My adventures in Parry Sound!

This post is a little overdue but I just got a little busy and a little lazy to sit down and write it. 

Last week I had a fantastic week of training!  I went up north to Parry Sound for my last big training week before my taper.  My previous post I wrote about my long 30km run from Parry Sound to Snug Harbour which is close to Killbear.  Then on Thursday morning, I headed out with David and some other Nacho triathletes (NachoAverageTriathlon is the tri club in Parry Sound) for a morning swim in Georgian Bay.  We swam about 2km and it was a great swim.  The water is soooo nice there!  Later that day I then went out for a 90km ride and Marianne joined me for part of it.  It was quite windy which made it tough at times.  Not quite as strong as the Kona winds but still strong enough that I had to fight to keep my line.  After my ride, I got back to the house, ate some food, showered, and then decided to take a shot at the weekly time trial the club hosts every week.  The time trial is a 16.3km bike and a 3km run....not too bad unless you decide to run 30km the day before and ride 90km that day...haha!  I did not go as hard as I could have but it hurt nonetheless.  I did this time trial earlier in the year and went faster back then.  I still managed to average over 30km/hr on the bike though on a very windy day with a good head wind on the return trip.  I was much slower on the run this time around.  In May, I believe I averaged 4:55min/km, on this day I managed 5:10min/km.  This girl was tired!  I went back to the house and was welcomed to some yummy chocolate chip and PB cookies!  Mmmmmm!!!!! 

Thankfully Friday was a light day and I did an easy ~37km ride and had some great company with Lynsey for this ride although it was a bit on the chilly side when we went out.  We had plans of going swimming later during the day but we never did get around to it.  The winds were strong and made the water pretty choppy.  Instead, Morgan and I went out on mountain bikes to jump off the salt docks and then rode up Tower Hill to get a pretty nice view of Parry Sound!  Fun times!

View of Downtown Parry Sound from Tower Hill

Now Saturday meant business.  This was going to be my longest training day.  The plan was to swim 3km, bike 110km, and run 25km.  We woke up nice and early and it was COLD!  Where did summer go all of a sudden?  The outside temp was just about 5C...what?!?!  I had to borrow some extra layers to go out that morning and we even put on our wetsuits halfway to keep our legs warm.  Luckily the water was actually pretty warm and it was a great swim.  We swam for about 56min and then headed back to the house for a yummy breakfast of poached eggs, toast, blueberry pancake and I ate a Clif bar for extra calories.  Then off for my ride.  Morgan joined me for part of it and it went well.  I rode 110km and got introduced to Shoebottom hill which was a bit harder than I expected.  A good ride though!  Got back to the house for a quick change and I was out for the run.  Marianne ran the whole way with me which was just awesome!  I didn't have to think of where to go and just followed her.  We ran on roads, trails, and in a provincial park where I got to refill my one little fuelbelt bottle I was carrying in my hand.  We were slowly ticking off the km and held on to my goal pace of 6:30min/km and averaged 6:32min/km for the whole run.  I ate 4 Gu Chomps, 2 Edisks, and drank 4 fuelbelt bottles with water during the run.  This was with some quicker km at the beginning and some much slower ones near the end.  But boy was this another hilly run...some good IMC training!  Woohoo!  I did it!!!  Thanks to Marianne and Morgan for keeping me company and helping me push along the way!  We ate a yummy lasagna dinner when we were done and had some more yummy baked treats, this time muffins filled with berries and nuts!

Sunday was my last long ride before IMC!  I had the brilliant plan of riding from Parry Sound to Barrie since Marianne had to take her youngest to Barrie for a race.  So she took all of my stuff since I was going to get a ride home from Barrie.  Morgan decided she wanted to take on this adventure with me which was great!  I had written up directions from Google maps, the walking version of it to avoid the 400, and I had another new toy, the Garmin 705 for a GPS and map.  Unfortunately, the 705 was giving me a route that was over 300km so I couldn't use it as I didn't know how to upload a route onto it.  We went out around 7am for the 160km route to Barrie.  The ride started off great onto some beautiful rolling hills.  However, about an hour or so into our ride it began to rain.  And at times it poured.  But Morgan and I kept our spirits up and I had fun.  Unfortunately, the directions took us to Hwy 11 which I thought was going to be ok...not so much!  It was pretty sketchy and scary to be on that road that I ended up taking the next exit into Washago.  We went into a bakery/ice cream parlour for directions and to buy some water.  Luckily, a local overheard our questions and found us a back route to Barrie.  Sweet!!!  So much better than riding on 11, pheww!  But the rain kept coming down.  We had to stop again in Orillia to confirm our directions.  I have to admit, a few times I was unsure whether we were going the right direction and whether we were going to make it to Barrie.  I did not want the ride to be that much more than 160km as well.  We soldiered on in the rain and the hills and made it!   Yay!!!  Morgan was awesome and pushed me along the way!  Thanks for the ride!  Took us a total of 165km and just under 6.5hrs with stops. 

I'm done!  Now...TAPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Georgian Bay - view from the Salt Dock where we jumped off from!