Sep 24, 2007
Rubble Creek Trail Run. Cool, Crisp and Beautiful!
I went to bed Saturday night sore and tired and wondering if I could make it to this run in the morning. My alram went off at 630am and I grabbed some clothes and my bag, brushed my teeth put on my running shoes and looked outside. If it was raining I wasn't going to run but to my luck it was once again blue skies...it was going to be another gorgeous day. I put on all the warm clothes I had and left my friend Dave's place at 645am and hopped on my bike to meet my ride at Function Junction. We met and drove up to the race start. It was cold, it was early and I was still unsure how i would approach this race. I decided to just enjoy the run and treat it like a trainig run. I was not out to win. So with that in mind I was off. I started nice and slow and managed to keep a good pace where I was never over exerted so i could slowly run up the majority of hills and keep the pace constant. To my surprise as the run went on the better I was feeling. As soon as we made it out of the woods and you could see Black Tusk on the right I was feeling good....tired but not overly as I expected to feel. there was a thing layer of snow/frost on the ground and it was just picture perfect up there. I was so glad I crawled out bed for this run...so worth it. I started to pick up the pace on the downhill portion when I was catching up to the girl in front of me I rolled over on my left ankle...I stopped I shook it off i hobbled around for a bit...teary eyed a nice girl stopped and lent me her first aid kit. I sucked down a bunch of drugs and decided to tough it out and run. I was doing a funky run/hobble/teary upset kind of thing when i went over on my right ankle and then I was down. I was in tears from pain when Russ and Christine came by and walked with me a little. I told them to head down as I could put pressure on my ankles but just had to walk very slowly as not to move them at all. So off they went and i hobbled a long. People were very kind offering me this and that. I graciously took a set of poles and a jacket and some more drugs. THANK YOU everyone for your kind words and offerings. I finally made it down to the bottom and hung out until my ride came back. WHAT a day. We made it back to North Van and I hung out with my frozen bag of peas, watched some movies and relaxed. It was great!
Cheakamus Challenge...Squamish to Whistler..a beautiful Day!
I awoke several times throughout the night Friday evening to hear rain splashing the house..."Oh man, tomorrow's bike race is gonna suck if its pouring rain like this...."...these were my thoughts throughout the night/morning. On Saturday morning I opened my door to blue skies...I was a happy biker...Geoff, was kind enough to give me a ride up to Squamish. We were a little nervous making it to Squamish being low on gas but we made it with plenty of time to spare. So, we got ourselves organized. I was sporting my new Steed Cycles wear. A little nervous as people were eyeing me up a little more than normal. I took a deep breath and tried to stay with the front pack right off the bat on the road (the roads are my forte). I managed to stay in the front of the mid-pack throughout the roads, got passed by a couple speedy guys but then passed a couple on the hike a bike section..I was getting more comfortable the more we were riding. All was going well, nothing major to report except that I tried to enjoy the weather, the trails, the colours and the crisp air as much as I could and tried not to think of the pain and how tired my legs were. I noticed that my energy levels weren't as high as normal as i still had not fully recovered from my adventure race the weekend prior. Alas I pushed on. It wasn't until the Microwave climb that I looked over to another racer and asked her if it would be terrible if I decided to quit now...she chuckled and said yes...i shrugged and kept going....Tunnel Vision is not my favorite trail as I find it a little technical for my abilities...I made it through and then back on the road...the last climb of the day...always a good feeling. I was surprised how well I descended down big Timber and was glad to cross that finish line. All in all it was a good ride...I ended up grabbing a 2nd place finish for my age group and then resting up for my run the following morning.
**There was nothing more that I wanted to do than ride my bike in the woods on a sunny crisp fall afternoon in Whistler.....I was a happy little biker!***
**There was nothing more that I wanted to do than ride my bike in the woods on a sunny crisp fall afternoon in Whistler.....I was a happy little biker!***
Friday Kayak Session with Ben Fast
Friday evening turned out to be a beautiful evening to hold my first kayak session with Ben Fast. He was kind enough to take the time to give me some key instruction before I head off to trinidad and Tobago and launch myself into a surf ski and paddle 30km in the ocean. I would say the first 20 minutes in the water were not looking promising. I was a little weary of the tippy boat and couldn't seem to get a handle on some of the technical aspects of paddling. We stopped at a dock..fixed up the distance of my foot rests and headed back to the cove and it slowly started to click. I was using my legs more, I wasn't dropping my arms as much etc etc...and then about 2 minutes before we finished I got it. I was gliding through the water smoothly and quickly. Looking forward to my next lesson....
