Setback

So last week I got the rough news that I have mononucleosis, aka mono.  Doctor's orders to take a month off training was a tough pill to swallow.  Thankfully, a setback is a set-up for a comeback.

It all started with a tough week of training up at Kajsa's cabin at Osprey Lake, where I was feeling unusually bagged in the dying days.  Initially I thought it was from my first 2 days of training in the heat this summer, the 2nd day of which I became dehydrated during a 3 hr ride, leaving me with persisting symptoms into the next day.  I figured the ill effects from this perhaps manifested itself into lingering fatigue 2 days after.  I still managed a great rollerski intensity session at Seymour Demo Forest in Van after a day off, but cooling down after the workout was a complete carcass drag.  The tiredness of the carcass drag cool-down remained with me for a whole week of easy training, some days of which I would hit a fever post-workout.  I knew something was off and matters were made worse by a sore tummy that would hurt whenever I breathed in while training.

Being tired is a normal feeling after hard training, and it sometimes even lasts a full week after a hard block.  However, occasional fever and constant abdominal pain while training?  Time for a visit to the doctor.

I was tentatively diagnosed with a strained diaphragm, and told to do nothing to exacerbate the discomfort.  We decided to do routine blood work just to rule out anything serious, and I peed in a cup to rule out kidney dysfunction.  That afternoon I got a call back from my doctor saying that I had mono and that's why my tummy was hurting.  My spleen was engorged with blood and inflamed from combatting the virus.

Luckily a return to exercise is a month after symptoms begin, and so I figured I was 10 days in already.  This reduced my time off to 3 weeks.

So what have I been doing with my spare time so far, you ask?  Mainly a ton of reading, but also some school on the side (after finishing the first half of the course in 3 weeks back in April, I took a 3.5 month break before my 3 week push to finish the 2nd half of the microeconomics course).

Books I have been reading since my diagnosis 5 days ago:

- "The Vertical Farm" - by Dickson Despommier (finished it)
- "Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures" - by Vincent Lam (finished it - great read about the medical profession)
- "Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil" - by Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl
- "The Rational Optimist" - by Matt Ridley
- "Anges et Démons" - Dan Brown (practicing my french)
- "Ape House" - Sara Gruen

I usually diversify my reading between 3-5 books at a time so as to not become bored of a single one.  However, "Bloodletting" was a riot and I read it almost all at once.

Recent reading I have been doing on the net includes an article on the Central Governor Model of exercise (brings into question training theory applied by virtually all sports in Canada), and an article outlining the woes of dietary cereal grains (I figure that now that I am not training, I can't be cheating on my diet so as to avoid weight gain for my impending comeback).

I guess other stuff I have been up to can be summed up in pictures.

Talk about weight gain - the other day we picked about 20 lbs of raspberries in Abbotsford (the 20 lbs doesn't include the 5 lbs we ate while out in the field).  Luckily Kajsa's family took most of them home with them. 

My first ever u-pick excursion down at North Arm Farm at the end of July. (Abbotsford berries proved to be way bigger)

My birthday dinner up at Osprey Lake.  Smoked baby back ribs with seasoning purchased from the Canadian National BBQ Championships that were held in Whistler. 

The Hollyburn crew at their Osprey Lake camp.  I helped out as technique model. 

While up at Osprey Lake for my birthday week, we made a day trip foray across the border to raid cheap US stores and a straight-from-Jalisco taco stand.  

Scenery along my 90km road ride towards the states along the Similkameen River.  Old Hedley Road is one of the most fantastic road rides of my life.  Unfortunately, the body was a bit out of whack that day and it could even have been the first day of mono.  

The Academy (ski team from Canmore) just rolled into Whistler recently and was shown to the local swimming hole of Logger's Lake, rope swings and all.  A true gem of a local haunt. 

With my current time off, I got to take in a day at the Squamish Live music festival, where I saw one of my fave musicians, John Butler.  He was incredible, especially his rendition of his 12-string instrumental "Ocean".  Check it out if you haven't heard it.  

Also, a few days ago I did the Slow Food Cycle down in Pemberton, where 5,000 riders biked from farm to farm tasting all sorts of goodies that the Pemberton valley has to offer.  

Posing next to a cabin up in the hills above Princeton in the heart of redneck country.  I am in fact NWT bound in a few days to spend some of my mono recovery in Yellowknife.  

Speaking of Yellowknife, I recently came across this video on facebook, made by a few Yellowknife kids.  It's shot on the East Arm of Great Slave Lake, probably my favourite place in the world.  A place where the landscape, and the fish, are larger than life.  I used to spend 6-10 days there every summer with my family, but haven't been in a few years.  One of the many reasons why I love Yellowknife!

