Boats on the Water

With the mostly wonderful weather we've been having the last couple weeks my training hours are going back up, mostly on account of it being too darn nice to be inside. I've been out paddling a fair amount in the last week, including some kayaking. I paddled with Erik for the first week of the Hoigaards paddle derby.

It was an ideal day for being out on the water. Not too hot, very little wind, and the occasional cloud drifting by to provide some shade. Consequently there were a lot of boats out, making for a choppy start. We held our own though, and started to move up through the pack heading for the first buoy on Lake Calhoun. I don't have the best feeling for pace in canoe races yet, and probably took it out a bit hard. Elspeth and Emily were teaming up, and after our close race at Chippewa last year Erik and I knew we would have our work cut out for us to beat them.
We watched the fast pro boats get away pretty quickly and just missed getting on the wake of a derby boat with a couple decent paddlers in it. We did not have the cleanest buoy turn at the North end of Lake of the Isles, and the E&E boat was pretty close behind us. They caught us going through the channel to Cedar, and passed us after the buoy on Cedar. We were only marginally successful at riding their wake back onto Isles, and it seemed like we might get dropped, but we fought our way back up to them a few different times.
Isles was weedy everywhere, so we picked a straighter line through the weeds vs. trying to follow the cleanest channel and we got back ahead of the girls' boat. When we got back onto Calhoun I really tried to push the pace, and I could hear Erik gasping behind me trying to keep up. There was a solo canoe who caught on with us and it was a good challenge for us to fight him off, which we managed to do. I feel like my technique is coming along, and there were some points in time where I could really feel like I was putting good power in the water, and other times where I still felt like I was mostly flailing. We finished in 1 hour 9 minutes, beating the solo canoe by only 7 seconds, and beating Elspeth and Emily by 15 seconds.

Chippeawa Triathlon Start - Photo: John Arenz

We had a paddling rematch a week later at the Chippewa Triathlon. It was another gorgeous day for paddling, and Erik and I got off to a decent start. I have done this race for the last few years and it is one of my favorites. It is long (usually 4-5 hours) and involves many natural obstacles, paddling lakes large and small, finding and navigating portages, biking on everything from singletrack campground trails to logging roads to paved bike paths, and finishing with a run that tests just how well you managed your energy in the first two legs.

Erik and I on the canoe leg - Photo: John Arenz

We settled in maybe the 15th boat or so and tucked in a pack heading through the channel shortly after the start. The race directions had said to use the East side of the lake because of the prevailing wind direction, but the lead boats headed out along the West shore, so we followed suit. I was kind of curious how this would work, since the buoys were set up on the East shore, but by the time we got a ways around the lake the sheriffs boat had relocated the buoys to the side all the racers were going on. After the first portage Erik and I didn't hear Emily and Elspeth behind us anymore, so we figured we had a gap on them and started pushing to catch some boats ahead of us. We were holding our own on the water, but we were running boats down on the portages. The final portage on the canoe leg is a long one, and we passed a couple boats early on and had open trail ahead of us. We were cruising on this logging road. The trail markers for this part of the race were pink ribbons with black stripes, and I noticed that the ribbons where we were running all of a sudden were just pink. They were in the correct place for trail markers however, so I didn't worry about it too much. Then we hit an intersection with no markers at all, and after a few seconds of deliberation decided to take the most straight path. Soon after that the trail spit us out into someone's yard, this was definitely not the correct trail! Erik set up his watch to backtrack our path, and we started back. Erik wanted to try another trail to see if we could cut directly to the lake, but I wasn't confident enough in our direction and didn't want to get lost further, so we continued back along our trail. We finally got back to the trail and instead of the racing canoes we had been running with there were now people walking with plastic kayaks along the portage route. There were two big orange arrows and the correct marker on the trail, I must have been watching my feet and not the trail when we went through this intersection the first time. I apologized to Erik and we got back on track, 4km and 30 minutes of time lost.

By the time we got to the canoe-bike exchange Emily had already loaded up her boat and left, and Elspeth was long gone on the bike leg. Erik had a faster exchange than me, and it was 15 minutes into the bike leg before I caught him. I caught Elspeth about an hour into the bike leg, just as we got to a section of trail with some crazy water/mud pits. I had fun looking for the best line around them, or when there was no line bashing through and spraying water everywhere. The run was pretty uneventful, and I crossed the finish line 5th in my race category, about 31 minutes behind the winners. I had the fastest bike and run legs of the day (except relay teams) and if it weren't for getting lost my canoe time would have been good enough to put me on the podium, but that is the fun of these races, it is more than fitness that determines the winner. There is a lot of strategy, navigation, and other factors that come into play.

Next weekend is the Grandma's half, where fitness will determine the winner, and that will not be me, not by a long shot. I'm feeling mostly better after the rough marathon double this spring though, and am interested to see where my running fitness really is. Plus I'll be excited to see how Jeff's fitness gains pay off on race day, and to be out cheering for my sister who is running her first ever marathon!

