2012

So over the last few days, i have been working on the plan of attack for the new year. I think i am ready to get faster and faster. This is the first time i have ever sat down to work out a annual training plan and i have come to realise that my training has been fairly lacking. Consistency is my big issue with not enough consistent hard work to build up my fitness.

Since April of 2011 when i first decided to start up my fitness again after having Hernia Surgery in December 2010, i have recorded approximately 1600-1800 kilometres running, walking and cycling which works out to be around 130 hours of training time. This is just a rough estimate as i switched tracking programs and do not have an exact record. This is definitely a good start and a good building block for the new year.

For this year, i figured that with discipline and hard work, i could get close to 400 hours. I won't be disappointed if i don't hit my target because i know this is a fair amount of work each week to get my goal but i think its a target thats well within reach if i put my head down.
I have also set myself some other goals this year which are,

• Average 30 km/h over a 40km distance by the end of year
• To Complete a Century (160 km, 6-7 hours)
• To cover 5000 km in the year (100 km a week)

Snow Shoe

It's that time of the year again and the snow has fallen up at Apex. Currently the snow base is 105cm and it apparently grew over night with 9cm of new snow.



Yesterday, Bridget and I went for a snow shoe near Nickelplate Lake where we took the Snowflake Loop for a quick 1 hour hike. Overall i think we were well prepared for the hike with the only thing being that we were well over dressed with both us finding it pretty warm in our winter jackets. The only other thing we might do is add some survival equipment to our backpack, things such as matches and spare socks, things that would get us out of a sticky situation, if something ever did go wrong.

Have i also mentioned that i Love my Garmin Edge 500? Since i got it from my wonderful lovely girlfriend, Bridget, i have been using it nearly everyday to track my exercising. When it comes to workouts, i love details, things such as average speed, how far i've gone, how fast i'm going, how high i have climbed, how low i've descended and altitude. The Garmin edge yesterday told me that i was high. 6164 feet high to be exact. Twitter Photo Here you can see the Garmin Connect information for the hike. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/136637945

Here is a picture of our new snow shoes that will hopefully give us many hours of fun hiking about and exploring new areas. 

Weather this Christmas Eve

Bike Schedule

Strava Week

2012 Cycling Events

Currently i am working on building a list of 2012 cycling events for the Penticton Area (within 2 hour drive). There are a few events that i am interested in competing in, so over the next few weeks i will start to plan my season accordingly to best prepare myself for them.
You can see the list here http://bit.ly/tTAtX8 and there is also a link to download the PDF version which i also created.

Los Angeles

Got an awesome Christmas present from the Girlfriend
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/134592152
Check out where we drove Yesterday

2012 Races

So looking at the running races of 2012 and i have found 10 that interest me. I feel that i could target 4 or 5 of these depending on how my fitness is going and if it is going even better then expected, there might be a triathlon or two that i might race.

1 Jan
Polar Bear Run 2k & 5K, Polar Bear Swim, Peachland

12 Feb
Freeze Up 5K, Peachland

04 Mar
IRA #2 – TIMEX #6 LAKESIDE 5K - Penticton

15 Apr
IRA #5 – WINE CAPITAL 10 K – Oliver

22 Apr
Spring 10K & Half Marathon – Peachland

13 May
IRA #6 – BLOSSOM 10 MILER - Penticton

20 May
Peach City Half Marathon & 10K - Penticton

03 Jun
Giants Head Run 5.4k, 10k, Summerland

01 Jul
Canada Day Beach Run 5 & 10 K - Peachland

09 Oct
Okanagan International Marathon - Kelowna

http://www.interiorrunning.ca/Other/2012_events.pdf

Training

So starting to look at my training lately and it has been improving. I've been getting out and running a bit more consistently. The Photo below shows my last 4 weeks where i have covered 84 kms with most of that being running. I did put in one big bike ride with 13 other total workouts. A total of 8 hours doesn't seem much but my runs have been around 20-30 minutes.

Looking at my stats there is plenty room for improvement as i think i could get my 4 week hourly total up to 20-30 hours averaging 1 hour a night, 5 nights a week. My big thing is, i need to take the indoor trainer seriously and do some intervals. I will work my way up to 20 x 3 at 80% of MHR.

Sports Action

So lately i have been doing a bit of light gambling which is a lot of fun trying to predict winners. I have been playing Sports Action Oddset by the BC Lottery in which you have to choose the winner of at least two different games (maximum of 6 games) where the odds are multiplied to give you the odds for the combined games you choose. So far i haven't had too much luck, with Hockey being the hardest to pick the winners as there are so many different things that make a Hockey team a winner.

Today was my first day of picking winners of the NFL and i accidently picked the New York Giants to beat the undefeated Green Bay Packers. I also have Baltimore for the win over Cleveland. My odds are 6:1 and i have a $3 bet on. Hopefully i come out a winner. I'll let you know how it goes.