Monday, September 23, 2013

Playing catch up

Wow! It has been over a month since my last post. When I said I was taking a break from training I didn't mean the blog as well. Where do I begin?
Well I guess I'll start where I last left off... mid- August!
No more races, for the next few months it's all about fun. No more brick workouts, no more fartleks, no more time checking. My first "long" ride post race was a lovely meander out to Lake Cowichan. From my place it's about 90km round trip. My fab riding buddy "D" and I headed out nice and early. Once we got to our turn around we spotted this lovely lady.
       

                                           
Can you tell what it is? It was a wild turkey with her two babies. We got pretty close to her but didn't want to frighten her. I love seeing wildlife out on our rides. On our way home we also stopped for a lovely coffee. It's just not a leisurely ride without doing so.


Next up was my friends the Mr. and Mrs. headed to Penticton for the 1st Penticton Challenge. The Mr. has been training hard all year and this was his big day. Well they had quite the surprise when they went out for dinner while in Penticton...
They got to meet the fabulous Chris "Macca" McCormack! Apparently he's pretty hot in person ; )
and the Mrs. got to watch him race.

Meanwhile back on the Island I was celebrating my birthday. This is what an athlete does on their birthday...
They race with their family!
We did the Easter Seals Colour Fun Run. I had some friends join us as well and it was a blast!!! I highly recommend doing this race with kids. It was a 5km run and there were 5 colour stations. Each station you go through they throw a colour at you. 
Afterwards they took me out for lunch and then we went home so I could watch "Mr." cross the finish line in Penticton. Thank goodness for live tracking and cameras and the "Mrs." texted updates as well. 

As for other things, well I've been doing a ton of hikes. There's a good group of my friends that have been meeting up once a week to do some great hiking. The first day was sketchy. We kind of got lost.
This is us trying to find our way back to the trail.
Once we reached the top it was all worth it!

We went from a cool evening hike one day and the following week it was ridiculously hot. These hikes were done at the same time of day.



My latest adventure was my riding groups 100km ride. Since we are all done racing for the season we thought it would be fun to get in a nice big ride. We rode up to Ladysmith for brunch. 

If you live on the Island go to Ladysmith! They have a ton of great cafe's and restaurants. I was pleasantly surprised. We will definitely be doing this again.
I have a lovely GF cinnamon bun with my soy latte. I also had some other goodies!!!

Now you are probably all wondering how my health is since I seem to always be injured. Well my friends, the verdict is out. I am officially the biggest klutz out there. I will be getting knee surgery this year after determining the time off did not help. Not only that, I am pretty sure I also broke my nose... while riding my bike. Seriously people I do not know how I do it. I know many that get scrapes, bumps and bruises but not me. I do damage.  
Terrible picture I know but you can see my nose is bruised, crooked and swollen right into my eye.

This is taken the same day. I wish I had taken one the next day because that was when it looked the  worst. I really do not know how I do this. I am now 1 1/2 weeks out and I still can't blow my nose. My doc says it's probably broken but really what are we going to do about it? So I now have a broken nose to add to my ongoing list of injuries.

So there you have it. We are all updated and you now know just how much of a klutz I really am.