We're here!!

Hawaii is so beautiful!  It has this sacred, soothing energy to it.

Today we biked part of the course and it's sure HILLY!  Add on about 10-15 minutes to my time estimate.  We're not allowed on the run course because it's the Fairmont Golf Course but we've been talking to people who did the race last year and they all say how tough of a course it is.  So, add on another 10 minutes to my run estimate too :)
I'll be happy to finish before 6:40.

We swam the course today too and the water is crystal clear.  A little colder than Cozumel but I'm just grateful there's no jelly fish.  There was beautiful coral and fish on the ocean floor and a moderate current.  It's fairly windy here, which will add some excitement on race day.

After our bike and swim, we registered for the race at the Fairmont and bought lots of souvenirs at the expo.  I'm so excited that I found this sweet Ironman backpack that I can use as my new gym bag.  Then we bought some dinner and walked around the Hilton Resort, which is huge and gorgeous.  They have a train around the resort and a little dolphin habitat.  It was beautiful and relaxing.  We both feel at ease and are enjoying our time together.  We're staying on "Calgary time" until race day because it's better for our race to go to bed early and wake up early.  We'll need to be up at 3:00AM race morning.
Tomorrow we have a short run scheduled.  Then we set up our bike transition and attend the athlete's meeting. Racing is seriously an awesome way to travel and see the world.  It's such a special way to experience a beautiful location.

Thanks for all the support everyone.  Hope you'll follow the race on Saturday!

Follow our race.

We are racing this Saturday, June 2nd in Hawaii.  Start time is 7am (local time) so I think that's 10am here.  There should be a link on ironman.com where you can follow us on the live athlete tracker.  Just look us up by last name.

My estimated times:
SWIM: 45 min
BIKE: 3 hours 15 min
RUN: 2 hours
TOTAL: 6 hours and 15 minutes including transitions.

Adam's estimated times:
SWIM: 40 min
BIKE: 2 hours 40 min
RUN: 1 hour 40 min
TOTAL:  5 hours including transitions.

These estimates are give or take 2-3 hours :)

Today and tomorrow are full and busy with packing, volunteering in my son's school, training a few clients, teaching boot camp, workouts, mowing the lawn, and spending some time with the kiddos before we ditch them with the grandparents (thank-you grandparents!!) for 11 days.

Last night we started laying out our triathlon gear.

Getting ready for Hawaii.

Some of the ways I'm getting ready for Hawaii:

We've been blending beets in our vitamix with things like celery, red cabbage and ginger.  I tastes kind of awful but it's worth it because it will increase our red blood cell count for the race.

We've planned out our race day nutrition and packed it up.  So much easier to do, now that my body is more metabolically efficient.  No, the white powder is not cocaine (even though the airport inspection people seem suspicious when we pack this stuff).  Yes, those white pills are salt tabs and no I do not plan on overdosing on them like I did in Cozumel. 

My hair is more blonde now.  I LOVE IT.  Even though I've been brunette for a few years, I still consider myself a blonde and think I look a bit better blonde (especially with a tan).  

I was having lazer hair removal done yesterday and the technician was asking me about the race.  She was asking about the distances (2 km swim, 90 km bike, 21 km run) and asked, "what are you doing it for."  My response was, "for fun, for myself, for exercise."  She said, "you're not doing it for a cause??"  

So, that got me thinking.  No, I hadn't planned on doing this for a cause.  I train and race in triathlons because it brings me joy, balance, health and add richness and purpose to my world.  But the past few months I have been wading my way through many different thoughts about beauty and women.  I know this may sound odd but I have a great love for women.  One of my greatest desires is to inspire, encourage and show love to other women.  I know that many women struggle with finding their beauty (both inner and outer) and that sometimes we find it and then due to a changing body and a changing life, we have to rediscover it.  I have experienced that.  

The discussions on my blog have been beautiful and honest.  Each of us has a story, each of us is beautiful.  So, I've decided that I will race for a "cause".  I'm not trying to raise money but I am trying to share a message and if my race can draw some attention to that message, then I suppose it is a "cause".

My cause is for women to rediscover their real beauty.

How can women do this??  I don't know for sure but it's important enough to me that I'm going to race for it.

My little tag along

It's hard to believe that up until last summer we were still fitting our two kids (then 3 and 6) into a chariot stroller behind the bike.  This year we're decided to stop cramming our children into small spaces and we've upgraded to a tag-a-long bike attachment.  We tried it out for the first time last night and loved it.  Kyla was just giggling and squealing with delight the whole time and kept saying, "go faster momma!"  We need to buy one more, so that all four of us can head down into fish creek park for long rides together.  I just love the trails down there and think it's so fun to explore them and break for a picnic lunch by the river.

We just came home from the gym where we did a 2.5 hour ride and a 20 min run.  That's the last long ride before the race (which is in TWO WEEKS!)  My legs feel really tired and I'm so ready to start recovering.  My left hamstring has been ridiculously tight this week but feels significantly better after my acupuncture appt. yesterday.  In my 20 min. run at the gym I ran 4 kms and felt good.  I'm having a hard time finding the word for how I feel about the race.  I just feel like it's going to be a 'natural' experience, if that makes any sense.

Oh and I'm still eating a lot of salads.  My new way of eating has definitely helped me to use fat as a source of fuel but I've also come to realize how much carbohydrates help with mood, energy and cognitive function.   I think that in our North American diet, it's common to eat too many servings of carbohydrates.  Even though I was eating healthy carbohydrates, I was still eating quite a few servings each day (especially relative to my servings of protein.)  It's been an interesting experiment to limit the carbohydrates for awhile.  My body has changed, which I'm happy about but I look forward to gradually introducing them again. I hope that by giving my pancreas a 'rest' it will be even more efficient at regulating blood sugar.  My plan is that after this race I will go back to having my primary focus be NOURISHING MY BODY.  I assume that by doing this, I will maintain some of these changes in my body but if not, that needs to be ok because I believe that being healthy needs to always be more important than being thin.

