Kyla Coates

Maui Update

2012-01-15T16:37:00.000-08:00

We went out for a fun ocean swim this morning. We saw lots of fish and a couple turtles, nobody got eaten by any sharks, and Jo and I practiced our body surfing for a bit. As we were leaving the beach, we heard that Sarah-Anne had won Patco in La Paz! The news was so exciting that some

humpback whales just off shore started jumping. Seriously! We saw about 5 whales jump right out of the water.

So nature loves you too Sarah!

It sounded like a marathon travel day(s) to get to La Paz, and killer race conditions, so to have Sarah-Anne, Brent, & Kyle finish on the podium (and Kathy Tremblay in 4th) despite all of that was great news! I would have suffered in that heat for sure had I been there.

Alex and I came to Maui off of a wonderful christmas break. Biking was aggravating my knee in the fall, so I just ran, swam and skied while I was home, and by the end of the week at home I was feeling healthy and ready to get fit.

(swimming in radium hot springs)

Unfortunately, despite a third bike fit, biking still seems to be bugging me a bit, which makes running hurt, so once again I am back to taking some legs off time. Hopefully it will be short lived. Swimming is going well, and there is no place I would rather be to be focusing on strength, flexibility, recovery and future injury prevention.

My goal coming into this camp was to get some bike and run fitness, but I have now changed my goal to becoming indestructible, and will let the fitness come when I'm ready.

Cheers to the beginning of racing season 2012!

(girls at the beach)

(Alex at fish market)

(View just outside of Paia)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-26T16:55:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Everyone. Just wanted to write a baby post announcing my return as a triathlete. Not that I ever left... but I took the most horrendous school semester of my life, so I'm very happy to say that I am DONE with that! Only positive is that I now have 6 more classes checked off the list, I will never do that again, and Onto Maui dudeeeessss!
Being home in Calgary has been very wonderful (which is good because it is going to be a while before I get over my post-traumatic-semester-disorder).
Highlights for me so far have been: seeing the family of course, powwow with the tri-it ladies (their enthusiasm always makes triathlon so exciting), and fiiiinnnnally watching the last Harry Potter movie ha. I'm going to see one of the junior world championship hockey games with my dad right now, and then hopefully we'll be off to the mountains tomorrow for some snow time before Alex and I head off to training camp.
Originally I had hoped to race some early season races for an ITU points boost, but I had some lame-o knee issue in the fall, so getting in a good block of training is the priority right now, and then I'll come up with a race plan after Maui.
Hope everyone is having a great Holiday!
KC

Day 1 of 2012

2011-10-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to write a season review for a while now.. but it seems like too much happened to really wrap it all together without turning it into a novel. This is why I decided to just put up pictures!
(and a miniature novel:)
The first half of the winter I spent sitting around with a broken collar-bone. I then proceeded to have the craziest second half of the year of my life, flying around to training camps and races, while being a part of Paula's support team (as the travelling team-mate and cheerer! some times I even got a walk-talky!). It was an amazing opportunity, an incredible experience, and I think I learnt a lot about WCS racing and training at this level. Unfortunately, due to my lack of World Cup points/past results, I didn't make it into most of the races I was at this year. That combined with some health issues led to me to race far less than I would have liked. Mid-way through the season I began to struggle with some blood pressure problems that I have dealt with in the past. I had 4 episodes this year, one of which was really scary and ended with me in the hospital over night. I still haven't quite figured out how to stop it from happening, but it was an eye-opener for me, and I am finally taking this issue seriously and am working really hard to have it all sorted out for next season. Luckily Beijing ended up being freezing cold, so I didn't have any issues and I was able to pull off a race that I am proud of. It wasn't perfect.. but 'what-if's' are silly to waste time on, so I am happy with what I learnt from it, and happy with my effort, and happy to finally run well. I was able to wrap up my season by getting my 2012 world cup standards so that was a nice way to finish. I think I progressed a lot in my training this year, so I am pleased with that and look forward to transferring my training to my racing more in the future. I'm also really looking forward to heading into this season in one piece! So thanks for the season everyone! Especially Patrick and TriCan and my parents. As well as everyone who looks after me (Kim & Joelle (massage),Kim (naturopath), Dr. Keeler, Dr. Murray (chiro), Paul (physio) and Dr. Smith & co! And I'm thankful to be racing with the world's best gear: 19 wetsuits, Trek ProCity and Pen Runners/Asics- thanks so much for helping me out this year!

August: Very broken but still having a lot of fun

September: broken

October: broken

November:Finally off the recliner bike and onto the trainer! (but still broken)

December 23rd: first 5km swim practice of drills, swim and lots of kick!

January: Maui baby!First road ride of the season, and went from barely finishing a 200 straight without having to open turn and suck air at the beginning of camp- to 5k open water point to point swim by the end!

February: tough month. being unaccustomed to training again after so long starts to get the best of me.

March: Australia! Raced Mooloolaba WC as a good early season start up (finished 26th),and watched Paula win first WCS of the year in Sydney

April/ May:Mini training camp in Arizona and not so great race in Monterray:

May/June: and then headed off to France camp & Madrid..

..and Kitzbuhel for training and Paula cheering:

June: Raced in Montreal, was having an awesome race, but ran into some blood-pressure/hydration issues and ended up in the hospital (finished 5th).

July: After lots of medical testing, headed back to France for what ended up being quite a fail camp as I was still too unhealthy. Toured Barcelona on the way home though!

August: Still trying to figure out health issues, but raced Kelowna and finished 5th, (on the podium as 3rd canadian and 3rd U23)

Finished off the season by placing 12th at U23 Worlds. Got a penalty, but still managed my fastest run of the year. Was so happy to finish strong!

U23 Worlds Report

2011-09-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

I've never really had any desire to go to China (luckily I can't offend anyone in China by saying that due to their ban on social media haha) but I'm really glad I was given the opportunity to see that part of the world because it was quite the experience. It ended up being both better and worse than I expected. The race site was quite green- like what you would imagine a panda jungle to be like, so that was really nice. But the smog was way worse than anything I imagined. On the bad days you could barely even see much of the scenery. Before it rained and we got a glimpse of clear air, I was wondering what it would be like to grow up and never know that the sky was actually blue not grey.. Anyways, it was an awesome experience, but boy do I love Canada.

After the first few days there, I went into the race with a list of all the different ways you can die in China: a) sliding out on the ridiculously slippery pavement if it rains, b) food/water poisoning, c) heat/humidity stroke d) asthma/allergy attack from the smog d) I can't remember what d) was actually.. but it was a legitimate fear as well (possibly something to do with getting hit by a car).. so when it was pouring on race day I couldn't help but think, 'thatttt's it! I'm a goner!!!' Our top 2 junior girls went down on the corners twice each during their race that morning, and the leading british girl was taken out by a stray dog, so that didn't make me any more confident. Luckily a) somewhat cancels out c) and possibly d) (since I can't remember what it was), and in the end since I didn't crash, it ended up working out for me quite well.

We raced at 3:15pm which is a lot later than any race I've done before, so that and the fact that the course/transition/lounge was barely open to us, made the morning leading up to the race a bit challenging. I ended up doing run and bike warmups quite early in the day and then tried to do a good swim warm up. I think that worked out.. problem was that while the lake was really nice (25 degrees) the air was really cold, so despite wearing all the clothes I could during the procession, I absolutely froze standing on the pontoon waiting for the other girls to get called out. My sprinting/start speed in the water had been feeling awesome, but somewhere between warmup and the 'go' I lost it, and my first 100 strokes were not at all what I needed. I ended up getting trapped behind A LOT of slower swimmers when we all came together. Unfortunately it was the 'oh no I am stuck behind A LOT of slower swimmer, but am so busy fighting and flailing that I'm using up all my energy anyways' type stuck. So that was too bad.
I panicked a lot. I think it was at the last 200 meters that I finally got free, surged up the front group and found that they were coasting. YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. that could have been the easiest swim ever!!! but alas it was not ha.

T1 was fine I think.. By the time we did the 180 and were coming back past transition, I was in first, and no one was going with me. Finally Lauren Goss pulled up and we exchanged leads a couple time until the hill, and then I pulled most of the way back around and back up the hill again.. Everyone worked the hill, but otherwise it was the most unmotivated front pack I've ever been in. The only positive was that I didn't have to stress about taking the corners too fast because I went into every one first. By the top of the hill on the second lap chase back caught us which was good because Alex made it up.. but bad because it meant coming off the bike with twice the amount of girls. The rest of the bike just got colder and colder and rainier and rainier. I think that was the coldest I've ever been in a race. Alex tried to put together an attack, but it ended up being at a very inopportune time for me. I totally cramped on the hill, and was literally straight legging it up while she surged ahead. Sooooorrrrrrryyyyyyy. Dying here! I was freaking out about the run after so much crampage on the bike but it ended up being ok.

I had a crappy T2 because I could NOT get my fingers defrosted enough to pull my shoes on. I headed out not too far back though, and just accepted the feeling of being too frozen to feel anything for the first lap until I had latched on to the main group of runners. That was awesome! I've never ran in a pack before. I didn't even realize how big we were until I saw pictures of us afterwards. So cool! Coming past the penalty box Craig was there telling me I had a penalty. Yuuuuppp and there was number 14- the only number up on the board- clearly posted there. I was shocked. I don't get penalties. I make fun of people who get penalties! I decided it must of been the helmet (which it was). I had thought for sure that it had gone in the box, but when I went to double check, my bike was in the way so I couldn't tell, so I just ran off having already wasted enough time struggling with my flats. So anyways that killed my soul a little bit. But it took off any pressure that I had about sticking with the girls because I knew that no matter what I would have to lose 15 seconds at some point. 'Well nothing to it but to run faster than everyone else,' I thought. I was feeling really good which has never happened to me before in an olympic distance race, so I moved to the front and tried to push the pace for laps 2 and 3. I figured I was probably being an idiot to do that, but how would I know- I've never tried this running in a pack and feeling good thing before aaaaaanndd somewhere along the line I would lose 15seconds. I had been having trouble keeping up with the girls on the steep little hill that did not feel little at all, so on the third lap I knew I would have to dig deep. I told myself: "30 seconds all out right now- ready go!" So I SPRRRRINTED........ and got totally gapped. And it took me a while to recover from my fail sprint.. probably shouldve taken the penalty then but I wanted to stay in contact with as many girls as possible. Anyways I gradually felt better and better as the last lap went on, but was still losing time to the leaders and then I had to take the penalty.. holy headrush/cramping batman.. and then sprinted my ass off (pain face and all) to make up 15 seconds and catch the 11th place girl in the last 400 meters ( I thought maybe she was a top 8 which would've been nice). But she saw me about to pass her in the last three steps, and beat me anyways.. and so now my calves are still shot from yet another sprint fail.

I had been feeling so smooth for most of the run that I didn't even think we were going fast.. I thought it was just an ez run until I died, but looking at the splits it was still the fastest run of my life even with the extra 15 seconds, so that made me happy.

All in all I would have loved to finish a bit higher, but I don't think I can expect much more from myself than that, so I'm content.
We honestly had the best support I have ever ever had at a race/event/anywhere!, so I can't thank everyone enough. Patrick for being my great coach, Craig and Gabor for switching out my cassette last second, because I would not have made it up the hill otherwise, Pierre for cooking for us, Kim, Marylin, Dr. Keeler and Rob Hasegawa for looking after me! Everyone!! Thanks for making it an awesome trip :D.

Road Trippin and the Not-Race

2011-08-25T14:11:00.001-07:00

Man.. Kelowna is over! Noooooooo. Heading to this race I couldn't believe that it was Kelowna-time already and that after this most of the group would be on vacation. Kelowna is supposed to be the 'save the best for last' part of summer, but it doesn't feel like it has been racing season long enough for summer to be ending already. The blackberries are all coming out here in Vic though, and my to-do list includes school stuff, so I guess that makes it official. Luckily Manon, Ellen, and Marc are all in town so our group doesn't seem too small after all.
I was so excited for Kelowna. For the ferry and the drive (which are still novelties to me), and to see my family and friends and to just be in the most chill place on the planet, but unfortunately I was not so excited to race. I had zero confidence in my ability to actually finish the race which is a very bad pre-race mentality, but I knew I had to get it out of my system before Beijing. I would say that I was the most scared going into this race than I have ever been, but that would be a lie as I was a major psycho kids-of-steel. That said, the swim/bike went pretty well, and my work with a naturopath seems to have helped because I had my first Olympic distance run without legs cramping.

Swim started off funny.. I was waiting for a 'you're now in the hands of the starter' which never came, and the 'take your marks' was too quiet to hear, so by the time I clued in that the horn had gone off, everyone was already running into the water. I gradually made my way up front, and shared Paula's feet along with a US girl. When I saw that four girls were starting to pull away, I tried to surge to bridge the gap, but the US girl followed me and swam on top of me preventing me from catching up. Not getting anywhere, I settled back in, regrouped and tried again. This time I made sure to pull out really wide before sprinting up, but again she left the feet she was on and swam on top of me making us both lose the draft and not go anywhere! I think she must have had no concept of drafting because I really cannot understand her motives for drowning me like that. She continued to follow/block right up until the last 50 meters or so when I finally broke free. Somehow she didn't make our pack so that was awesome! haha! I almost ate it sprinting to transition when I hyperextended my knee though, but luckily I caught myself. Face planting on the brick walkway would be an embarrassing way to miss pack. By the time we got to the top of the hill we had reeled in the girls out front. The rest of the ride was pretty smooth. My corners felt awesome which is a HUGE improvement from the beginning of the year!

Starting the run was the tough part for me though. I just wanted to build it, but watching the front girls run away so quickly was hard on the ego. I was trying to push myself while still monitoring myself for signs of low blood pressure which meant not really pushing myself at all. I think it got to the point where I just made myself feel shitty because I was focusing on it so much. I ended up DNFing twice because it felt like I was beginning the death march- but then un-DNFed twice as well. After sitting down off the course for the second time, I told myself- " well blood pressure seems to be fine after all, there are plenty of girls out there who will be happy to finish. Walk if you have to, but finish!" So I did. And by the last lap I actually felt like I was moving and was able to pass back all the girls who had passed me during my breaks.

I can't really say I'm proud of doing that.. but I am really happy to have finished, and now I think I am so much more prepared to actually dig deep in Beijing. Even though I didn't deserve it, I was very happy to still make the U23 & Canadian podium after all that. Very happy to get the not-race out of my system.
Missing Kelowna already.

(Pics courtesy of Mark Bates & Alexis Lepage)

What happened to July?

2011-08-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

Barcelona to Frankfurt flight complete and we’re on our way back to Canada. I'm not sure how I feel about people clapping after a clunky plane landing. I’m sure it’s just a way to say thank you to the pilot.. but it makes me feel like everyone was expecting to crash, and are thanking the pilot for saving their lives. If it is the world’s worst flight and the engines fail and a wing falls off but the pilot miraculously lands then sure I’ll clap too, but otherwise applauding a particularly jarring landing makes me scared of flying.
Matt, Alex and I spent yesterday evening getting a mini tour of Barcelona from Jon Bird! We ended up there last minute when our team realized that it was logistically impossible to get us all down from France the morning of our departure. So John Sasso, and Marilyn were so kind as to drop us, and their 8 extra pieces of luggage, off in Barcelona last night. It didn’t really dawn on any one of us until we arrived- that this could be fun! Still in the middle of race season here, so it wasn’t exactly a night on the town, but we had a little swim in the Mediterranean, got to walk along the La Rambla, and sat out in a plaza for a Sangria. Turns out the little fruits on the bottom are potent. Like little shocks straight to your brain. We were just so happy to be out in the evening and for it to still be warm out. Crazy to think that only a couple hours before we were in the Pyrenees. It’s rare that we get much tourist time on trips, so to get some free time was sooooo awesome!

Euro-trip round two 2011 was a bit of a mixed up camp for me. I left Victoria feeling pretty frustrated and stressed about all the fruitless medical tests, so I was looking forward to getting away from it all and just training again. Predictably, getting back to training ended up being more challenging than I had hoped. In short, I began the camp having low blood pressure issues all over the place, becoming too dizzy and crappy feeling to get through workouts. After the first time, the dizziness didn’t go away for two days, so I learnt to shut it down earlier after that. As my bp issues began to get better, my fatigue levels increased until I wasn't even a functional human being anymore. On the plus side, I have never been able to sleep or nap so well in my entire life! The downside was that sleeping didn’t seem to help. I had to withdraw from the Banyoles race. Finally I got to the point where I barely made the walk a block over to the grocery-store (granted it was a tired day for all of us), had an epic meltdown, and tried go home so I could rest and heal and see more people. I wasn’t able to go home though, so (with dr.Austin’s medical advice ha) Alex and I came up with a backup-plan, and I tried my best to follow a pseudo- Gaps diet to see if it would help. The Gaps diet is used to heal medical issues stemming from GI problems (everything from crohn's to autism). I couldn’t exactly just eat beef/chicken broths like you’re supposed to at the beginning, so I skipped that stage, but I cut out all remaining potentially harmful things from my diet/life, and made lots of soup even though I don’t like soup, and the difference was unreal. Within the span of 2 days, I went from feeling the worst I have ever felt, to better than I have felt in a long time. I went from sleeping all day, to feeling too hyper to sleep. The energy change was so huge that at first I felt wired alll the time. My resting hr went down by over 15 beats, and I went from being unable to imagine going for a jog to having one of those runs were you could just run forever. Annnddd finally the rainy/cloudy/cold weather we had been having let up and summer came back. I had enough energy to think again. And the ability to talk came back.. So in the end, camp was good. Thanks Alex and Matt for always making everyone happy, and John and Kim for looking out for me. Jenny & Mike, as always, were the best hosts ever. Seeing an improvement has been a huge boost mentally. I had been concerned that this was going to be the end of my season, so I’m really happy to give it another couple shots this summer.

The non-Barcelona crew are all off to London now, so wishing everyone the best! We miss you, and wish we could be there, but at the same time are ever so happy to be heading home.

2wk Mid-Season Break

2011-07-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

Today I got the confirmation from coach, doctor and travel agent that I will be heading back to Europe with Paula, Recent San Fran Pan American Cup winner, Matt Sharpe, and for the first time to Europe, Alex! We leave tomorrow. Needless to say the last two weeks have been quite the gongshow. I came home from Coteau du Lac feeling quite lousy. I think more then anything it was the pulling the all nighter at the hospital (sleeping in emerge is not so easy), and then getting home late the next night, and then the jet lag that did me in. Well I guess the disastrous race too.. But by the end of the week I had a caught a little cold that our group seemed to be sharing around. I then proceeded to pass it on to Alex only a few days before her race, so that was too bad.. but she still did really well! In summary: that week was quite the fail for me.
I'm really fortunate (and so thankful) to have access to physiologists and doctors and nutritionists who already know me, so they heroically threw together a massive amount of tests and meetings to try and get to the bottom of my past collapses in time for our Europe departure date. Because of all the testing, and driving all around town for testing, and my team abandoning me to go race ;), my training was rather pathetic this week as well. On top of it all, my stress levels seem to have gone through the roof- so I can't sleep anymore, so even though I've been training with way less intensity and volume then I'm used to, I've been feeling really tired and crappy.. and therefore this week was a somewhat of a fail also. I am going to pretend that this was just a 2 week mid-season rest. Kind of a lame break.. but hopefully now I'll be ready to get back to it. I agree with Paula though... ready to escape to France now!

At first I was so impressed by the Edmonton tri-fan's understanding of Paula's smart decision not to race. I knew they would support her choice because as fans they would want her to be the best she can be, on the WCS circuit.. at the Olympics..so I was happy to see that everyone was very proud of her for being smart despite the pressure to race. Butttt theeenn came the Edmonton Journal (front page) article about Paula having to get an MRI on such short notice. I do understand their points of view.. buuutt I guiltily have to admit that If people are going to be hard on Paula for getting in for an MRI on such short notice then there would likely be riots if I go into detail about the number of tests I was able to squeeze in in the last two weeks. Lets just say the blood clinic ladies know me by name now, and that I better be very healthy into old age because I've used up my fair share of tax dollars.
I was really hoping all the testing I did would come up with something substantial. Preferably fixable. But I guess if it were an easy fix I would have it figured it out by now (we Are going on 6 years of this happening), so makes sense that this will be a challenge for me. Through-out the process I did manage to learn some new things. The cardiologist thinks that my collapses are due to nervous system instability. It is not uncommon in young women which makes sense since I know a number of people who have collapsed in races before. My problem is that it seems to happen to me a lot. I guess during races, when adrenaline and some dehydration come into play, the parasympathetic nervous system ('rest & digest' system for those who haven't taken bio in a while) can overcompensate for the increasing symapthetic nervous system activity (fight or flight) leading to total shutdown. I hadn't been entirely convinced that this was my issue, but he described it as that feeling you get when you stub your toe REALLY badly, or whack your thumb with a hammer and you get that sinky/nauseaus awful feeling that is worse than the pain itself and you just want to yell or dance around, or yell and dance around to make it go away. Well that's the perfect description of the feeling of extreme discomfort I feel after I've collapsed, only it doesn't go away like it does when you stub your toe, it just keeps going on and on and on until I borderline lose consciousness again. It's nice to hear some explanation that makes sense to me, but not an easy fix- I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER MY STUPID BETRAYING NERVOUS SYSTEM! It seems like the only thing to prevent it is to stay well hydrated which can be an issue during races. I was treated for severe dehydration at the hospital so makes sense that hydration was an issue: The problem is WHY was I so dehydrated.. I was well hydrated going into the race, I drank well on the bike (e-load), and as mcuh as I could on the run, and yet the doctors were saying my kidney's were beginning to fail by the time I reached the hospital.

We followed up all the heart tests and blood tests with a bike/run test at 30 degrees. Unfortunately I only lasted 45 minutes into it because I was so dizzy and had reached the critical point for core temp (where you're not allowed to continue the test). I had to stop running to get my blood pressure taken every few minutes which obviously would have dropped my BP even further, but even still it was reading as low as 135/30 during the run which sounds pretty disastrously low to me. My hydration had been good. I am a very low-salt sweater. So my blood pressure issues were deemed to be not entirely related to hydration but likely to some other (at the moment) unknown mechanism.. I think maybe some other physiologists are going to look into it.. but for the time being it has been decided that nothing is wrong with me and that it was a poorly run test. sigh.
I have been quite frustrated by all the dead ends. I keep having to think back to Madrid when John had to go run and get paper bags in the middle of the market, the evening after my 5km TT, because I was still so nauseous from the morning's blood pressure episode that I just about puked in between the artist stands, And the good 5-10 minutes in the ambulance when I thought I was going to die in Montreal, to remind myself: nope this is not all in your head.
I always assumed that when I'm running and have to run with my eyes closed because I'm dizzy- that that was a normal part of getting tired. But I don't think it is. This is a problem, and problems can be fixed.
I used to just let people convince me that I'm fine. All the tests came up fine (enough..). I would let them tell me again that it was a matter of hydrating better before races, or eating more. But I am too scared of collapsing again to be complacent. I have to do more than just hydrate better. I've already tried that. I've done the salt loading, and the sports drinks. No, I'm going to have to hydrate way way way better. I think I'm going to start by healing my digestive system. I know I have some issues there, and poor gut health can lead to some serious problems (Alex and Austin have sent me like 50billion scientific articles/journals on the subject that I am supposed to be reading right now...). Maybe I have such terrible absorption that I'm not holding onto any sodium, so while I appear hydrated the reality is that I'm not retaining any water.. I mean there are a lot of other possibilities as well that we just didn't search deep enough for, hidden Thyroid issues etc.. But for now I'm going to be extra attentive of my tummy issues, I'm going to eat even more super healthy, and by my nutritionists recommendation I'm going to start taking in 4x the recommended daily allowance of sodium to see if that makes a difference. And hope for the best.. eek!

Sometimes it seems unfair that some athletes can get through an Olympic distance race without touching a bottle or gel, and I can't even make it through 5 k's.. but we all have our setbacks. And I'm not exactly on my deathbed here, so I am thankful that it is not something serious. But still maybe they'll find something else... in the mean time Ima go eat some olives or miso soup or something.. and get back to real training!

Coteau Report

2011-06-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

(warming-up in my super-awesome new nineteen wetsuit)

On Sunday afternoon I retired.
30 minutes or-so later, I decided to make a comeback. So Newly back from retirement, here are 3 common assumptions that get on my nerves.

Number 1) That you must have been working hella hard to race until you pass out.
This is a common, but very incorrect assumption. Look at the athletes winning the WCS races. Unless they are wayyy out front like Brownlee sometimes is, they are usually giving it their all. As in, that is as hard as they can go- they can't go any faster. Then 30 seconds later microphones are shoved into their faces, and in 5 minutes or so they're up on the podium looking totally refreshed. Not in an ambulance. You pass out when something is wrong not from trying too hard.

Number 2) That you must have very poor hydration/nutrition strategies in order to become so dehydrated that your kidneys start to fail.
This is much less of a stupid assumption.. but it is still an assumption.

Number 3) That you weren't fit enough to be pushing yourself that hard thereby eliciting an uber-bonk.
Similar to Number 1, but even more insulting. As triathletes we train pretty hard. I know that we are often putting in 3 or more times the amount of training as track athletes, and yet I've collapsed in a 5km cross-country race, and major-bonked after two other 5k races. Now what were you saying about my fitness?

direct example: When I mentioned to the nurse that I've had this history of collapsing in races, but that my identical twin sister didn't have that problem, she said, "your sister is likely more fit."
ook. New nurse please.

This weekend was a good wake-up call for me. I've been whining for a while that I think there is something wrong with me when I race, but now I KNOW there is something not right. I'm not too worried about training, but I am going to wait until I get some testing done before I race again that is for sure. So about that race...

