Ok let me see where to start. (In point form)
- I am still vegan and going strong (I did however enjoy some fish a couple of times in the last month though)! Meh. I'm only vegan to feel good and be healthy, and I feel good and healthy when I eat fish!
- I've created all sorts of fun new things, like chili cheese popcorn and cashew cheese.
-I stopped drinking caffeine before my last race and just haven't drank it since, only decaf and the occasional green tea. Mostly rooibos or herbal.
- We went to Sudbury for a week and I did some extreme open water swimming with my brother Ian (the varsity swimmer), mostly extreme for me because the waves were probably 40-50cm high.
-My knee has been seizing up and causing me a ridiculous amount of pain, so I had to cut back on my running to counter that issue. More biking and swimming to make up for that.
- This past week I have been in my school getting set up in my new office because I don't have a classroom, which I am very happy about!
- Not so happy to find out that my teaching assignment is literally to split grades the whole week. Get this I am teaching science (in french) to : a 2/3split, a 3/4 split, a 4/5 split and a 5/6 split. Yay me!~
But once I got my head around the copious amounts of science units I need to know (20 in total), at least only 5 at a time :) ha ha I got kind of excited because I get to teach the fun stuff. You know the outdoor lessons, the experiments, the field trips, the scientist/dorky stuff! And because I'm me, I'm starting with the units that I love the most, plants, ecosystems, habits and human body. I am going to have a blast this term. I selfishly choose these units because they are by far way up my alley and they will allow me to gain my teaching confidence back. Geeze it's been almost 5 years since I worked in a school.
- Topic change! I just made a butternut squash soup (squash, a few stalks of celery, 1 onion, 1 large carrot, a sweet potato and a handful of garden herbs -thyme, savory and sage) and the coup de resistance was that I added some coconut oil to it and some cremed coconut at the end, just a tbsp or so. And WOW! sooooo creamy and good!
-Topic change AGAIN! My big race! The culminating event of my entire summer's worth of training....was this Sunday and it wasn't what I was prepared for or anticipated. At all. The evening before the event they sent out an email telling us that we couldn't swim in the water due to bacteria levels, so they were changing the triathlon to a duathlon. So that meant I would run 2.5k, bike 20k then run another 5k. I was really upset when I found this out because I am a strong swimmer and between swimming and my fast biking I would have a good enough advantage to possibly place. The other thing that I found out was that most super fast runners are terrible swimmers (grrr) so I lost my advantage while the runners gained theirs. The day was hot (in the 30s) and it was a bit windy (not too bad). All in all I did ok. I placced 7th, the bike portion was amazing. I was flying and feeling really good. The first run part was awful, I felt like garbage, and the transition from run to bike was really sloppy (since I had never done it before). And the second run was better than the first, in fact I think I got negative splits (go figure, I gues it takes my body a while to get used to the idea of running).. Anyway, Mark and the kids tried to cheer me but they missed most of it because they didn't have an attention span long enough to stay in one spot. They saw me off. and that was about it. They missed the finish because I arrived before the mc was even calling out ppls names... ( I guess that was a good sign). But I now know that duathlon is not for me, 7th out of 49 I think. The other thing I figure is if I had done the shorter distance, based on my times from the last tri/and yesterdays times I would have come in either 2nd or 3rd! So all in all not a bad race day!
So that pretty much sums it up. My first day of work in 5 years starts tomorrow, Mark is home full time with the kids (the two that aren't in school full time) and I will be getting back into some type of gym routine again! With the addition of swimming, spinning and running at least once a week. OH that reminds me, my knee is much better since a week ago someone pointed out to me that runner's are in fact supposed to land on the balls of their feet NOT their heals... like I was. Duh I wonder if that was causing my knee pain. Well I worked on that and didn't feel a single twinge during my run on Sunday.
This is a picture from the Niagara race. For this race I got Scott from
Rock and Road cycle to put red tape on my handle bars! (they have magic I've been told) Placebo or not, I loved the bike portion of the race!
