Wednesday Update

Lately I have been lacking inspiration to write, although we have not been without news. Everytime I write something it seems just so boring and all over the place. I think there has just been TOO MUCH and it seems it would be all over the map if I wrote it in one post. But Here I go, I'll put it in sub-headings to organize myself.

Training
Training hasn't really been going for me. Infact I have not trained since my last post (that's 12 days ago). After my last post the weirdest thing happend, my foot (that I broke last year) started aching. Then it swelled, and was really painful. Getting nervous I called Ben to drop by with some ice and advil. Within an hour I couldn't walk, so we decided to get checked out by the doctor. Well she was convinced I had a stress fracture and insisted I go back on my crutches and into my boot, and wait for a bone scan. UGH. Well that lasted a day. I blame it on my grandfather, I'm pretty sure the doctor had to threated a cast to make him rest a sprained ankle. It started feeling better and now it's fine so I have nod idea what happened. Then, not 2 days later I caught a real bad cold while my brothers were visiting. I haven't had a cold this bad in a loooong time, and I dont want to drag it out with training so I am relaxing and resting. Which is probably also good for my foot. But I am finally starting to feel better so I am hoping to get back to it hopefully tomorrow.

This weekend marks the 4 months mark! ahh!! that's only 3.5 months of intense training and 2 weeks of tapering. SO Ben and I need to get our buts in gear, stay healthy and really dedicate the next few months to training. Now that the ski hill is closed, and the snow is nearly melted I think this should be easier to do.

Wedding
Ben and I want to get married this September, so we have started trying to navigate through this wedding planning thing. We want September because we will be finished the Ironman and we normally aren't training for anything in the fall. Originally we looked into ALL the options, I mean everything from in Calgary to renting out a lodge in lake louise for the weekend. And after some consideration we decided two things were the most important to us 1) that it was in the mountains because that is where our souls are and 2) it doens't cost a small fortune. And thus we decided on Fernie, BC. Ben's mom lives there and we have spent alot of time in Fernie, plus it is GORGEOUS and much less expensive than Canmore and Banff area. So when we were down in Fernie last weekend visiting Ben's mom for Easter we looked at a couple of venues and are toiling with either a more causual backyard reception since Ben's mom generously offered their beaufitul backyard to us or a reception at the Best Western. Both have pros and cons that we're considering, but I think either would be great. Hopefully we have that figured out this week. But I think we have decided on a ceremony location:

That's us practicing. I think it looks like a pretty awesome spot. Obviously things wouldn't look quite so dead and brown in September. Rather all those trees in the background will have yellow and green leaves!

Moving
I think it's time to oficially announce that we have decided that we are moving back to Calgary! It's just a matter of when. We're thinking possibly as early as June, and by August at the latest. We realize that we moved to the mountains for a reason and it was our dream, but over the last year we have learned that there are things that we miss in Calgary. Such as my family, a career, and the convenience of having all the stores that you need right there. Although we love the mountains, I have stopped noticing them as much. We used to make plans every weekend, and look forward to going to the mountains and getting away every weekend. Planning all week kept us going. But now that we're in the moutnains all the time, we don't have that anymore, it's not a big adventure since they're right there. Also, the training facilities here in the winter are.... well.. not great. We dread going to the gym becasue it is hot and gross. The pool is typically INSANELY busy in the evenings because they only have one single lane for all the lap swimmers and there is this one guy that just KICKS for half an hour and doesn't wait at the end to let you pass him if you're right on his butt (so so so anoying!). Finally,the hours that the pool and the gym have been a struggle since they open late on the weekends. I think every place that you live has it's pros and cons, and Revelstoke just doens't seem to be working for us. Although the mountains are important, and the skiing was amazing, we're at a point in our lives where our Careers and family are just more important. So I am on the job search in Calgary. I've started casually applying for jobs, but I think it's hard to do when you're not physically in Calgary. If anyone knows of any potential employers in Calgary let me know!

So that's probably the biggest news. Wedding, moving and training. Phew. There we go trying to do everything at once. But I think it will all be worth it.

