Music I'd been meaning to post, but brain has been AWOL

If you haven't heard these guys on the Zone (91.3 fm in Victoria), you're seriously missing out. Check out "Little Lion Man" as well. Very east coast feel, but they're from the mother country :)

To me, this song by Dallas Green of City and Colour is very similar to the sound of the Mumford and Sons song above. Love it!

There once was a 10k named TC...

That decided it would be super busy.

People lined up at the start.

Many decided to fart.

And the whole race was set to go.

The PT crew was ready to rip.

Not a single corner would they skip.

Derbear thought he'd go out fast

But little did he know...

That his speed just couldn't last

At kilometer 8 and 9 and a half

He walked around like an injured Calf.

Clutching the right side of his back.

In spite of these little digressions

He made some significant progressions

As did the rest of his team!

Now DerBear's PB is 34:38

But he knows it's his fate

TO KILL IT AT THE SUN RUN IN TWO WEEEEEEEEEEEEEKS.

Ok, pretty much the worst poem ever but you get the idea :)

OK, so I should be in this picture SOMEWHERE, but I seem to have disappeared!!

Power Rangers Season 1...

... Makes life significantly more awesome.

It's been a GREAT week here in Victoria. Training has been pretty tough and I'm hurting a little going into the weekend, but I'm confident I can put in a solid time at the TC10k.

Before the workout started....

All of us looking relatively alive.. With Adam being a stud as usual

Boys, we worked hard. A little downtime before cool down!

In other news I did my 1500 LC time trial and went 18:04. Not the most amazing time but I'm glad I got it out of the way. Anything under 18:30 was the goal, so I'm pumped I nailed it by 26 seconds. I also did this at the end of my biggest 3 weeks of training since I've started triathlon so I'm confident I could drop more time off had I been a little less fatigued.

In the most important news of all, it's only 2 weeks until Ally heads back to Ontario to go work at RKY Camp for the summer. We've done long distance for over 5 months now, with me going to Vancouver, and her coming here to Victoria. It doesn't make the prospect of months without each other any easier, but I'm incredibly confident that everything will be great in spite of the distance. It's pretty easy to be this confident when you feel this way about someone.

Block Party 2010... A slight digression from my otherwise athletics based lifestyle :)

And in OTHER OTHER news.. My iMac hard drive crashed last week and it's been wiped and mac osx has been reinstalled. Unfortunately, I lost over 5 years worth of pictures, documents, music, movies etc. It's extremely disappointing, but at least I have hard-drive space again :)

PS:

34:xx or bust.

Kelly Slater wins at Bells...

Kelly Slater, my sports hero, wins at Bells Beach Australia on a broken foot!

MAN.

"And every day, good or bad, there is this magic time"

This may be about Surfing as a dangerous escape rather than my life and involvement in triathlon, but I love the idea.

"There is nothing mystical about this. There is a need in all of us for controlled danger; that is, a need for an activity that puts us however briefly on the edge of life. Civilization is breeding it out of us, or breeding it down on us, this go-to-hell trait. Gradually, the day-to-day people, the hackers, are taking over. There are, as you read this, uncounted millions of people who now go through life without any sort of real, vibrant kick. The legions of the unjazzed."

I enter this sport knowing full well I could get very hurt on a training ride, or even in a controlled environment as a race, but I WANT it. Seeing pros like Jordan Rapp falling victim to one of the risks of the sport makes it seem so much more real. But yet I refuse to join the "legions of the unjazzed".

Dread the training no more...

It's tough to look back at swimming sometimes.

So many happy memories... Team travel to meets, the ridiculousness of meet warm-ups, spending all my time with the same awesome people, the relationships I've formed that will last forever... The list could go on and on.

That said, I wonder if I would have continued with it for so long had it not been for the above reasons? I think about swimming A LOT. A lot more than I should. Absolutely.

Why? Because not only do I think about the aforementioned highs, but also of the horrible, horrible lows. I was unruly, argumentative, uncooperative... a major pain in the ass. With very few exceptions, I've been in yelling matches with all of my swim coaches. I would work hard, but the second criticism was handed my way I blew up. Blame the adrenaline of the workout, fatigue, lack of nutrition, WHATEVER.. I did it anyways. That's what matters.

I also think of the times where I would drive to the pool, and either contemplate or succeed in a scheme to miss workout. For example, hiding in the upstairs lobby bathrooms of the Commonwealth pool and parking my car in a semi-hidden area. I would make any excuse I could get my hands on to skip practice. I can remember several instances where I would lock my door and not even allow my parents to come pull me from my bed at 4:45 a.m. (this was before I had my own car + my N).

It's funny, once the responsibility shifted my direction (i.e. I got a car and my license), I missed more workouts. Surprise? Not really.

This is where the most interesting part comes in. Did I want to succeed in that sport? Did I have the drive needed to push myself to my true potential as an athlete? The answer to both is a resounding NO. I got excited when I would have a breakthrough in workout, but I would still dread going to the next workout. DREAD. As I've wrote about before, I also couldn't transfer that success in training over to ANY races (with very few exceptions). What was I training for then?

Now, it's completely different. I'm loving training. LOVING it. Even on those workouts where I'm feeling like crying, tearing my hair out, projectile vomiting etc., I still finish and I don't dread the next workout. Quite the transformation I'd say.

Swimming was a different story though. I still dreaded it to a certain extent. At the beginning of my being coached by Noa she would make jokes about making me swim 5x per week, and I would cringe. Since about 2 weeks ago though, I feel like I have my stride back and I look forward to every workout.

Oh, and good timing too! 1500m TT next Friday so I can make the World Cup swim standard. If you're wondering why I'm doing this, well, you can ask me personally.


Loving the pain on Mt. Lemmon during the February Tucson Training Camp

On yet another note, I would just like to say how much of a privilege it is to have such an amazing group of guys to train with. I am so excited for this season for ALL OF US, because we have all worked SO hard and pushed eachother to new levels in training. Our group dynamic keeps getting better and better, and training with these friends is quickly becoming one of my favorite things to do. Even on the aforementioned throwing up/crying workouts.

Ok, no more giant delays between blog posts.
No excuses :)
Derek