It started off awesome. The main thing I freakout about pre-race is making the front pack. Every race, I know that I’m going to have to stay really tough if I want to make that lead group, and despite being a small field- this race had quite a number of excellent swimmers. But shockingly, I dove into the water, and found myself instantly ahead of the masses. I saw Angela Quick swimming off to my right, and KNEW that those were the feet I needed to be on, so I easily skooched over, and from then on was just cruising. By the 500m turn-around it dawned on me that I could be swimming a lot harder. I have never ever felt this way before. The only problem was that my goggles had fogged up so badly that I couldn’t see anything. Not one thing. I know- Lame excuse, but I felt like if I did pull ahead on my own I would just end up on the completely wrong side of the canal. So I swam up beside Angela and tried to see if I could pick the pace up a bit by pushing it beside her, while still letting her guide me. Maybe it was just that I had moved out of the draft, but I think we picked it up a bit. On the run-around at 1000 meters I was able to give my goggles a quick wipe and the next 500 was so much better. Thank goodness I was able to see because I had separated myself from Angela on the dive back in, and from 2 people over I saw her surge (is that solely a running term?). I knew I had to get on that, but I couldn’t get over to her right away, so instead I sprinted to the bouys and since I had the inside line, I easily got on her feet as we headed back to the pontoon. She was motoring. By the swim exit she (and me with her) had made a few seconds on the other girls, and I still wasn’t feeling nearly as tired as I usually do out of the water. I had a good run to transition and ended up with a decent lead out of T1. I couldn’t believe it! As I was letting the lead pack of girls pull through, I realized Alex was on the back of them! I was so stoked! And instantly felt really bad for pushing the first bit of the bike in my attempt to shake off any stragglers. I had almost dropped my own sister! But she had made it in, and we separated from the main group, so it all worked out. Except Dorelle was nowhere to be seen! A dropped chain had landed her in chase pack. For the first two laps we could see Evelyne Blouin chasing us down. I really hoped she would catch us because I felt like we needed just one more strong rider if we wanted to stay away from the bigger chase group. I was stoked when she did catch up! Man that girl is strong. It was a tough ride, but I think the five of us worked really well together. There’s no hiding or wimping out on a bike like that. We had a couple laps of riding scared as the chase group made time on us, but then we really hardened up and increased our lead again.

Into transition, I ended up folding the back of my shoe, and came out of T2 way last of the pack for my third time this year. And to make my attempts at bridging up worse, my quads immediately started to cramp up. I have yet to do an Olympic distance without cramping, but usually I can hold out for a lap or two. This time, my quads were locked right off the bat. I couldn’t get into a comfortable stride because it felt like my muscle fibers were tearing with every step. Considering how painful walking is today- they probably were. I saw Alex and Kathy duking it out up ahead, but even though I knew I could definitely be running faster, my legs weren’t going to let me. Onto the second lap when the cramping had not eased up a bit, I knew it was going to be one looooooong ten kilometers. And I knew it was only going to get worse. Boy did it ever get worse. A podium was out, so that sucked, but I figured that if I stuck it out I still might be able to manage a top 5. And I really really really wanted that top 5 to put me in contention for a worlds spot. On the third lap I went from feeling hot and thirsty to freezing cold. I’ve experienced this before, so even though I knew this meant my body was starting to shut down, I irrationally thought the temperature outside must have suddenly plummeted. When I found myself swerving off the path onto the grass, I told myself that I had meant to do that. Onto the last lap I was. not. moving. Manon flew by me. Evelyn pulled away, but I knew I still had a decent lead on the 6th place girl. I think my body had almost completely shut down by the turn around but I just kept pushing myself towards the line. I didn’t see Alex waiting for me at the finish but I felt her catch me as I crossed it. I don’t remember anything else until I was in the ambulance.

Alex has been doing imitations of what I looked liked in the last 400 meters and it is sooooooooo embarrassing ugh haha. Like a marching duck with a wobbly head.

I almost didn't want to write about my second trip to emerge in less than a year, but it came out anyways.
..so if you're tired of Kyla Coates dramatic blog posts, you can stop reading now.

In the ambulance, all the muscles in my legs completely locked up, it was really painful but the least of my worries. The last times this has happened it has always been during hot races, so I am usually immediately surrounded by volunteers who cover me in ice, and after some time I start to feel better- Since it wasn't hot out today, I don't think anyone considered my temperature. Now I have nooooo clue what was going on with me.. I think my blood pressure might have been low, but I really wish my temperature had been taken as well. As I was lying in the ambulance I felt like my body temperature was just building and building. I didn't feel hot necessarily, but I felt like every protein in my body was denaturing and that my organs were shutting down. Ok melodramatic I know.. but I don't know how else to describe it. It's almost like the worst pins and needles you can imagine all throughout your internal organs, and just building and building. I was begging for someone to bring me ice, but no one would. I don't usually spit inside vehicles, but I couldn't stop gagging up. A volunteer finally found me an ice pack but it wasn't enough, and as they strapped on the oxygen and the IV, I finally began to let go of my panicking. My awareness of myself and my surroundings faded away as well and I could no longer feel the pain, but I was way too scared to let myself pass out completely. It was as if all of me had become centered in a little ball of light behind my eyes. I had been rocking my legs to ease the cramping, so from my little tiny bubble of conciousness, I focused on doing that. I can’t die if I keep moving my legs I thought, and I kept repeating 'Alex came second, Alex came second, Alex came second'. It was my little anchor of happiness that was keeping me from completely passing out. I know that it's JUST a triathlon, but that was the only happy thing coming to me at the time. Either they had the windows open or they were blasting the air-conditioning, but I think the cold air made the biggest difference. Minute by minute my awareness gradually began to expand back towards normal, and when we arrived at the hospital and the paramedic told me to open my eyes, I found that I could.

I was very happy that my mom was with me, but I felt really bad about her witnessing that. I think it's easier just to say, hey mom, I passed out in a race, but I'm ok now!
I ended up on an IV for the next 22 hours in emerge because my Kidneys were showing signs of the beginnings of failure, and they were concerned about a little bit of heart stress. It wasn't the greatest experience. The IV also made me soooooo poofy that I looked like I had gained 20 pounds to my face. Alex packed up my ridiculous amounts of luggage, so we made our flight home yesterday evening. And now I am home!!! And everything is ok. And I think I do want to be a triathlete again after all, so long as my body will let me. Luckily I've got the best support staff ever here so I know I will be in good hands. I hope that this race will still have qualified me for Worlds because my only other chance is San Francisco in two weeks time, and unfortunately I really really doubt I will be ready to race again by then. My goal this year was for Alex and I to go to Worlds together though.. so at least she's done her part!
Huge congrats to Kathy and Alex, and Manon and Andrew for their podiums here in Coteau, and everyone who raced so well this weekend (Monroe & St. Malo too)!
And thanks to Kathy & DJ for letting me stay at their place and taking such great care of me earlier in the week!

Kitzbuhel

2011-06-22T06:06:00.000-07:00

Mission Accomplished Also!

I always think its funny when someone not-so-very-important like me writes: sorry for the lack of updates or something like that because REALLY? I'm pretty sure no one is actually anxiously awaiting an update so badly that it's worth apologizing for.. (I know I've written that many times, but I still think it's a silly thing to say). But then today I checked my stats, and 210 people checked my blog yesterday via Paula's Blog! And I haven't updated it recently! PAULAAAA you forgot to warn me! WWWWWAIT 210 people- COME BACK- I'm writing a new one!!!!!

Actually, I wrote this one on the Flight home, but haven't had the time to post it yet, so here are my thoughts from Kitzbuhel:

Hate to sound overly excited all the time, but after 5 weeks away I couldn’t think of a better way to end our May/June Euro Adventure. (Here.. I will take out most of the exclamation marks so this blog doesn’t sound too annoyingly happy).

-Paula won the gold Kitzbuhel goat trophy like I asked for. (oh and the deer head trophy.. can’t forget that one). While the conditions during her race fluctuated by about 20 degrees depending on the cloud cover, for the most part it wasn’t the freezing downpour the boys experienced. (guys race = not so fun (although the Brownlee show, as usual, was pretty unreal)).

Brownlee in Freezing Rain:

Goat (yay!):

Deer Head (umm..):

-After all my ordeals, I have finally mastered one carry-on, and a bag under 50lbs. No comment on the weight of the bike box and carryon though..
-We arrived at the Munchen (ie. Munich) airport this morning, and there was hardly a line up at check-in. The wonderful Aircanada ladies didn’t charge us for the bikes, and Patrick very very generously offered me his upgrade. Yup I am currently in a pod!!! (exclamation marks very necessary here) Matt described it pretty well.. ‘it’s a whole different World up there.’ He was right. THANK YOU SO MUCH PATRICK!

Our Paula is the best in the world, I’ve tried a pod.. Life Is Complete.

(.. Currently sooo full from the 4 course dinner, but they just brought out bowls of ice cream with coffee, chocolate praline somethingorother, and vanilla- how can I say no! I am making an ice cream soup with the last bits of each flavor like I used to do when I was twelve... Best. Day. Ever.)

When I was first given the opportunity to train with Paula this spring/summer, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about taking a semester off school to train and prepare for races knowing that I wouldn’t be racing myself. Would it make training mentally harder, doing weeks of specific prep, sometimes just the two of us, without a race to prepare for myself? I also felt a bit like I was jumping through hoops, experiencing the WCS atmosphere without taking any time to master Continental Cup racing first. Despite my worries, I soon realized that there weren’t many races back home that I would be missing out on. I don’t have the funds to go chasing points around other countries anyways, so I wouldn’t really be compromising my own season. And training in a world class program, with the best female triathlete on the planet (crazy thinking about that!), getting comfortable with WCS races, while traveling the world, really is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I know there are a lot of girls who would give a lot to be in my position.
I hadn’t thought too much about being part of something bigger. But when she won that first race in Sydney- I just felt like: Oh my god WE did it!
It’s a silly feeling because IIIIIIii did nothing. Even the description of training partner is embarrassing because I am in no way equal to her. I’m just there to share in the good days, and laugh through the suffering days alongside her (well more like behind her..), and then let her do all the dirty work. But after watching her win these last three races, I’ve realized that I don’t just want to be faster so that I can be competitive at this level too.. I want to be faster so that hopefully I can continue to be her team-mate as well. I think I’m on the right track. Every camp this year I’ve seen huge improvements in my ability to handle the training. Sure I still probably have 50 tired days for every one of hers, but I did it! Obviously John (physiologist) and Kim (massage) played a HUGE role in keeping us going. Kim wasn’t just there for massage, she was making me coffee every morning, really going above and beyond. And Patrick of course for putting so much caring and attention into our little group even with such a big group back home. Thank you so much!

I’m never ever going to be a Paula Findlay, but getting to be a part of it all has been so much more rewarding than I ever imagined. And to be working towards my own goals at the same time is a nice bonus. So there ya go. Kitzbuhel was awesome. Hopefully leaving behind the rain though. And I’m off for more adventuring. Kathy was very kind to let me crash at her place for a few days, so I’ll get in some training with her. And then my mom and sister are coming out to Montreal! I haven’t seen my mom in a while, and I haven’t raced with my sister in over a year- so I am very excited. Also very excited to see Dorelle and Joanna and the Ontario crew again! Yay D! And to get to race against all the Canadian talent that I don't see too often. I know Manon Letourneau and Evelyne Blouin are FIT!
I somehow managed to lose my last year’s wetsuit at the pre-race swim on Friday ☹, so I’m really lucky that Alex will be able to bring out my brand new 19 wetsuit- I have heard that it is pretty awesome. (SVP DO NOT FORGET IT ALEX!!). And then it’s back to Victoria for a week to do so some laundry and hopefully visit the bike shop, re-pack.. train..all that good stuff.

- signing off from the pod!
KC

Europa

2011-06-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

Kitzbuhel Pool:

(this would be the most beautiful pool I have ever seen, if it was not so deathly cold.. that takes down it's impressiveness a couple notches..)

Whew this update has been a long time coming. So much has been going on.. I have been in Europe for the past 3 weeks. 2 weeks in France, a quick stop in Madrid for the WCS, and now we’re in Kitzbuhel! Alongside traveling with bikes and doing laundry, another challenge in Europe is finding internet. The veterans who have been here before are always pointing out the various wifi locations: 'this hotel is good, but they get mad if you're not a guest, McCafe is great but a bit of a hike'.. but then a wifi connection magically appeared in the kitchen of our condo! I sure hope it sticks around..
I think Kitzbuhel is my favorite place that we've been to so far. The scenery is amazing (just like Banff, as my Dad says). The little town is gorgeous with tons of cute shops to cater to the elite (as in wealthy) ski crowd, so I can't wait to check it out on a lighter day. Maybe sans my credit card.. Where we trained in France was beautiful as well, but I always leave there with the feeling of ‘oh thank god we’re finally returning to civilization!!!’
So it is nice to now be in a beautiful European village with actual people in it.

Boys loving breakfast in france, and the Font Romeu pool:

So about Madrid!
What a weekend hey!! Now that I have internet, I really want to watch the Magazine show! Relive the excitement a little ha. It was neat to stay in the race hotel with almost all of the other athletes, and to be around all the energy and nerves but not have to worry about racing myself. I roomed in the tiniest little euro-style room with Kathy Tremblay. It was so tiny that I felt bad that she had to be in such a cramped room with me leading up to her race, but in the end we had fun, and she was a deep sleeper so she didn't seem to notice when I accidentally thwacked her with my pillow while rolling over a couple times in the night.
I got to meet a few of the superstars, mostly just the one’s staying on my floor, but that was pretty cool. Alex summed it up, “she’s not racing but she’s getting to meet a lot of famous athletes. It’s like Pokemon cards- collect them all!”.
I'm too scared to talk to some of the big names so alas my collection is likely to remain incomplete.. buttttt otherwise I'm not doing too bad! I think maybe other athletes are trying to get to know Paula through me...

Since I had trained and tapered with Paula leading up to the race, I wanted to try out a 5km. The last one I had done was on smashed legs, in a hurricane (exaggeration- but it was one of those days when even the Biggest trees are getting blown around), and with the worst pacing ever, so I figured I could pull off something better than that. I just wanted it to be low key with Patrick timing me, but we needed a second Tri-Can coach to make it official. Andddd of course the other Tri-Can coach in Madrid was none other than Barrie Shepley. So the morning rolled around and my low key TT had turned into a warmup around the nicest track I’ve ever been to with Simon Whitfield, in Madrid, paced by the Worlds best pacer, Jon Brown, timed by Patrick and Barrie Shepley, and cheered on by Paula Findlay. Oh my goodness can you get any more high profile! I couldn’t believe how many people came out to support me even though they all had WAY more important things going on that day.
Too bad I sucked.
It was fantastic being paced by Jon because not once did I have to use my brain since I knew that he was Exactly on the pace I wanted. It felt smooth for the first 3 km, but then the last 5 laps got progressively worse and worse until I ended up running 2 seconds slower than my previous crappy 5 km. At first when I finished I just thought ooohhh well, guess my running is just not where I would like it to be right now. Nothing had felt particularly off, I just felt too tired to hold onto the pace at the end. But as I was lying on the grass at the finish while all the important people rushed off to do their important things, I realized that I was not recovering at all. If I had been in the finishing shoot and someone had been telling me to 'keep moving, keep moving', I would have been one of those melodramatic ones that need to be carried to the medic tent. I really could not stand up. I knew we had to get back to the hotel asap, so gradually I went from lying to sitting, and then crawling and with a couple stops I was able to pick up my stuff and hobble to a cab with Patrick. The whole walk over I was fighting bouts of extreme stomach cramping, and dizziness. I just kept my eyes mostly closed because the black haze that came and went made me feel like I was going to fall over. At the hotel I went straight to the breakfast buffet and drank a glass of orange juice and then slept on the table for ten minutes, listening to the voices around me fade in and out, and my ridiculously high heartrate pound away. Finally it dawned on me that most people seemed to assume that I was racing, and they probably thought I was having a pre-race freakout or something, so I made myself get up, drink another glass of orange juice and go up the elevator. Unfortunately the orange juice did not sit well, and I REALLY thought I was going to throw up on the other two people inside. Thankfully that passed, and I slumped down in front of my hotel door for another 5 minutes until I was able to open my eyes again and get the key out so I could flop on my bed. I knew I had to recover because there was a very important race that I needed to be at in a couple of hours, so I was able to eat a whole Lindt chocolate bar, and 3 apricots (pretty much the extent of the food in my room) and after a while I became human again. Crappy feeling human, but functional at least. That kind of a bonk hasn’t happened to me since my pass-out days, so I’m not really sure if it was more of a blood pressure, or blood sugar, or hydration issue, but I know it wasn’t normal. So hopefully my iron isn’t disastrously low or something like that. On the plus side I don’t think I could have come so close to passing out without having my run affected, so I’m hoping that I’m running better than the time showed after all.
Anyways a couple hours later and we we’re down at the race site for the 2nd WCS race of the year! I was so nervous for Paula, and I felt bad that since I wasn’t racing I couldn’t share in her pre-race misery, so she had to suffer alone ;). But then after the first amazing lap of the swim when she came out right behind Lisa Norden and Laura Bennet, I KNEW she had it in the Bag!! And did you see her get those two Primes!! Whoohoo! It was so amazing to be there!

Can't really describe how cool it is to actually be at a WCS race! Thanks again to everyone who has put me in this position. It's really a great experience to be here. GOOOO PAULA!!!!!

Goals

2011-05-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

This trip I brought my new giant suitcase. My new mini-rolly suitcase (that I’m not 100% convinced actually conforms to the carry-on size limitations. Maybe if the wheels were removable..), my brand new speedo backpack cause the last backack didn’t survive the previous carryon experience, and my super-awesome biknd bikebox/bag. For the most part this all went very well. I avoided paying overweight fees on the suitcase. I never made eye-contact with any of the flight attendants while boarding, and tried to hide my not-so mini rolly-carry-on behind my legs, so no-one would figure out that I was Definitely exceeding the ‘one carryon, one personal item rule’ heck both my carry-ons probably exceeded the size and weight limit. Individually!
The only unfortunate moment, was when I boarded the smaller plane in Frankfurt, and there were hardly any overhead compartments available for the rolly. I finally found a place above a grumpy looking couple, and with the speedo bag shoved into the face of the person across the aisle, I proceeded to take about 10 minutes leaning over the couple on my tipi-toes trying to shove my bag into the too-small spot. I kept repeatedly trying to shut the compartment door, only to have it bounce back off the wheels that were sticking way out.. maybe if I slam it hard enough I thought.. nope.. ‘it conforms to the size limitations I swear …’ I was trying to act as casual as possible while repeatedly slamming the door- I didn’t want the flight attendants to notice me and show me my ticket which clearly said in large block letters: ONE CARRY-ON. Finally with enough re-arranging I got the compartment closed and shuffled awkwardly through the onlookers back to my seat. “you’re in the emergency exit seat ma’am, you’re going to have to find a spot in the overhead compartements for your backpack.”
You have got to be kidding me… Annnnnd the process began again.

Well in the end I arrived in one piece. Spring here is absolutely beautiful. We’ve had wonderful weather, and despite the snow on the mountain peaks we’ve mostly been riding without even arm-warmers.
But the Jetlag.. I vaguely remembered having issues with it last year, but boy did I underestimate it. Wide awake at night, eating full meals at 3 in the morning because I am TOO starving to sleep, dragging my butt all day long. But the napping is amazing. Back home I rarely fall asleep when I nap, I just doze off and wake up feeling a bit more refreshed. Here I can fall deep asleep at noon in a second. The waking up from naps is less enjoyable. For some reason it’s even worse than waking up early in the morning. This feels more like waking up from the dead. As if only a strong enough will to live can bring you back (or a great enough fear of the consequences if you just went back to sleep..), and even then you’re only a shadow of your former self, stumbling around holding your eyelids open with your fingers, and inhaling caffeine, sugar ANYTHING that will help keep your eyes open on their own.
Luckily a long enough exposure to sunlight seems to help, and as your zombie self begins to fade away in the sunshine, you are oh so thankful for that nap for giving you the ability to make it through the next workout.

That feeling is quite similar to the food here really. Let me explain. European countries are often known for having good food.. and I won’t deny that, buuuuuuttt they sure aren’t into the gluten free fad. The boys can tease me all they like but it really does bug my stomach, so as much as the fresh French bread and chocolate croissants taunt me every morning, I try to avoid them as much as possible. Ok there have been a after-swimming mornings, where I come home to the wonderful breakfasts our hosts set out for us, and been like, ‘move aside boys today is a chocolate-bread day!’. But I usually regret that decision later on. Anyways, avoiding bread in this country seems to make finding other food tricky. At least they have not-too moldy yams imported from some South American country this year. But they don’t do nut butters. I mean other than nutella of course. There is a whole wall in the grocery store dedicated to it. A shrine really. With big jars, and little jars, and glass jars, and cans, and the normal type, and fancy-looking healthy types (first ingredient is still sugar..), and smooth types and the nutty-types. So with no other choice- nutella it is! They also don’t do any type of cereals without wheat. Except for chocolate rice crispies. Shoot not more chocolate!
So life is good with my chocolate rice crispies, and my nutella addiction. You know. Other than the sugar crashes.. So in that way I find it similar to loving the napping, but hating the waking up and/or trying to fall asleep again later that night.

Now it recently dawned on me that almost all my troubles would be avoided if I was just an Elite. An Air Canada Elite that is. I don’t know how many carry-ons you’re allowed.. could it be 2?? But even then it wouldn’t matter because when you’re Elite your big giant suitcase is allowed to be over 50 lbs. So that rolly-carryon for all the heavy items isn’t even necessary! Andddd you could bring your very own almond butter, or gluten free cereal, or salad dressing that doesn’t contain mustard (yuck), so you wouldn’t have to depend entirely on Nutella and chocolate cereal for survival. I’m not really sure if being an Air Canada Elite has the ability to overcome jetlag.. but heck the Elite Lounge and the upgrades have got to help.
So a life goal: Become an Elite. Get a Pod.

Arizona- Mexico- Arizona

2011-05-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

I am currently sitting in the sun, drinking coffee on my Aunt & Uncle's patio 45 minutes or so outside of Pheonix. Life is good. They've got this fancy smancy rec center with an outdoor 25 meter pool that I'm going to check out next. Originally I had been planning on staying overnight at an airport hotel in pheonix before joining up with the Arizona training camp crew the next evening to travel home with them. At the very last second I realized that I didn't want to stay on the airport hotel strip very much.. we did that on the way out, and I wouldn't have even been comfortable going for a run around there by myself. There was a mall nearbyish, but I would have had to check out with my bike and ridiculously heavy suitcase likely around noon, which would have meant another afternoon spent at the airport. Noooo thanks. And then a miracle happened. My aunt and uncle had just arrived in town not too long ago, and they happened to be at the Ikea in Pheonix only 15 minutes away from the airport, so they came and rescued me!! yayay! Food!!

The trip went really well. ARuss was a fantastic travel buddy, so I made it there and back in one piece. Thanks Drew for organizing everything. Craig and Greg and Dr. Vanessa were fantastic support, I couldn't have asked for better! Montterey itself really surprised me. The whole park and canal system was absolutely gorgeous. And despite being massacre capital of the world I felt very safe the whole time. I'm still not sure what to think about the race.. Mostly just feeling a little discontent and frustrated with it.. There were definitely some positives to take away from it, but mostly I'm just looking forward to trying again next time.
The swim was really crazy. I think being ranked among 'the lasts' was more of a handicap then usual with this course set up. The pontoon was off to one side, so that we could swim by it on the way back, so the people on the right had a straight line and the people on the left had one big long diagonal line. As number 70 & number 73 of 73, Joanna and I didn't stand a chance! I didn't really feel like I was ever on good feet, but maybe that will come with some more open water practice. I took some good hits, but did not swim into a concrete wall with my face like Kathy did, so I really can't complain. The first 3 laps of the bike just felt like one huge sprint for me. The first lap was spent chasing first pack, and then the next two was me trying to not get dropped off the back of first pack, as the back-of-the-packers were letting big gaps form on each turn. I think mid-way through the third lap I finally succeeded in moving up, and from then on I was a lot more comfortable.
It took me until about midnight the night after the race for it to dawn on me that that was my first time making front pack in a world cup. So that was a positive at least!
Unfortunately chase pack caught us half way through the ride making us one giant pack, so my making front pack didn't matter very much. Luckily the corners went 100 times better than in Mooloolaba. I felt fairly confident on them, and the one girl who went down right in front of me slid away so fast that I didn't even have to swerve to miss her. Craig told me to keep my cadence up through the chicany sections and that helped a lot too. Since the course was consta-corners I didn't even drink half as much as I usually do in a race, so I wasn't feeling so hot by the time I got on the run. I don't really feel like I could have done much better of a job of hydrating though.. I really needed both hands on the bars allll the time. I was pretty dizzy getting my shoes on in T2, so right out of transition I found myself in no-mans land aaggain. And the next lap proceeded to suck bigtime, so I couldn't even bridge up. I got in a little water from those ridiculous plastic water bags they hand out, and took a gel, and felt way stronger for the second lap. For a little while I got on the shoulder of a faster runner and felt fantastic, but then my calves and quads started cramping and it all went downhill again from there. Mostly I just felt really slow. I think better nutrition/hydration would have helped me a lot this race.. but also I think I just need to start running faster.

next time!
The rest of the canadian team sure had some amazing performances. I fried my brains out watching the men's race, but Brent was still able to make an amazing comeback. Before this trip- I hadn't had much opportunity to spend time with Joanna Brown, so rooming with her was really fun. It was her first ever Olympic distance and World Cup and she nailed it. She's a monster on the bike & run, and she proved she can swim at a world cup level! So Don't worry folks the future of our sport is in very good hands!

Learning the hard way

2011-05-09T06:23:00.000-07:00

by Kyla Coates

-Do not take classes by correspondence. I said I would never take one again last year. Well this time I really really mean it. Do not take courses by correspondence.
It is especially a drag when you are traveling to races in the summertime, and everyone has finished their school and they are catching up on movies on the flight, and reading books on their brand new Kindles.. while you are lugging around 15lbs of text books through the airports with no Kindle and no movies in order to STAY focused! mannnn I realllly wanted to see that movie!!

-If you just drank a caffeinated beverage and are thinking you maybe might have to pee a little tiny bit but you're not so sure.. Do not think, 'oh I'll just go on the plane.' You will be trapped in a window seat with two 200lb tattooed men snoring away beside you on a crazy turbulent flight causing the seat belt sign to stay on the entire flight (not turbulent enough to wake up scary tatooed men unfortunately). Trying not to think about it makes it worse. Trying to learn correspondence course makes it way worse. All you can do it tap your foot along to the 'I have to pee so badly, I think I'm going to die' song that you are singing in your head.

