I can't believe that it's been a month already since Karl and I packed up the car and headed out west to Canmore. We decided to come out here for the fall to both prepare for the World Cup trials races to be held in December as well as give ourselves a much needed break from the craziness that has surrounded us for the past three years. I finally finished my Master's degree in May so it was time to celebrate a little!
The drive out was pretty uneventful and leisurely except for my bad luck of getting two black eyes! One right before we left while packing the car and one while swimming in Lake Superior three days later! We took 7 days to get to Canmore stopping at my cottage, the Sault, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg and Cypress Hills Provincial Park in Saskatchewan.
Since we have been here, we have gone to the glacier for a training camp (see Karl's article), done lots of training around here and also a lot of relaxing. So far I have been unemployed but that will change this week as I have two days of work lined up. Karl is also working a couple days a week for the sports consignment shop.
As for training, we have done some interesting workouts with various people. Last weekend we did some zone 3 intervals up a hill that went through two subdivisions and lasted 12 minutes! On Thursday I went for an easy rollerski and ended up skiing through a snow storm with huge snowflakes (and freezing my butt off)! Friday we did a duathlon time trial with Foothills Nordic at the Bow Valley Campground. This was interesting and especially challenging since it ended up being almost twice as long as we thought (about 9km per leg instead of 5)! It was a great workout and there were lots of good skiers to race with. Thanks to Robin for organizing that!
Yesterday we went for a hike and "climbed a mountain"�, which is a popular thing to do around here. The one we climbed is Ha Ling Peak and it is the mountain that we can see out our front window. It was a gorgeous day and the views were spectacular! It took about 1:15 to get to the top, then we hiked to a few other peaks (the ones just to the left of Ha Ling on the picture from our house) while up there and headed back down. It was a good strength workout walking downhill for over an hour!
So, that's what we've been up to so far. In about a month we should be skiing!
"OWL Rafting - The Mighty Ottawa River"