Sep 19, 2007
Sept 18th the Epic Tues Night Kayak
The deep cove Tuesday night races have come to an end but throughout the last month I’ve met some awesome guys who are keen on kayaking and we have organized to keep kayaking Tuesday nights even without the races. Chris lent me his plastic boat and Gary his paddle. Last night at 6pm it decided to rain and rain and rain but we were a determined little group and set out for our paddle. The waters looked calm from the shore so we were pumped. About 15/20minutes into our paddle things were not as they seemed. It was windy and wavy..Chris and marshall were in surf skis so they headed right I started t follow and gary headed towards our intended route (straight) . I realized that C and M were just trying to find calmer water and a better crossing to head back so I turned around and tried to catch gary to tell him but as I hit Jug island and beyond it just got worse and I couldn’t see Gary anymore so I figured I would just turn around and head back and hopefully run into the other two. Eventually I spotted C and M and caught them and we headed back towards deep cove. We looked back and couldn’t see Gary. So Chris and I did a smaller loop in the calmer water and Marshall got out to get warm. Anyways we were trying to see Gary and he was nowhere in sight until we started heading back towards deep cove kayaks when we noticed him on shore??? When we got there he mentioned that he lost his car keys….the adventure was not to end…Eventually Chris realized they were in his pocket, we laughed and started to pack up and ended the night in good fashion at The Raven with some food and pints. All in all an adventurous evening!
Sep 18, 2007
4th Dimension Adventure Racing Olympic Peninsula WA Sept 15/16 2007
So, last night I wrote this post about the rest in good detail and somehow due to either my technology incapabilities or whatever I lost it all and now I have lost motivation to re-type everything. So its going to be much shorter and less detailed than my first entry.
The weekend started on Friday for me. I had to take several buses down to the ferry terminal. I was lucky to run into a girl I had met recently so she kept me company on part of the trip. Anyways, I had lots of stuff and my bike. I arrived at the ferry terminal saw the PCL buses and the two drivers hanging out outside and decided to ask them about the bus service to victoria. They told me I could by my ticket on the ferry but when I mentioned my bike they shook there heads and told me there was no room....oh boy....then mentioned that a city bus could take me to victoria but I was on a time budget as I needed to meet Todd at the Coho ferry terminal in Victoria. By some random chance there happened to be a carriage free on one of the buses that the drivers totally thought was full of luggage so again luck was by my side and i managed to grab a seat on the bus. Could have been disastrous. I met Todd at the ferry and all was good until we figured out I didn't have a paddle. So we just hoped that someone would have an extra at the race....All went smoothly and we made it to the race meeting just in time. At the meeting we found out a couple of interesting things. First it was going to be a 28 hr race instead of 24hrs fine..except that would mean we would miss our reserved ferry back to the island....arg...we would deal with that later. Second, was we had to drive down and drop off our bikes that night that would take about 2 hrs (more if you drive like LINA).....so Todd set up camp and worked on the maps while I drove the bikes and dropped thenm off. We got to bed at 130am the night before our 28 hr race and had 3 hours of sleep. The alarm went off at 430am and we had to get ourselves ready in the dark and drive down to the race start. We were off at 630am. We should have paddled in a tandem kayak but due to other reasons we found ourselves in 2 singles...and we were fairly happy about our paddle considering our circumstance....the paddle took about 3,5 hours and off we went on our bikes.... on our bikes the first big frustrating situation we found ourselves in was the misplaced check point. We happen to take a different route than most or all teams that involved an easier road but a bikewack (bushwacking with a bike). We prob lost about 45 minutes and some spots going back and forth looking for the checkpoint and after chatting with a bunch of teams we were certain that it was misplaced. So we went on our way passed one or two teams and then found ourselves on the hike a bike (prob one of the longest hike a bikes I've been on thus far and the descend was a hike a bike as well. ) After check point 10 we were faced with another decision (to bushwack or take the long simple route but one that involved a huge climb on the bikes....) we took the road tired of bushwacking and walking with our bikes...we believe it was the right choice.. We arrived to check point 11 in 3rd place...surprised, we fueled up and kep on going. from there we had a lot more biking to go. Again at check point 12 we made a decision to take the longer but probably safer route to 13...a long slog of a climb...but by this point we were getting pretty immune to these climbs so they just didn't seem as long and hard as the first few....we biked through the night (my lights died on me so I had to deal with just my headlamp by the end which for me was sort of tough....) We hit the kayak portion at about midnight and had a wonderful smooth kayak to the beginning of the rogaine/run/trek section. Todd had planned out a sweet route for us in assumption that we would get all 22 controls. As it turns out this was not the case some controls were much tougher than others and involved some pretty intense bushwacking and steep descends and river crossings.... It rained pretty good on us throughout the night but being in the woods you are fairly sheltered from the worst of it...we had a little fight with devils club to get to one of the check points. Todd did an awesome job in navigating us throughout the area. The toughest part for us was the end but also in some ways the most rewarding. It was 9am we had 1 hour left and had to make some decisions...we weren't going to get all the controls we had planned so we decided to grab 2 more and head back on the road rather than try and bushwack our way back. Then it was 9 25am. Todd looks at me and says "lina we gotta run or we aren't going to make it." I take a deep breath, not too happy about this but pick up my feet and start running...we run and run and run and all I want to do is stop and crawl into the woods and sleep or at least walk. It took my all not to start walking....I was just exhausted overall...after 27.5 hours of racing the last thing i wanted to do was run 8km to the finish....but we pulled it off and that is what makes racing so amazing....we rolled in at 10:18am. 2 minutes from 3rd place. We lost 2 control points but still managed to pull off a 2nd place overall finish by one control. It felt great to accomplish that and looking back it was worth the pain and suffering especially that last little bit....