-If you need help getting your suitcase zipped up before you depart.. when everything is perfectly folded and organized..
..you will not stand a chance on the way home when you're in a rush to pack up your pile of dirty laundry, and your roomate is already waiting in the cab and therefore unavailable to sit on your bag while you zip...
Buying a rolly-carryon for the trip home helps a lot in these desperate situations, but does add one more item to cart through the airport and fit into shuttles.
Sooo buying a great BIG suitcase is obviously the thing to do. Packing is a breeze, and you can even add in some of the little things that all female triathletes seem to manage to bring on trips, like your favorite teas and spices, and cooking oils and bath salts.
The problems arise at check in, when your perfect-easily-solo-zipper-upper- suitcase is 15 lbs overweight. This may be ok in Canada when the overweight fee is 20 bones.
Those epsom salts are worth it.
But on the way home..
100$ added onto your 200$ bike fee.. mmm maybe not so much..
So the rearranging begins.. bike box is already considered overweight and they are giving you the 'don't even think about making it any heavier look'. So the heaviest important things go in the carry-on, and the grocery bag that will now also be a carry-on. Heavy, not so important things, go in the trash. like shampoo and contact solution.
This is less than great when you later remember need those things for your next night at the airport hotel.. sigh.
So you lug your 50lb carryon backpack and 20lb grocery bag through 3 airports and customs and shuttles, and try to focus on using your core as much as possible to relieve your compressed spine. And you're singing the 'My shoulders and back and arms are in so much pain I think I'm going to die, and what is that ripping sound coming from my backpack' song in your head in order to stay focused.
Buying another rolly-carryon for the trip home would help a lot in this situation. If not for the guilt of already having one at home.. is $100 on another suitcase preferable to just paying the overweight fee?

Some people just get everything right the first time. I do not. Ooooh my compressed spine.
and you thought this post was going to be about the race.. ;)

ps. that post will be along shortly
pps. no I have not reached the level of packing cooking oils and bath salts.. how they manage it I do not know.

Byeee Sunshine!

2011-04-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

Isn't it annoying how regeneration days always become catch-up-on-life days!? One day to relax, do some yoga, and tryyy to get in a little homework would be fantastic.. but it seems like my to-do list always ends up getting piled onto my precious recovery days. Heck, I haven't even finished unpacking yet! My suitcase is STILL a death-trap blocking the entrance to my room. Aww well- sure am glad we get catch-up-on-life days.

Coming back from Aus has felt like this:
am #1: after being awake half the night, alarm goes off: " ugh *expletive* IT FEELS LIKE THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!"
am #2: didn't fall asleep until after 3am, and woke up thinking "wow- it's sure is sunny out for 6:30 in the morning," only to realize that was because my alarm hadn't worked/woken me up, so it was 10am and I missed swimming!!! PANIC!!
am #3: after being awake half the night, alarm goes off: " ugh *expletive* IT FEELS LIKE THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!"

There has got to be some point when exhaustion overweighs jet-lag and we are able to sleep again.

Australia was a great trip. The training went really well, and thanks to Patrick and our little support crew (THANKS SAM & JOHN!), I was able to stay really consistent and healthy the whole time (other than MAJOR DOMS of the calves post-race!). Patrick put the hurt on the week after Mooloolaba, but by the end of it, I had gone from being not sure if I could even finish a triathlon, to feeling 100 times more confident and 100 times more race fit than before Mooloolaba (albeit, early- season race fit, but still a huuuuuge improvement!). The last few days leading up to Sydney, we discovered that I had moved up a ton on the waitlist, and for the first time it dawned on me that there was the possibility that I would be racing after all. This created a stressful situation because I had to pretend like I was racing, but at the same time I didn't know if I would be.. I knew I would be disappointed not to race, but at the same time I was feeling early-season race-fit, not necessarily WCS race fit, so the thought of racing at that level freaked me out a little bit too. Especially since there was no access to the full bike course pre-race and it was technical, somewhat sketchy, one.
The pre-race meeting came around, and all the girls showed. I was disappointed, but just being there was an absolutely amazing experience! Plus they gave me a sympathy WCS backpack. All the girls did so well (KS's first half up until the crash was so great). Watching Paula win was absolutely unbelievable.
And exhausting. Watching races is exhausting.
I am so grateful to be have been part of it all!
I also decided that the positive of not getting to race was that I missed out on 'the crash'. I feel like I 99.99999999% sure would have joined Lauren and Kirsten in that one. So that was another bonus. A backpack aaaaaand no road rash!
Ishigaki is coming up this weekend, and although I'm on the startlist, I was not able to go because I haven't taken the time to get my run standard yet. Another bummer because I was feeling sooooo good about it! It would have been a great ITU points boost, so that maybe I could actually get into some other races this year! Annnd for the first time ever I was not dead last and/or second-to-dead last on the startlist!
But it's all fair, I need to get the pre-reqs out of the way first. (not entirely true about the not taking time to get my standard yet.. I did run a 5k in March after some time off with a silly foot-nerve-pain-issue, but I got sick right before the race, so it was quite the disaster.)

Word on the street is that the girls out east are running fast right now, so here's to finding some certified races in the next couple weeks and running fast as well!
Anyways I am STOKED to see Kirsten kick butt this weekend in Ishigaki (sure hope road rash round 2 is healing up!!!)

back to the doing of important things!!!!

(..as you can see the other side to jetlag is extreme hyperness at bedtime)

Mooloolaba Race Report

2011-03-27T03:32:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the recovery zone post race, I was feeling pretty happy. There were a lot of things that could have gone better, so I wasn't entirely sure what I was happy about.. but then Paula summed it up, " we lived!" she said.
I finished with the exact same placing as my other world cup, which is fine, but now it's time to start improving.

The swim was the roughest/choppiest conditions I've ever experienced. Once we got through the (not-quite-mazatlan-2008 -but-still-Really-big) break, it was 1500m of washing machine.
I just wanted it to ennnddd.
The waves were smashing us into one another the entire swim, leading to consta- fighting, and getting my ankles pulled, and my suit pulled, and getting dunked, and choking on ridiculous amounts of salt water while never knowing which direction land was in, let alone where the buoys were. There were times when it felt like I wasn't even swimming very hard, I was just expending all my energy trying to untangle my arms from the girls surrounding me, and trying to stay on top of the waves that were drowning me. The few times I managed to get free of being boxed in, I was able to make up a lot of ground by swimming outside the pack. My swimming felt a lot better than my fighting. I'm just not an angry person! Despite not catching either of the perfect waves that passed me by on the way in, I came out of the water not too far down from the leaders so I was happy about that. One second ahead of Barbera Riveros according to the timing splits, buuut she then proceeded to make front pack, and I never even saw it, so that was too bad. Enough of this almost making front pack business!

The wind was really howling on the bike, making the already killer course that much worse. My legs felt great, and I felt really strong on the bike, but I sabotaged my own race by not being aggressive enough on the corners. Ever since I did my first road ride a couple months ago in Maui, I've realized that I'm not as confident on the bike as I had been pre-London crash. That said, I have never ridden in a pack this big before either, let alone with lots of U-turning and wet roads. I did a good job of staying calm and controlled despite that the pack felt very sketchy to me with the wind pushing us around. I think I did a good job of the turns, and held my line well, but I just wasn't brave enough to fight my way into the front on the slippery corners like the top girls were. I'm pretty sure I was just about last into 12 out of 14 of the corners.

Focusing on not crashing is a VERY bad winning strategy.

The times that I did make it to the front of the pack, I felt very strong, and I tried to help out Kathy and Klamer who were doing most of the work. But sadly, instead of using my energy to help pull our pack, I mostly spent it bridging the massive gaps that formed every turn-around. Only positive is that now I know I can get dropped 12 times in a World cup and still catch back up again.

When I wasn't sprinting as hard as I could to bridge back up, I was attempting different ways to get myself to the front of the pack, before the U-turns, to avoid the inevitable back of the pack gap.
I tried killing it up the massive never-ending- hill-into- head- wind. I pulled everyone the whole way up Big Hill, and then proceeded to get passed by EVERY SINGLE GIRL over the crest of the hill/downhilll.
Once again I was dead last into the U-turn and had to sprint my ass off on the way back up the hill to close the gap.
4th lap, I ditched the hero tactic and waited until way later up the hill to push to the front. I succeeded in being about 5th into the downhill- chicany- turn-around section, only to find that the leaders were taking it SOOO freaking fast! I seriously thought they were attacking we went so fast. No wonder I was gapped off the back all the other times! the back girls weren't going half as fast. Somehow I stuck it out. I tried really hard to stay up front, but then the hurricane hit (seriously it was like a wall of rain/wind) and I found myself slowing up into the incoming turns as the sound of race wheels skidding, and girls unclipping into the turnaround freaked me out.. only to end up back at the back.
Needless to say I am very excited that it will soon be Crit season back home, and I'll be able to get back some pack-riding/cornering practice in. I knew what I had to do, but wasn't quite able to be as aggressive as I need to be at this level of racing.
I even managed to lose a good 30 seconds from the leaders of my pack onto the run by being DFL of my group coming into T2. Not proud of that at all.

The first lap of the run was super crampy, But I took a gel and some water, and seemed to get it under control by lap 2, so that was a relief. The run was just up and over the big hill and then back up and over the big hill four times, so it was very hard. It's a really big hill! My legs are not quite in that type of shape yet, so my run split was not pretty.

All in all I am very relieved that I was able to put in such a big effort at this time of the year. I didn't get lapped out AND I didn't even end up in the medical tent for any reasons! woot! I'm looking forward to being able to get some more training in here in Aus, and continue working my way towards racing fitness. It was nice to see where I'm at, and it's easy to see what needs more work.
I'm really happy that Alex had a successful return to racing in the continental cup, and that Kathy, Lauren and Paula raced so well too! Sydney should be exciting! and Kirsten get well soon!!

OZ

2011-03-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

The men's race goes off in a couple hours! Wish we could watch but unfortunately it's a bit too far of a trip for us, so we'll have to content ourselves with the internet updates like the rest of the planet. We've been here 2 weeks now.. so I realize that this post is a little late coming. At first I didn't want to write any posts for fear of letting people know that I'm even here, let alone racing.. but then when I figured the secret was likely out as of months ago, I decided to give blogging a shot afterall.. but it ended up sounding like this:

"The race course is really hard. It is REALLY hot here. I suck at hot. Would everyone please stop talking about how this race annihilates the underprepared- what if I am, and this race was supposed to help prepare me? Does this mean inevitable death??? There are so many fast people here. These waves are pretty big. The hill is really big. What if it rains? I hate race wheels in the rain. Why are my legs so short. What if I get eaten by a shark. What if I have to TT the whole thing and get lapped out. What if I get a flat- then I'll definitely get lapped out. WHY DO I DO THIS SPORT?!!!"

That is why the post remained unposted.

We went down to Mooloolaba this morning to get one last feel for the course, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. The hill is still really big, and it was still pretty hot, but I think the first race of the year panic has mostly run its course. I'm a more positive nervous now.. maybe a teensy bit excited?

The waves weren't so big this morning, but the tide has left the sand under the water really uneven, so the run-in will be treacherous.. I expect to see some epic belly flops. The swim exit is VERY long, in deep sand, so it's gonna be lactic central in T1. And then it's just the hills and heat!

I think this will be my second World Cup, not counting the swim/T1 in London, so it will be another fantastic learning experience. Seems cliche to say, but there's nothing like racing the best of the best. It will definitely be a fitness booster. And if I do get annihilated as the mooloolaba veterans keep foretelling- well still looooootttts of training left to do this year! I am very fortunate to be healthy enough to race so early in the season since after such a late start. I am so lucky to be in Australia (it's awesome btw)!!! And I am very excited to be on the line with ALL 4 of our national team women- all of whom seem to be in fantastic shape. This has not happened in a long time!

Alright nap time. Lets go JP!!

I find these things interesting

2011-02-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

We talked a bit about this in Physiology last Semester. Cool stuff to learn about.

Not in Maui Anymore

2011-02-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

Coming back from a trip and facing real life always ends up being harder than anticipated. Alex returned from three weeks away from class to face two midterms and lab reports galore. When asked how the first test went- she was just like, 'oh.. there was one question I might have gotten wrong..". Champ. I just returned to find all my correspondence course material finally delivered and my first project having been due a week ago. Luckily the due dates are more like guidelines anyways...

Thank goodness the sun came out today because I was experiencing severe Vit D withdrawal symptoms. We planned to meet at 10am Sunday morning for a ride. I Rolled out of bed- and discovered my two roommates and riding companions were out with the flu. Luckily I got the flu shot. My good friend Danika was still ready to ride though, and as she is not attending an academic institution this semester she is as healthy as can be (Schools are where the flu epidemic originates/propagates in my opinion. Put a bunch of sleep-deprived young adults, whose idea of burning pent up physical energy is drinking alchoholic beverages to excess, usually in the very close proximity to other university students, until the wee hours of the morning several times per week and then clustering these same kids in classes together all day = flu season). Still I decided to load up on zinc, vit D, a few drops of oil of oregano juuusst in case. Bike gear on: full arm & leg warmers, toe warmer under booties, mostly water resistant jacket, ear warmer, 2 pairs of gloves- not my warmest but the good ones were lost somewhere in the wash. Coffee in a go-mug in the back cage- all set! Rolled out to the front door- and noticed it was drizzling. hmm well it was just a rainy/mist combo that really didn't look all that bad. 'I can handle this,' I thought. Until I rolled out under the overhang and got that first freezing douse of ice water up the back and in the face courtesy of my lack of fenders. The roads were really wet. 'Are you sure about this?' I asked Danika.
"Welll I had already committed to riding a couple days ago, only to discover that is was pouring.. this is definitely better than that was."
Alright- she's seen worse.. It's only me coming off of 27 degrees and sunny who is getting cold feet. I didn't ask how long she stayed out there those couple days ago.
I begin the 'yes you can' chant. Coach Neil used to say it in the middle of ridiculously hard swims when we would look up at him with, 'how can you be so cruel' faces and he would say 'yes you can, ready go!' Unfortunately my 'yes you can' chant has begun to lose some of it's effects since I have been overusing it for mentally challenging tasks such as just doing the dishes. yes you can.

"If worse comes to worse we can always stop at a coffee shop and get Alex to come pick us up" I say.

We head out and the first hour goes by really nicely. The hills are hurting a little more than usual but I can't figure out if it is because I'm getting hungry, or if it's my muscles being soo cold.. not that I could change either of those because the bar in my pocket is most definitely inaccessible with my double gloves on, and the legs are as warm as they are going to get, so no point worrying about it.
All is going well until the last 45 minutes hits. Happy chatter dies down. Gradually my feet and hands begin to lose feeling until it gets to the point where I decide to stay in my small chain ring regardless of the fact that we've been descending for the past 5 minutes because I know the likelihood of changing gears if an uphill arrives is very slim. An uphill arrives. A very steep one. I convince myself that just because I can't feel my feet doesn't mean that I can't stand up on them, and I get up and out of the saddle, irrationally convinced that my feet are just going to unclip for the mere sake of me not feeling them clipped in. This is better than the time we were doing repeats on West Saanich in the un-forcasted spring downpoar without rain gear on I tell myself. I cannot hear myself inadvertadely whimpering yet. We're getting closer to home. We hit a stop light and I slowly drift out further and further into the intersection unable to unclip. Damn. My inability to track stand is going to get me killed. I get my foot out, but almost go down anyways when I realize my foot feels more like a block of wood attached to my leg. Mercifully I finally get home, and dripping mud and water I roll my bike right into the elevator- going back on my promise that I would wash off my bike and carry it up to my room like I had told one of the strata members before leaving. I get to my door and pout until Alex finally helps me unbuckle my helmet- and then I go through the awful experience of defrosting in the shower. And watching my feet go from white to purple to bright red. You can go into anaphylactic shock from that you know- Alex just said so.
A few hours of thawing later I decided to load up on vitamins again. Fingers crossed that their flu is one of the one's that was in the flu shot. When I get to bed, I'm beginning to think sleeping in tomorrow might be the best option for me to avoid getting sick . I wake up the next morning.. yup feeling a bit under the weather.. check my heart rate.. yup sleep in will be best idea for me to stay healthy and avoid being out with the flu for a week. I roll over and go back to sleep. Annnnnnd then:
"Kyla wake up- CCES is waiting for you at the pool"
ugh.. Note to self: go buy the certified healthy vitamins that don't have a 15% chance of being cross contaminated like the store bought ones.

Quick rush to the pool & 3 bottle of water later and I think the germs are mostly flushed out of my system. CCES ladies are convinced it will be too dilute, but nope- allll good.
But time to toughen up.. none of this Maui spoiledness allowed here. Although the tan is welcome to stick around.

Alex- stop sleeping & put up your 3wk video!

2011-01-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

How did 3 weeks turn into 3 days leftttt?? It's a sad thing to leave one of the awesomest places on the planet. I like all the cute shops in town, I like the grocery store, I like the coffee shop, I like the ocean, I like the sunshine, I like the papayas and mangos and pineapples and coconut everythings. I like the rainforest on the way to Hana, I like the beach, and the little hippy children that run around with bleached blonde hair and no shoes on. I like the fish market, and how everything is right out our front door. I will even miss the pool because of the outdoor shortcourse yards.

Yup it's a good place to be.

Sam says I'm not allowed to talk about how nice it is toooo much though because we don't want it to become too popular here.

I've been a bit all over the board over the last 3 weeks in terms of road back to fitness. Two steps forward one step back type thing. I think speedbumps are pretty unavoidable when you go from taking a looong period of time off and then try to get back into to shape. I know I've been at it a couple months now, but I guess there are a lot of changes and adaptations to be made after a break like that. This will be my fourth week of swimming full volume, and when I think of it that way, I'm pretty happy with how far I've come since my first full 5km swim on December 23rd (I remember the day because it was everyone else's 10km swim day). Not going to lie though, I feel like race season is coming too quickly! oh well who needs fitness anyways. At least my bike is awesome!

Yesterday was our second easy day and Alex, Sam and I got a sleep-in & coffee shop morning. Then we went for a second breakfast after swimming, and Patrick dropped us off to spend the day at the shops and beaches in Wailea. I really enjoy the ocean swims and the riding here, but fun days like yesterday are what give the whole trip a feeling of happy for me when I look back on them and not just a general feeling of exhaustion.

Speaking of that, I really need a nap.

Jaws

2011-01-22T16:26:00.000-08:00

super fun off-afternoon:

Maui week 1.5

2011-01-19T21:16:00.000-08:00

Today our rooster went missing.

Maybe one of the neighbors finally had enough, and is having 'chicken' for dinner, but that is probably too much to ask for. He likely wandered off and hasn't found his way back yet- after all he isn't exactly the smartest rooster in town. He doesn't know when morning is coming like real roosters are supposed to, so he tries crowing at 2am, 4am, 5am.. a strangled pitiful kinda crowing that nonetheless gets through any and all types of earplugs. Either way, he makes departing for swimming at 6am more bearable because we're up anyways. Kinda missed the lil guy this morning.. (yaaa huge lie). For the first time my morning resting heart rate wasn't skewed by sympathetic nervous system response to his sporadic crows.

Paia is sunny, and warm and beautiful, and hippy, and everything a beach town should be. It is by far the funnest, nicest, most beautiful place I've ever been to for training camp. The ride out to Hana was amazing! And I quite enjoy the outdoor, shortcourse yards. Mana foods (the grocery store) IS THE BEST THING EVER!!!!!
On the otherhand, I would have to say that Tucson as a training camp location DOES have the benefit of not leaving you with a broken heart for not having the time to check out every amazing store, restaurant, beach, luau, snorkling cove, whale watching tour.. etc because the funnest outing there is to go to the Starbucks-Safeway. (No offense Tucson). I'm Having fun with Sam and Paula and Alex at the stupidrooster house. If I am able to move tomorrow then I will deem the: 'getting fit' a success already. If I am unable to move (which is highly likely after today's ride) then the: 'getting recovered' will probably need to take priority, but I'm sure the 'getting fit' will set in eventually. My tan is sadly taking it's time.

Sorry for the pitiful updates- check out Alex's blog for videos!

Here We Gooooooooo

2011-01-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we head off to our first training camp of 2011. I want to share where it is but I know you will all be jealous...
..ok ok 3 weeks in Maui yay yay hooray!!

I am supposed to be packing.

For my birthday I was set up with a Biknd helium bike box from Tri-It in Calgary (Victoria could really use a branch if you're thinking of expanding.. wink wink) which iiissssss sooooo cool. After traveling with my old-school hard case amongst all the fancy smanshy boxes last summer, paying waaaayy more for my extra wheelcase and extra weight every flight, I decided it was definitely time to upgrade (not to mention the forearm injuries derived from dragging one of those things through the airport). So I begged Tri-It to find me a bike box like Paula and Kathy's and they did! Now I will fit in with the pro's at the airport at least.

I'm really looking forward to this year. For the first time I won't be taking a second semester at university since it looks like we will be away all of exam period, and I didn't think the profs would be too pleased.. I will be taking a couple online courses (one at a time) but otherwise it's a Tri focused year for me. This is a little scary coming off the collarbone injury because there is the potential that this would have been the perfect year to take a big chunk out of my undergrad requirements. But I would be an idiot to pass down the opportunities that have been offered this year, so here we go! I do worry sometimes that my swimming won't come back to the level it was previously at in time for the early races, but other days I see glimpses of my old swimming-self and feel really confident that the recovery is going well. I think once my upper body strength starts to return I'll begin to see huge improvements, but at the moment each swim is like a strength session for me leaving me overly tired and usually cranky because I want to be Fast Now! 'Patience young Jedi'- I know I know. Running and cycling volume has gradually been increasing and so far everything feels healthy and heading in the right direction. eee knock on wood.

Today we ran the Pioneer 8km, I caught a stupid little head cold a couple days ago, so I wasn't planning on running it in order to be 100% by tomorrow and avoid getting any worse, but then in the morning I was feeling pretty good so I decided to just run it at a tempo effort. (this is kindof a lie.. I actually ran 3km with the girls, blew up, and then decided maybe tempo effort was a better idea). There were some good efforts all around. Solid early season run by my lil sister ;) and Big congrats to Marc for a very speedy time.

Well time to go get Fit. Later Friendssss!

2011

2011-01-02T20:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Belated Holiday's Everyone!

wowy 2011. Officially an adult tomorrow. I don't think there is anywhere where I can still officially be a kid anymore! That sucks.
I quite liked being young & stupid.

Firstly, Please Welcome a beautiful new addition to my living room: Sparkles! (Spark for short)(named by the one and only Bill himself). The roads were all frosted over this morning, so I stuck to the cross bike, but I will take her out for a real ride soon!!!! I wish I could explain how excited I am. Thank you so much Trek Pro City & Ron at Ridley's! I can't believe I get to ride a bike this nice.

I really liked Christmas this year. I think it was the best one I've had since I moved to Victoria. It took me a while to pinpoint what made it even better than the rest.. but I thinnnkkk maybe it was because we had our winter training camp leading up to christmas as opposed to right after christmas. At the time I didn't appreciate the pre-christmas camp as much as I should have. I was happy to be getting some good training in, but as Christmas neared, I was thinking more about how it was already the 23rd and how I wanted to go home, and how it didn't feel like Christmas at all with the Victorian greenness & 10 degreesness. But when I finally made it home to the snow, and played nighttime shinny at the big rink in the park behind my house christmas eve (we won btw.. nbd ;), with no worries about heading back to trainingland the day after christmas, I realized it had all been worthwhile. It is much easier to fully relax when you know you are supposed to be relaxing, not prepping for a training camp slash awaiting impending doom.

I loved seeing my family. My parent's spoiled me. My cousin's first baby, Baby Wyatt, was born on New Years Eve (and the new born pictures are actually cute. He doesn't even look like a squished tomato baby). Welcome actuallyreallycutenotjustsayingittobenice baby Wyatt Coates! My brother is no longer shorter than Alex ha (still a teensy bit shorter than me :), and he sleeps in until 1 pm if you let him. I OD'ed on christmas chocolate. Really Badly. I need a serious sugar detox now. (and why did that last box of aftereights follow me back to Vic aaaackkkk!!!)

We got out to the cabin for a few days, and while Alex and I didn't get out snowboarding for fear of re-injury, we did have a couple great cross-country skiis! The paths and roads were so snowed/iced over that we incorporated our tempo sections of our run workout into our ski. That was a great idea at the time, but not so much the next day when I could barely walk. Turns out xc-skiing uses a lot of funny muscles. We did our swim workouts at the radium hotsprings pool. I wish I could always swim outdoors. Granted our waterbottles froze on the pool deck, and we spent almost as long in the hot pools beforehand preparing for the workout, but it made swimming almost fun.

Even if I miss the holidays- It is great to be back to the island again. Running in the greenness and sunny +4 degreeness sure is nice coming from snowy minus 18.

And finally to finish off this random post, We met up with some High School friends New Years Eve, some of whom I hadn't seen since high school, and in honor of them I have begun a list of things I learnt in 2010:

a) Being friends with nerds in highschool is a good idea. They end up being the ones already in Medschool by fourth year while still swimming varsity, or Biophysicists designing brainwave sensors in their summer jobs . wow. Really amazing, accomplished, down to earth people. And they're nice to you even if you only visit them every four years :)
b) Just because you know you are doing something stupid doesn't make it any the less stupid. Now that I'm an adult and all, I hope I am over this phase.. ie. If you're riding down a hill with a bag on you're shoulder which has the potential to fall off said shoulder and get jammed in your spokes, catapaulting you over the handlebars.. it will happen. knowing it could happen doesn't prevent it from happening. If only that were the only example of 2010, not just the most simple one.
c) Ride the course before you race on it. It doesn't matter if your only chance to ride it is at 5:45am the morning of the race. Just do it.
d) Training at Altitude is really hard. Since Calgary now counts as altitude for me, friends who ran with me over the break please don't judge the huffing and puffing.

.. list to be continued..