This weekend the rain is supposed to clear up and we're going to train hard and have some quality champ time. Even have a date night planned for friday night. Then next weekend we're headed to Calgary! Forzani puts on the mother's day race every year, and with that is a HUGE sale on running shoes so every year we stock up. So that was the main reason but we're also excited to see everyone, and talk wedding stuff with my mom!I haven't been to calgary since January, and Ben hasn't been since Christmas, I think that's the longest stretch yet! perhaps that is why we are getting homesick! -

-Jen

ps.. just thought I'd leave you with a picture of my adorable nephew.. incase you needed a pick-me up to get through the rest of the week.

I mean how cute is he!

I can't wait to cross that line

I found this video the other day and it gave me some motivation. Normally when you watch ironman videos you always see the pros. The people that are shredded, train for hours every day, and win these races. This video, however, shows everyone else that does the race. People of all shapes and sizes. People that you would never think could possibly compelte an ironman. Although this video is long, the 2 minutes is amazing, with people crossing the finish line. The emotion is incredible. Then they show the very last finisher of the race last year coming in at 17:58:56 with just 4 seconds to spare until the 17hour cutoff, and what amazed me is that the crowed was cheering just as loud for the first as the last athlete. Wow. I can't wait to cross that line.

"Training Camp"

Last weekend we did a little "training camp" in Osoyoos. I called it training camp because that is literally what we were doing; camping and training. I had friday afternoon off, and we have been itching to get our bikes on the road and get some sunshine so we decided to head to osoyoos for the weekend. It is only 4 hours away, so after work I went for a quick swim, we loaded up the car, picked up our freshly tuned bikes and hit the road. It is amazing, as soon as you drive half an hour out of revelstoke there is NO snow, where as we STILL have 2 feet on our front lawn. We were determined to get some vietnamese for dinner in Kelowna, but unfortuneately the GPS on my phone led us astray, so after some driving around we settled on some thai food, which was alright. By the time we finally got to Osoyoos it was 8pm and dark, and yet it was still plus 10 outside... ahh warmth. Since the office was closed we had to find the security guard to check in, and he was mighty concerned that we were sleeping in a tent, asking if we had a heater to keep warm. We just laughed considering the himelayan hotel (our tent) is meant for the base camp of everest and can hold 4 feet of snow on it, and our sleeping bags are good to -12. However, I responded with a "I think we'll be fine," and he left us to set up.

The next morning it was a little chilly, so we let it warm up until we hit the road on our bikes. We had some breakfast, explored the campground, and just relaxed. We finally hit the road around 10:30, and I was aiming for a 3 hour ride. Coming right out of osoyoos you hit the start of Richters pass, which is a 10km hill and is part of the ironman canada course. My only goal was to make it up without stopping, and 30 minutes later WE MADE IT! woot! Although it was pretty uneventful because it's not like there are signs, banners, or fireworks congradulating you on making it to the top. Infact, when we got to the top we weren't even sure if that was really the top. Anyways, Ben looked down at the hill ahead of us and realized that if he biked down it he would have to bike back up, and since he had been sick all week he didn't want to push it so instead he turned around and headed back to the campground. While I continued on, down the backside of the rogers pass, and turned around at 1.5 hours, then I realized how smart ben was. Biking up, then down the backside, then up the backside, and then back down rogers pass is brutal. But, on my way back up I just focused on getting to the top since I knew there was a pretty awesome 10 km downhill back into town. Needless to say when I got back to the campground I was pretty tired and my butt was VERY sore. After a hot shower, some lunch, and a nap I started feeling better and we decided to check out osoyoos. We treated ourselves to some pizze and a bottle of wine, and a walk along the beach before packing it in for the night.

We woke up on sunday to what looked like a threat of rain so we packed up all our camping stuff before we went for our run. We managed an hour run, and although my legs weren't sore they were definitely tired, no fuel in them. So the run was a struggle. When we got back to the campground we showered, ate some breakfast, and hit the road.

