We’ve spent this weekend in Lake Placid – Kathryn and I, with Gavin and Michelle, William, and Greg and Lynn. No hanging out with the kids, or just enjoying the long weekend, or spending Canada Day with our friends at their “used to be all day long but is now more like 6 hours since we all have kids” party. It has been a long weekend of difficult training in Lake Placid.

It hasn’t gone as planned. Sure, we’ve been here since Friday night, and we’re leaving tomorrow on schedule. But, the original plan was:

• Friday night: swim 4km
• Saturday: swim 2km; bike 160km
• Sunday: bike 90km; run 20km
• Monday: swim 4km

With all the best of intentions, we just haven’t been able to get all the training in. The weekend has been more like this:

• Friday night: eat, sleep
• Saturday: swim 2km; bike 160km
• Sunday ...

Launching this site means that I am getting a new toy: the Garmin Forerunner 305. I was talking with my friend Duncan about it when I saw him in Vancouver at the Web Directions North after party last February and he convinced me that I should get it (see his post Fitness 2.0 to see why).

Add to that what I’ve seen from Greg Collett ‘s experiences with his, and I’m pretty much ready to get one. Hopefully one of my next posts will be a review of the unit and how it performs. After that, a post on how we integrated the GPS data into this site. We wanted to create and use our own solution rather than rely on 3rd party sites like MotionBased.com. Why? Because we wanted the map data directly as part of this blog, rather than having to go to a ...

My wife and I have been on the lookout for wetsuits here in Ottawa for some time. We started seriously looking about 2 months ago, and weren’t really able to come up with too many options. Pretty much everyone carries the same brand: Orca. I tried on three different Orcas and really wasn’t too happy with the fit of them – the ones that fit my legs didn’t fit my torso and the ones that fit my torso didn’t fit my legs.

Being in the internet world, I looked to Google for help. The problem was that all the sites that turn up when searching for wetsuits in Ottawa are for diving/scuba shops. Searching for triathlon wetsuits in Ottawa gives you a great resource that helps you determine if you need a wetsuit, but doesn’t help you see which stores carry which brands. Basically, searching ...

In cold and blustery January 2007, my wife and I ran our first half marathon – 13.1 miles/21.1 km – on a very cold -20 degrees Celsius day. We had never run farther than about 16 or 17km before, it was ridiculously cold for the entire 2 hours and 8 minutes that it took us to run that race. We were happy with the fact that we had finished the race at all.

Fast forward 4 months to May 27, 2007 and we were ready to run our second half marathon as part of Ottawa Race Weekend. We knew we felt better, but weren’t sure how much faster we’d be able to go – most of our other training runs that we’d done were not at a race pace, but at a long, slow, sustained pace. Our goal was to finish in less than 2 hours.

We ...

I ended up taking last week off – the whole family ended up sick with that flu that was going around. It didn’t hit me as hard as others in the family, and I’m wondering if I was able to better fend off the bug given that I am a bit healthier and generally more fit. I recall lying there in bed, feeling like I was going to get it – my stomach starting to feel queasy and a bit rumbly. I remember thinking to myself: “fight it, it won’t get you; don’t let yourself throw up” and for some reason, that is what happened. Could be a combination of several factors, really – but I do think that will power had something to do with it. Straight up control of my physical function.

So, with that bug going around, the regular Wednesday morning swim time arrived and while ...