gotta ♥ recovery weeks (week 8) + I need some new beats ppl!!

The way that my tri training schedule was set up allowed me to have a recovery week every 4 weeks. This means I do the same number of workouts, but each workout is a lot less demanding because of the shorter distances.

Hopefully this week allows me to relax my legs, and than have a strong 2 weeks of training before my first race which is a try-a-try in Guelph (1/4 triathlon that I signed up for, I will do a race preview maybe this week) on June 18th.

I'm not too sure whether I'm going to relax on the swimming though this week since it's BY FAR my weakest of the three, but I'll see how lazy I feel tomorrow.

 
Now, on a more serious note, I need some new songs for my playlist....I'm running out of bieber tracks.

Any suggestions?

I listen to the SAME songs overrr and overrr again during my runs and bike rides haha and have nothing new. I've been rockin' some:

Wiz Khalifa - Roll up (thanks pete)
Tinie Tempah - Written in the Stars
Dirty Money - Coming home
Kanye ft. Rhanna - All of the Lghts
Lady Gaga - Judas
Lady Gaga - The Edge of Glory
Jessie J ft B.o.B - Price Tag
Daft Punk - The Game Has Changed
Soulja Boy ft. Ester Dean - Grammy
Eminem - Space Bound
Eminem - Not Afraid

(My buddy jordan gave me an idea of blogging about the music I listen to on my runs so I credit him for this post.)

my very first brick day

A quick brain teaser for all yall before I blog my first brick day:

A bricklayer has 9 bricks. 8 bricks weigh the same amount, but one brick is slightly heavier than the rest. The bricklayer wants to find the heavy brick. He has a balance scale. How can he find the heavy brick in only two weighings? Answer at bottom of post.

I just got home about 20 minutes ago from my first brick day (week 7 on training schedule). For those of you who don't know what a brick day is, it's basically a workout where the bike to run transition in a race is being simulated.

Today I had to do my 20km bike, hop off the bike and get right into the run for 5km.

The bike went as usual, I got through it without too many problems. So right after the bike, I quickly got off the bike and started my run and.....my legs felt exactly like bricks, hence the "brick day" term (a little factoid for all of you). My quads just felt numb. But probably 1km into the run I got legs back and from there it was basically the same as a normal 5km run. My time for the run was for the most part the same as usual, maybe 20-30 seconds slower?

Overall, it wasn't too bad and I guess it can only get better from here on out.





Answer:
He should divide the bricks into 3 groups of 3. He then weighs 2 sets of 3 bricks against each other. If they balance, the heavy brick is in the group that was set aside. If they do not balance, he then takes the group that was heaviest. He has 3 bricks left. He takes the 2 bricks from the 3 and weighs them against each other. If they balance, the heavy brick is the one which is set aside. If they do not balance, the scale will show which is the heavier brick

terrible weather in the city of toronto

Training for the bike portion of the tri has been extremely annoying as of late. The weather in Toronto has been brutal and I'm not hardcore enough to bike in pouring rain. As a result of this issue, I've had to train on the stationary bike at the gym a lot. It's definitely not as fun, but I THINK it's getting the job done. I can also kill two birds with one stone by studying for my CSC course while I ride the stationary, so it's not all bad.

I'm not quite sure how accurate the mileage counter is on these machines, but I really have no alternative so I just have to assume that they are fairly precise.

I've thought about doing a spin classes at the gym. (has anyone tried one of those before?)

OR

Maybe I could just invest in one of these bad boys...

swimming woes.........

swimming IS, or WAS, a bitch ...............? (excuse my french)

I already knew I was a horrendous swimmer. However, after my very first swim practice 7 weeks ago, I would soon realize that I was horrendous AS WELL AS pathetic...

TRUE STORY. That first day, I literally got in the pool, swam across all 50 metres, held onto the side gasping for my life, walked back to the change room, and drove home....In my defense, I completely forgot that I was suppose to exhale under water. So everytime I turned to take a breath I would exhale and than take a breath.

After that first day, I was completely rattled...So many thoughts ran through my head of "how the F am I ever going to be able to do this if I can't even swim 50 metres in a pool?"

A couple weeks later, I started feeling slightly more comfortable in the pool and ended up creating swim workouts for each week.

Week 3
2 x 50 = 100 (Warm-up)
10 x 50 = 500 (15 seconds rest after each 50m)
2 x 50 = 100 (Swim-Down)

Total = 700m

Week 4
4 x 50 = 200 (Warm-up)
10 x 50 = 500 (10 seconds rest after each 50m)
2 x 50 = 100 (Swim-Down)

Total = 800m

Week 5
4 x 50 = 200 (Warm-up)
10 x 50 = 500 (10 seconds rest after each 50m)
2 x 50 = 200 (Swim-Down)

Total = 900m

creating a training schedule

Once I was certain I wanted to compete in a tri THIS year, I knew that I would have to have a sound training schedule for the next few months in order to get into shape.

I began researching different races with my friend and ultimately decided that we would compete in the peterborough sprint triathlon (750m swim, 20km bike, 5 km run) on july 18th. This gave me just about 13 weeks......I had not swam in over 8 years (not including little pool parties that don't count really) and definitely needed a schedule that was swim focused. I came across several training schedules online and ultimately combined all of them into a plan of my own (see below). I used a combination of a sprint triathlon as well as a full olympic triathlon workout so that I'd HOPEFULLY be more than prepared come race day.

(Right now I am on week 7 of the schedule. I HAVE had to play around with it slightly but that is for the most part what I have been following.)

the dragon pearl restaurant

Fastforward 11 years and that young boy has become a man.... in a 16 year olds body, with a 14 year olds mind. There's absolutely nothing wrong with dabbling in some DBZ and logging in countless hours of pokemon yellow (thanks pete) on the crackberry from time to time.

Now you might be thinking...dragon pearl restaurant???

One and a half months ago, my friends and I were at a restaurant known as Dragon Pearl. This is where the triathlon dream would be reawakened... It was here where my friend Derick would inform me that he would be training to compete in a triathlon this summer.

So why did I wait 11 years? I guess I never attempted to do one before because I didn't think I could get through it to be honest. But knowing someone who was actually going to train for one triggered something in my mind, and reassured me that it REALLY IS achievable.

carrying out a young boys dream

For the last 1.5 months I have been training for my first triathlon. Why do you ask? It all started in the summer of 2000, and involves a fresh grad out of denlow public school @ the age of 11, and a man by the name of simon whitfield.

It happened to be the summer of the Sydney olympics. I remember it SO clearly, sitting at home in front of the old box, watching all these amazing athletes do incredible things. The very first olympic triathlon was on at the time. As I watched the athletes slowly get past the swim portion of the race to the bike, I thought to myself...this is quite boring actually. UNTIL.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kDKw1WOpRs
(This is hands down THE single greatest olympic memory of mine (along with vince's tomahawk over mr. weiss - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrPjl-927Q - still the greatest dunk in history of basketball)

To this day, it is still one of the proudest moments of mine as a canadian. How can it not be? From this, I knew that some day I would compete in a triathlon of my own.