We had SUCH a great time that we decided that we needed to do another "training camp" soon. So we booked the campground again for the May long weekend, and also for the oliver half ironman in June. It was clean, was right on the lake, had great showers, and even had a club house with a pool and tv if you wanted to get in from outside.

On the way home we had some errands to do, so we were prepared for a long drive. However, we were not prepared for the 10hours it took. It turns out a there was a huge accident on the highway the day before and it had comprimised a bridge. Meaning, they didn't know it the bridge would hold up to cars being on it. We sat for hours, until we finally decided to hop on a side road and ended up budging hundreds of cars, but we were stil not even close to the bridge. Eventually they started letting a few cars across at a time, and we managed to sneak across, getting home after 9pm. We were tired, hungry and grumpy. We ordered takeout from the nearby pub, ate and headed to bed.

Training this week has been going good. On monday I felt like I was getting sick so i took the day off and relaxed. Which was a good idea because i felt much better the next day, and managed to bike tuesday and swim yesterday. Ben managed to get to the gym mon and tue but took yesterday off. So a swim is due today, and a run tomorrow and we've made it through the week. We're not doing double workouts right now. I think if we are still healthy after 2 more weeks of doing one workout a day, then we'll ramp it back up to 2 workouts.

We just found out that my brothers and my nephew jack are coming to visit tomorrow. So we are VERY excited! We haven't seen jack since christmas, and he has changed so much. It should be a great weekend. We're hoping to squeeze in a couple workouts in the morning before everyone gets up. Then next weekend we're headed to fernie to visit ben's mom. Very excited about that too, should be a great lond weekend. We also will hopefuly have a look at couple of places and get started on this wedding planning thing!

have a great day!
Jen

Digging Deep

The other day I was doing bike intervals at the gym, which involved 10 minutes at 85% max heart rate followed by 2 min recovery. Now, when biking that hard, those 10 minutes feel like they are slooowly ticking by and you're constantly battling to keep your feet moving, your cadence up and your heart rate up. Then this song came on on my ipod:



it's pretty much the greatest moticational song EVER! When that song came on i had no trouble keeping my feet moving. I just kept picturing myself cruising up ritchers pass.
I mean what better describes the Ironman as the following lyrics:

This is 10% luck,
20% skill,
15% concentrated power of will,
5% pleasure,
50% pain,
And 100% reason to remember the name

On the training front, the training schedule that we have been following has been just too demanding. Twice a day workouts every day, we felt like we were always playing catch up and missing workouts. According to the schedule only one of the workouts was critical and the other one was more of a short light aerobic ride. So this week I have only been doing the critical, longer and harder workouts after work and happily sleeping past 5am. I'm hoping this leaves me with enough energy for the crazy brick workouts this weekend, instead of running out of steam by thursday.

Ben has been sick again this week, so he is taking the week off. He has been sick on and off since he got the flu in February. Every time he starts feeling a little better the tries to make up ALL the workouts he missed, which probably makes him sick again. So, under doctors orders no training this week and hopefully he can get back at it this weekend.

This weekend, we were planning on going to penticton to camp and train. My afternoon off this week is friday afternoon, so we thought we'd take advantage of being so close to the race course. Instead of Penticton we've decided to drive the extra 45 minutes to Osoyoos. Osoyoos is going to have 15 degree and sunny weather, I can't wait! It's also on the race course as well, but closer to ritchers pass, so hopefully we'll hit that up a few times and see where the weekend takes us. Our bikes are in the shop right now getting all tuned up and they should be ready to hit the road!

Rainy Revelstoke

Wow, it is already April.. APRIL! that means we have been living in revelstoke for 9 months, the ski season is more or less over, and Ironman Canada is under 5 months away! EEK!