Really looking forward to 2011.
KC

Mobile uploads

2010-12-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

Classes are over. 1 full lab report due tomorrow (aka reason for this procrastination induced blogging), but only two exams left to go after that. I Have been adding eggnog to my coffee. Chocolate calendar has been started. NTC christmas party was fun. The boys ran the santa shuffle yesterday... all this can only mean one thing: christmas break is almost here!!!! I'm just so excited. :D

I realize that my blogging has been rather sub-par these past few months. This has been due to time spent getting educated, getting treatment, and slowly getting back into training. AAAnd because there really isn't a whole lot to talk about when all you're doing is stressing about school, and driving to physio appointments. I realize that if I were A REAL elite triathlete I would have made amateur videos of me and my teammates training (set to cool music of course), and made myself look really badass by training to said cool music. OR I would have at least taken pictures of training rides/runs and posted them on twitter every couple hours to instill jealousy among all my adoring followers, in their 9-5 jobs, unable to swim, and bike, and run full-time like me.

But I don't own a video camera, and my regular picture taking camera broke.

That said, in an effort to be a real elite triathlete, I did try to take some phone pics yesterday to celebrate a number of FIRSTS.

FIRST outdoor ride since London (/alex making goofy smile on top of observatory):

Also FIRST coffee shop ride since who knows when (/Alex drinking soy latte with helmet and gloves still on):

Last Month's FIRST snowfall & reason why yesterday was my FIRST outdoor ride (/Alex on her new cross-bike):

FIRST christmas tree in this house (/Charlie):

annnnnddd not in pictures but also a first: FIRST 200 meters of straight swimming without stopping at a wall and/or drowning :). And FIRST full run around the lakes since last summer.
Merry almost-christmas-break everyone!
KC

Since being BETTER!

2010-11-16T20:16:00.001-08:00

:D

I've been saving that title for a loooooonnng time. It may even be a little preemptive right now, but I can't keep saving it any longer! I just had my 4 month X-Ray yesterday, (That's like a whole third of a year batman) and bone callous is starting to look pretty solid! Despite Dr. Keeler's positivity, looking at the x-rays never gives me quite as much confidence as I would like. I can see the cloudiness that is the bone callous, but mostly I just see big huge gap in between the two halves of the bone. Sounds like it's just going to stay like that though, and bone callous will continue to fill in the gap. The bone-callous cloud is much more pronounced then it was 4 weeks ago! I just have to remind myself that allllll bones look semi-transparent on x-rays, and thusly still-building bone callous will look even more so. Outwardly you can hardly even tell that there's a step there, so despite having a deformed clavicle for the rest of my life, I'm not going to look super grotesque afterall. And it's been feeling very strong and sturdy lately so that's the important thing. I had a somewhat worrisome moment on the weekend when I gestured rather wildly (I think I was demanding a sudden-death round of charades or something because the boys were kicking our butts), and felt a sharp pain. The pain just got worse and worse on the drive home from Courteney/Comox where our camp had been. But Paul (super-awesome-physio-genius) explained that it was just the nerve getting stuck on the bone, so I didn't re-brake my collarbone after all! whew. He is very amazed by how well I've healed considering I showed no healing at 2 months, so I'm a lucky lucky girl.

I have reached a whole 30 minutes of running and feel great. I am also REALLY enjoying the decrease in water running volume. It was very nice to start running again with a whole group of walk-run gals (although I recall a couple of the run walks may have been closer to interval training than injury rehabilitation...), but even better that we're all just run-run gals now!

I was queen of the trainer this past month, but I have been given the all clear to ride outdoors! There is the teensy issue of not having a bike as my road bike was cracked in the crash, and I am sans cross-bike a le moment. But Alex just received her BRAND NEW Trek XO1 from Pro-City (and wont stop raving about it), so Lauren pretty please may I ride your cross bike for a bit?? I even went and dug out my old helmet from storage, but I would like to buy another pretty-catlike since that was the bestest helmet ever and I only wore it a couple months before the crash.

The last few weeks have been all about kicking in the pool. It looks like I'll have to build up my arm/shoulder strength and flexibility before I can begin ACTUAL SWIMMING, buuuutt in another week or two maybe I can give it a shot!! eek.

I had a lot of fun at our fall camp up island last week! The weather was mostly awful, but seemed to cooperate when we needed it most (aka monsoon ended just in time for the cross rides). I did trainer rides everyday, walks, runs, and loads of kicking+ some drills/single arm = sooo much training! ha. Mostly it was just really nice to get away from school-life, start getting back into shape, and stay at a very nice hotel with the team for a few days (outdoor pool & hottub, bath and body works shampoos/soaps, and two leaves and a bud teas! just so spoiled). I almost feel like a real triathlete again.

Most of all I want to say thank you to my friends who have listened to my whining and panicking these past few months. ESPECIALLY Lauren for always being so positive and supportive after having gone through a much worse clavicle-healing process than myself. No matter how many times I told Lauren that I was pretty sure I needed surgery- she would always say, 'no no I believe in you, you're still going to heal!' Never once did she think that I would need surgery. So thanks for everything Lauren!!!!!!
and Thanks to my support team for all the monitoring, and treatment. I still have a long way to go, but I am so grateful to have such a great team behind me. Being injured last year was good for something afterall because it led me to find such an amazing group to look after me!
I didn't know it was possible for me to be more appreciative of my sport/lifestyle, but I am. I never thought I would want to go swimming in the mornings, but I do! (well maybe not the morning part).. I even want to ride outside even if it's rainy and gross out! Soon soon!! I'm a lucky girl.

bike rescue fail

2010-10-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Over Thanksgiving weekend I went home (to Calgary) and rescued my long lost bike. Somehow through-out my summer adventures, my bike ended up not making it back to Vic with me. But my box now graces our deck rather than my parents living room. I'm sure they are quite happy about that. And I was oh so happy to have my bike back again :). And thennnn to make life even better- my three month X-Ray showed healing!! Finally!!! So I busted out my happy dance (It goes like this: "I'm Healing, I'm Healing, I'm Healing!"..involving an immobilized right arm of course), and texted pretty much everyone who knows me, to tell them that I finally have a bone callous. I was thusly given the go ahead to begin trainer riding on a real bike!!!! No more granny biking/recliner biking for me baby.
Tonight I built it. 3 months of being unloved. In pieces. In a box. In my parents living room. My london race number was still on the seat post, gels still taped to the top-tube. I had forgotten that I had stripped my handlebar screws in Europe.. this made putting it back together slightly more challenging. But then as I was cleaning it, I realized that my beautiful bike was broken! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo. So now I most definitely will be needing a new bike. And it's back to the granny bike in the gym for now. Sponsorships gladly (and graciously) accepted.
Love,
Kyla

BLOG

2010-09-24T14:24:00.000-07:00

LIFE UPDATE:
Firstly!!!
Giant Congrats to our Canadian team at Worlds. Amazing amazing racing. Paula was the toughest I have ever seen anybody be. Joanna and Kirsten were our podium girls in the Jr. & U23 women's races. Our Jr. Boys had what I think has to be the highest placing for any Canadian Junior boys team eeeeeeevvvvvvvvvverrrr! Christine- Ms. Consistent- had a fantastic race. And everyone else who I didn't mention were champs too. Giving all you have with what you've been given on the day is just as inspiring (..I think we saw two world champions finish somewhere in the 40's at races this season.. and I was really impressed by that. Sticking it out on the rough days is a lot harder than winning).
Annnnywwayyys thanks for making living vicariously through you guys so much fun!

Going on month three of being broken.
Last week I finally got to see my X-rays, and was shocked by how broken I actually am. I'm not in a lot of pain, am quite functional, and have great range of motion, so even though I heard that my x-rays weren't very good I definitely was not expecting them to look so bad! After Dr. Nelson checked my range of motion, and poked and prodded he was surprised as well. 'You don't match your x-rays,' he said, 'you seem all better.' But the x-rays showed the two halves of my collarbone a ways apart, (I want to say over a cm apart, but I'm just making up numbers here cause I have no clue) and slightly overlapping with no apparent healing. so that sucked. Surgery was considered. Buuuttt I got a CT scan done (8 weeks), and miraculously a tiny eensy-little bit of healing showed!!! YAY!!! hugggeee relief.

..you see people lie to you about collarbones...They say it is a fairly easy break which rarely needs surgery, and heals in about 6- 8 weeks. From what I have seen this is a bigfat lie.
But if everything keeps improving over the next month, and I can avoid surgery, I will be a very happy girl.
*thinking immobilized thoughts*
I'd like to thank Dr. Keeler & Dr. Nelson for keeping an eye on me. Because if they weren't monitoring me, I'd probably assume myself to be better, and be trying to win my in-class push-up contest (I mean.. personal fitness test..) next week. (winning the beep test would've been a piece of cake!)

Primal Diet is going well.
Mostly Alex and Austin feed me though.. I'm working on being more creative/inspired so that I don't end up just being the dishwasher/just feeling really lazy& unhelpful in general. it can be hard keeping up in this family. I did make dark chocolate covered roasted macadamia nuts last night though (ok fine Alex melted the chocolate)! yummmm.
Austin is beginning to look like the guy from into the wild (right before he dies), and has thusly inspired approx half the team to jump on the bandwagon because he looks so.. emaciated.. I mean fast looking.
I do not know if this is a good thing or not.

School is kicking my butt.
It's not that it's harrrrrrddddd. There's a saying, 'If you want something done give it to a busy person'. Welllll since I am not really training right now, I don't consider myself to be a busy person anymore (and yet I fill my time up doing a quadrillion other things), and soooooooooo I have found myself up wayyyy too late, waaayyy too many times over the past week finishing assignments and/or studying last minute.
OK OK I've learnt my lesson!!! and I am officially going to time manage better as of tomorrow.

Toscaloosa this weekend!
Dorelle, Jason, and Andrew Russell are there ready to represent at US nationals. Sounds like another HOT race so gooodddd luckkk!!!!! Have fun. :) ps. the start list is stackedddd for a pan-american cup!! And sounds like Domi's doing a little cross-country racing this weekend, so go Domi go!

Otherwise..
-I pretend that I'm water running queen of the world in order to inspire myself to keep going back to the pool. I will be sad when the outdoor pool closes because at least on sunny days I let myself think that I'm getting my tan on.
-Alex has almost mastered this screen printing thing.
-I just want to race tooooooooooo.

Since Being Broken

2010-08-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

We went to the Buffet on the beautiful ferry ride over to the Island last night. It still hasn’t lost its novelty for me. Arrived back to Victoria after 2 months away. I sure missed it here although the chilly and fall-like weather was a bit of a shock.
France: Hot. Cabin in Windermere: Hot. Okanagan: Hot!
But I know that in Victoria the summer weather will come back around again in September, so I won’t complain just yet. When I left, Beacon Hill was still green and flowery, not dried all golden from August. The blackberries Definitely were not out! When I left, my racing season was just beginning. Now I’m back, and I ended up having my first summer vacation in a long time. The month off was really nice even though I couldn’t do most of the things I would have had I been whole. Maybe no backpacking or climbing or wakeboarding or trail running or, or.. but it still felt like a nice break. I got to spend more time with my parents and little brother than I have since I moved out 3 yrs ago. I got to spend almost 3 weeks at my cabin which I have been missing so much. Just like the old days.
Almost.
I read books. I’m still the Dr. Mario CHAMP. I’m not really a lie on the beach all day and tan kinda girl, but getting better. Recliner biked while watching Paula win her second WCS in a row. Kinda wished I was there too. Fancy Coffees. Shopped for broken collarbone friendly clothes but nothing looks cute with the dork brace on. Or maybe it’s the bandaid tans… Water ran in the lake at 9:30 at night. Got spoiled rotten by my mom & dad. Stayed up all night because I don’t burn off enough energy in the day. Slept in. Hotsprings. Walked. Ate so many BC blueberries and peaches.

I’m going to have to go back when I can do my favorite 3.5km out and back run ALL OUT as the sun is setting like I used to do as my pre-kelowna ‘training’ back in the day. Kelowna was too late in the season to really train for back then ha. Too much boating and beaching and exploring to be done. But a 3.5km run all out at the end of the day- now that could be squeezed in.

Speaking of training- It’s amazing how many people actually believe you when you tell them that you’re working on getting fat right now. They then try to convince you otherwise. For the record: I was kidding. Gaining a pound or two might be a bit inevitable but regardless, 20 year old girls don't TRY to get fat during bikini season.
I think the highlite was coming out to watch nationals in Kelowna and seeing all my teammates race that I hadn’t seen for so long. Missed you guys. I liked hearing all the 'when you were gone' stories. And I'm very proud and happy for everyone!
The Okanagan is one of my favorite places.

I still have to wrap my head around the fact that now that I’m back doesn’t mean I can get back into training. Still got a ways to go yet. Not a whole lot of improvement after the 4week X-Ray, so fingers crossed the 6week one looks better! I’ve a huge to-do list.. mostly organizational things that I tried to write up on my whiteboard, but the previous list was un-removable.

It says: Finish This before Aus!!!!:
'get school books, bills, laundry, e-mails'..

…a whole year ago. Crazy how fast a year goes by. How much happens and changes and start and ends in a year. We danced to Day and Night, and Sexy B**** then instead of Dynamite, and Baby I like it ha.

I just got the stuck whiteboard list off with some Windex.. 'get school books, bills, laundry, e-mails'.. ok shouldn’t have bothered with the Windex.. now I have to re-write it all. Maybe some things don’t change too much. The T-Swift songs sound about the same.

I've still got some late summer adventuring to be done before school starts! Immobilized adventuring of course. I will try to do a better job of updating this time round.

No bad days.
-K.Coates

Recap

2010-07-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

“If you don’t come out front pack, the first thing you ask yourself is, ‘where’s Nicola?’ because when that train goes by, you better be ready to jump on it.“
-KT

I had a great feeling swim when I wasn’t getting beaten up. I felt relaxed and in control as opposed to hanging on for dear life like in Des Moines. Somehow Paula, Kathy and I ended up on the pontoon beside one another. I had my first good start of the year, and had a very clean first 300m to the first buoy. I mean I wasn’t up with Laura Bennett by any means, but I think I was up there on the first corner. But with almost 70 girls on the startlist, and only 300m to those two tight 90 degree turns, being ‘up there’ isn’t good enough to escape the death trap. Somehow Paula, Kathy and I ended up coming out of lap one all together though, so I was very happy with that. Lap 2, I got separated at the turn-around and was never quite able to make up those 8 seconds. I jumped on my bike frantically trying to bridge the gap all by myself. And then I saw Spirig gaining on me.. my one and possibly only chance to make front pack.. Right as I was moving over to jump on her wheel, I heard a 'hey hey hey', and randomly this other girl appeared behind me- also in the process of jumping on Spirig's wheel. I had to veer away to avoid cutting her off, and the two of them were off and away as if I'd been sitting still. Major fail. I kept hammering until I was swept up by the chase pack. The tail end of the front pack was teasingly winking in and out of sight as we weaved around the corners, so our pack was plenty motivated. There was no organization yet, but lots of standing, sprinting and jockeying for positions. I was in the middle-back of the pack, in my drops, focused intently on not crossing the wheels of the swervy girls in front me, when I went down. I just didn't see the speed bump coming, hit it hard and flipped off my bike. I have no clue why I fell- maybe it was a particularly nasty speed bump because later footage shows waterbottles flying out at that spot, but who knows. I just remember calmly thinking 'aw shit' as I was launched towards the pavement. I landed a lot on my head, so the combination of mini concussion and probably shock, make my memories after the 'aw shit' part pretty hazy. I did vaguely notice another girl picking up her bike and jumping back on, so I'm so sorry for taking you out Erin.

When I crashed I didn't go into the usual panic-shock where you frantically try to jump back into the race while shakily assessing the severity of your wounds. Either I went into the other type of shock, where you're perfectly calm- and time moves really slow and hazily, or else that feeling came from the landing on my head part. I don't remember a time passing between crashing and being surrounded by medical volunteers, but there must have been one. I don't recall my surroundings other than sky and pavement. But as I lay on my back on the asphalt, I was mostly thinking, 'please please please don't be broken before Budapest.' And also how the UV index must be really high because I was definitely burning, and that I was most likely going to get run over again as the packs came around again, but I couldn't seem to get myself to move.

By the time I got to the hospital I was with it enough to know that I had at least 90% for sure broken my collarbone. I was in a neck brace because I had had a lot of head and neck pain when they first found me, but that was going away so I knew my neck would be ok. I was so relieved when Doctor Keeler found me in Emerge a little while after the paramedics dropped me off. Even though I couldn't really tell you what year it was, or how old I was, I knew that being broken, alone, in a bathing-suit and bike shoes, without any money, insurance, or the contact info of anybody on the trip, probably wasn't a good thing. Dr. Keeler had run a whole lap of the bike course trying to find me, and arrived at the corner just as I was being taken away in an ambulance. He then was able to track down the hospital they had taken me to, but with no ride there he ended up running all the way to the hospital too. It didn't feel like much time had passed between crashing and Dr. Keeler getting to the hospital, but in that time Paula won the biggest race of the year. I was so so so happy and amazed to hear that. We waited for neck X-rays. Finally someone came and wheeled me away. Alone for a few minutes in the dark X-Ray room, the devastation I felt over my ruined season began to overwhelm me. Today was my first and last day of being fit this season. All my previous races I'd only been chubby-fit, and unable to finish a ten k without my SI joint getting jammed. But today I had been ready. I felt like I had wasted all the amazing experiences I had been given leading up to this race and Budapest. I was so incredibly lucky to be taken to Des Moines, Les Angles, and here that I felt like I had just ruined all that. Thinking about starting all over again, and focusing on next summer when I had been handed such amazing opportunities this year, and had such high expectations for this season, was really depressing. I would have maybe started to tear up for the first time that day except that I thought the X-ray guy might get a little worried to come back and find me crying.
Besides I'm sure he's seen people lose a lot more than their racing season. So I stopped feeling sorry for myself.
After getting wheeled back to Dr. Keeler we got the all clear to wait around for collarbone X-rays. And then when I was finally declared broken, a kind little nurse came in to work on the road rash. Dr. Keeler was so great, he had brought me my clothes and flip flops, so that I had something to put on as the nurse cut off my suit. He bought me treats from the vending machine when I was bonking, and around six pm he brought us back to the hotel.
When someone genuinely feels bad for you, and you already feel sorry for yourself, sometimes that overflows- so when I saw Patrick my tough-spree ended and I got a little teary. I had been really excited for Budapest. But then Paula helped me do my hair, Patrick and Kim brought me dinner and treats, aaaaaand Lauren and Kirsten came back with a whole new broken collarbone outfit for me! (such a lifesaver because it was the only thing I could get on for the next three days). All the love and the crazy pain meds that make me drunk helped me feel muuuuch better. The whole team took such good care of me the whole rest of the trip.

I was so fortunate to go on this trip, I never ever imagined I'd be spending a month this year in Europe training and racing with two of our national team girls- two of the most talented, hard-working girls on the planet. And I definitely never ever thought I would be in a WCS race. Once I found my happy back, I realized that there is no way you can 'waste' an experience that already happened. The training camp itself was great, the experience of being in London was great, being in London when Paula WON was great. Thanks so much for this season, even cut in half it was the coolest thing I've ever done.
Be Back next year.

LE TOUR!!!!!!!!!!

2010-07-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

4 Days ago there was a boil water advisory that we didn’t hear about until 2 days ago. Needless to say, 3 days ago I came down with a stomach bug. The first evening of tummy cramps I laid on the kitchen floor until bedtime and hoped it would be gone by morning. Next day of tummy acheage and sporadic cramping was on our lighter day, so it wasn’t that big of a deal but I whined continually nonetheless, and had to eat really slooowwlyy to get any food in. Day after that was a big day, so it made things much more difficult. I made it through the swim quite well, and then the run I was only really affected at the end. But then the bike happened...
I found myself an hour away from home getting dropped up another damn mountain while doubled over and unable to breath from excruciating intestinal cramps, and bonking because I hadn’t been able to eat all day. May or may not have been a couple tears. That evening I didn’t move off the couch, and reflected upon how nice my life had been.
By some miracle, the next morning I noticed an improvement! But the bug had taken such a toll on my energy levels that I had to starfish float on numerous occasions to make it through warm-up. I was completely and utterly spent. In the end I was unable to make it to a brick-workout that afternoon. Instead I spent the day getting a massage with Yulla, and by some freaky luck- visiting with Dr. Keeler, Dr. Young and the family who just happened to be passing through town as they followed the tour! I was so amazed to see little Chloe and Liam (I guess not so little anymore) following the tour so intently, and listing off the rider’s names way better than I ever could. This morning I woke up normal-tired instead of Zombie-Meltdown tired with only minimal residual tummy aches.

- And that is the story of how I self-tapered for the day the Tour de France went by.

BEST DAY EVER.

We parked at the base of the mountain, and then rode up to the top of le Col de la Port de Pailheres. I think it was a 10km climb, but much steeper than the long climbs we usually do like Lemmon. I think it's the second longest climb on the tour, and it's ranked as the hardest type of climb. It took us about an hour but it didn’t feel that long at all to me!... but then I hadn’t done the brick yesterday.. The whole way up was lined with crazy spectators cheering us and the other weekend warriors up. Everyone had out their picnics, and booze.. there were old men playing the accordion, and young men blasting french rap, and wherever there were trailers with TV’s on- crowds would form around the windows trying to watch the tour as it made it’s way nearer and nearer. When we finally made it to the top we were able to buy some souvenirs- although we were limited by the amount of cash we had brought up (IOU PK), and baguettes with ham and Orangina (staples of this country). And soon enough the caravan came by and we joined in with the kids and drunk people for about an hour trying to catch all the freebies getting thrown at us. A jersey flew about a foot in front of my face- but some crazy-matrix old guy snatched it out of the air even though he’d been like 3 meters away, and quickly shoved it inside his jacket with all the rest of his shwagg. At least 7 helicopters preceded the riders. They might have been going a little tiny bit faster than us.
I'm so happy I was better in time to see the Tour today. And rested enough to make it up the climb smiling. Now I better go check out the highlights to see how the stage finished! Thank you thank Patrick and Mike for taking us.

note crazy fan in last pic. Oh and Lance Armstrong in the one before that. Oh and everybody else cool in the one before that!

Woot

2010-07-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Congrats to the Team over in Saskatchewan! Especially Christine and Matt for their continued domination!! Marc, Ali, Gabby Edwards! So proud of you guys. I was going to list everyone else who deserves a congrats.. but then I realized that everyone did so well that I'd just be re-writing the results out.. so good job team!

Latest pictures:

Training camp day 10

2010-07-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

I wrote this blog a few days ago, but was unable to post it due to a lack of internet time. And then yesterday was my bonk evening, and I never summoned up the strength to make it to the bowling alley. Sorry I never got the chance to wish everyone good luck at SanFran and Saskatoon! Hope to hear about it soon ☺.

First off- I added a couple more pictures to the original set of pictures in the last post- so don't miss them! The big white Pyrenees Mountain dog is Lily, Mike and Jenny's one year old puppy. Sophie took her on a run today, and I think she's pretty pooped. We had to move out of our wonderful house today :(. We're going to miss Mike and Jenny and the wonderful breakfasts they would bring us each morning. My brother is on an exchange somewhere in France right now too- and I sure hope they're not feeding him as well as Mike and Jenny fed us. I'm not a huge croissant or danish person myself, but I gotta say those chocolate croissant thingy's were pretty gooood, and pretty hard to resist when coming back from a morning death swim workout. I know if the opportunity presented itself my brother would have eaten every one they brought us.

As DJ said.. " a chocolate bread a day- keeps you happy All Day!"
I always thought it was mostly just a stereotype about the French and their croissants and baguettes, but I guess most homes here just have mini fridges, and each day the locals walk over to the boulangerie and the backery for their meat, and baguettes and morning croissant- so it's true. At the till of the grocery store everyone has a baguette or two. Being gluten free takes serious will power. I decided to give it a shot but I only lasted 1.5days. Since then I have deemed it too difficult and not worth-it. Anyways point of this story: Mom and Dad prepare for Evan to return home chubbier than when he left.

Paula and I are now in a condo downtown, and the rest of the crew is in a house a ways away- With the most amazing view!

Well Paula and I are probably a lot closer to any internet locations, so we're hoping the condo is the way to go. Watch the house have it's own wifi or something ha. Anyways I'm currently at the local bowling alley/arcade/bar for free internet! No more of the local hotel/restaurant's 2.20 euro gross teas just to bum internet. Despite being one of two people in here- the tunes are bumpin. Hearing myself think is somewhat difficult, but I'm ready for a dance party.

Yesterday was our off day! We smushed ourselves into the van for a family trip to Andorra. I thought we were just heading to a town just past the border in Spain. But nope- Andorra is whole nother Country smushed in between France and Spain. I guess there are no taxes, so it has developed a tourist niche. Nestled high in the mountains, was this modern shopping city! Completely different from the 500 year old buildings and (older still) skinny cobblestone roads in France. I was told to go shopping in Europe because the fashion is years ahead..or something like that- but I was quite overwhelmed. The style seemed to be everything flashy, studded, multicolored, or sparkly. oh and mostly designer labels. And jumpsuits.

