I've been slacking a little bit since I've been back home, usually it's the opposite; I head out on my work trips and the training drops off the map. However my southern loop, Whitecourt-Edson-Jasper is awesome for training, Whitecourt has a brand new rec centre and there is literally no one in the pool! I can't believe it, they have a pool that is 100 times better than Grande Prairie and there is literally no one in there. I not only have a lane to myself but I have the whole pool, that is unbelievable for someone from Grande Prairie where you'd be lucky to have a day where there is only 2 other people in your lane. Also there is a beautiful isolated road towards Edson where you can bike out for 20kms and back with a good shoulder and incredible scenery. It hasn't been nice enough yet for me to ride it yet but next trip for sure.
Edson also has an excellent pool with no one in it, although the showers take a little time to warm up. Plus I usually hit the treadmill fairly hard at the hotel I stay at, last time it was some speed work, 15km/hr at 2% grade for an hour. Usually it's 13-14km/hr at 2-4-6% grades 5 minutes at a time. What can I say about Jasper, it is literally the best place for a triathlete or ultra runner to train. Everything is accessible by foot, it has the best trail system I have ever seen, the pool is not busy and beautiful, and the road biking is head-and-shoulders above everything else in Alberta. So I'm getting into a nice routine with training when I do that Southern loop, it was just a shame that I didn't do any biking last trip it was rainy and cold the entire week.
Today I had a nice surprise when I finally made it to the pool at 8am I was surprised to see Robert there when I was getting changed. He was too, his reaction was "oh you're here... well I guess today is going to be a hard swim..." I'm the one who should have been worried he's been hitting the pool very hard, today was his 4th swim this week and only my 2nd. He said, "okay we can go easy today and hard tomorrow or hard today and easy tomorrow." I chose the latter because we are doing a swim-bike tomorrow and I want to be able to survive a 3hr bike after swimming. So we started off easy for the first 30 minutes and just did some technique, paddles, and form work. Then it was time to decide on the training for the day, I suggested a 500-400-300-200-100 descending ladder but I'm pretty sure Robert doesn't like those long sets because he countered with 50's. I kind of laughed because we were at two opposite ends of the training spectrum but I compromised with 15 x 100's at 90 seconds with 30 seconds rest and he was okay with that. The first 5 went okay but I could feel my arms getting more and more tired each set. I was holding my pace but by the time I hit the 10th rep I was really starting to wonder if I could finish off this workout. I just kept thinking that this is the same distance that I will be swimming in Hinton in 4 weeks, I better be able to complete this distance at race pace by now! The final 5 my form was starting to really suffer but it was nice to have both Robert and Dennis there to push me, yes Dennis joined us for the 100's and he looked really strong.
I'm looking forward to the weekend, an hour swim Saturday morning followed by a 3 hour bike with the gang and then the first 'official' race of my season on Sunday; the Brian Harms memorial. They changed it this year from an 8k to the original distance 10 miles (16k), which basically just means twice the suffering. Brian Harms was an incredible athlete in the GP area who set a PR in this 10 mile race of 52:11 in 1985 and he was involved in some epic battles with another incredible local athlete Terry Smith. I don't think I'll be running anywhere close to that time but I'm going to go out and see what I can still do, I'm secretly shooting for the 55 minute mark but we'll see how that turns out on Sunday. Tragically Brian Harms committed suicide many years ago but we all still remember him and his running prowess through this race. To learn more about him take a look at the following link; http://gprunwalk.com/harms/about
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