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Burn fat, burn...

In preparation for my race in Hawaii in 2.5 weeks, I have been teaching my body to rely more on fat as a source of fuel.  So, I've been eating a lot more vegetables and lean protein, with very little carbohydrates.  The first week was tough but my body has adjusted and I've had some pretty incredible results in the couple weeks I've been doing this:

• I'm down 6 lbs on the scale.
• My lean body mass has risen 2 lbs.
• I can now do my long workouts without any fuel (except water of course).  Last Saturday I rode 2.5 hours without taking in any calories and I felt great.
• Yesterday I ran 12 km in 1 hour in my training run (and I had done a 1 hour swim earlier that day).
• Basically my body has learned to use FAT as a fuel.  My body is changing and the way that I train and race is changing.  I will not have to take in nearly as many calories in the Hawaii Half Ironman, which means I am far less likely to have GI problems (remember Cozumel??).  

Did you know that an average person has about 1,300 - 2,000 calories stored as carbohydrate in their body and in excess of 80,000 calories stored as fat??  That means, that if you are relying primarily on carbohydrates for fuel and energy, you are going to have to take in A LOT of calories in training and racing and well, LIFE.  Conversely, if you can teach your body to use fat for fuel, you will be tapping into an amazing source of energy.

Simply brilliant, I think!

Lovin' the sunshine.

You'd think that with the beautiful weather last Saturday, we would have biked outside but our goal right now is to find ways to make family time a priority. Thus, we headed to the gym first things in the morning to get our 2.5 hour rides in.

We passed the time with two spin classes.  Every so often we'd look at each other and share a grimace in the common suffering.  Strange how much I enjoy that suffering and it's even more enjoyable to suffer with Adam.  We kept counting down the time to each other.  "One hour to go..."  Adam is a strong biker and is very disciplined at keeping his resistance and his RPM's high, which helps me to not slack off   :)  One of my favorite parts of the scene was the pool of sweat under both of our bikes.  Kind of disgusting in an awesome way.

With our workouts out of the way, we had the whole day ahead of us to enjoy being outside with our kids.  The afternoon was a whirlwind of garage sale hunting, community BBQ lunch and park clean up, family bike riding, planting the vegetable garden, washing walls, doing laundry, mowing the lawn and then a BBQ dinner with Adam's mom and sister.  Phew...  now I don't have to be productive at all for at least a few days.

Less than 3 weeks until Hawaii.

It's....THE BIG ONE

This Half Ironman in Hawaii is kind of a big deal to us.

It's on the BIG Island in Hawaii.  I've never been to Hawaii and neither has Adam, so it's our first trip to the famously beautiful islands.

It's the first BIG trip that me and Adam have done by ourselves.  We've had some wonderfully fun trips to California, Mexico and Florida with family and loved each of those trips.  It's so fun to have family to share a trip with.  It's also special to have a trip that's just the two of us and I'm really looking forward to 11 days with my best friend.

It may be half of what we did last November but it's still a BIG race.  We've trained for over 4 months for this race and are both excited to see what our bodies can do at this distance with the fitness level we've both achieved.

Apparently there's a BIG active volcano, some BIG bugs, some BIG cans of spam and some BIG turtles, which also add to the grandeur of this event :)

Only 3.5 weeks to go and I'll be racing...

Life's shifts.

Life is funny.

Every stage is so unique.  Each with it's own challenges, adventures and opportunities.  Each requires shifting of time and priorities.

Since being a mother, I have found that for me, exercise is such an important piece of the puzzle.  It has helped me to recover mentally and physically from having babies.  It has given me an outlet.  Triathlon has given me a pursuit.  Triathlon has become such a part of me that I think I will view myself as a triathlete for a long, long time. (I hope!)

This past year, triathlon has shifted to become a larger focus in my life than ever before.  Training for and racing in Ironman Cozumel was a treasured experience for me and Adam.  I have an athlete's drive inside of me and that pursuit gave fire to that drive.

Lately I've had a nudging in my heart, telling me that it's time for another shift.  I have learned to rely on these nudgings, as I feel like they come from God.  Often they feel like simple, sweet messages that come over and over.  Often they are different from the direction I was headed and as I start to listen and put action and words to the promptings, I feel a sweet peace wash over me.

My heart is telling me that it's time to shift more of myself back to my home and my children.

So, it began on Saturday.  I had a 1 hour run scheduled and Adam had a 2 hour bike.  Normally we would head to the gym first thing in the morning and get our workouts done (with the kids in child care) and then spend the rest of the day together as a family.  Instead we decided that I would run home from the kid's dentist appt in Midnapore and Adam would ride while we watched a family movie that night.  That way, we could give our fresh morning selves to the kids and enjoy breakfast and a lazy morning together.  Most importantly, we were trying to follow the promptings.  The day was less than perfect (as family days often are) but I feel peace in this new shift and I know that it's not so much the day to day results but what matters more is what happens in the long run.

I love my family.  I love my kids.  I love my husband.  I love being a mother.  I love being a triathlete.  I don't have to give any of these up because all of these things (and more) are important parts of who I am.  I know that each stage of life will require small and great shifts.  I trust in God to help me figure it all out.

 Picture is after a triathlon that me and Adam did together 4 years ago.