The South Wind and the Sun

Week 7: April 20-26

Run: 45 km
Bike: 209 km
Swim: 1500 m

Biking in the wind is the most depressing and most exhilarating thing in the world. Since Thursday Whitehorse has been swept up in a raging south wind. On Thursday I took an easy ride into the wind and then rode as hard as I could back into Whitehorse. The slow grind into the wind was well worth spinning at 100 RPM in my highest gear and hitting speeds of 45 km/h on the flats. I fooled myself into thinking that I would have an equally fabulous time doing the same thing on Saturday. This time I took out my new triathlon bike thinking that I'd get even faster speeds. Unfortunately, my poor Contessa von Awesome (my triathlon bike) was getting thrown all over the road and every time I tried to use the tri bars, I was worried I'd get creamed by an oncoming semi truck. I learned a bit of a lesson, and on Sunday Tony and I rode to the Marsh Lake Dam (30 km south), then turned around and rode to Bean North for a coffee (70 km north). I probably compromised the training integrity of the ride, but who cares...riding with a tailwind is awesome.

The camera is en route, so the blog should be slightly more interesting soon.

Sierra posted this on Apr 28, 2008 from the gym | | permanent link

My bike lost 5 pounds...why can't I?

Week 6: April 6-12

Bike: 132 km
Run: 17 km
Swim: 2750 m

Week 7: April 13-19

Bike: 75 km
Run: 26 km
Swim: 3000 m

The bike renovations of my mountain bike were completed this week with two new wheels. More important then the improvement in looks, my bicycle also lost 5 pounds. I have to say, this is the easiest 5 pounds I've ever lost - it required no dieting and no exercise. I used to mock the people who paid $500 for carbon fiber cranksets, I used to preach that if I wanted to lose 500 grams off my bike I'd stop eating chocolate truffles everyday. Consider me converted - I am on the bandwagon! Screw dieting (or even eating responsibility), bring on the carbon fiber bottle cages, helmets and bike bells. For approximately $200/pound I can shed weight faster than ever. I figure as long as my loving husband continues to foot the bills, I'll end up with the lightest bikes in the Yukon. Unfortunately, nothing to date suggests that I will be any faster on said bikes, but that's a small detail at this point.

Last week the bike riding was interrupted when Spring was rudely interrupted by a dumping of fresh snow. I was not the only Whitehorse resident that was unimpressed by the return of winter, many other people saw fit to voice their concerns by crashing their vehicles. I just pouted and temporarily retired the road bicycle. The only thing convincing me that Spring was still on its way was the garbage bags full of dog hair that were spontaneously falling from Strabuck's body. Thankfully Starbuck's shedding was right and by Sunday the snow was gone and the highway was ready to ride again.

The blog will be temporarily photo free thanks to an unfortunate incident with a camera and cement floor...damn that gravity.

Sierra posted this on Apr 21, 2008 from the gym | | permanent link

Pimp My Ride

Week 5: March 30 - April 5

Run: 12 km
Bike: 32 km on trails and 2 hours on the trainer
Swim: 3800 m

Tallying up the weekly numbers can be depressing, especially when you've only run 6 km (woohoo further investigation shows it was actually 12 km). I suppose I had a bit of bike love, thanks to the arrival of our newest bike addition and the pimping out of my old mountain bike. Thanks to Tony's overactive bike shopping habit, I came back from Denver to a pile of pink bike parts. In one week my bike dropped some serious weight and was blinged out. The seat post and handlebars were swapped out and a new Chris King headset was added in. Extra pink was added with a new chainguard and handlebar holder (which I realize has a more technical name).

While this has made riding the snowy Whitehorse trails a lot easier, it has also meant the end of riding Frederika the Wonderbike to work. The transition has been made easier by the re-introduction of Princess into the regular bike line-up. Princess is my big cruiser and the most fabulous bike in the world to ride around town.

I was going to blog about my little tomato plants that are happily growing in the guest room, but unfortunately the picture of said plants has been lost in memory card land.

Sierra posted this on Apr 07, 2008 from the gym | | permanent link