As for this altitude business- wellll. I am gradually adapting. I think I said that last post.. there have been some workouts where I don’t seem to suffer as much. That said, I still feel a bit like my purpose on this trip has mostly been moral support for the other girls as opposed to being an effective training partner. You know when you’re hurting, but the person you’re training or racing with is quite obviously suffering so much worse, that in turn it makes you feel quite good! And before you know it you’re having the best workout of your life. Well that’s been my job- the one about to drop dead at any second. Willing to resign from the position at anytime. Ha no but really.. I think I might be starting to adapt..

some pictures

2010-07-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Training camp day 3.5

2010-07-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain on our skylight. It wasn't really what I wanted to hear when heading off for a lake swim, but I suppose if you're going to be getting wet anyways... In the end the lake actually wasn't too cold, so I had been all reluctant for nothing. Mike, the man we're renting from, had scared us by saying it was mountain-stream fed, but I guess all the hot hot weather here has heated it up. It has been really summery here. I love it. It's rained off and on.. well thunder showered really, but it stays pretty warm out during the day and the sun always comes back again in the evenings. Mike, and Jenny (his wife) have been really great to us. We are very fortunate to have found them. Mike is a retired pro cyclist (he went to the olympics for britain I think), as well as a mountaineer (climbed everest), and local hiking/climbing guide. So not only has he mapped out most of our rides for us, but he's also taken us on beautiful hikes. And he has a puppy! We've mostly been swimming in the little local outdoor pool which is nice because it's warm- perfect in the morning. But it doesn't have any lines on the bottom, or at the walls, so we resorted to dropping rocks at each end to let us know when the wall is about to smash into our faces. We've also visited the national center (or something official like that anyways..) longcourse pool, which had wrap-around windows and the most beautiful view! I'm an idiot and forgot to upload the new pictures before making the trek over to our internet hotel cafe, but I'll put those up later.
We actually did our bike workout in Spain today!! It was super cool we just drove down half an hour and all of a sudden everything was spanish. It was actually pretty different from the France side. I had a better ride today too. So far I have been struggling with the altitude. My HR has gotten near max for almost all the easy sessions we've done+ full body lactic+ getting dropped in everything is not so much fun :(. But Spain was a lot lower and it made a huge difference for me. I think I'll start adapting to this altitude thing soon. And I've still been having a lot of fun- and really enjoy being here despite sucking in all my workouts.
Ok I've been trying to upload more pictures from our first day here for ageeeeess but they're not working. So goodnight! I'll try again next time I make it on the internet! Hope everything's going well back home.

Les Angles

2010-07-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Paula, Kathy and I are in Les Angles right now for an altitude camp. We have great support from Yulla (massage) and Sophie (chiro), and the coaches. So far it has been amazing. The countryside reminds me a bit of my cabin in the rockies which is really nice because I miss going to my cabin in the summer.

Our house:

The view from our house is beautiful!

Victoria to France

2010-07-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

I’ll try to avoid making this into a Monster post, but I’m worried that it might turn out that way- too many blog worthy things have happened in the past couple weeks. We spent the last week in Quebec for the Coteau du Lac continental cup, and now we’re in a little skiing village in the Pyrenees in France! I find that my French has been coming back really quickly being in all these French places.. I’m still too shy to speak unless I have to, but I catch myself thinking French sentences sometimes- and that has happened since high school.

But starting from the beginning. Coteau was a good race for me- I’m slowly getting a little bit better at this Olympic distance thing. I made the qualification for the Worlds team so I’m very happy about that- hopefully this means I will be selected to go! It was my only chance at qualifying (unless I came/come top 20 at either Des Moines or London which is highly unlikely), and I wasn’t really sure I could do it since I have no clue how I compare to most of the girls in the U23 circuit, but in the end everything worked out.
Warming up I got to watch the sprint finish between Alexander and Matt- looked like a tie to me! Luckily there were two jr. male spots up for grabs at this race, so I’m so happy for both of them that they’ll be going to Budapest.
My swim started off really slow- I had a lousy dive and ended up underneath the girls on either side of me. The girl on my left immediately started veering towards me, so I was pummeled and squashed from both sides. I ducked under her, and swam in the gap she had created on her left. This gave me clear water, and I pulled ahead of the rest of the pack, but when I finally looked up for the first time, I saw Dorelle, Paula, and Angela easily two body lengths ahead of everyone. Damn. I was very worried that I had just lost the race in the first 30 seconds. So I cranked it up another notch, and gradually me and another American girl closed the gap. I was very relieved to come out front pack. The bike was good.. we were a group of seven to start, four Canadians and two Americans. We all worked really well together, making a very efficient pace line, but it was also crazy windy, and the chase pack behind us was big- so we were working hard! As the laps went by, our pack dropped down to 6 and then 5 through the technical section, which was sad because having the extra people to pull in the pack made it significantly easier. Stevie was so strong on the bike (as always ☺), and I had to give it my all to pull through each time after her. We made time on the chase group the first two laps, and then worked our butts off to maintain the gap the last 4 laps. The first thing that popped into my head when I jumped off my bike and tried to run it into transition, was a blog inappropriate swear word- legs weren’t feeling so great. Paula was immediately way out front, but surprisingly I found myself in second. I ran pretty strong the first two laps, just pretending I was winning rather than like 2 minutes or so down from Paula already, but by the third lap my legs really began to feel the hard bike. I knew a girl from the chase pack was gaining on me, so I tried to pick it up, but my legs don’t have a lot of miles under them yet, so they wouldn’t go any faster. Like Des Moines I felt really relaxed cardiovascularly, but my legs hated me. The girl who finished second flew by me with 1.25 to go and I had absolutely no hope. I was happy with how I placed though, and I know that as I get more fitness and experience the season will hopefully continue to get better. I also felt way better as far as nutrition and hydration goes than the last two races- so I’m glad to have that almost figured out (although it was a lot less hot..).
I missed most of the guys race in drug testing, but Andrew Yorke had an amazing race and won, with JP in third. Congrats boys! There were a couple crashes though, and I know the results could have been completely different, so I hope you’re feeling better soon boys- time to kick ass at the next races!

Paula, Patrick and I spent the next three days in Valleyfield, Quebec, before heading to Montreal to catch our flight to Paris. The Air Canada check-in was an absolute circus and I have never come so close to missing a flight before. (It’s a good thing you have the sweet movies/tv’s on your planes Air Canada or we would be fighting right now.)
We then proceeded to miss a night of sleep on the 6 hour flight to Paris, and arrived in the morning for a short flight to Toulouse, and then a beautiful 2.5-3 hour drive up through the Pyrenees to Les Angles.

When I was in grade 5 my parents took us on a 3 week trip of Europe. I don’t remember it that clearly, but I remember not being able to sleep on the flight over, and then doing headbobs, unable to stay awake, on our tour of London when we arrived. Apparently not much has changed. Wanted to sleep on the plane but couldn’t and wanted to stay awake to see the scenery during the drive, but couldn’t keep my eyes open!

Here are some pictures of a little town we stopped at on the way up. We will get to see the Tour go by here in a couple weeks!

So we made it ☺. Shorter more frequent blog posts to come.

Some of My Pictures from the Weekend

2010-06-15T14:10:00.000-07:00

Presents!

AMac 2nd out of the water

ARuss!

champ

Paula: " the guys are all so melodramatic."

athlete's tent

I realized late last night that I had forgotten to include the most important part of my last post:
Thanks Kim and Rob and Kurt and Patrick and my teammates and supporters and my parents and my sister.

I really don't know if I could have finished the whole race without having Kim(massage) and Rob(chiro) fixing me up beforehand, and Rob again afterwards. My hip still gets all jammed from time to time, so while running today all I could think was thanks so much Rob for putting my hips back right after the race! Thanks Kurt and Patrick for bringing me in the first place- even though I wasn't so sure it was good idea. Thanks parents for cheering for me even though I never have time to phone home. And thanks Alex for being more nervous about my races than I am even though she's had a rough couple years (and I usually can't find any cool presents to bring back). Don't worry though, I have a K in front of the Coates on my suit because there's two of us. Juuuuuusssst wait.

Hy-Vee Race Report

2010-06-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

Wow what an experience! I am really happy with how it turned out. It wasn’t a perfect race by any means- I left a lot of room for improvement, but knowing that I was able to finish mid-field with a just an ok race was a huge confidence booster.

I didn’t write any posts prior to the race because I didn’t want many people watching for me just in case I got lapped out. In the end I didn’t get lapped out or come last, so I really appreciate all the support from everyone who watched! Your messages really made my day.

Being at this race was so inspiring. We got the personalized Hyvee gift bags, and flats of water/propel delivered to our rooms which is always fun. The atmosphere was incredibly motivating. I was starstruck the whole time. I ended up on the plane beside Frodeno (aaand he talked to me- NBD), ran next to Moffat on the hotel treadmills (..I always thought she was taller..), stood in the elevator with the Bennett’s, roomed next to Daniela Ryf, and sat at the race meeting next to Tim Don.
It was a mixture of what the hell am I doing here?? and this is the coolest thing everrrr!

I think I’m probably the first person in history to attempt their first ever Olympic Distance triathlon, annnd first ever World Cup, at the HyVee WC. But I just told myself that I was getting all my ‘firsts’ over with in one shot, and therefore reducing the learning period. Lining up before the start, I was right behind 2008 Jr. World Champion, Kirsty McWilliam, because neither of us have any World ranking points yet. I can still picture her smile when she crossed the line in Vancouver- major shivers moment. It was nice chatting with her before the start because she was so friendly and genuine whereas most girls are pretty standoffish/intimidating pre-race. She said, ‘how many people get to be HERE! At the Des Moines World Cup!.’ So that helped calm my nerves a bit- ‘just be happy to be here.’

The swim was crazy. I was ranked last, but three Chinese women were put behind me because they missed the pre-race meeting. I didn’t want to be running back and forth along the pontoon looking for the last empty spot, so I chose the first one I saw, right beside Barbara Riveros- even though it was smack dab in the middle. The start was rough as usual. I think the packs split down the middle because I was doing a lot of horizontal swimming to get in a pack rather than forward swimming. About 250 in I was still in a good position up front(ish) when Girls started grabbing my ankles and pulling me back. So I lost my good feet and got really grumpy. There were so many girls around that I just swam and hoped I was up there. In the end a little gap formed a little ways ahead of me, so we weren’t quite front pack. Sucks because I know I know I know I know I can be front pack. I know it! But not this time. Hopefully next time. Came out of the first lap with Barbara- she ran faster than me, but I had a siiiiiicccck dive in, and bridged up to the girls ahead of us all by myself. Still not enough to make front pack though.

1500meters is an awfully long, painful, distance to swim.

I ended up getting on Kathy’s wheel coming out of transition, and Snowsill jumped on the back. I kept telling myself- Emma Snowsill and Barbera Riveros don’t get lapped out- you’re going to be ok!! But I was stuck at the very back of the pack, and we were hardly changing positions, so nobody would let me move up. Every corner I had to sprint to catch up- and it’s a cornerey course! By the end of the second lap, coming out of the technical section, a huge gap formed and I thought I was a goner for sure. I had to work sooo hard to bridge that gap. But then all of a sudden I was back on again! I moved right up to the front of the pack and somehow squeezed in around 5th in the pack. It felt like a huge improvement from 7th or 8th. And from then on I was ok! After lap 4 the leaders of our group started getting tired, so I was finally able to move up in the pack. I couldn’t decide what was worse though: pulling a lot at the front in the wind, or having to sprint out of each corner. On the last two laps my quads started cramping which made me nervous for the run, so I uber hydrated the last couple laps and hoped for the best.

The run was off and on. I dropped my gel right off the bat, and I was cramping worse and worse. I was hoping to pick it up on lap two- but someone had Stolen It!! (/probably removed it from the course). Luckily they had Gatorade at the water stations, so I made up for no gel by drinking loads of Gatorade. After each Gatorade, the cramping would go away and I would build into a good rhythm, and then it would sneak back up on me, and I would have to slow down the pace just to keep from completely locking up. On lap three I tried drinking water instead, but that was the worst decision everrrrrrrrr. It made my quads and calves lock up even tighter. I knew Paula was out there somewhere having the fantastic race that I knew she would have, but I kept missing her. She was just too damn far ahead! I finished the run with a tummy very very full of Gatorade. I wasn’t too tired at the line because I had had to hold back a lot to avoid complete crampage. Mostly I just wanted to throw up all the Gatorade. But I was very happy- because I didn’t come last!
Next time I'll have this cramping and hydration stuff all figured out!

I am so thrilled for Paula- knew she’d be right up there! And Jones- what a race! A-Russ looked so good those first couple laps of the run- and way to go for the swim again AMac!
Thanks for such an exciting weekend.

Ixtapa Report

2010-05-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

I can’t remember going into a race just wanting to finish before. But when I crossed that line I was SO happy that I had finished. I don’t know how some girls and guys were actually racing in that. Half the field DNFed from the heat, but on the other hand there were some people out there actually running! Like JP- he was running! I learnt a lot from this race. I learnt what it takes for me to Finish a race in the heat. Now I just have to figure out what to do to Race it.

While traveling here I thought my race would be at 7:30 am. After a couple days we heard start time had been changed back to 10:30 am. So I had to wrap my head around a very hot race. I don’t have the best track record when it comes to racing in the heat. Pretty sure the score is: Sun :3, Kyla: 0, with me coming-to in the Med tent each time. I’ve never tried to race for 2 hours in the heat before, so I was a little bit nervous (*understatement). The first few days we had great, calm ocean swims. The hardest part was avoiding the occasional jelly fish, and stingy sparkly blue things. Then as the week went by the waves began to get bigger and bigger until the day before the race they were breaking right where the swim buoys were placed. Getting in and out of surf was just like Mazatlan all over again. I think the only thing that kept me from completely freaking out was the fact that somehow I survived them in Mazatlan.

Ocean early in the week

Going into this race I knew that I would have to prepare myself for a number of worst-case scenarios. So I made my number one goal to finish (still conscious), and then after that came the real goals.

Race morning I woke up pretty early (not nearly as early as the juniors), and did a little jog and some strides. I contemplated closing the blinds so I wouldn’t have to keep watching the Tsunamis outside my window. Maybe then the butterflies would move aside enough to get breakfast in. Unfortunately, Blinds don’t block out their thundering crashes.
Even early in the day it was scorching- I think I drank almost three bottles of nuun throughout the morning.

Ocean day before the race

7:45 am, Aaron came knocking on my door- Race had been switched to a Duathlon. 3km run, 40k bike, 10k run. I’ve never done a duathlon before. An almost Olympic distance, Continental Cup Duathlon. For two hours. In 36 degrees + humididty.
Ugh.
Weather network says that 31 degrees in that humidity is supposed to feel like 44- so 36 degrees was HOT!

Showed up for warmup and saw a mass of bloodied and bandaged Canadian boys. Since their duathlon run hadn't broken up the field almost half the field was taken out by bike crashes. Only 4 of our 11 (?) Canadian Jr. boys made it through the bike. Hope you all heal quickly boys :(.
We couldn’t do much of a warmup for fear of getting our core temperature too high, but me and the girls did a little spin and attempted to figure out how the new transitions worked. The coaches and support crew (specifically the Stewart family) were super helpful, supplying a constant turnover of frozen towels, and sponges leading up to the start. I think it helped a lot. None of the other countries seemed to have any support like that.

The boys headed out three minutes before us, and then we were off too. Turns out it was 1.5k up this massive hill, and then 1.5km back. So much for keeping the body temp down. I tried to keep my effort controlled because there was still a looot of racing left to do. A group of about 5 girls pulled ahead, and I came into T1 about ten seconds back. I made up a lot of time by doing my (¾ of a) high-ho silver (South American girls don’t seem very good at this). And within a km or two we had caught up, and formed a big pack of probably 15. I didn’t feel so good those first couple K’s on the bike. Heat was already catching up to me. Then I remembered to force myself to drink! So I drank, took gel numero uno, and felt way better. For the most part, the bike was pretty relaxed. There were a couple really intelligent girls who repeatedly attacked off the front, but the rest of us took turns bridging the gaps. I made sure I was in the top 4 around all the corners, and just spun up each hill. Every time I found myself in the front, the girls wouldn’t pull through, so we’d play the game where they would follow me in a snake from one side of the road to the other. After a few times of that, I started to pull less.
It was definitely the heat that was putting the hurt on.
By 30K I had drank almost both my bottles, taken both gels, and both salt tablets just to remain functional. I forced myself to ration my remaining e-load. With about 5km to go on the bike my quads started cramping, but I had no electrolytes left to take. The last couple Km’s were a big sprint around the corners and into T2. I forced myself to stay right up front.

And then proceeded to have the slowest T2 ever.

I just couldn’t seem to concentrate on what I was doing. I hadn’t had anything to drink for a while.

The run is one big hazy blurr. I shuffled my way out of T2 and just focused on making it to the first water station. There were cups of water, and I think I grabbed about three. One cup had a big chunk of ice that I stuck down my suit, and now have a painful frostbite bruise on my chest from it although I didn’t even feel it there at the time. The water helped the quad cramping almost immediately. After lap one of four, all I could think was ‘you have got to be kidding me’, and prayed that I’d be able to actually start running soon as opposed to shuffling. From then on, all I would think about was making it from one aid station to the next. We would hit three water stations per lap (I think.. memories aren't all there), and each time I would put up two fingers to indicate 'dos por favor', and then would double fist either bottles of water or cups depending on what was being handed out. Each time I prayed for bottles- The cups of water were usually warm. I was struggling so much, but once I had hit enough water stations, I felt brave enough to attempt another gel, and two more salt tablets. After that I had my best lap of the day. Soon enough that had worn off, and lap three was my most awful lap. My stomach and quads simultaneously began to cramp up again. Water wasn't doing the trick anymore. For some reason the volunteers just happened to start handing out Gatorade on that lap- and I honestly think that is the only reason I was able to finish. The salts allowed my quads to release enough to run a little bit faster again. Around me girls were dropping like flies. Lap four is my most blurry lap- I think I went a bit swervy.

But like Craig said, the important thing was that I knew where I was the whole time.
And I had a pretty big smile crossing that line even though I had only been able to focus on my survival goal.

In retrospect though, only accomplishing survival goal really sucks.

I still don’t understand how I could drink that much water on a run- and still be so unbelievably dehydrated. And take (what I thought) was a lot of salts- and still be so unbelievably crampy. It was hours and hours until I regained the ability to sweat. I felt cold the hours afterwards instead of hot. I don't think that's a good thing in 36 degrees C. But maybe for the next one I can work with Wendy in the heat chamber a little more prior- and do some testing. There has got to be a way to actually race in the heat!

Not that I’m ever racing in the heat ever again. Right coach?

Thanks Trish and Carolyn and teammates for hanging out in the medical tent with me.
Other than the 2hour sufferfest and 3or so hours of death after that- I’m going to miss you Mexico and sun. It was fun.

ps. Congrats Joanna, Christine and Ian on the podium finishes, and Jeff on his fourth place finish. You guys rock.

Bienvenido al Ixtapa

2010-05-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

I don't know if that was spanish or not.. but looks about right to me. I didn't bring my camera cord, so the picture of our beautiful hotel room view is from my phone, but thats the gist of it. I'm pretty happy to be here! Its hot though mang. I should have just lived in the Steam Room all day long prior to coming here. So humid. So hot. Beautiful! But hot.

Race Time has been changed back to 10:30, so I will let you know after the race if I survive it.

AC is bad for the acclimatization, so we're currently cooking in our rooms. I usually sleep with my head under a pillow, but that would have meant a sure death last night, so instead I starfished on top of the 7 blankets on my bed. (I guess they expect most people to crank the airconditioning.) We did a little swim this morning. The water temp was perfect! No Mazatlan waves by any means, but they weren't small either! I got plowned every time. Definitely going to have to practice this body surfing thing some more. There was a sign on the beach saying watch out for Crocodiles. Well I couldn't actually read it, but that's what I assume it was saying. So crocodiles+ sharks in ocean= fast Kyla swimming. Hope so at least.

We're heading out to check out the bike course soon, so time to go scrounge for something to eat. At least the gatorade here is way better!

So many Links!

2010-05-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

A big shout out to Aquaman for their help in setting Alex and I up with new Cell Gold suits so quickly! Wetsuit season is coming. Lake swim on Friday.?. My new wetsuit excitement almost negates my cold water phobia. Almost. Good thing it's the best wetsuit ever!
I'd also like to thank Kiwami again. For the first time in my life, I now have too many race suits to choose from! Much different from last year at Patco when I had to wear the patched up, survivor of two good crashes, suit.
Thanks Asics and Pen Runners for the sweet gear, and support, and for always being so friendly and helpful.

While I'm on the topic of thank yous:

Thanks Carolyn for the super healthy tea!
Thanks Pro-City for setting up my power meter even though my bike was ridiculously dirty. Although I think I might still need to get some bugs worked out.. I don't know how to work this thing! Thanks Bill- the bike setup still feels great!
Thanks Austin for letting me use Norma. I am loggin in my 45' while typing this. And for setting up the supercomputer so I can waste time watching Glee on the big screen. ;)
Thanks Norma.
Thanks Sun for the beautiful summer weather and blue skies.
Thanks Trish for selling all of our bracelets all the time. We can't keep up. And for the beautiful lilacs- reminds me of Calgary in the springtime.
Thanks Alex for the cool NTC shirts. I hear RTC guys were in the process of making shirts too? Sorry but ours already win.
Thanks for the strawberry, mango and pineapple's being in season. Breakfast was superawesome.

..whew the orchestra is going to start playing any second now..

Thanks self for starting to work again. My body shut down over the last week after I trained through being sick. I've read too many articles lately about adrenal burnout syndrome, and was beginning to think that I must have that. Hypochondriac much?
But then today rolled around and despite my lungs having one tenth their normal tidal volume- I did just fine. Finally!

I'll be able to start a bit of heat training today. Vancouver Sunday. Leaving Monday. Until then, maintenance chiro, healing acupuncture, Dr. guan, maybe a last minute massage. Oh ya and Ali says I HAVE GOT to get a haircut. I'll be training through Ixtapa more than I initially intended. After the last couple weeks, any hopeful expectations I might have had for myself have effectively been squashed. But I feel like I've also taken a lot of pressure off myself, so maybe it was all for the best.
Yup Yup
Take it easy-
K.Coates

The Elephant

2010-05-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

If Kirsten is a souped up Vdub Bug then I am.. well I don't really know what I am...I don't know anything about cars to be honest. But If I were a car, I'd be something that has to use the ridiculously expensive Premium Plus, or Gold Level Gas not the regular Bronze. And I'd probably have stupid bad gas mileage. Either way, I have learnt over the years that I always have to be on my toes when it comes to hydration and nutrition. My mom was the one who always had to pack the extra granola bars and juice boxes- no matter how short the trip.

My main goal for this year is not to Bonk.

Patrick has witnessed his fair share of Coates' bonks. I have many memories from my first year, cross biking back home along the Goose in the winter, with Patrick handing Alex and I bite sized pieces of cliff bar. Last week we had an NTC crit. It was pretty epic, and afterwards I was so proud of my lack of bonking! Unfortunately I still have some work to do.

An article I read a while ago said, " We're not talking about the everyday slowing caused by lactic acid build up, or the mere cramping of a calf, or the deep muscle pain sometimes cause by downhill running. It's actually a bodily form of sedition. In some form or another, it becomes a collapse of the entire system: body and form, brain and soul."

They say that there are three types of bonks:
Paul Scott writes, "There's blood-glucose bonk, where the legs work fine but the brain up and quits." (I think this then leads to a:) "muscle-glycogen bonk, where the brain works fine, but the legs up and quit." (This will cause you to face plant with 400m to go.) " And lets not forget about the everything bonk, a sorry stewpot of dehydration, training errors, gastric problems and nutrition gaffes." ( the one's where you have no memory of the last 2km, and have to suffer through your body coming back to life again afterwards in the medic tent.)

Marathoner Dick Beardsley said, " It felt like an elephant jumped out of a tree onto my shoulders and was making me carry it the rest of the way in."

Yesterday I experienced an everything bonk. Not to the point of a 'get-this-idiot- to -the-medic-tent' bonk like in races by any means, but a bonk nonetheless. I can't say what the exact cause was, but something along the lines of a not fully recovered from a cold+ worn out+ nutrition bonk. I'd like to say thanks to Phil for getting me through it, and to Alison for having to witness it.

Warm-up started and I felt ok.. 15 minutes into it though my legs started to feel more and more heavy, and by the last ten minutes I knew this was going to be a toughness test afterall. I was feeling a bit hypoglycemic at the startline, so I looked around for my powerbar, but seemed to have lost it- so I convinced myself I would probably regret eating a bar 30 seconds before a workout anyways. Sipped some gatorade instead.

We were doing 800's on the Mile loop at Beacon Hill. I started the first 800 at an appropriate pace- under control since it was the first interval, but around where I wanted to be. Little did I know that there was a Wall waiting for me 1200 meters away. Not just any wall, but a Wall with a malicious Elephant on top. Four hundred meters in, the Elephant-on-the-wall started to hurl acid laden bricks at me. As I came closer and closer, more and more bricks began to find their mark. My legs began to scream from the onslaught. The overflow of lactic acid flooded into my arms, until there wasn't a part of me pain free. My lungs were too small. The 800 meters stretcheeeed out until the cone marking the end of the interval seemed to fade off into the distance.
Somehow I finished.

Interval number two began. This time the elephant never missed. There was a constant onslaught of bricks, each one adding to the lactic acid building in my muscles. My arms were so lactic I could barely bring my elbows back. My ankles were lactic, my fingers were lactic. And then I ran into the wall. Right smack into it. Alison nimbly dodged around me, giving me a questioning look. She couldn't see my wall. The finish line was still 400m away, and somehow I had to make it there. I pushed through the wall, but the Elephant jumped on my back for the ride. Every excruciating step bore the weight of his 10000 lbs. And when I finally made it to the end, and tried to regain my breath, Phil was waiting.

What happened he asked?
I wanted to explain the Wall and the Bricks and the Elephant to him, but could only manage a: "well I had this cold.."

And we begin again, the Elephant quite comfortably sitting on my shoulders. I pretend that I don't have a watch. That I am actually going faster than jogging pace. That my training partner isn't running off into the distance. That the headwind is holding me up- not making this (impossibly) even more painful. That my legs don't actually exist. Phil tells me just to think about my stride, to have good technique. So I do. And I remember a similar feeling a few months ago in Australia when I didn't manage to eat enough race morning, and neglected to take a gel on the bike, so my buddy the Elephant met me with 1.25km to go. Phil was telling me to keep my turnover high then.

Some people just have to learn everything the hard way. I should hope that I've learnt by now.
My goal for this year: No bonking!

Resting and Regenerating time.
K.Coates

Life Update

2010-05-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

3 cold fx. 2 drops of oil of oregano under the tongue. 20 drops of astragalus back of the throat. 2 echinacea. 1 Vit D. 1 Zinc. 2 Flinstone gummies. 3 spirulina. 3 times a day with orange juice!