Home away from Home

Every winter when I never see my home because it gets dark so early and I'm off racing every weekend I start to dream about summertime when I will get to all those home projects and just be around to enjoy Northfield. Of course every summer comes and I have just as much stuff, if not more, going on than the winter, so most of those projects don't get done. This week was busy for sure. I wasn't home before 9:30 any night this week, so my time seeing my house in the daylight is still somewhat limited.

Monday my co-worker Dean and I hopped on a plane for a day trip to Chicago. We went to American Standard Circuits to take a look at some process equipment made by a company we are considering buying equipment from for our facility. We got a good look at the equipment, ran a sample, and talked with the chemical supplier and the equipment manufacturer about the machine and how it has been working for the 6 years it has been in operation. Then we flew back Monday night. I have only been on a few work trips, and never one where I've flown there and back in the same day, so that was a kind of fun experience.

Tuesday the equipment supplier was in Minnesota, so we got to sit down and compare notes about the machine we had seen the day before. That meeting went a bit long, so I rushed home and met my friend Erik, who was visiting from Boise. We went over to Carleton and played a round of frisbee golf, my first one of the year. Much to my surprise I actually edged Erik out. He is an amazing athlete, so for me to beat him at anything sports related is a rare occurrence. Jeff was in town running a workout, so we went to cheer for him and then went to Nate and Nichole's for pizza and games.

By Wednesday I realized I probably wouldn't have an evening at home this week, and my lawn was getting completely out of control, so I headed home over lunch and got some of the mowing done. Then after work Nate and I headed up for our first Vakava rollerskiing day. My abs were still a bit sore from the weekend, and Nate's triceps were still toast, maybe a sign we're starting to get old.

Thursday I again snuck home over lunch to finish the lawn mowing. Then after work I headed up to meet my friend Emily for some paddling. It was my first time in a canoe for the year, and it was an absolutely perfect day for it. We portaged from where she lives down to the Mississippi and paddled for about an hour and a half. Emily paddles a lot and is becoming very good, so she gave me a few technique pointers. In general I felt better about my skill level starting out this year than I have in springs past.

When the weekend arrived I finally got a chance to be home for a bit. I got out paddling a couple more times but didn't do much else. It was nice to get some house projects done finally and just have some time to relax.

Hitting the ground running

After a couple weeks to get my feet back under me from vacation things are starting to pick up again on the training and general busyness fronts. Tuesday of last week I started doing some baking to get ready for the weekend. Nichole has been talking about riding her bike more, so I sneakily tried to get her to bike over a few bananas for bread baking. Instead Nate showed up with not only bananas but also a baby and some rollerskis. I got to babysit Greta for a bit while he went out rollerskiing. I had overfilled one of my pies, and the spill over was creating a rather smoky kitchen, but with many open windows and some clever fan placement I was able to keep the smoke alarm from going off. Greta wasn't a fan of the smoke either, so her bouncy chair went up near the smoke detector, and she happily started hopping.

Bouncing time!

Wednesday was the first Vakava fitness test of the year. My results were a bit behind years past, but I could tell I was still carrying some fatigue from the marathons, so I didn't really worry about it. I've been getting some easy runs in again, but haven't been too motivated to spend much time boating or biking yet.

Greta printing some coupons

Thursday after work I headed for the cities and picked up Jeff, then we continued North towards Hayward for the TNC running camp. We had some fun grocery shopping with Greta at 11:00pm. Friday Nate and I got out for our first classic rollerski of the year on some fun country roads. My balance was a bit shaky, but this will be my 3rd year classic rollerskiing and it gets more fun every year.

Checkout Time

 After the rollerski I was surprisingly tired, so Mesa, Greta, and I decided to take a bit of a nap. Hopefully Nate's mom doesn't read this blog, because Mesa isn't supposed to be on the couch. Shhhh! Friday night we got an easy run in as other campers began to show up and then played a Bingo game as an icebreaker before everyone wandered off to bed.

Nap Time

Saturday was the hard workout for the weekend. Jeff and Marco were doing 19 miles with two sets of 4x5 minutes at tempo pace (about 5:40/mile pace). I was not up for that distance, but agreed to pace Jeff through the fast miles, so I took a break between the two sets while he put on more miles and ended up with about 16 miles for the day. My longest run since the marathons, and it didn't feel too bad actually, and I was able to keep up with Jeff on all the speedy stuff.

Saturday afternoon we had a strength competition, and I struggled mightily with that. Between the Vakava strength test and the rollerskiing the day before my abs were pretty shot. Nate won pretty handily, and Jeff edged me out by doing many more situps than me. There were some fabulous prizes to be won, I got a pair of ski socks.

Fabulous Prizes!

Sunday was just an easy run and a trip back home. I stopped by Cary's new house to drop off some plumbing materials for him then got home and headed right to bed.

I just realized all the pictures in this post have Greta in them. For new readers she is my neighbors and good friends Nate and Nichole's daughter, and my God Daughter. She just turned 7 months old for those who are interested, and will be mobile quite soon I have a feeling.