But that was not the end of our adventure we still had to pack up grab our bikes and find a way home....we had missed the ferry we originally booked. Todd was going to drive me to the ferry terminal i was going to walk onto the 515pm ferry and make my way home from there and he was going to sleep and catch the early one back to the island. We neglected to remember that we were exhausted and that driving anywhere would be a problema dn this was soon realized when we drove to pick up our bikes... we nearly drove off the road due to pure exhaustion. So we parked the car and fell asleep to wake up 2 hours later and realizing that i was not going to make the 515pm ferry. So in the end we drove home through seattle. Stopped in Bellingham for some great food....at this point i think any kind of food would have been delicious but it really was good food. Saw my buddy Chris and kept going. I found myself in bed at 11:15pm and asleep at probably 11:16pm. Todd drove to the ferry and slept in his car so he could grab the first ferry to the island...what a trooper!!!! All in all an adventure of a weekend and a fabulous one at that!!!
The weekend started on Friday for me. I had to take several buses down to the ferry terminal. I was lucky to run into a girl I had met recently so she kept me company on part of the trip. Anyways, I had lots of stuff and my bike. I arrived at the ferry terminal saw the PCL buses and the two drivers hanging out outside and decided to ask them about the bus service to victoria. They told me I could by my ticket on the ferry but when I mentioned my bike they shook there heads and told me there was no room....oh boy....then mentioned that a city bus could take me to victoria but I was on a time budget as I needed to meet Todd at the Coho ferry terminal in Victoria. By some random chance there happened to be a carriage free on one of the buses that the drivers totally thought was full of luggage so again luck was by my side and i managed to grab a seat on the bus. Could have been disastrous. I met Todd at the ferry and all was good until we figured out I didn't have a paddle. So we just hoped that someone would have an extra at the race....All went smoothly and we made it to the race meeting just in time. At the meeting we found out a couple of interesting things. First it was going to be a 28 hr race instead of 24hrs fine..except that would mean we would miss our reserved ferry back to the island....arg...we would deal with that later. Second, was we had to drive down and drop off our bikes that night that would take about 2 hrs (more if you drive like LINA).....so Todd set up camp and worked on the maps while I drove the bikes and dropped thenm off. We got to bed at 130am the night before our 28 hr race and had 3 hours of sleep. The alarm went off at 430am and we had to get ourselves ready in the dark and drive down to the race start. We were off at 630am. We should have paddled in a tandem kayak but due to other reasons we found ourselves in 2 singles...and we were fairly happy about our paddle considering our circumstance....the paddle took about 3,5 hours and off we went on our bikes.... on our bikes the first big frustrating situation we found ourselves in was the misplaced check point. We happen to take a different route than most or all teams that involved an easier road but a bikewack (bushwacking with a bike). We prob lost about 45 minutes and some spots going back and forth looking for the checkpoint and after chatting with a bunch of teams we were certain that it was misplaced. So we went on our way passed one or two teams and then found ourselves on the hike a bike (prob one of the longest hike a bikes I've been on thus far and the descend was a hike a bike as well. ) After check point 10 we were faced with another decision (to bushwack or take the long simple route but one that involved a huge climb on the bikes....) we took the road tired of bushwacking and walking with our bikes...we believe it was the right choice.. We arrived to check point 11 in 3rd place...surprised, we fueled up and kep on going. from there we had a lot more biking to go. Again at check point 12 we made a decision to take the longer but probably safer route to 13...a long slog of a climb...but by this point we were getting pretty immune to these climbs so they just didn't seem as long and hard as the first few....we biked through the