You know how moms are always right? You refuse to believe them until you learn for yourself the hard way and have to admit defeat. Coaches are often times right as well. My first year here with the NTC, Patrick would say, "you have to sleep a minimum of 8 hours a night." ..But that would mean being in bed by ten! That seemed almost impossible with all the schoolwork I had to do. I tried to sleep more, but more often than not was up later than that. I was sick all the time.
And then I learnt.
While swine flu, and student's flu, and partier's flu were raging around campus, I managed to not get sick once this whole year by doing as Patrick said. That's pretty much unheard of from a Coates (the not getting sick part- not the not listening part).
Unfortunately I went through a bit of an insomnia period last week. It wasn't because of studying for exams, or stressing about anything in particular, I just couldn't seem to fall asleep. I went through about 8 days of sleeping less than 5.5 hours a night. For all the students out there, that might be very normal. But it is really hard on the body (and mind) in the middle of hard training. I had two incredible crashes where I ended up having 2 hour naps in between workouts. By day 6 I lost the ability to swim. But it wasn't until day 8 that the lack of sleep really caught up to me and I ended up catching a little baby headcold. It's not a very bad one, but still is a drag. It's one of those ones that you can train through, but at the same time you don't want to prolong the illness by training too much through it. At least I am sleeping again now. Aaaaaaannnnd healing myself through:

3 cold fx. 2 drops of oil of oregano under the tongue. 20 drops of astragalus back of the throat. 2 echinecea. 1 Vit D. 1 Zinc. 2 Flinstone gummies. 3 spirulina. 3 times a day with orange juice!

I will let you know of any adverse effects that arise from this regime.

Patrick always says that consistency is key. Hence the importance of not getting sick, or injured. That one is also very true. I always believed it, but it took me a year or so to fully understand just how true this is. After my initial adaptation back into training around exam period last semester (andrew describes the feeling perfectly here), this second semester has been going pretty well for me trainingwise. I have finally begun to run again almost consistently. After a challenging fall/winter I think I now really appreciate simply having the ability to run, and compete. For the first time I think my excitement to race may out weigh my nerves. Paula has joined our team which has been really great. Every time I do a run workout with her, I think: a) how does she do that!?, and b) what makes her go so fast?! I'm hoping that in time, as my running improves towards normal Kyla speed and then beyond, I will be able to stick with her for more than ten seconds.

Ixtapa is coming up soon! First race of the year. First Olympic distance race. First Continental Cup. Excited!
K.Coates

On the Life Goal list:

2010-04-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

Be able to do a Handstand.

Do what you love, And do it well.
K. Coates

This is what we learnt in School

2010-04-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

Happy (almost) end of the Semester.

According to my observations approximately 45% (or more) of the undergrad students at UVic are from Calgary. And the one's who stay in Calgary do so for one reason: The last day of classes.

Bermuda Shorts Day: Beer Mile, Concerts and Couch Races. Those Crazy Kids.

(PG13 for brief language and carnage)

Good Luck on the Examinations Folks.
K.Coates

Cheering and Regenerating

2010-04-18T17:15:00.000-07:00

First the world cup in Mooloolaba, and then WC Series in Sydney, then YOG qualifier for our juniors and World Cup in Monterrey- aaahhh just too much excitement!! I need to go run a loop of the lakes all out now. (dear Patrick: not literally. this time..)

Congrats Everyone!!!

I slept in this morning. Was just lying in bed- too lazy to go get my computer, so I checked the WC updates on my phone, and the first thing that came up was 'Paula wins'. That got me out of bed!!! I actually did a little happy yelp ha. I had messed up the times, so I thought the girls hadn't started yet, but they were already done- and Paula wonnnnnnn!!!!

I had the best regen of my life this week. Since our team was leaving us for Mexico- and we were on a recovery week (well 4/7 of a week), Alex and I decided to go home to Calgary for a few days. It is only a 1hour flight away, so it's a pretty easy trip- we just never seem to fit in the time to visit. My mom just about went into shock when I told her we wanted to come visit.
She was speechless for a bit, but then managed a: " but you never come home!"
My Dad gave my Mom a 'take the girls to the spa' gift certificate for her birthday. So we went to the Banff Springs Hotel Spa for the day, and it was the most amazing day ever. I would put it on my 100 things to do before I die list. check.
Banff was so beautiful as always. Calgary well... Calgary was sunny, and warmed up to about 15 on our last day, but was rather brown in a winter-spring in calgaryish way. So great to visit home and the family though. Would've loved to stay longer. We flew back to Vic thursday night because we had an exam the next morning, and when we stepped off the plane the air was so warm and humid, and the birds and frogs so chirpy, and it smelt so green and floral that it felt like we had actually landed somewhere tropical. Not a bad place to come home to. I like my two homes.

Banff Springs hotel. We started off the day with a swim in the hotel's 32 meter lane pool with a full Panoramic view of the Rockies (I didn't get a picture of that).

There was a little outdoor pool along with the lane pool that I did get a picture of (& pretty mountain):

Water Station: citrus water, or cucumber mint (tastes like cucumber and mint..). Coffee, or 20+ different types of tea, with your choice of homemade cookie or muffin.

After spending some time in the eucalyptus scented saunas (one warm, one really hot), we tried out the three waterfall pools. One hot, one warm, one cold- all surrounding the mineral pool. Again with beautiful views of the mountains.

(some randoms in pool)

The mineral pool was supposed to aid in regeneration, and if you lay on your back looking up at the skylight you could listen to music underwater. And then we checked out the outdoor hottub:

yup. best recovery day on the planet.
Best Daddy on the planet :)

And this is from today. We went out to Sooke to cheer on Gaby in her 10k, and then we did our ride out there. Much greener here.

A Very Blustery Day

2010-04-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

~ellen shaw

When I was 11 years old, as a not very accomplished competitive swimmer, I would dread going to morning practices. On this particular morning (I think it was a Saturday) my mom was driving us to the pool along the pitch black, empty Calgary streets. Negative 20 degrees outside, snow drifts blowing across the road. Getting into a freezing cold pool to train under some-hard-a**-ex-Olympian (still the toughest coach I’ve ever had (maybe the best..)) who trained us as if we were athletes heading to the olympics any day now rather than some skinny lil kids hoping to get B-provincial times, was not really my idea of fun. “Don’t cry”, she’d say, “it only makes it harder to breath. Ready-Go.” As always, I was huddled in the back of the van, praying that the coach would forget to show, or there would be a power outage, or the pool would be empty, or, or..

And then it happened.

That morning the pool had been drained!!!! No Swimmmmmminnggg!
And some amazing parent had brought Timbits!!!!!!
And my mom took us to the mall to walk around with the mall walkers until some of the shops started to open, so that we wouldn’t be stomping around the house waking up my little brother.

Best Day Of My Life.

Miracles do exist.

Well I have a little bit of a different attitude and appreciation for training now. Now that I have goals. I mean real goals, not little 11 year old- 'I want to go the Olympics even though I am generally among the last 5 kids in my event on every results sheet kinda goals'. I can’t say that I never wish that the pool was drained some mornings- but now training matters a lot more. And I know I’ll make sure to get the work in some way or another. So with the power-outage this morning, not getting to swim wasn’t quite as great a feeling as that cold Saturday morning…Nobody brought any timbits!!

It is currently soooo windy and dreary out there, that with no power my house is hardly lit up at all. Had a very dark trainer ride. Prayed my ipod would last the whole 90min. Attempted to make coffee out of insta-coffee packets and hot-tap water… didn’t work out so well…
-“Just make it on the stove,” Ali says!
-“I have an electric stove…”
-“Oh.” (insert 'sucks to be you face')

hmm wonder what the strata would think of making a camp-fire on my deck..

K.dot.

Springtime

2010-03-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

8 days of school left????? World Cup racing has started???? Officially retired my winter riding jacket??
Whhhhhattt when did this happen??
Guess it's time to start those semester-long assignments that are due on the last day of class. kidding.

.. sorta..

New Kiwami race suits are in!! woot!!!! I have the new women's open-back suit (as opposed to the zipper back), and the red kiwami bathing-suit to choose from this year, so I'm tres excited about that. Bill at Trek Pro-City has been spending the last couple weeks fitting and re-fitting my bike for me, so that has been great. Thanks Bill!!!!! Feels better already :). Annnnndd Hip is finally cooperating- just in time!

Early run in the rain (well.. felt early), team breakfast at Matticks Farm, mostly sunny ride, stretch/roller, homework.
Stoked for this season.
K.Coates

Good Tune/Band for A-Mac

2010-03-18T12:07:00.001-07:00

...except that embedding it just made my blog all funny.

on being tough..

2010-03-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

Today
PK: Keep bringing your wetsuits to the pool. We'll be getting in the lake for some short swims next week.

Matt: (painful cry/yelp/scream)

Ali: It snowed yesterday..

Mark: I hate this life.

I really hope he actually meant next month instead of next week, or maybe the next month, or preferably the one after that just to be safe... (Video from May 11, 2008 shows my opinion.) May 11!!!

Sunny with Flurries

2010-03-08T15:04:00.000-08:00

I was just about to go for my ride- looked outside... and it's snowing. Well a combination of slushing and snowing at least. mmm maybe I'll wait a few more minutes. Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week were gorgeous. 15 degrees, sunshine, huge blue sky, all the flowery trees and bushes are in bloom, and the real indicator that spring has reached Victoria: the daffodils have begun to take over Beacon Hill once again!

But apparently it also sporadically slushes.

Austin interviewed me for his Journalism class back in the fall, and it was just published in the school newspaper. It was an incredibly flattering article, and the editors made it even more so. Kirsten and Paula can get the prodigy title but definitely not me! Anyways moral of the story: if you want to have an interview that makes you sound good- talk to Austin. And if you want everybody to have a good laugh at your expense- have the paper put an incredibly silly, giant picture of you saving hilary's bike from Caddy Bay on the front cover. oh sigh.. Now that everybody on the planet has seen it (thanks in part to Idon and A-game).. and laughed at me- moving onward Please!

Bazan Bay 5km was on Sunday. There was some goooood running. Simon took the win (again), but very very close on his heels was Jones which was pretty cool. AP had a great run (sub 15) for third and was almost caught by a very smartly paced ARuss in the last 300m. Close behind was Austin followed by JP with sub 15:20 runs. Speedy Speedy. Christine dominated the junior girls, and the Dark Horse- not so rookie Brookie took the win for the boys! woot.
But most importantly the tiny newborn girlies were there! Triathletes just have the cutest kids. Congrats Bertrand and Whitfield families.
Here are mes photos from Sunday:

I tried to get them in order, but then decided it was a lost cause.
and ps. Congrats to Thida for beating her goal time in her first ever 5k race!!

25 headup, 25 back, 25 headup, 25 back, 400 all out..

2010-02-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

Originally I planned to write a Tucson wrap up post. About how my bike felt superfast the whole trip, and I credit it to my huge Pro-City bike makeover before we left. Thanks guys. About how I love my new handpump almost as much as my bike.. well not quite but it's a keeper. About how they make Starbucks' soy lattes with vanilla soy in the states which is ammmmazing (in my opinion)= no sugar required. And how their insta-coffee packets are pretty good too. But I would recommend buying the insta-coffee packets prior to dropping 5 bucks a day on soy lattes. About how we were ambushed by the pee in a cup patrol, and none of us are even on wherabouts-yet!! And how we ended up using Kirsten's conconut oil as emergency moisturizer when all the lotions in the world weren't making the cut. How watching Olympics in the states just don't compare. How we sat next to the USA olympics pairs figure skaters on the way from Denver to Vancouver (they had to go home to train for another competition). hmm there were so many training stories!

but then we went over to Vancouver for the day yesterday, and watched the amazing game today, and I decided that my stories don't quite compare..

I had to catch up on all the major events I had missed on the internet this morning. Then almost died during the game today. Somehow we mixed up the start time for the closing ceremonies and ended up watching the first half from the pool on the big results screen. We had to get as many meters in as possible during the commercials, so that we could do kick/drill for the actual ceremonies part. I'm not sure if it was because the games were at home, or if it was because I realize that the Olympians I train with are just the same as the heroes on tv, Making the Olympics more real than ever before, but these were my favorite Olympics. There was so many tears: Mckeever, Joannie Rochette, Jennifer Heil, Kershaw, yet they were combined with smiles: Alexandre Bilodeau, Montgomery, our hockey boys.. too many to name! So much heart and sacrifice. I read today that among all of Clara Hughs' charity work such as right to play, she is also giving her $10000 prize money to a youth at risk foundation. I'm pretty proud to be Canadian right now.

Thanks for everything team. You guys were great.

Tucson Post!

2010-02-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

We're onto our second week here in Tucson.. so it's about time I wrote a lil update. With the olympics going on I've been doing a great job of stretching and rollering (we moved the couch to have a front row yoga zone), but I've been doing a terrible job of homeworking. Now that reading week is over, the school work that I've managed to mostly ignore has finally managed to trigger my stress receptors (ever so slightly). So that's why I am now beginning my pre-studying procrastination.

This is my third time coming down to Tucson, and I vote that it's been the most fun. We're in a beautiful house, pretty close to the UofA pool. No ghetto train-house this year. Our first week here we had amazing weather. I'm on a bit of a 'not wanting to be weathered and wrinkly when I'm old' kick, so I've been sticking to the 30, buuut with the blue sky and outdoor swimming I've still been doing a pretty good job of getting one helluva swim-suit tan if I do say so myself. The last couple days have been more on the stormy/rainy and cold side, but it's still been fun. We had a swim in the warm pool along side Barrie's group in the cold and rain which was neat because the pool was steaming. And it was the first time my wish for a hot-tub warm-up ever came true! Thankfully, It's supposed to warm-up again tomorrow though.

other fun things so far include:
Some nights out for dinner. Best seared Ahi-tuna salad evvvveer at Zinburger.

Having a girls morning downtown after a recovery swim. We had latte's and went for sushi, tried every single sample imaginable at the aveda store, and speed shopped!

Our team dance parties/T-Swift jam seshes in the big 12 seater van.

Running and Icing in Sabino canyon.

Our dance-off the other night in which the boys kicked our Butts! We gave it our best-shot, but I don't think we could really compare to their semi-naked tri-geekness.

And of course just enjoying training in the sun. Pics to come whenever I find my camera cord thingy.

Congrats Claire!

2010-02-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

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this made me a little teary.. oh I'm such a girl. So happy for you Claire- all the best!

Tucson dreamin

2010-01-30T20:43:00.000-08:00

Nothing motivates you to work hard quite like hypothermia..

"20' easy? thanks coach- but I'll just keep going race pace."

I've been too hot on most of our rides this month, so I was beginning to forget that it is still winter. If you can call plus 8 winter. Guess I'm getting a bit soft..

Nonetheless when you've got ice-water/mud spraying down your neck from the girl in front of you, soaked through the tights and gloves in less than a minute.. pooling into your booties.. wind cutting right through all the wet clothes, and no feeling in the toes for the last hour... .'There's no such thing as bad weather- only bad clothes" My A**.

Flat Tubes: 3
Punctured Tires that cause Flat tubes: both
Functional Break Pads: none
Remaining whole tubes: none
New hand Pump: Somehow lost the part that attaches to the tube valve

Thinking it's time to make a trip to the shop.

Fast, Rich, Tough 'n Happy.

2010-01-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

-2 reasons why I'm going to be fast this year:
1) Dr. Mike Murray
2) Fiona Taylor

Mike said that his personal massage therapist is the best there is- that I'd have to be tough because it would hurt, that I better never miss an appointment, that he never recommends her because she is completely booked up and impossible to get into, and that I'd better like dogs.. But he said he'd plead my case- and right away I was in for an appointment on the lunch break of one of the nicest and by far the most knowledgeable massage therapists I've ever met (with her co-workers Moses and Barney). We chatted the whole time about puppies, and tri-stuff, and kinese stuff, and twinly stuff, and muscle origins, insertions and trigger points, while I made funny pain faces. And it's great because I love dogs!

-2 reasons why I'm going to get rich this year:
1) Trish (Cole's mommy)
2) My mom!

Last week Trish contacted Alex and I about buying a few bracelets for herself and her friends. Before we even had time to buy some silver cleaner we were $180 richer, and the next day Cole said that she could easily sell 10 more on the spot! Thanks so much super salesgirl, Trish.
Annndd my mom just discovered this place in Victoria that rents out torches so that we can make more beads! The problem before was that we could only make beads when we went home (which is practically never), so not only could we never make more beads, but we could never get more practice so we haven't been able to get really really good at it. So now both of us will be pros soon ;).

2 reasons why I'm going to be tough this year:
1) World Cup Wednesdays (otherwise known as Harden-up Hump Days)
2) Suicide Saturdays

Alllllllright World Cup Wednesdays (otherwise known as Harden up Hump Days. Harden up- because you gotta stay tough, and Hump Day because wednesday is the hump of the week and after that it's downhill from there. Unfortunately this title can sometimes be taken the wrong way..). WC Wednesdays all began a couple weeks ago when I joined the boys for a draft pack set in the pool because we ran out of pairs. Tuesdays have a big swim, a big run, and a base ride, so Wednesdays begin pre-fatigued. The coaches threw me at the back of a pack of two guys in a set of 2x{ 2x300 on 4:30+ 3x200 on 3:00 drafting}. By the second round my job was just to hang on to the back. Tried it again this week as the guys cranked out 2:23's (lc).. oof! The worst part is the walls. Going into the turn in third guarantees a gap. It's just like going around a 90' corner in a crit at the back. If you're at the back of the pack you have to be prepared to hammer. So not only was I working on my holding onto feet for dear life skills, but also my sprinting to catch back onto the feet that I was barely holding onto in the first place skills! Killer swim is then followed by a big 2ish hour drafting ride. Last week Alex and I tried to hang onto the big guys through a set of 30' steady state+ 20' tempo. Sitting in for the steady state was pretty easy because the guys were pulling into the wind, but on the way home for the tempo we might as well have been motor pacing. We definitely didn't last the whole 20'- maybe next time.. So all in all I spend my wednesdays feeling like what I imagine World Cup racing is going to feel like. (hence the name)

and Saturdays.. well lately coach has been enjoying having us do repeats of the backside of Willis Point/Durrance Hill + weights+ little run off the bike+ an eye opener set in the pool= Suicide Saturdays. Enough Said.

2 Reasons why I'm happy Right now:
1) Timmy's
2) My coffee maker

I was grumpy all day until 30 minutes before tonight's run when I had a large steeped tea (1cream, 1 sugar) and a raisin cinnamon bagel a la Timmy's. And then I was happy :). Run was good too.
I have a box of coffee, a box of fancy/specialty coffees ie. (cappuccino, hazelnut, swiss chocolate almond..), a variety box of tea, aaand a box of hot chocolate on the way!!!!! I just love my coffee maker. :)

Highlight Reel

2010-01-08T17:53:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since my last update that I've been putting off writing a new post simply because there is too much to talk about. Christmas break came and went so fast that it feels like it was months ago that I visited home rather than just a couple weeks ago. So I've decided to write this in highlight-reel format.

Home/Christmas:
- snow!
- eating meals that actually taste good, and the fridge always being full... basically just having such a great mom :)
- going out to the cabin even if just for the weekend. Possibly the only place on earth where I can be stress free.
- cross-country skiing
- seeing friends and family. My brother just keeps growing. He has also become a bona-fide 'gamer'. I discovered this on my first day at home when I found him closed up in his gaming-room, playing X-box live, while talking on a headset to his friends/whoever else in the world he was playing against. I don't know if he would appreciate me sharing this.. but I thought it was pretty funny. He's limited to an hour a day.

And then before I knew it, my holiday week was over, and it was back to Vic to get my ass kicked.

Training Camp:
- learnt that I am officially addicted to coffee. First two days of camp I went sans coffee (for reasons unknown..), and had two days of withdrawal headaches, until I finally had a coffee.
- Paula became my room-mate for the week which was fun. We tried to do as many fun, but little energy expending things around victoria as possible.
- Realized that the cleanliness/orderliness of my condo is inversely related to the amount of time my sister spends there. ;) not saying it's a causal relationship or anything..
- Had an inconsistent fall, but I'm finally gettin fit!
- got my butt kicked

Birthday:
- I am old.. *sigh* goodbye teenage years..
- Birthday/End of Camp cake from Dean and Carolyn on the day before my b-day! Nearly all my birthday's have been during training camp. When I was a swimmer this meant I had the worst birthday's ever. (While I think of Tri camps quite positively (especially when I really need to get fit fast), winter swimclub training camps have been proven to be directly linked to depression). This was the first time anyone's ever brought us a cake :)
- Ali organized us a dinner at Milestones. bff :)
- AP bought us the best, but deceivingly potent drink (mine had a monkey on top).
(I just stole this picture off the internet- because I didn't have a picture of it- ignore random person in background:)

- Austin gave Alex and I the best b-day present eveeeerr! ok so: it's a Keurig coffee maker. You get all these little cups (think oversized versions of the little creamers that you stack into pyramids at restaurants). They are either coffee, or tea, or hot chocolate, or some type of fancy coffee drink (there are hundreds of types). There is a compartment filled up with water. You stick the little cup into the machine and voila! Your drink just pours right into your mug. It's all real coffee or tea, and it's sooooo gooodd! so fast! and sooooo much fun!! No more withdrawal headaches for this girl.
- Thanks for everything friends!

And Now- Into the New Year:
- Just read A-Russ's top workouts of 2009 and it made me smile. It's all about the process- gotta be proud of those moments. We're HP kids.
- we'll be going into a recovery period next week. I'm hoping that post-recovery my improved fitness will show in training. I'm already swimming much stronger, but the fatigue is quite apparent.
- Running is another story.. my foot is all better but my ever since I started running again my bum/piriformus/glute/hamstring on the injured side hasn't been cooperating very well. I feel like I'm running with a peg leg.. Beginning to think it's about time to get some new legs:
(you'll have to excuse the profanity)

- Massage & Chiro Mondays, Yoga & Physio Thursdays, and hopefully some acupuncture will fix me up
- Semester 2 has begun, I'm still figuring out my schedule but should be an ok one.
- I've been drinking way too many hot chocolates.

Day 4 of chocolate calendar

2009-12-04T18:14:00.000-08:00

Firstly, In true NTC fashion, I'd like to welcome the sun back... mr. sun: It has been a while- I was beginning to forget what you looked like :).
I thought I'd better write a post tonight, just in case any of you were concerned about whether I made it through to my last day of classes. Well I did. whew, I made it! Spring Slacker Semester here I come!
This semester was a toughie right until the end though (if you can call it the end since I still have a term paper and 3 finals left.. oh well- close enough :). By thursday I was so exhausted that I completely bonked 3.9k into a 4.5k recovery swim. New low...
I went to my magic chinese medicine acupuncturist (Christina) that night- and she said that over this semester I've gone from having a good strong pulse, to practically no pulse. Poor self :(. 5:30 swims just don't work well for me because I can never fall asleep early enough. Over the past couple years we've figured out that I'm really predictable: 3 sleeps in a week around 6.5 or less hours of sleep= sick. Just about every time. By the time today rolled around, I was so used to feeling shitty that I forgot about the 'train smart to stay consistent' rule. I hadn't even considered not going to swim practice this morning. But when I rolled out of bed, I found a text message on my phone telling me to go back to sleep. And to do the swim OYO later. Its amazing what a couple extra hours of sleep can do for you. I went from having a sore throat, sinus congestion, and being borderline mental breakdown material- to having a great day! Thanks coach, you got my back!

Someone else who also has my back is Dr. Murray- Kirsten & Lauren's (and now my) chiropractor. He's fantastic. He seems to have determined the cause of my stress fracture, my lower back & bum/tailbone pain, and pretty much everything else that is wrong with me in my first session. In the first few minutes with any doctor/physio/chiro/massage etc.. you just know whether they're good or not- y'know? Dr. Murray is really really good. I've known for quite a few years that one of my hips is higher than the other. Physio temporarily fixed it by yanking really hard on my short leg, but Dr. Murray was the first person I've seen who is fixing WHY my one hip is higher. Turns out that my left hip gets stuck, so I have very limited range of motion in that joint. Not only does that really really inhibit my running, make one hip higher than the other, and tighten up all my lower back muscles which pulls on my tailbone (leading to bum pain as well as back pain), but it puts all the stress while running onto my foot.. which leads to stress fractures..

I think this is all really cool :).

Even though this is the first time I've ever worked with a chiropractor, I've been considering going onto chiropractor school when I'm all grown up for a while now. Chiropractors, especially the good ones, just seem so smart. From what he told me, it makes me think about this summer. My back pain was really bugging me around the time of Canada Games/Worlds. At Canada Games my bike, and the first half of my run were a complete disaster. Then I randomly had a complete turn around 3k into the run, and managed to make up 40ish seconds to get on the podium. After the race I had the worst tail-bone pain ever! It felt like I'd slipped on ice and cracked it. Kinda makes me think that my poor running, and the pain afterwards were all related! This is cool- because it's all fixable! (the only problem is that the fixing part is mostly through active release which is not very enjoyable).

On another note: The second half of my swim ended up being in the dive tank due to lack of pool space. It went something like this:
"Soooooo hot in here.. I think my brain is going to explode. Or I will throw up. One or the other.... Oh well last 100m and I'm done the best averages..
Oh no two more board-short-wearing-public-swimmers just jumped in.. aaaaaaaaannd they're swimming the wrong direction.. quick Abort! Abort! To the other side of the lane!.. whew close one...
Coming up to the wall with 50 left... and are you kidding me!! Big-Bum-Breastroker decided to push off ahead of me. I was part way through my flip turn for goodness sakes!! Must get around. Way way around.
15m left- and oh no!! Death Trap ahead!! Head-up/glasses-on doggy paddler, and whalelike water runner are closing in from both sides! think skinny thoughts..
Made it!
soooooo hot.."

Thanks for swimming the last 2km with me Lauren.

And Way to go Austin for the great 10k TT on the track. Sounds like Rachael got a pb too! Alright team :)

Pretty Cool:

2009-12-03T14:04:00.001-08:00

I heard this song on the radio a while ago during a program on mashups- and thought it was craaaaaaazzzzzzzyyy!!
So well done.
A friend just tracked it down for me, so check it out:
Hurts like Teen Spirit

Random thoughts from yesterday and today:

2009-11-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

Last night we had a team sushi & movie night. It was fun- although the majority of us ditched out on the movie to give the cross bikes some TLC, and get to bed early. Oh so HP. (really its just that we already saw New Moon as soon as it came out ha)
After coming home from sushi, I was in a small panic because there was no chocolate to be found in my house. So I gave in, and opened the box of Jelly Belly's Steph gave me. Jelly Belly's are my #1 favorite candy (candy doesn't include chocolate obviously). At training camp 2006, three girls and I went through 2 cosco sized bags in 3 days. No joke. I am fairly certain that is 8 pounds of jelly beans... 3 days.. How I managed to survive the ensuing sugar crash I'll never know.. Now I stick to sport beans at training camps (they're not nearly as addicting).