One of the consequences of having such an amazing winter of skiing, is that it turns into rain in the spring, and rain it has been for the last 3 weeks. Seriously. In the past 3 weeks we have had MAYBE 3 days of sunshine, and these are not FULL days of sunshine. Rather, an hour here or there inbetween more rain. Ben and I both do not do well with rain. We need sunshine, and it was not more obvious as last week. We were both not feeling great, we had low energy, we were not in the greatest mood and we had NO motivation to train. Perhaps we both suffer from SAD (seasonally affected depression), or we need to take more vitamin D. But, we got our butts into gear by friday and hit the gym, skied and went to the gym on saturday, and went for a 2 hour run together and got to enjoy the 1.458 hours of sun for the week. We're hoping the weekend momentum of training carries through this week, first up swimming after work today. Just take it day by day. We are aiming at camping and training in penticton/kelowna area this weekend. It is only 2 hours away so pretty easy to get there from here. We're hoping to get our bikes out on the road and do a looong bike, maybe hit up ritchers pass, and hopefully get away from the rain. Although the snow is slowly melting here in revelstoke, there are PILES of gravel still on the roads and over 2 feet of snow still on the ground, making it difficult to get out on our little road bikes. We haven't biked outside since last summer and long indoor training sessions at the gym are TORTURE which has equated to not doing our 2-3 hour long rides, whoops. Hopefully this weekend we get back at it.

Other than training, we had some great company the past couple of weekends. My mom, murray and wilson (their dog) came down for the weekend last weekend, and we had a great time with them. We skied with them on saturday and then went out that night and had a great time at a 80's band that was playing in town. This past weekend my sister came with her boyfriend Paul. She is leaving for Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand tomorrow for 3 months (lucky girl) so it was nice seeing her before she left. They went to the halcyon hotsprings on saturday while Ben and I skied and trained. After dinner we went out to a couple of bars that had live music and had a great time with them. I learned my lesson after the weekend with mom and murray so I offered to be the designated drive, no hang over for me this weekend.

That's all for now!
--Jen

The Begining of the Champs

Well since Ben and I just got engaged I thought I would write about how the champs became the champs in the first place:

Ben and I met in June of 2007, and he brought me back to life. I was not in a very good place at the time: I had just quit my hockey scholarship in the states, and moved to Edmonton where I got a job in an office in order to be with my (ex) boyfriend. Our relationship was not a very healthy one, and needless to say it ended badly in less than a month of living in Edmonton when one of my second cousins came and picked me up at 2 in the morning with as much stuff as I could grab and he took me to his parent’s house. The next day my aunt, who happened to be in Edmonton for the weekend, picked me up, and took me back to the house to grab the rest of my stuff, and drove me back to Calgary. Thank goodness for family.

So, there I was; broken and lost. I found myself living back at home and looking for a job in Calgary. I wound up getting an interview at COP for a guest services position. It sounded like a fun job, just what I needed. I remember walking in and seeing this really good lucking guy at the front counter when I asked for directions to human resources, little did that he would be my future husband. I had the interview, got the job, and started the following week.

There was a great group of people working in guest services that summer and I made some really awesome friends, but most importantly I met my champ. At first nothing much happened between us, except for the fact that I would go out of my way to ask him questions, pick the till closest to him, and offer to work any extra hours if I knew he would be there. Yes, I had a crush on him, but according to all the others that we worked with Ben was not looking for anything. After a few group functions we wound up getting to know each other a little more, but Ben was focused on running his first marathon in Calgary that was just a few weeks away and he was training like crazy. After the marathon, we started doing more things together. Then one weekend in late July, I managed to score tickets to the Stamps game (thanks grandpa) and it was more or less our first official date. We had a blast and then met some friends from COP after for a few drinks. The next day, hung-over, we decided to go climb Heart Mountain and boy were we naive; we had only packed ONE bottle of Gatorade and some trail mix. It was tough, we were thirsty, hungry, and hung-over, but once we got to the top (or as far as we could get since we took a wrong turn) we were awestruck by how beautiful it was and have been hooked on mountain climbing ever since. That was our first champ weekend (although we didn't have the name champs yet and had called it the weekend of fun). We continued to plan weekends full of fun and adventure every weekend and by any definition we were dating but we were both cautious of getting into another relationship, plus the fact that he was my supervisor at work. But we couldn’t resist. We had an awesome summer; we went hiking, mountain climbing, camping, running, white water rafting. We talked, laughed, and just enjoyed each other’s company. Ben ran the Edmonton marathon after the Calgary marathon and inspired me to pick up running, we trained together for the Okanagan half marathon in 6 weeks and we both have been training for some sort of running related event since. I remember one morning I woke up beside him and the first thing I thought was “you will wake up forever next to this guy.” I brushed the thought aside thinking that I was just being a girl. But, it was true; I had met my soul mate, my champ. In only a few months, Ben had brought me back to life.

