flax seed oil in the freezer, but I think I will use this up so fast so it's staying in my fridge!