Anyways, hope you didn't mind this extra circuitous collection of musings.  I am sick, after all, and so have an excuse.

Check back soon for an update on things in YK.  

T

The Return of One Fit Man: the Hermit Edition

With the exception of a short 3-day vacation to Kajsa's cabin and a relatively painless laser eye surgery operation, I have had my feet firmly planted in Whistler for the last month and a half, getting work done.  

95% of training sessions are completed straight out my front door, avoiding time wasted driving (not to mention gas burned), and ensuring rapid recovery upon finishing each session, with food and a shower within 15 minutes of completion.  The training options from my front step are exceptional and varied enough to avoid boredom.  

Having trained like this consistently for this chunk of time, the changes in fitness are becoming apparent.  I have made big gains in the weight room (notably, I can now deadlift twice my own bodyweight a few times), to my running (practicing running technique and range of motion downhill is paying dividends), to my cycling (attributable to long hours throughout June along with 2 hard Toonie race efforts), and to my respiratory system fitness (swimming and by practicing breathing large volumes (5L) on spirotiger).  

It seems that the current approach to training is working and getting me into a good position for the rest of the summer!  The goal is to continue this approach until I stop improving, then to switch it up.  It's encouraging, because right now is one of those obvious moments where I know I am in the best shape that I have ever been in. 

 Embarking on a "full hand" day of training (5 hours) with LT, summiting peak 2 and 3 of the Squamish Chief first thing in the morning as part of the extended LT training camp where I was pushed to my limit in both cycling prowess and training volume.  

"Camp LT" was followed by a relaxing visit to the Heyes' cabin at Osprey Lake, but the training did not diminish despite a day of wine tasting in the Okanagan and a Salsa party one evening.  Kajsa's brother, Zayne, and I completed a 5 hour mountain bike ride in the surrounding hills on quad trails, and I made a point to train twice per day regardless of whether or not I was playing tourist at Okanagan wineries. 

 Wine tasting at the fruit orchard winery Elephant Island.  

Kitsilano pool in Vancouver, in which I enjoy the odd swim from time to time.  My swimming ability is improving even though I swim way less than I did 2 years ago, when I first started.  I completed 4 km earlier this week!

 Da bears are out in full-force, especially along the Callaghan Valley road.  Silently gliding by on a road bike is a great way to site see.  Another great way to site see is to venture solo onto un-tamed single track and startle a bear cub up the tree in front of you, not knowing where mama is (happened to me a few weeks ago - not recommended).  

 Whistler is beautiful this time of year.  When it is sunny and warm that is.  The season is late this year and you hear more than a few complaints about how cold and gloomy things are.  Makes for good training though as there is no intense sun to drain precious energy.  

Swimming at Adventures West private beach after an evening run with Antoine.  If I were ever to buy a small place to live in Whistler, it'd be here.  

Below is a short video of me training with my new training partner, Burton, banging out some steep ski bounding intervals. 

Thanks for checking in!

Thomsen

Callaghan Country Lodge on-snow camp with quick video

Here's a quick vid I pieced together from short clips I took recently while staying up in the mountains at 1400m at the Callaghan Lodge for a week of phenomenal training on the 8 km loop they maintained for us.  I banged out a fairly big week of 23 hours, almost all of which was skiing.  It was pretty easy to train up there with the skiing out your front door and awesome leisure activities close at hand as well, including sauna, pool table and ping pong.  And talk about a lot of snow!  Still 4 meters of base at the end of May!



On another note, mid-week while up at Callaghan Lodge I snuck down to Whistler to see The Wealthy Barber speak in the Village.  Having been introduced to his book a few years ago, he got me interested in personal finance and saving, triggering a change of direction in my education - I am now studying Finance part-time through correspondence studies with Athabasca University (not super-seriously though).

The Wealthy Barber (David Chilton) dazzled an audience of 500 with his priceless anecdotes of writing the book while only 25 years old, and with his urgings for Canadians to save more money and to watch their debt.  The dude didn't miss a beat for 2 hours!  What a champ.  And what a privilege - I would highly recommend seeing him speak if given the opportunity.

Yellowknife Visit

While back in Yellowknife I also had the opportunity to make it out on Spring Hunt with my dad and his hunting buddy, Francis.  Being aboriginal, we have the opportunity to hunt geese in the spring time.

Kajsa retrieving a goose from the marsh.  With the marsh frozen right to the bottom, melt water had pooled on top of the ice along the section we hunted. 

