A Mouthful of Bugs & New Determination

What a totally unbelievably cool experience. So I touched on
it in my last post, but I spent the weekend at the 2013 CrossFit Canada East
Regionals. Competing here were the top 48 men, 48 women and 32 teams that
completed the Open WODS 13.1 to 13.5. These were the best CrossFitters in this
half of Canada and they were amazing. Working until they had nothing left for a
chance to get to the Games in California. Blood (lots), sweat (even more) but
no tears. You get a chance to see what it takes to get here and what it takes
to get to the Games. Wow.

Training starts now for 14.1…

With that in mind and only 1 run under my belt in the last 6
days, I was very scared to see how my body would react to my first CrossFit
class in almost a week and a bit.  So
nervous in fact that I ended up cancelling. WHAT??? Before you freak, there was
a good reason, @Keilshammer strolled past my desk and brought an interesting
proposal. “Wanna do a 50K ride down to the spit tonight?” The obvious answer is
“Yes I DO!”

With the Ride for Heart only a 6 days away, getting a nice
training ride in would be a big bonus, plus I would get to see the route from
Lawrence and Yonge down to the DVP trails. We headed off and stuck to the side
streets until we could get into Sunnybrooke and from there it was mostly smooth
sailing.  The path is well kept in most
places, but could use a refresh in a couple of spots.  With race wheels on, I took a bit of a
pounding, but it was worth it. Well it was worth it except for the roughly
8,000,000,003 bugs that decided to hold meetings every 20 yards. Nothing like
tiny and green hitting you in the face at 30KM per hour.

Our ride ended up being 42.5KM (the spit is closed to people
except on weekends and it was getting dark by the time we got down there) and
it took 1h57m22s round trip.  That
includes the off road section where we had to heave the bikes over our
shoulders and climb up/slide down embankments because a bridge was under
repair. Try doing that in road shoes. Average speed was 21.9KPH and I maxed at
42KPH (although @Keilshammer and his new bike Stella are wicked quick). 132 BPM
average with a max of 169BPM.

This will be my last day in the saddle before the Ride and I’m
pretty happy with the result.  CrossFit
has been paying off because I was able to power through some big climbs that I’m
sure would have caused me problems before and I barely was breathing hard.  It will be interesting to see what happens on
Wednesday when Jillian gets a hold of me after all this time off.

2 housekeeping notes before I finish tonight.  1st, I’m going to change my format a bit
again and go back to 1 post a day.  It
was getting a bit hectic doing one after every workout/run/spin. 2nd and way more important, if you haven’t sponsored anyone for the Ride for Heart
yet and would like to make a donation, please click the Ride for Heart widget
on the top right of the blog main page. 
If you’ve already donated, THANK YOU for your support and I will make
you proud on Sunday.

Beez

Related posts