Towards the end of August, we were inseparable. We worked together, and more or less lived together. My family had Sunday night dinners every Sunday, and Ben and I would go to dinner, at which point I’d pack a fresh bag of clothes and head back to his house. There was no official moving in. Gradually more and more of my stuff started staying behind. That was nearly 4 years ago and we have been together ever since.

In the last 4 years we have climbed mountains, hiked hundreds of kilometres, camped on top of mountains, skied waist deep powder, I finished my University Degree, I ran my first half marathon and then marathon, Ben ran the Boston Marathon along with other marathons, we started doing triathlons, Ben did the death race, I went to Peru, we moved to Revelstoke, along with everything else in between. It has been the best 4 years of my life, and I look forward to a life time together.

here is a picture of us at that first stamps game.

Here is Ben on heart mountain

And me on heart mountain!

Engaged!

Well, last friday the champs got engaged! Ben had mentioned that he wanted to go camping this weekend a few weeks back, but unfortuneately the weather was not cooperating and it was supposed to be pouring rain. Plus there is still over 3 feet of snow on the ground, so it would have been almost impossible to find some wood for a fire. So, we didn't really have any plans going into the weekend other than training. Nevertheless, we had a great weekend. It was a gorgeous spring day on friday and since ben has friday's off and my work is very slow right now, Ben hung out with me at work in the afternoon and we sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine. We had some spaghetti and meatballs for dinner (mm one of our favorites) and some wine, went for a walk, and then I went to have a nice relaxing bubble bath when Ben came in and proposed! and obviously I said yes! So we are officially engaged! We spent the rest of the evening calling our family and having a few drinks before heading to bed.

Saturday morning came and we planned on training first thing, but instead we decided to head to Vernon and Kelowna to get some errands done. The ring was a little bit too big, so it had to be sized down and there was a jewler in Vernon that would do it that day. I also needed to get some new glasses and Ben needed some tools. So off we went. It was a pretty busy day and we didn't get home until 6, too late to go to the gym. So we had some nachos, watched a movie and relaxed.

Yesterday we woke up to rain, and wet snow. We had a 2 hour run and a 2 hour bike to do (making up for the day before) and we set out on the road. Within a half our I was not feeling so well. All week my stomach had been bothering me, and so I hadn't really eaten properly. Plus I had a tea before the run, which I haven't done in a while and I dont think my stomach can handle it. Lesson learned. So I stopped and walked home and ben continued on. I decided to try and take a short cut because it looked like there was a trail through the trees. Well that was a bad idea because every second step I was sinking past my hips in snow. It was horrible. I was freezing, and I almost lost my shoe. I finally made it home, stripped out of my soaking wet clothes and stuck my feet in the bath to try and defrost them. Ben came home shortly after, and we set off to the gym for the 2 hour bike. Ben did awesome, me on the other hand, not so great. I just had no energy and was not feeling great, plus I was in a horrible mood after that trek through the trees, so I left and went back to pick him up later. The sun finally came out that afternoon, and after doing some cleaning up around the house we went for a huge walk outside enjoying the sunshine (and admiring how the sun sparkled off my ring!). When we got home home we had an afternoon nap and just relaxed. We love lazy sundays after training. So, although we did not end up camping, we still had a great weekend together. I learned that the only things I can eat before running are stone wheat cracker, water/gatorade, half a bannana, or a fruit to go. And I am still getting used to the whole ring wearing thing and having a finacee (it just sounds so weird saying it)! Hope everyone had a great weekend!

--Jen