The Old Man playing the waiting game.  The tranquility would be regularly interrupted by trying to call in geese, followed by rigid stillness with only our eyes following the birds as they came in towards the decoys, ending finally with the excitement of an intense shooting bout. 

An attempt to broaden my culinary horizons by eating soft-boiled half-formed goose eggs.  They were pure orangey yolk, covered by a tough, veiny membrane.  The pungent cousin of the household chicken egg wasn't completely appetizing, even though my yellow lab seemed to think so.

Out at the Yellowknife Sap Suckers' open house out in the forest on a beautiful northern spring day (sunny and 20 degrees and no mosquitos!).  The birch syrup operation had sampling of the sweet soy-sauce-like concoction accompanied by northern cranberry pancakes.  Visitors could also guzzle birch sap tea (warm birch sap) from one of the large boiling vats.  

A day where we had scheduled to ski out to Bechoko (115km Northwest of YK).  Even though the wind and ice surface ensured easy 20km/h averages, the unknown ice conditions at the North Arm and the promise of a great day of paddling on the Yellowknife River with friends convinced me to hold off for the time being.  

A picturesque evening on the ice at Prelude Lake out at the Tumchewics' cabin around the time of John Tumchewics' routine cabin birthday party.  Kajsa and I had a great dinner and visit with Alicia and Rob even though the evening out at the cabin lacked it's characteristic borderline-overboard ebullience without John, a great friend whose untimely passing last summer has left many missing him within the community. 

From Easter weekend...

Last Racing of the Season

I know, this update is way long overdue.  Mostly a result of an activity filled vacation period and then with hacking away at school work for a few weeks (I take correspondence classes through AthabascaU).  I have had some other high priorities lately.  I figure it's good to have balance in life like that from time to time.  Cramming for school and what not.

Canmore marked the last trip of a long season of racing and training.  It was my first season where I was grasping at fading fitness and needed a true rest at the end.  Call it wrong training at the wrong time, or just general burn-out, there were a few mistakes made leading into the last month of racing.

Returning from Canada Games, I was in need of some rest and easy training.  Instead, I felt not-bad in training for a couple of days, and so I decided to just bang out the rest of the season's racing, ignore some signs from my body and hope for the best.  Unfortunately I didn't quite get the best in the end, but I did get the chance to improve my race experience.

I ended up racing at Sharkfest the weekend before Nationals and then did every individual race at the National Championships themselves.  It was a great time to be spending such a prolonged period of time in Canmore as it was the best snow I have seen in the ten years that I have been racing there.

Out skiing on the meandering rec trails at the Canmore Nordic Centre.  Trails that barely receive a dusting of snow in some years. 

 Stoked to be racing at the beautiful Canmore Nordic Centre, Canada's hotbed for cross country skiing, and where our National Team is based out of.  This Nationals marked the biggest ever for the sport in Canada.  

 I skied a strong and well-paced 15 km classic race at Nationals (unlike my loose cannon of a 10km skate), in warming/deteriorating conditions.  However, the field was blown away by some of the late starters who had special last minute wax alterations. 

 The classic stride-and-glide.  I feel I made a marked improvement in my classic striding this year with a few minor adjustments made. 

Bad luck befell (no pun intended. seriously. I just saw this. hahaha) my Nationals sprint day yet again this year.  Last year it was my ski falling off on a downhill corner in my quarter-final.  This year it was a dude falling into my lane 20 meters in.  

After I was taken down, I fought as valiantly as I could to catch back up but it was too little too late.  I felt great in my audacious pursuit of the field, it was just too bad I couldn't use all that energy head to head with others in a normal race setting.  I did however manage to nip 329 at the line.   

 Nationals racing was capped off with the famed 50 km mass start race.  As my first 50 km skate, it was a telling experience.  Being more worried about physically covering 50 km under my own power, let alone racing and competing in an event of that extent at altitude on a hard course, I suffered an uncomfortable demise brought on by my pre-race bonk mitigating efforts (read: gorging myself) coupled with my energy conservation strategy (skiing the 5 minutes up to the start instead of a warm-up).  Naturally, stinging cramps subdued my dreams of pack-drafting racing into a long, lonely, solo effort of a Sunday ski in no man's land.  For next time, I think I will try a regular warm-up and a modest-sized breakfast (so basically, I will approach it like any other race as opposed to cringing in intimidation at the daunting task ahead).