night (my lights died on me so I had to deal with just my headlamp by the end which for me was sort of tough....) We hit the kayak portion at about midnight and had a wonderful smooth kayak to the beginning of the rogaine/run/trek section. Todd had planned out a sweet route for us in assumption that we would get all 22 controls. As it turns out this was not the case some controls were much tougher than others and involved some pretty intense bushwacking and steep descends and river crossings.... It rained pretty good on us throughout the night but being in the woods you are fairly sheltered from the worst of it...we had a little fight with devils club to get to one of the check points. Todd did an awesome job in navigating us throughout the area. The toughest part for us was the end but also in some ways the most rewarding. It was 9am we had 1 hour left and had to make some decisions...we weren't going to get all the controls we had planned so we decided to grab 2 more and head back on the road rather than try and bushwack our way back. Then it was 9 25am. Todd looks at me and says "lina we gotta run or we aren't going to make it." I take a deep breath, not too happy about this but pick up my feet and start running...we run and run and run and all I want to do is stop and crawl into the woods and sleep or at least walk. It took my all not to start walking....I was just exhausted overall...after 27.5 hours of racing the last thing i wanted to do was run 8km to the finish....but we pulled it off and that is what makes racing so amazing....we rolled in at 10:18am. 2 minutes from 3rd place. We lost 2 control points but still managed to pull off a 2nd place overall finish by one control. It felt great to accomplish that and looking back it was worth the pain and suffering especially that last little bit....
But that was not the end of our adventure we still had to pack up grab our bikes and find a way home....we had missed the ferry we originally booked. Todd was going to drive me to the ferry terminal i was going to walk onto the 515pm ferry and make my way home from there and he was going to sleep and catch the early one back to the island. We neglected to remember that we were exhausted and that driving anywhere would be a problema dn this was soon realized when we drove to pick up our bikes... we nearly drove off the road due to pure exhaustion. So we parked the car and fell asleep to wake up 2 hours later and realizing that i was not going to make the 515pm ferry. So in the end we drove home through seattle. Stopped in Bellingham for some great food....at this point i think any kind of food would have been delicious but it really was good food. Saw my buddy Chris and kept going. I found myself in bed at 11:15pm and asleep at probably 11:16pm. Todd drove to the ferry and slept in his car so he could grab the first ferry to the island...what a trooper!!!! All in all an adventure of a weekend and a fabulous one at that!!!
Sep 13, 2007
CYCLOCROSS....Sept 9 2007
So, this weekend was fairly chill. I acted a little like an 18year old onFri night and I rather not talk about it....sat was recovering day if you get my drift. Went for a mountain bike ride around bridal path etc. but it was cruisy...just to do something active. Crashed early sat night and graham picked me up bright and early on Sunday. We headed to Langley for my first cyclocross race. I don't have a proper bike so I just used my mountain bike. I was super nervous as I knew nothing of this sport and wasn't even using the proper bike but excited at the same time as I love trying new things. So I lined up with the other women B ladies and off we went. I took off and just figured i'd bike and just worry about that. So i did...the first 2 loops I found myself neck and neck with another girl and eventually lost her. I didn't quite understand the whole lap system so when I thought it was my last lap I went hard (as I am not the best sprinter) to cross the line and notice that I had one lap to go so I shook it off and kept going. half way through the lap I had a man tell me I was done but then others tell me to keep going so I figured i'd just keep going just in case.....so yeah I did an extra lap...ah more of work out i guess...I ended up winning the womens B category. Looks like I might have found a new fall sport....
Lake Chelan Patagonia Model...labour day weekend
Labour Day weekend.