I've decided that the equilibrium state of my condo is consta-mess. honestly it seems like regardless of how often I clean and tidy it falls back into it's natural state of disaster. I ended up staying up a bit too late last night, after attempting to fix up my cross-bike, to clean up my house for the 50th time this week. Luckily I found a hidden stash of chocolate chips to hold me over (don't worry- I put away the Jelly beans upon discovering the chocolate). But then my building's fire alarm went off at 5am. Urg. It took them an hour to get it off because we were having flooding in the garage or something. I fell back to sleep by 7am, and woke up for weights at 7:30. So I'm on an over-tired high right now.

Today was XC nats! The triathlete's there (that I know) were Simon, Kyle, Little Gabrielle, Dorelle, Alexander, Jordan B, Joanna, and Paula! I think thats it.. (hopefully I didn't forget anyone)? Anyways looks like everyone did really well. Kendra won the senior female race which was pretty fantastic (in August I predicted she'd be the one to look out for- nbd).

My foot is coming along.. I think I'm at about 8 weeks post-injury now. Still haven't started running yet, but today I did the full training with the team! Weights, big cross bike in the rain, and then swim. Holy bonked right now batman. Y'know that feeling that you get after a day of skiing/snowboarding? And your eyes and face feel hot and windburnt..Thats what I'm feeling a le moment. But coming from a normal canadian climate, I find it pretty cool that we're riding outdoors at this time of year. In Calgary you can't ride until like.. June. And to make things even better- the sky was blue yesterday!! Almost the whole day! It had been almost a month since the sun last came out. I didn't have to turn on my headlights while driving at noon for once! So I thought that meant that today would be nice too. But alas.. was I ever mistaken.. The perma-dark & rain returned for my first X-ride of the season. I wore as many layers as I possibly could, and surprisingly stayed quite warm. My toes and fingers were numb by the end, and I was soaked- but nothing unbearable. It was actually really fun!

Man do I suck at cross biking though. I have the 'riding on the road to get to the trails' part down. But when it comes to single track riding... ha. At least everyone always knows where I am because of my constant yelling/screaming.
I discovered this way of getting around the trails decently fast by just always keeping one foot unclipped, and scooching along like a scooter! (don't tell patrick).
Ok ok.. I do try to Ride my bike as much as possible.. but half way through today's ride my front brake broke (thats what you get with tiagra & sora components), and my back brakes were out of pads, so I really did need to brake somehow! When I arrived back at the parking-lot at least half the team were dragging their shoes along the pavement to stop too. It was kinda funny watching us all try to stop sans wiping out.

Tomorrow is water run, spin, grocery shopping at Red Barn, start & hopefully complete term paper, anatomy work annnnnd then we're onto the last week of classes before Exams! Hope everyone in Guelph is having a great night. And good luck to those starting exams.

we're the real deal

2009-11-19T21:14:00.000-08:00

Chere Marianne:
We're famous! Made the ITU highlight reel. Although I do admit you got more camera time than me (see 40- 45 seconds). My only claim to fame is the footage of the dive start. (My bum is the farthest one from the camera (36 seconds)). Good times team. :)

Team Relay World Champs

3.4

2009-11-06T14:42:00.000-08:00

Only 3.4 weeks left of school until exams. (whew huuuuuuuge sigh of relief). Ever since the beginning of the semester I've just been trying to survive until december. Killer semester ends in december. Only have to swim 5:15 mornings until december. Should be fully back into training by december.. oh and december means christmas of course. There's just so many things to look forward to!
I've never really been injured before. So this has been a bit of an eye opener for me. I've discovered that not training during off- season is excccccelllent. But not training (because of injury/school taking over my life), when I feel like I should be training makes me anxious, and grumpy and thereby depressed. and after a while getting fat (and slow) becomes less fun.
A few weeks ago when I was hardly doing anything trainingwise with the team, I showed up for my first weights session feeling like a depressed basket-case. But during weights I had so much fun. I came out of the session happier than I'd been in weeks. Like way way way happier. So I realized that training isn't something that I do just because its what I do. It Is what makes me happy. And being with the group makes me happy too.
So I've had really great attitudes going into all my workouts lately because of this discovery. I even go to my super early morning practices with a positive attitude because I am thankful to be there- even if 5:15 is nowhere near morning. Ok moderately positive attitude.

I realize that I have completely failed in the quotes of the week department, so I'll put one in now:

"never die easy"
- unknown

Thats all. I didn't really analyze that quote in any way.. but it sounds Badass.

Quote of The Week

2009-10-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ok so as promised in ma previous post- here's my quote of the week. I was talking to possibly my favorite training buddy of all time last night (she should come back and train with me soon), and at one point she says,

-"aren't you excited for this season! There are going to be so many U23 girls this year. Nationals is going to be so fun!"

-me: "Yay! but you're going to have to show me how it's done since you're the experienced one and all.."

-"Oh don't even worry about it- Tri boys are easy to flirt with!"

so there ya go- The transition from Junior racing to U23 isn't nearly as hard as everyone makes it seem. I was worrying for nothing!

Since both my quotes of the week so far have been more like conversations- here's a bonus one.

" Time Flies when you're living." - Jasper Blake
( go check out his blog because a) he's the funniest triathlete on the planet, and b) he's getting ready for Xterra worlds right now!)

One of life's unexplained mysteries

2009-10-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've decided to include a Quote of the week section into my blog. We will see if I find one for every week or not, but thats my goal at least. I've got a different best quote for this week that I will post shortly, so this next quote will stand in for my September quote of the month.

Overheard at the UVic bibliocafe:
A tuesday morning, late september

Student #1: Hey man- did you make it out last night?
Student #2: Ya- it was awesome- I don't even remember how I got home!
Student #1: Hey- you came out with us Saturday night too right?
Student #2: Ya! I went out every night this weekend! ended up pulling an all nighter Saturday night... (more talk about events of the weekend, hookups and such..)
Student #2: The only crappy thing is that I feel like I'm getting sick again. I just got over my last cold a couple days ago!
Student #1: Me too! My throat and head are really starting to hurt today- And I was sick all last week!! This seems to happen every september!!
Student #2: Makes no sense!!! Whats with september anyways??

hmm good question students 1 and 2- why are university students alll sick alllllll september long?? Guess its just one of life's unexplained mysteries.

Dear October, we have gotten off to a rough start.. redo?

2009-10-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

.. It must be Karma..
I'm not sure where to start to be honest.. I guess when it comes down to it, the root of all our problems is Anatomy 141. Death course. no joke. I mean its very interesting, but I've been investing 15+ hours a week outside of actual class and lab time- just studying for this one course! Its like the ultimate life ruiner- in a text book. Despite our (I say our because this is a twinly story- not just my story) attempts to NOT give ourselves absolutely killer academic schedules- it appears we have majorly failed this semester round.
Not only is this course very mean academically it also happens to be held at 8:30am Tues, Wed, and Fri mornings. Right in the middle of our three most important swim workouts of the week. (and yes it is a required course, and no it isn't offered at any other time, and no- no other online anatomy courses are transferable- believe me we went through that too).
Its been a struggle to find other options to ensure that we're still able to have a swim focus this fall since we cant be with the team. Alex and I threw about tons of different training options- attempting to create a schedule that kept us in the pool enough, but still allowed us to attend the rest of our NTC workouts. For a while it looked as if Alex and I would end up just having to train alone for the semester. At the moment I'm dealing with the after affects of an Australian foot injury. I'm going in for a bone scan on Tuesday, but until then I have to assume its a stress fracture. So that's been a pain. Since I'm only able to water run, that meant Alex would be doing the running and biking solo.
In a little fit of frustration- Alex said, "maybe we should just quit training entirely since we're barely surviving school in the off season as it is.... and just get really fat!"

She didn't really mean it.. honest..

but apparently the Karma gods don't understand sarcasm.
One twin can't be healthy if the other one is injured- so to even things out Alex flipped over her cross-bike handlebars and broke her collarbone.
Ironically our test today (in anatomy) had a lot to do with the pectoral girdle and clavicles, so at least we both knew what was going on!
So now it looks like Alex got her wish and can go get fat. And soon enough she'll be able to join me in the dive tank for some water running. If in fact I do have a stress fracture- I will post a picture of me with my air cast, and her with her arm sling. sigh ..We already get lots of funny looks walking around campus together as it is- since we look the same and all..

In the end Patrick and Island swimming came to our rescue- so fortunately the two of us will be part time islanders until december. Well I will.. by the looks of things Alex will be out until then. 5:30 mornings are really not my steez. Not oooooonnne bit. But I'm willing to throw in a couple per week until worstsemesterofalltime is over.

For now- I Hope everyone has a great thanksgiving!
And good luck to all the Vikes, and all canadian triathletes around the world running Cross this season. Huge Congrats to both Sarah-Anne, and Jess for their phenomenal races- and for making it onto flotrack! And good luck to all the Canadians in KONA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Season Review

2009-10-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

I had a very brief chat with coach Neil the other day that went something like this:
NH: So How did you feel about your season?
me: Great!
NH: Really? so you had some races that you were happy with?
me: yup!
NH: Which ones?
me: weeeeeeelllll eerrrrr Patco, and ummmm (pause to think a while...) errrrrr I guess Worlds.. kind of...but I could've done better... uhhh ya just Patco really.
And that's when I came to the conclusion that my season actually sucked!

so why when I thought about my season as a whole did I feel happy with it??? The past couple days I thought that over. And I came up with this:
I think the first half of my season was really strong, but then by the end I just didn't have the energy to finish as strong as I had been earlier in the summer. My running at both Canada Games and Worlds was rather sub-par. And I'm disappointed that I was sick at nationals- but not much you can do about that. So those are those are the negatives.
...buuuuuuutttt...
I am pleased with my season because I feel like this past year I was finally racing at a level that represents my ability. I knew I had the ability to win Patco. check! I knew with luck I could win the Canadian series. Check! I knew I could become a front pack swimmer, and a leader in the bike pack- and I have accomplished both! I knew I could come top ten at Worlds and I did that too. Check, check, check. So that's an awful lot of positives!! Before this year I couldn't even check off one of those.

So I think that makes it approximately 5 to 3 in favor of being pleased with my season ;).

I may not have had any perfect races but thats probably a good thing- I think I'm getting pretty good at always leaving myself loads of room to improve. And all in all I was so fortunate to have a season like this one- no crashes (my 3 transition crashes this year are just embarrassing and therefore don't count!!), and only one sick race!! I wish I could say the same for Alex- but I think she had a great experience in her first U23 race, and is ready to kick butt 2010.
Overall feeling of racing 2009: Great!

And now I'm going to learn how to be a champion for 2010 from Ian's blog.

oh and on a side note I am currently attempting to round up some partnerships/sponsorships for this coming year because I am broke and have no more money for new shoes and wetsuits and stuff.. See take a look at this: My suit is missing something...

So if anybody has any tips I'd love the advice :)

Good tune whilst homeworking

2009-09-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

Favorite Pump up song is still undecided.. but this song still makes my top 5 all time happy songs:

Junior Worlds 09

2009-09-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

That was it! My last ever Junior race...
All in all I was pretty happy with how it went down. I mean minus the last km of course haha. But otherwise It was a really great experience. Even though we were still training pretty hard a couple weeks out from the race, our volume dropped from approx 23 hours per week to about 18. (I can't give you exact numbers because my workoutlog is temporarily suspended for the off season). I think the decrease in volume was really good for me because by the time we arrived in Australia I felt rested for the first time going into a race since Patco early on in the season. Training in Australia was great, and I'd been healthy for a really long time. But then, the night before the race, I managed to come down with Kirsten's cold. I was bummed- but not too worried about it because a) I get sick so easily that I'm getting used to it by now, and b) it was just a head cold so it shouldn't have much affect on my race. I woke up a bunch of times in the night with my throat so sore I could hardly swallow, but then when I woke up in the morning my throat was feeling a lot better and my only real issue was a lot of sinus pain/congestion. I tried to round up some tylenol sinus, but in the end we ran out of time to double check whether it was legal or not- so I ended up racing sans drugs. Which was good since I spent the 3hours after the race getting drug tested!

I was lined up right beside the second place finisher, Emma Jackson, on the startline which was nice, but we both had pretty rough swims- so I'm thinking our spot wasn't the greatest. I was stuck fighting for at least 400 if not 500 meters of the swim. The girl on my left kept grabbing the neck of my suit and pulling me backwards, so there was a lot of internal swearing going on by me that whole swim. By the time I found clear (enough) water, a small gap had already formed and Emma and I were left to try to catch back up. I ended up exiting the water really disappointed because it looked as if I was second pack even though I know I could have easily hung on to the lead group. I had a quick transition, hammered past all the girls who were fumbling around with their shoes, and all of a sudden I realized that the small group ahead of me was the front pack! I knew that I didn't have long to catch up before they got organized, so I really hammered the first turnaround and caught on to the back fairly quickly. The first lap of the bike was sketchy though! None of us had ever really rode the course before and there were lots of turns and chicanes. At one point the course switched from the left side of the road to the right, and since I was mid-pack I didn't know it was coming, and was very very nearly forced into the median. But I survived the bike! It was a pretty relaxed ride actually. Lots of sprinting in and out of corners- but otherwise not very fast. I came to the realization that at races like this those who push the pace are the ones that have podium potential, whereas everyone else doesn't really have a lot to gain from working the bike, so they are content to just sit in. And if by chance some great runners come up from chase pack- then to them it is only a place or two different. I didn't really know where I stood in this race. I wanted the pack to speed up, but at the same time I didn't want to be the only one doing work like I did in Patco. So I just did my share, and tried to stay at the front as much as possible- oh and tried to avoid the sketchy riders!
T2 was sweet. Somehow me and Alison came out together 1,2 and lead the first little while. First women out on the run at Worlds woot! The two leaders soon flew right by though. And I found myself in third. For quite a while actually! That was fun. I had watched Gomez and Brownlee the day before head out on their 10km run not holding anything back, and I just thought- this is Worlds man- and I only have to run 5km, so I'm going to run my legs off. And I thought "run like Brownlee" most of the way. My stupid orthotics almost killed me though! Geez! I tried to dump water on my head to cool off- but it went in my shoes and my orthotics made it so slippery that I was just sliding around in my shoes. So I had no push off. no power. I couldn't even dump water on me. I very very very VERY nearly just took my shoes off and ran barefoot because it was throwing off my stride so badly. (so a different type of orthotics will be required for next year!)
My arms were feeling pretty lactic right off the start too- which isn't a very promising sign (i don't know why it was my arms..), but otherwise my pace wasn't too uncomfortable. That is until 800m to go- when everything went lactic. Like complete, 100m backstroke type lactic- and I was struggling. Shoot. I don't know if taking my gel on the bike would have helped me or not, or perhaps drinking more, or being able to dump water on me..but regardless I had hit the wall. And then with ~600m to go Alison decided to pass me, and I all I could think of was that there was no way I could keep up until the finish line. And so thats where I'm most disappointed. I'm not disappointed that I went out hard- because I really do think I could have finished at that pace on a different day. I'm not disappointed that I died with 800m to go even though if I had gone out easier I might not have died at all and finished a few places higher. I'm disappointed that when Alison ran by me- I didn't tell myself to stick with her just until the top of the hill- and then from there- just until the corner- and then from there just until the finish.. instead all I could think of was the finish line being too damn far away.. shoot. So there ya go- another lesson learnt. But when I look back on a race I always think I could have maybe given it a little more- but at the time.. ha that probably was all I had, so I won't get too upset about it.
Buuuutt on a more positive note-coming into the race I thought that a top 20 finish would be realistic, so I made it my goal to come top 10. And I did! I also haven't worked much on my run this year- and instead focused a lot more on my swim and bike. And I don't think I would ever have been able to be a Worlds front pack swimmer until now- or even been able to chase down front pack on the bike until now, so I'm really happy about that too. And like I said earlier- Now I just want to make another national team so I can give it another go!

Gold Coast 09!

2009-09-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

Ok this is a test to see if my brain is back to working normally. After skipping sleeping the night after the race (we had to leave hotel at 4am.. and I had yet to pack after the after-party), then flying all the next day and night (slash who knows what day or night we were actually flying in) and sleeping rather minimally on the plane, I was very very out of it when I returned to Vic. (sleeping sitting up makes lower back hurt/is borderline impossible, lying on tray= bum cramping and pins&needles in lower legs, and sleeping on teammate's laps is good except for when they're watching funny movies and laugh every few minutes). I then stayed awake until bedtime Vic time yesterday, and didn't feel too tired- but I had zero attention span, no motor skills, and great difficulty communicating coherently all day long. I currently have half finished projects (partially built bikes, partial e-mails, piles of clean and waiting to be clean laundry..) strewn all over my house, waiting to be finished by a less A.D.D me. So if this blog post is tricky to read- then I blame it on the jet lag.

Anyways Australia was awesome. Best Trip Ever. That pretty much sums it up. The race was really cool too. Everyone says that Worlds is such a great and different experience, but I don't think I really realized how different it would be. I went into it thinking that in the end- it was just another race. But really I think I learnt way more than I was expecting too- and now I just want to make another national team, so I can give it another go!

We flew to Australia Sept 3rd, and I didn't race until Sept 13th, so we had a fair amount of time to train and acclimatize to Aus before the race. It wasn't until the U23 race- two days before ours that I even felt like I was there to race, we were just too busy living the life. Here's the views from the Jr. Girls hotel room:

Since it was spring there it got dark pretty early, so we were all sleepy by like 9 every night. But the sun came up so early that none of us were sleeping in past about 6:30. We'd leave for swimming at 8, so before then most of the team could be found at our little coffee shop just down the road before workouts every morning.
We couldn't go to the beach, or do much walking around the days leading up to the race, but we found ways to entertain ourselves. And we did manage to get into the ocean for a few minutes one day. Check out our jr. team's 20Q videos on Ian's Blog if you'd like to see what we got up too..

The last block of training in Victoria before we left had been pretty rough for me mentally because the season had felt sooo incredibly long. And I struggled through yet another Vic training camp. But the change of scene and the excitement when we got to the Gold Coast fixed me so that I was ready to go.
Here's our pool at the Australian sports centre, where we did most of our rides, and where we ran one day!

Like I said- the racing was really great too. I'll go into more details in my race report. Watching the U23's (Paula came thirrrrrrrrrrddddd!!!!!!!!!!!) fired me up/made me very nervous, and by race day I was ready to race. I would love to go back again sometime and actually go to the beach! And see more of Oz, and visit with Steph (we only got to hang out for ~ 1hour during the women's race)!
Thanks for the cheering and the support, and the good times, and Ian's dancing, and the great admin team!

and as a sidenote for the Jr/U23 team I vote the themes for this trip were: T-Swift's you belong with me, the guys': "Craaazzyy B****es", and "Doin' work", Connor wishing he had a gun, good coffee with little coffee bears, Water bears.. sometimes Land bears, Ian's dancing, and "can you push the white button for me?" ha.

Falling on my head, BC domination and good stories like that!

2009-08-24T14:49:00.001-07:00

So I just decided that I better make the relay race report as a separate post from the real race report, so that everyone doesn't get mad at me again for writing too much. The relay was by far the most intense, exciting, nerve wracking event I have ever done! Ha it was soooooo much fun. We knew we had the potential to win, and we really really wanted that win, but we also knew that it would be a close one. We all had our part to play-We had to use lots of strategies. We knew we had to get a lead on team Ontario, so that I wouldn't have to be running head to head with speedy ms. Joanna. Alison lead out, and her goal was to work together with the other leaders to drop Dorelle. They ended up making a few seconds on the bike, but mostly Sarah and Alison just pulled away by 10~15 seconds on the run. Then Christine's goal was to work with Stevie if she was close enough after the swim, and if not- to just TT the whole bike and to gain as much time as possible on Domnicka from Ontario. She ended up TTing the whole thing- but I think she still had one of the fastest bike splits! She said her bike finally felt like her old biking self which was great. And she made up tons of time.
I was so nervous waiting for the handoff- because my job was just to solo the whole race. And hopefully to have at least 30 seconds on Joanna before the start of the run because we estimated that she would run about 30seconds faster. So many BC teams came down to watch, and the whole cycling team was cheering for me at the handoff. I didn't know how much of a gap I had, so I just had to try and go as fast as I could the whole way. It was hard because since I was all alone I never knew if I was swimming fast or not, or if they were gaining on me or not.
Heading out onto the bike was where I crashed! it was sooooo embarrassing. You see in warm up I had been practicing jumping onto my bike in a harder gear than usual so that I would be able to hammer right from the get go. But that didn't work out because since I was just practicing- I wasn't using elastics, and so when I went to stand up on my pedals I got one of my shoes stuck on the pavement, and I flipped myself right over the handlebars. That kind of hurt. I was wearing lots of clothes though, so I didn't get much road rash- just a scrape on my elbow and my bum. But anyways in the race when I jumped on my bike, one of my elastics broke! I didn't want to have a re-run of warm-up, so I was calmly trying to flip my shoe over so that it wouldn't hit the ground, and I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, and I rode right into the curb, and flipped over onto the grass! Two crashes on the same corner in the span of like an hour! Ugh and this time it was right in front of everyone who was cheering for me. I felt like an idiot. Patrick was flipping out because he thought I might have messed up my gears- or my brake pads or something, but luckily nothing was wrong and I got up and going again super fast.
My bike was actually really strong- I think I gained time on the other girls! I was too scared to ever look back, but I saw how much of a lead I had at the turn-around, and I realized that I had loads of time on Rachel, and even more time on Joanna. The run felt rough. 2k is a hard distance because it is short enough that you should be able to just go all out the whole way, but coming off the bike you feel so terrible that 2k actually feels really long. I went hard, but I didn't ever need to sprint or anything because I had so much time, so I relaxed into it for the middle section of the run. Regardless I was totally beat after the sprint. I had worked really hard in the real race a few days earlier, so the relay finished me off. We had lots of group hugs at the end, but the other girls were kind of holding me up haha. And then we had interviews with TSN and stuff which was pretty cool. I think our guys team did a much better job of the interviewing than us though ha.
The boys race was equally as nerve racking and exciting. We ended up winning by a lot- but it was super close between us and Ontario the whole way. The Nova Scotia team's chain fell off in T1 of the third leg, and I think that might have changed up the race a little because Nova Scotia could have maybe worked with Ontario to catch back up to BC. But luck was on our side today.
Barb got some great photos! Of the individual race here:
and the relay here.
Check 'em out!
oh and PS. Our development guys did Amazing in Kelowna!! Paula came third to Lauren and Kathy. Andrew Fifth, Austin 7th (2nd U23 to A-Mac) . And Alex came 3rd U23 in her first Olympic despite dropping her gels on both the bike and the run, and having to tough out the ensuing major bonkage!

Canada Games Race report

2009-08-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

Heyyyy! I'm back in Vic now after the big Canada Games adventure. I've been pretty exhausted these past couple days, so despite my huuuuuge list of things that have to be done before I leave for worlds, I've mostly just been lying around, doing some light training, creeping facebook pics, laundry, grocery shopping, wasting more time on facebook.. that kinda stuff. And now blogging! Not necessarily a high priority on my to do list, but more fun.
Canada Games was Awesome! Because it was a smaller field, smaller race.. I wasn't really expecting it to be so exciting, or so much fun. But it was a really great experience- so thanks Patrick, and Barb, and everyone who had to work so hard to get everything organized for that. My individual race wasn't the greatest physically. I'm not really sure what was up. I didn't sleep At All the night before (like maybe 1 hour max) so that may have played a part, but I think that just happens sometimes. You can't always be 'on' for every race, just like you can't be 'on' for every workout. I started the race with a great swim despite the huge waves! I was 100% in front pack right up until the last 40meters where the leaders pulled ahead a bit. I'm having trouble finding the results, but I think I was only out of the water 10ish seconds back from the leaders, so that felt great. Alison kept knocking off my helmet for all our events- Jeez Alison!! ha it wasn't her fault, but I lost some more time trying to find my helmet and sunglasses. We were focusing on team tactics for this race which was really cool because we've never done that before. So Alison and Christine were waiting up for me. Luckily I was up with them almost right away, and together we headed out on the ride with Dorelle, Stevie and Sarah-Anne. Since we've all trained together before our pack was super efficient. But my legs weren't there at all! I had to take smaller pulls than everyone else because I could just tell that I was slowing our pack down. I took a gel on the last lap of the bike with hopes of boosting my energy. And then the run started and I could tell that I wasn't myself at all. I pushed myself through the hardly moving feeling for the first lap, but I was barely holding on, and then as I came around the turn-around last I think my mind and body gave out on me, and I quickly lost time to the other girls. I knew that I should be able to stay with them easily, but I just couldn't get going. And then half-way through the run I had a complete turn around. Again I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden Kyla was back. And I was shocked because I have never gone from feeling that terrible, to good so suddenly before. And I didn't know what to do because I felt like I had already lost my race. I decided to go for a medal still, so I really began to pick up the pace. But it looked completely impossible. With only a lap to go I didn't truly believe that I had a chance of making up such a huge gap. But then I passed Patrick and I think he could tell that I was feeling better and he yelled at me to give it my all- and to go get that medal. So I kicked it up another notch, and all of a sudden I was gaining on Christine. I just kept pushing and with 600 meters to go I had caught her! I just kept on sprinting though- not daring to look back. I finished 15 seconds ahead- totally frying my legs. In retrospect I know that if I had been able to keep contact I could have still been in the race for the win, but I'm still proud of how I did out there. I don't know if I've ever had to dig that deep to catch up before. I definitely never worked that hard in any of my wins earlier this season. So if a bronze was the best I had that day then I guess I'd better be satisfied with that.

Race Report?? how about Walk Report..

