Tour Love

I’m in one of those head spaces right now where I can’t seem to put the thoughts that are in my head into a succinct flowing blog post and as such, figured a nice numbered list might be the way to go. No need to flow one thought into the next right? Bullet points for the win!

1)  Last week it was made official at work that we will close the office at 1pm on Fridays for the duration of the summer. It is awesome and makes the weekend feel slightly longer (which I guess, technically, it is).

Thankfully, last Friday (the first day of our official early departure), I had gotten my workout out of the way before work and so had the afternoon free to do whatever I pleased. Shane met me for lunch, and we proceeded to consume burgers (veggie for me) and beer. I don’t typically drink a lot, but for some reason I was sure craving a beer that day (and a couple other times throughout the weekend too ~ mmmmm summer wheat beer). This unusual beer craving made me wonder what I was lacking in my diet? (Other than barley and hops that is).

2)  It’s Tour season!

I love watching le Tour de France. Love it. In fact, Shane and I love it so much we recently changed our cable provider in order to get a PVR, pretty much just so we can PVR the tour and watch it whenever we please… and let me just say, it was so worth it!

My days now look like this: wake up, train, eat, work, train, eat, TOUR, bed. Repeat.

GO RYDER GO!

3)  Last weekend was a pretty big volume weekend on the training front. I won’t bore you with the details of ‘Sufferfest’ but can say that, for the most part, it went quite well and left me feeling mostly confident and pleased with where my training is at right now.

The most exciting thing was that Monday was a complete rest day. With the Canada Day stat and a day off from training, our schedule was wide open. No Work and No Training! Say what? A full day off-off rarely happens and so when it does, man does it feel magical. We spent the day doing one of three things: eating, lying on the couch (watching the Tour of course) or napping.

The one downfall to all this rest however, was that it made it very hard to sleep on Monday night.

4)  I’ve been dealing with a bit of an ankle issue for the past couple weeks. Actually, I have kinda been dealing with it since the end of April, but was able to manage it on my own with some ice, self-massage/stretching and good dose of denial.

Unfortunately, at the end of the Victoria Half IM, I could not ignore it any more, as my ankle pretty much seized up as I crossed the finish line and made it difficult to walk for a few days post-race.

I had a massage scheduled for two days after the race and my wonderful RMT Lysanne was able to give the ol’ ankle a good adjustment and get it moving again (it seems that my ankle is very loose and that my talus bone tends to slip/rotate out of place ~ thankfully it is just a joint issue and there aren’t any tears or fractures or anything like that).

While the adjustment helped immensely with my ability to walk, unfortunately, the pain didn’t go away and eventually it even starting moving up my leg and into the back of my knee. At that point, I realized I needed to deal with the issue once and for all and have since been seeing a great new physio (Andrew) who is helping to put me back together.

I’m on a strict stretching schedule [I’m sure my co-workers think I’m nuts when once every hour I get up from my desk and do the same 4 stretches], have been getting regular adjustments and even experienced my first taste of acupuncture the other day.

I think things are progressing well and even though there is still a bit of pain, it is definitely lessening. I’m able to do most of my workouts without having to really adjust much, so I think that is a win.

5)  This coming weekend’s training schedule includes a 160km bike. Shane is racing on Sunday and Kirsten is otherwise involved, so I will be going it alone.

160km solo. Gulp.

For some strange reason, I’m feeling a little nervous about being out there all on my lonesome for so long, but also know it will be a very good way to work on some mental training. So, I suppose, while nervous, I am also kind of looking forward to it.


And wow, I think that might actually be it.

Happy Belated Canada Day to all my friends and family up here in the frozen North!
Happy 4th to our neighbours down south!
And of course, Happy [almost] Weekend!

Good luck to anyone racing this weekend! I’ll be thinking of you as I pedal my way to 160k.