Lots of travelling but got to do and see and hang out with lots of fun people. My weekend started off with a cycle to the states in the pouring rain. I made it to Blaine to find out the bus to Bellingham would not come for another 1.5 hours. I was freezing and wet and didn't feel like making the trek by bike so I found a nice cafe, changed, had some food and found a sweet novel to read. I went to the bus station to wait another 40 minutes as there was lots of traffic due to the long weekend. So i finally made it to bellingham with knowwhere really to go. I was hoping to meet up with someone in Bellingham but it didn't work out so I found a sweet spot by the water and sat and watched the sunset and read my new novel. About 1.5 hours later Dave P. rolled into town from Seattle, we had food and a couple of drinks and headed down Chucka nut drive to find a place to camp out. We ended up pulling over on a viewpoint pull out off the side of the road and slept in his truck. It was a beautiful view and a gorgeous night..FUN! I loved it. The next morning we were heading to Anacortes Mt erie to go rock climbing although we didn't have set directions of a climbing book for the area. We got to the Mountain scoped it out had no idea where ot go until we ran into some fellow climbers. they gave us an option for a fun crag and off we were. It was my first climb of the season so I was a little nervous at first. Dave rocked the crag. Our last route was a sport route and I finally felt confident and strong but we were done. Before heading to Seattle we went on an hour trail run through some trails in the area. It was great. We got to seattle, showered and went out for a beer to celebrate life and good times. There Colin met up with us (my photographer for the weekend)
I switched cars and I was off with Colin to an awesome local mexican restaurant...We had some drinks , some great food and they were both pretty beat so went back to his place. He had some work to do and I crashed out. The next morning, we got ourselves ready, for the long drive to Lake Chelan. We picked up Delanie, went for breakfast (again a super awesome joint) and made our way east. We finally arrived around 330pm. Drove up to the campsite unloaded and got our campsite ready and took off for photo shoot number 1. We got to a sweet little area that Colin had picked out ahead of time and took a zillion shots from different angles until the sun was gonna leave us. I ran back and we made it to the car just as the sun left us. We drove back to camp, Colin made a fabulous dinner and again just crashed hard knowing the following morning was gonna be an early one. We awoke with the sun, had some granola breakfast and coffee in a can and headed out for round number 2. We went to another great location and shot for several hours. I even got to play photographer for a bit....so fun...new career??? not yet at least. Then we headed on a long mtb ride home. the first part was a little tough for me.....and involved lots of hike a biking. We were kind of silly and forgot to bring food...oops and I could feel my energy drifting away. Anyways, 3,5 hours later my skills improved dramatically on the bike, we were both smiling and we made it back to the car where Delanie was waiting for us. We had some beers to celebrate a successful photo shoot and bike and off we went back in the car for the long drive home.
Thanks for a fab weekend Colin....you rock!
Lots of travelling but got to do and see and hang out with lots of fun people. My weekend started off with a cycle to the states in the pouring rain. I made it to Blaine to find out the bus to Bellingham would not come for another 1.5 hours. I was freezing and wet and didn't feel like making the trek by bike so I found a nice cafe, changed, had some food and found a sweet novel to read. I went to the bus station to wait another 40 minutes as there was lots of traffic due to the long weekend. So i finally made it to bellingham with knowwhere really to go. I was hoping to meet up with someone in Bellingham but it didn't work out so I found a sweet spot by the water and sat and watched the sunset and read my new novel. About 1.5 hours later Dave P. rolled into town from Seattle, we had food and a couple of drinks and headed down Chucka nut drive to find a place to camp out. We ended up pulling over on a viewpoint pull out off the side of the road and slept in his truck. It was a beautiful view and a gorgeous night..FUN! I loved it. The next morning we were heading to Anacortes Mt erie to go rock climbing although we didn't have set directions of a climbing book for the area. We got to the Mountain scoped it out had no idea where ot go until we ran into some fellow climbers. they gave us an option for a fun crag and off we were. It was my first climb of the season so I was a little nervous at first. Dave rocked the crag. Our last route was a sport route and I finally felt confident and strong but we were done. Before heading to Seattle we went on an hour trail run through some trails in the area. It was great. We got to seattle, showered and went out for a beer to celebrate life and good times. There Colin met up with us (my photographer for the weekend)
I switched cars and I was off with Colin to an awesome local mexican restaurant...We had some drinks , some great food and they were both pretty beat so went back to his place. He had some work to do and I crashed out. The next morning, we got ourselves ready, for the long drive to Lake Chelan. We picked up Delanie, went for breakfast (again a super awesome joint) and made our way east. We finally arrived around 330pm. Drove up to the campsite unloaded and got our campsite ready and took off for photo shoot number 1. We got to a sweet little area that Colin had picked out ahead of time and took a zillion shots from different angles until the sun was gonna leave us. I ran back and we made it to the car just as the sun left us. We drove back to camp, Colin made a fabulous dinner and again just crashed hard knowing the following morning was gonna be an early one. We awoke with the sun, had some granola breakfast and coffee in a can and headed out for round number 2. We went to another great location and shot for several hours. I even got to play photographer for a bit....so fun...new career??? not yet at least. Then we headed on a long mtb ride home. the first part was a little tough for me.....and involved lots of hike a biking. We were kind of silly and forgot to bring food...oops and I could feel my energy drifting away. Anyways, 3,5 hours later my skills improved dramatically on the bike, we were both smiling and we made it back to the car where Delanie was waiting for us. We had some beers to celebrate a successful photo shoot and bike and off we went back in the car for the long drive home.
Thanks for a fab weekend Colin....you rock!
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