2009-08-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

First of all- I didn't get sick! I thought I was doomed- but nope IIIIIIIiiii beat it! haha take that nasty cold that is taking down the whole group.
Today was the Victoria Self Transcendence Tri- an annual nondrafting race. I have to admit I was a little nervous. Not so much about the results.. because it's just a training race, but I guess I was just scared of sucking. (mainly due to the non-drafting part). TTing on the bike has always been my weak point, so non-drafting races aren't really my specialty. I know my biking has improved a ton this year though! I think I've gone from one of the weaker cyclists in the Junior Series, to one of the stronger ones, but still.. I can't help but equate non-drafting to death.
Anyways..
At 7:05 am we were lined up girls and guys together in the water for the start. Since it was just a free for all, we were all shoving our way to the left side to get the best line and the best draft. That turned out to be a gongshow. After two strokes I hadn't caught any water-only bodies, and then my turn came as both kids to either side of me simultaneously dunked me, and the girl behind me swam right over top. Luckily I could still touch the bottom, so I popped back up again, emptied my goggles and somehow found my way back onto Alison's feet. Perfect. She pulled us right up to the tail end of the guy's pack (+Christine and Hilary). So we chilled there for awhile. (Maybe chill isn't the best word.. I actually was working my butt off the whole swim ha). Then I noticed that Alison and her draftee (my word for the guy pulling Ali..) were heading a bit off course, so I took a straighter line and beat them around the buoy. Alison was quickly right back at my side, so I dropped back again so that we weren't slowing each other up (that makes me sound like the good guy- ha I also dropped back to get on her feet again), and we made our way into the beach.
A little gap formed in between me and the pack in the last 75 meters, but I came out of the water only about 5 seconds back from Alison and Christine, so I think that qualifies as my best swim so far this year.

Transition was a little messy- my helmet and glasses had been knocked off my bike, so I had to search for those, and then as I was running out one of the first time racers realized he needed to get something out of his bag, and blocked off the whole exit with his bike. I stopped myself from careening into him, and a little, "uhh excuse me?" got him moving out of the way pretty quickly. I jumped on my bike with the other girls still in sight. I think I must be more used to having to catch up out of T1 because within less than a minute I had flown by all the girls! (except hilary). My lead lasted all of ten seconds, and then Christine passed me back, and we soon found ourselves in a little non-drafting draft pack of four: Alison, Christine, Stevie and I. We tried to stagger, but the road wasn't very wide, and non of us were willing to drop back, so we were riding all in the span of about a van's length and width- rather than having a van's length between us like we were supposed to. ha woops. We soon caught up to Hilary drafting..uh..riding with two of the Manitoba boys, and they joined our non-drafting pack.

Annnnnd theeeeeeen about 6ish Km into the ride, down this back-country road, we all heard my tire go flat. We were just cresting a big painful hill, so my first thought was, "oh dang!", then my second thought was, "thank god" because that hill was Really Hurting ha! But then I realized that I'd been doing well, and I'd been feeling great, and that maybe I had a win in me after all- so then I was disappointed again. I hope this means I got my 'flat tire whilst racing' out of the way for the season.. or the next couple seasons.
I also realized that I was 6ish km out in the middle of nowhere, and that I had a long walk in bike shoes left to do. So clip-clopping along the side of the rode I made my 75minute walk allll the way back to the race site.
I was shocked to see how spread out the girls had become as they passed me. I hadn't felt like it would spread out at all seeing as we were practically drafting. But Christine had rightfully assumed her place up front, while Alison and Stevie followed not too far behind.
I thought about what made some people ask if I was ok, while others didn't. I made a friend with a cyclist named Jerry( I think?) who was out cheering on his son in law. I cheered on Tom who was doing his first tri today. I said thank you to all the volunteers.
And a half an hour after the junior race had finished I made it back to the race site. I couldn't finish the race because I'd never made it to the turn around on the bike, so I handed in my chip and called it a day. It wasn't a complete disappointment though because I think I was feeling good enough to have stayed up with Christine on the bike. I'm sure that wouldn't have been the case if it was a flat course! But seeing as hills play in my favor I think maybe I could have pulled off a decent non-drafting( ok a little bit of drafting) race after-all!
I haven't seen the results yet, but Congrats to Christine who's been running great these last couple weeks- and won! And to Jeff who ran his way up to first as well. And Aaron who would have actually won if Jeff had been racing his real age category. And everybody else who finished!
Oh and Pat for his relay!

Heat Training

2009-07-31T16:09:00.000-07:00

Ola!
Just thought It has been awhile now since nationals, so I should probably switch up the blog post. I don't know about everywhere else in Canada but Vic's summer has been HOT! We are going onto our third week in the 30's. Very un-Victoria like weather. They are saying it's the hottest since 1941 or something like that. Vancouver hit an all time record high the other day. I would give anything for this kind of heat were I at my cabin, spending the days on the beach, or on the boat. But in Vic I'm having a little bit of a love/hate relationship with it. I love how after hard rides we can stop by one of Vic's many lakes and dive in to cool off (although some of them are getting to be not so cool now), and then it's so hot we dry off before we get home. We even dove in the ocean on Wednesday after the track workout! That was chilly. I love how it feels like Summer! I love how everyone does summery things- the lakes are always packed, kids running through sprinklers, feeling like your head is going to explode from the heat while doing km repeats on the track in the middle of the afternoon...
I guess the hate part only really comes into play at night-time when it doesn't cool off at all. I'm a crappy sleeper- I grew up sleeping in the basement in Calgary which was always cold. So 32' inside my third floor condo doesn't lead to good sleeps for me. I think that might be why our group is sharing this one cold so easily. We're all training so hard, but we're probably not resting quite as well as usual. But I am determined not to get sick! I had a great training day Wednesday- but a super bad sleep that night which lead to a not so great feeling thursday, and then another bad sleep thursday, has lead to an aahhhh I'm borderline getting sick friday! But I won't. I just had a good nap- and I think I'll be good to go tomorrow. I've also been ODing on all my health supplements. ( Oil of Oregano, Vit C, Zinc losanges, Cold-fx, Echinacea, Elderberry extract, deep immune..etc) so if I don't die from whatever comes of mixing all those- then I should stay Healthy!
Otherwise we're just in the middle of a Canada Games training camp, our third week of build, so it has been lots and lots of good training. Manitoba is here training with us, so that's fun. We even rode up Hurricane Ridge last week over in Port Angeles. That was really neat! I loved it up there.
We have a little local race this weekend- and then the countdown to CSG is on!
Here are some pics from hurricane ridge:

Gatineau Recap (* warning: very long blog post)

2009-07-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

* I included some headings for those who don't feel like reading everything*

Well I'm back from Gatineau in one piece. My nasty cough has somewhat returned, but I'm sure a good sleep in my own bed will cure me. I know my race schedule is nothing like that of our Senior national team, but I feel like its been non-stop racing and traveling the past few weeks, so I'm really looking forward to actually training.. and resting in one place for a while.

Nationals itself wasn't quite what I'd been hoping for. There are a lot more lessons to be learned from bad races than from good ones though, so at least I know I came out of this race smarter. And now my fire has been lit to re-deem myself. Two positives to take away from this weekend.
So about that race...

PRE-RACE WHINING AND COMPLAINING:

I spent the week leading up to Nats in quarantine once again. I wish I didn't have to include the 'once again' part but unfortunately it seems to be a re-occuring issue among us Coates girls. It began on Monday last week when I wound up spending my day in bed with a fever, brutal neck and back aches, a sore throat, and a disgusting phlegmy cough. Sorry if I just went into too much detail ha. It took me most of the day to find the energy to pack for the trip. I honestly didn't know if racing would be an option, but then Tuesday rolled around (the day we left for Gatineau) and miraculously most of my flu symptoms were gone! It was possibly my speediest recovery ever. But I was still wiped, and my easy 3k swim in the warm pool was almost the end of me. I was absolutely paranoid about infecting my sister ( we are really good at sharing illnesses) and the team, so I sat on the other end of the plane from my team, and stayed in my own hotel room for the week. I actually ended up staying in the suite because that was the only room left!! And that was awesome by the way ( king size bed, flat screen tv, jacuzzi..) until I had to pay the bill at the end of the week ha. The girls were all formulating conspiracy theories( jokes)- and decided that I was just pretending to be sick in order to rest-up and kick their butts on race day. I WISH! haha I am not quite that tricky. Nor do I feel the need to play mind-games with my team-mates. I was recovering well from my flash flood flu, but training was not going well at all. Easy runs and bikes shot my heart rate through the roof, and all of my sprinting abilities were non-existent. Even the day before the race it felt like each and every muscle had been injected with the flu shot- and were just so painful. It's really hard to think of yourself as a competitor and a threat when you can't even keep up doing an easy jog. Patrick really emphasized positive thinking, and I tried as hard as I could to put my fears out of my mind. But I think it was just as much my lack of confidence that limited me this weekend as my physical well-being.

Race Morning came way too soon, and once again I couldn't keep any food in. It is strange because I don't get anywhere near as stressed as I used too before races, but I still can't eat! It took me at least half an hour to force feed myself a bowl of cereal, but I don't think any of that stayed in me. Alex and I are working on a better pre-race nutrition plan for the future. Because it's impossible to race to your potential on an empty tank- especially in an afternoon race like this weekend. Race Day brought 21' and thunder showers. The conditions were sooooo epic. I wish I could steal some of the race-day pics of the Kids of Steel running through puddles up to their thighs in the midst of the downpour. We don't get that quantity of water during showers in Western Canada I don't think. This was like getting a whole kiddy pool of water, dumped on your head- aaaaaallll the time! It made the corners on the bike very treacherous. In the age group race before ours, whole packs of riders were taken out on the corners. We had done loads of cornering practice before the race, but in the end we were forced to almost come to a stop before taking each turn it was so slick. I skidded out three times- and I'm telling ya- I was not going fast around those corners!
Anyways- back to the beginning.

THE ACTUAL RACE REPORT:

One of my goals for this season was to have strong early season races, so that by nationals I'd get a good starting position. Luckily I had that going for me- so I got the far right spot all to myself. I think I had my best start ever from there. The go came really suddenly once everyone had finally all got lined up, but I had a quick reaction, and had perfectly clear water for my dolphin dives. To my left I could see Sharpie leaping, and waving me on from the warm-up area, so I knew I was doing well. And I actually sighted properly! Often times I find that when I'm on the outside at the start, I accidentally separate myself from the pack, and lose the draft entirely. But this time I kept a good line, and found myself in open water ahead of the whole group. Unfortunately that was the highlight of my swim. Christine was soon zipping past me, and I got right on her feet, only to discover that I was stuck going one speed. (a not fast enough speed). Hilary was soon filling in the gap I left, and then before I knew it- what felt like the whole group of girls were swimming on top of me. I saw all my usual swimming buddies pull away, but where I can usually dig deep and hang on- today there was nothing to dig into.. if that makes sense.
I sprinted into transition superdy duperdy fast (at least thats what I was going for..) because I had a lot of time to make up. My "supposedly best" bike spot in Trani ended up being not so great though..I was right on the end, so as I pulled my bike out- my shoe got hooked onto the end of the rack. I kept yanking, and succeeded in knocking a few other bikes right off the rack. Oopsy. The volunteers seemed to get it all fixed pretty quickly though. Legs were notttttt feeling so great on that bike though thats for sure. Gaby went whipping by me- 'stay with me,' she said. So I got on her wheel. There was a few seconds where I fell off, but then I hardened up- 'I can stay with Gaby,' I just kept telling myself- 'I can!' And I did. But it was a while before I could pull through. Most of this season I have felt very strong on the bike, but this race I was thinking more about hanging on then actually racing. That is a lame way to race. I'll expect that feeling when I race Elite, but for now that is a lame way to race my last junior year. No one in our group was pulling particularly strongly, so we were soon engulfed by the pack behind us lead by Rachel Edwards (& mini Edwards in tow!), and together we caught up to the front pack (minus Stevie and Christine who had broken away earlier on). I was having weird cramping, even in my hands, so I took my gel, and hydrated a lot, and by the end of the bike I was feeling much stronger than before.
But then I made a rookie mistake. I found myself leading up front for a really long time all by myself as we were nearing transition. It didn't dawn on me until too late that all the other girls were just using that opportunity to sit back and take off their shoes. Usually I don't take my feet out until right before transition, but I had forgotten about the death corners right before the dismount line. Probably 6 girls ended up coming into T2 before me. And with my transition spot right at the end of transition it ended up being a huuuuuge mistake. I was stuck waiting for all those girls to rack their bikes before I could even come close to my spot. Ughhhhh where was my brain! Needless to say there was a big gap in between me and the leaders of our pack heading out onto the run. And then this is where I think I made tragic mistake #2. I just let them keep their lead thinking that I would reel them in slowly. I was scared because my whole race had felt really weak, so I was worried that if I took it out too fast that I would just die all over the place. In that instant I completely lacked any killer instinct as A-Russ would put it. I needed to get in with those girls right away! But I didn't. Maybe if I had- I would have blown up all over the place. But Maybe I would have won. Either way I didn't put myself in the position to risk it. And I regret that. Even though I wasn't entirely in the game physically, I could have still been in the game mentally.
My run actually felt stronger and stronger as it went on- I think that gel really helped! And by the end I think I was only about 5 seconds back from Alex.

I was pretty disappointed at the end of my race, but it wasn't my result that made me sad (every one of those girls deserved to be where they were), it was my performance that made me disappointed. I feel like I was in survival mode instead of racing mode. I totally lacked any aggression in this race- and that's what I learnt not to let happen again.

The end.
(yay!)

Relays!!!!

2009-06-28T20:09:00.001-07:00

Oh my goodness. The relays were just so much fun. Actually this whole trip was so much fun. Thanks so much TriCanada for bringing us down here and giving us this experience. Like Sarah-Anne said, "It was really nice of them to take us here even though they knew we would come last." Well our C team may have been a bit back in the results, but we were definitely not last- and we killed the American development team!! ok so here's how it went down:

The World Team Triathlon Championships consisted of 4 person teams (2 girls and 2 guys) who would each do a super sprint triathlon before tagging off to their next team-mate. Canada brought the national team, and two development teams. We didn't know until the day before the race which team we would be on. And since Sarah, Marianne, and I are all very similar -none of us could guess which one of us would end up on the B team. I think we were all pretty impartial to which team we ended up on though because B team meant a lot of pressure whereas C team would be more fun (although slightly anti-climatic as it was destined to come last(ish). In the end I was chosen to lead out the C team, and Marianne got to join Paula, Kyle Jones and A-Mac on the B. For some reason I had been expecting not to have to lead, so when I heard I was leading the C I freaked out a bit. I would be racing the fastest women in THE WORLD, and somehow I would have to hold on long enough that we wouldn't be out of the race before any of my teammates even got to start! ok so much for C team being less pressure..

As we stood behind our flag bearer I had mixed feelings of "this is so exciting!" and "Oh my god what am I doing here!". My C team was ranked third to last to start, so I didn't really have much choice on the pontoon. The wind was blowing very strongly to the right, and in warmup we had all noticed that it was making for a strong current. Pretty much everyone had lined up on the left side of the pontoon to avoid having to swim against the current. So I had a choice: choose a spot right smack dab in the middle of the pack and fight my way to the first buoy, or pick the spot second to last on the right and swim against the current. I chose the far right spot. I don't know if that was the right choice but I did have perfectly open water the whole way to the buoy! I absolutely gave it my all, but even though I was right up front, I lost some distance from having to swim towards the left as well as straight. And then coming around the buoy was a huge fight as the whole packed funneled together around it. I didn't take the turns very tight, so coming around the second buoy I was still on the outside of the pack. I knew I needed to get on some feet, but I couldn't push my way in anywhere. Finally I realized that I should stop worrying about drafting, and start focusing on swimming fast, but by that point we were pretty much at the beach. I came out of the water only a couple seconds back from Lauren and Paula and the leaders. 'Ok this is good! Just need to run fast up to transition.' I just kept telling myself 'sprint, sprint, bridge the gap!' But my legs could only go so fast- and everyone else was sprinting as fast as they could too. I had a pretty speedy transition, but when I ran up to the line to high ho silver I just ran into a big pack of 15 girls wobbling around on their bikes trying to get their shoes on at the line. The mount line was in a pretty inconvenient place: right in the middle of a chicane- so it pretty much corralled all the girls who were mounting their bikes into one small area. Since there was absolutely no where left for me to jump on my bike, I just kept running with it. Dodging all the swerving girls on bikes (Seriously!! They are supposed to be the pros!) . But by the time I finally found space to jump on, all the other girls had got their shit together, and were biking off without me. Ugh! I got up and hammered my way past a few stragglers onto a really big girls' wheel. We were so close- there was only a tiny itty bitty gap in between us and the whole pack of leaders. Like almost no gap. The girl I had latched onto was a tank, so I thought we'd bridge up for sure. Unfortunately it turned out that her helmet strap wasn't done up, so she was more focused on trying to do it up one handedly rather than hammer the first few minutes of the bike (Seriously!! They are supposed to be the pro's!). Not only is that worthy of a DQ- it sucked for me. I was pulling us as hard as I could to close the gap, but I really really needed her help, and she was too busy sitting on my wheel trying to do up her helmet to help me. She eventually got her strap done up, but our opportunity to catch up was gone. Now that she was focused on riding though I was doing everything I could to stay on her wheel. Luckily I was a bit stronger on the corners, so she didn't gap me there, but as soon as we got to the straights there was no chance of me taking any pulls- I just put my head down and sucked her wheel to the best of my ability. My corners were actually really great Minus one 180' turn where I was in too hard of a gear going around it. That turn happened to be the one where Phil was watching. As I turned the corner he yelled, "Gear down, gear down- you're in too big of a gear." And I was like, 'how does he know- I haven't even pedaled out of the corner yet', and then I stood up out of the corner and could barely move, and I was like, 'oops! definitely way too hard of a gear'. I didn't make that mistake again though. ( it was by far the most technical course I've ever done. 20 corners in the span 3.3km including 2, 180 degree turns and 2 wicked chicanes)! I had been terrified of the chicanes when we practiced, but in the race they felt great!

Everything was just so fast though. Definitely had no chance to do up my biking shoes- and the water bottle on my bike was useless. By the end of the bike me and the girl who was pulling me had caught two of the girls who had been dropped from the leaders. My T2 felt fine, but the run felt rough. In warmup Simon and Kyle had showed me what they thought the loop was. So I had that loop pictured in my mind as I headed out. I was super thirsty and hot, but the water station was at where I thought the turn-around was, so I thought that taking water would slow me down too much- and we were almost done anyways. But then the run went way longer than I had imagined- and my legs weren't working, and I was thirsty. I really wanted to pick it up because I expected myself to be able to sprint the whole run, but I think I was going my 5k pace. I'm pretty disappointed with how my run went because I know I could have been able to keep up with the two girls I left transition with. At the end I finally found my extra gear and sprinted to the tag off, but I wish I had found that sprint earlier because then Connor could have left for the swim with two other guys rather than by himself.

So that's how my part of the relay went down. Ha that was longer than most people's full race race reports. It was so exciting to watch the rest of my team and the other canadian teams finish the race. Especially when Brent and Kyle came around in the lead pack together! Looking at Marianne waiting to be tagged off by Kyle, I was just like, " oh thank goodness I lead out!". But Marianne did Awesome, and held her fifth place position! And Andrew held it too!!! So in all Canada came 3rd, 5th, and 13th! So Great!

I guess I didn't talk much about Saturday's racing- but that was so cool too. Simon wins Gold, Lauren Bronze and Brent right up there too! Yaaaaa Baby!!!

This is Sooooo Cool!!

2009-06-26T13:35:00.000-07:00

Well It's actually very very hot here. But Des Moines is sooooooo cool! I'm having a lot of fun. After Couteau de Lac we spent another 4 days training in a little town outside of Montreal called Rigaud. That part of the trip was pretty chill. We were in a cute family owned inn that would cook us whatever we wanted for breakfast in the mornings. For half the trip we were the only ones staying there. We swam in both the Couteau de Lac river and the local school's pool. We had to drive to the next town to find restaurants, but it was kind nice to be training in such a relaxed place. The roads for riding were beautiful, but really bumpy and cracky from their winters ( that’s how I broke my race wheel- I wish I had a picture of the death pothole to put up.. looking at the hole afterwards I was pretty surprised that I hadn’t died when I hit it). Coming here was a huuuuuge change from Rigaud. We went from old little town inn in the countryside to a super fancy new hotel in the middle of a brand new shopping and restaurant district. It's Great! We're right beside a Super Target which is like.. an even better version of a US Walmart! It has absolutely everything. I had to refrain myself from buying every unnecessary yet fun thing I saw- Snow Cone Mix anyone? We also have a neat health foods market right around the corner that is great, so I was able to stock up on gluten free treats! They even have a little restauranty thingy inside that we’ve eaten at twice now.

So anyways- I came charging back into my room to tell Marianne about the best grocery shopping trip everrrr, only to find that they had delivered us each big gift bag things full of treats and shirts and bath/body products, and just so much stuff, plus 4 flats of water and propel to each of our rooms! It was sooooo cool! ha. We both couldn’t stop talking about how exciting everything was. The hotel pool here is half outdoor, half indoor. We weren’t able to get in for a swim anywhere yesterday, so Paula and I tied ourselves to poles with our stretch cords and swam stationary for a while. I just had fun sproinging backwards every time I stopped swimming.

Presents!:

I think we all felt a little out of place at the pre-race meeting. Not only were we the youngest by far, there were so many big names… and then there was us. Most of the athletes there got to watch themselves in the ITU promo video they played before the meeting. Its weird being at a race meeting with the people you usually only watch on tv.
Apparently they spent more on the race set up here than at the Olympics (2.5 million!). There's a huge grandstand, advertisements and vendors everywhere, even walkways above the transition zone, so you can watch from above. Not only is there $200 000 for winning ($1000 just for finishing) - there is a $5000 swim prime, and 3x $500 bike primes! And you don’t have to finish the race to win the prime. Definitely a very exciting place to be.

West Des Moines itself is beautiful. . I lovveee the lake/river that the race is at. Everything is very green and clean. And hot. Water temperature was 29 degrees yesterday- In normal circumstances I would be absolutely ecstatic to swim in a lake that warm, but since it’s so hot outside a little bit cooler would be nice. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this kind of heat+ humidity before except for maybe in the heat chamber. Just jogging outside the other day was really hard. Fingers crossed that it’ll be a bit more bearable for the World Cup tomorrow.

At the moment an outdoor concert thingy is going on outside our hotel. I'm thinking maybe I should go check it out, since there is no way I'll be falling asleep anytime soon. The boys are also on this Tetris kick, so I might just have to go show em how its done.
I was given the choice to either watch the women’s race or the men’s, so I think I’ll go cheer on Paula at the women’s tomorrow. Pretty excited!
oh and ps. helmet was found. So the casualties from my trip to Rigaud only include one broken race wheel, and one floor pump left behind at the race course.

Me at the hotel pool:

Hi from Rigaud

2009-06-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

I don't really feel like writing a super huge race report right at this moment. My race didn't feel easy and relaxed like the last few. I struggled the whole way through. And I think my win was very muchly due to others. Stevie who worked with me to Bridge up to the leaders, and Christine who powered us all through the 20k bike. Buuuuut it's been fun. Unfortunately it is turning into an expensive trip. So far I have managed to crack my front Zipp race wheel, lose my pump at the race course (that's the problem when your pump becomes the team pump), and at the moment my helmet is temporarily lost as well. aaaaaahhhh I must have left my brain back in Victoria. Although the breaking my wheel was more my not quick enough reflex's fault rather than my brain..
Ok here's some pictures stolen from Craig (in reverse order):

(apparently I race walked through the finish..)

Birds Hill Photos

2009-06-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Why my sport is more badass than your sport

2009-06-05T19:11:00.000-07:00

After this morning's pre race prep I came to the realization that us triathletes- we're pretty badass. Especially the Canadian ones. It all started with kids of steel racing...

Take the Calgary Kids of Steel race being held this weekend: Snow warning for race day? No biggie. Those four year olds can handle it. Their training wheels can give them a little traction on the icy corners.
You winter sport athletes think you're so tough- We have our kids ride around soaking wet, in the snow, wearing nothing but their bathing suits.

Those Kids of Steel days just helped build character for the Jr Elite, and Elite races. Like Edmonton ITU a few years ago..
No other sport can compare to riding down Emily Murphy hill at 70+ km/hr on the skinniest possible tires, nearly touching wheels with 20ish other athletes, on slick roads from the pouring rain. That downpour was followed by torrential crosswinds that pushed a few of the athletes right off the road into the barricades of the bridge. And the race finished off with the Elite women running through big pellets of hail. The spectators all huddled under inflatable tents while the water levels rose to their knees- causing the racers' helmets and shoes to float away from the transition zone in the foot of ice water.

The experts say that ice bath temperature should be around 10 degrees. Water temperature at World Champs 2008: 12 degrees.
... I'll admit they did bring in helmet removers for the elites though. Since the juniors were unable to remove their chin straps with their numb hands. I vote that even with helmet removers we're still leading in badassness.

Or how about PanAms in Mazatlan last year. The beaches were all closed due to dangerously high waves. "But no worries those triathletes can handle it. Hell, we'll even have them do warmup before the sun comes up, so they can use their 6th triathlete sense to anticipate the incoming 15+ foot high swells in the absolute darkness." Only about half the field had to be rescued by the lifeguards on jetskis- see not bad, not bad- Us triathletes, We're badass.

(waves in Mexico):

We're so tough we don't even need the roads to be paved- we hardly even noticed the 50 billion cracks and potholes from our aerobars

You're not a real triathlete until you sport road rash scars on your elbows and hips.

Or what about PanAms in Oklahoma this year: E-Coli count was over 500. In Vancouver the beaches close if the count is over 80. But no worries- having a stomach of steel comes with being a triathlete. Just as long as there is no gluten, dairy, eggs, fat or sugar involved.

Or Colorado a couple years ago. 35 degrees at least, on an open road, no shade, and only two water stations for the Elites on their 10km run.

I thought about all of this out at the course today. The water temperature at the lake was 12 degrees. The air temperature at the time we will be racing at is 2 degrees. It felt even windier on the bike than it was in Oklahoma city the day the tornadoes rolled in. We can't take the time to put on clothes in transition, but we'll manage. Because we are damn badass.

oh sigh.