The 2011 National Championships was capped off by the banquet.  Heck, there's no way I can call that thing a banquet.  More like Nationals was capped off by an extravagant evening gala at the acclaimed Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, laughing and reminiscing over a bottle of champ of days gone by with old buddies and new buddies alike, all of us dressed to the nines.  Of exploration in the hotel's vault-like passageways and chambers, seeking out and soaking in the rich historical rendition of the resort, much like the railway tycoons of yore would soak their golf-wearied legs in the thermal springs of the region.  Descriptions of a night of indulgence aside (everything I just said is true, minus the champagne part.  I drank beer instead), I had a ball.  It's quite amazing the network of friends I have made in this sport.  Friends right across the country, from coast to coast to coast.

Very soon we have some exciting new developments to start out the new training season, so stay tuned!

Until next time.

I've met many a fine Haligonian in my travels.

I have just returned from my first visit to Nova Scotia, where I participated in the 2011 Canada Winter Games in Halifax.  Before this tale unfolds, I feel I should mention the lead up to the Games and a race weekend where I had my best overall performance to date in my career.  Here is a quick recap of the Western Canadian Championships races that I sent to sponsors:

Day 1, Skate Sprint:  This was my main focus for the Championships, but due to some heavy training earlier in the week in addition to a hectic car ride the day before the race, my performance was off and I had to settle for 10th overall, and 4th U-23.  Despite how tired I was, I had a good semi-final and nearly qualified for the A-Final (top-6).  With 2 distance race days ahead in the cumulative mini-tour, I figured it would be tough to stay in the running after a 10th place the very first day in a race that is normally my strength. 

Westerns sprint action.  Photo cred: Lucas Jungmann

Day 2, 3.5km Classic Prologue:  An interesting distance that I haven't raced for 9 years, it was a bit of an unknown in terms of race strategy and result expectations.  I felt good out there and ended up surprising myself with a 6th place finish!  And only 17 seconds out of the win!  3 of the skiers who finished ahead of me were on the Canadian Olympic team in 2010.

Classic Prologue.  I told Pate I was going to ski it "like I hope to someday ski a distance race".  Seemed to have worked alright.  

Day 3, 15km Skate Pursuit start:  With a surprise result in the prologue, and with a few bonus seconds from a decent finish on the sprint day, I would be starting 7th, 49 seconds back, in the first-across-the-finish-line race.  Before this year, this race has been far from being an okay race format for me.  But yet again, I upped my season's best performance from the day before with my best ever true "distance" race result, maintaining my 7th place start bib, but in the process also passing all of the U-23 athletes who started ahead of me.  I became Western Canada's U-23 Champ!!!  I was ecstatic.  And still am.

Now back to my trip out to Halifax...

In possibly the best welcome/first impression to a new town, I stepped off my bus from the airport on a Saturday night in downtown Halifax amid a bustling crowd of 15,000 raving beneath skyscrapers and  sweeping spotlights to a rousing performance by Great Big Sea.  Is Halifax always this awesome!? Over the course of my Games experience, I found that the answer to this question is an unequivocal "aye".

A huge highlight of my trip to Halifax was our tour of the Alexander Keith's brewery on the final day of the Games.  We traveled back in time to the 1800s to experience some of Nova Scotia's finest ales.

After not quite enough rest after my good performances at Westerns, I perhaps made a bit of a mistake in training through fatigue resulting in a sore throat the week leading up to Canada Games.  After drastically cutting back training hours, my body was feeling good but the sore throat remained.

Leading into the first race of the Games, the 10km skate, I was concerned.  Morning of, however, the throat wasn't bad and I was ready to give racing a shot.  The race ended up going great.  I went for it off the start, hoping everything would hold together.  My hard start proved too tough to maintain, resulting in my 2nd 5km lap being 1 minute slower than my first.  But this was still good enough for 7th!  I was pretty stoked with the result and was optimistic for the other races.

The sprint day was my main focus of the Games and my main realistic shot to fight for a medal for team Northwest Territories.  Disappointingly, the body just wasn't there on the day to produce a top result.  Racing the 10km the day before and not being 100% healthy ended up being more detriment than help in its attempt to fire me up to sprint fast.  I slogged through the sugar snow to finish a distant 9th.

 Qualifying on sprint day. Photo cred: Lisa Patterson

 Qualifying on sprint day.  Photo cred: Lisa Patterson

After a valiant inside corner move in my B-final. Photo cred: John Sims

The final 2 races, the 15 km classic and the relay, ended up playing out much like my sprint.  My body just wasn't firing as normal and I wasn't able to pin down a good performance.  Some good rest and easy training is in order to recalibrate the 'bod before my season's final races as it is evidently a little out of whack at the moment.

Lots more racing to go this year, so stay tuned!

NWT Ski Team.  Good times with a group of swell Northerners.  Some of whom on the coaching staff were racers back in my early days in the Yellowknife program!  

Out for a run upon arrival in Van.