Ironman Mont Tremblant

Sunday, August 29, 2010

IM Canada

They're off and running. IM Canada started this morning at 10 am our time and I know three people competing. Good luck to all. One of these days I'll get around to toeing the line.

I had to move some workouts around as Tammy had a 10 km run Saturday morning so I took that as rest day and moved my long bike and run to Sunday.

Tammy's run was ok but I think she was disappointed with her time. It was at Sunnybrook Park and started at 8:00 am but we got there just after 7:00 am. No problems finding parking. I watched the three kids while Tammy ran. One of the vendors at the race was Absolute Endurance. They had a tent set up with a couple of massage tables. Always looking for freebies, I started to talking to one of the therapists and he told me he would be able to give me a free session once the race started.

The first question he asked me was if I wore othotics which of course I do. Keeping one shoe on, Josh performed a couple of simple tests where he told me to resist his attempt to pull or push the opposite leg. For some reason, when I wore the shoe with the orthotic, the opposite leg was weaker and I was unable to resist him but when he took the shoe off, my leg was significantly stronger and able to resist his attempt to pull or push my leg. The point of this exercise was to show that by wearing orthotics it weakened the ankle, leg, thigh and glute muscles leading to repetitive injuries (now that sounds familiar). This is similar to what Kevin (the chiropractor) said about orthotics as well. Both believe the way to counter the weakness of the foot is through specific strength training targeting the glutes especially. Clearly that is my biggest weakness and the cause of many injuries. This is something I'll have to target during the off season.

For this morning long ride I was going to meet up with Lisa as I'm totally bored of riding by myself, however before it got light enough to ride, Tammy came downstairs in pain (from the run) and had a splitting headache. I offered to go to Sobeys to pick up some aspirin as it would help her headache and aches and pains as well. After I got home I left just after 6 am. Normally I would have left earlier but I was going to meet Lisa in North Pickering at 7:00 am but she doesn't ride with any lights or reflectors on her bike so that would mean riding before the sun came up so I pushed it back to 7:30 am. I did the usual twin peaks at Kennedy and Aurora before peeling out to Pickering. I was only four minutes late and we headed south down Tenth Line which is one of the smoothest roads I've ever rode on. It could have been used for Formula One racing. Compared to the crap roads I rode on this was awesome. I hammered it doing about 45 km/hr down the road only to look back and saw Lisa about one km behind me....doh.

All in all it was an uneventful ride but it was nice to ride with someone else. I'm still not sure about riding with a large group as I constantly weave all over the road.

I finished riding about 97 km but wasn't too worried about the distance as I did some solid hill climbing and repeats (I think). We did find one hill that was almost as big as Sixth Line Hill in Milton which I did two climbs.

After I ran about for 35 minutes and a fairly good clip. I switched to my new shoes as after my last long run my old shoes left my knees and feet hurting. I only had them since March this year but they were toast. I also need to reset my running pod on my shoe as during Muskoka Long course, my pod said I ran 13.7 km but it was only 13.0 km. This morning my watch said I ran 6.91 km but when I mapped it out it turns out to be only 6.1 km. It was a painful run as I wondered how in the world I would run another 15 km.

On another note, I seem to be getting the hang of that nutrition thing. I used to take about four gels for a three hour bike ride but found that it was way too sweet so today I used GU Chomps as well as two Salt Stick pills. It seemed to work well as this would allow me to save the gels for the run. Also even though it was warm, I drank four 750 ml of water/amino vital while I was riding and 1.5 liters before I left. That's a lot of fluid for a four hour workout

Post work out drink.......

chocolate milk


I could have drank a liter or two of chocolate milk as it went down sooooo goooood


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