The other day I got there a few minutes early like I normally do, and I noticed my trainer shuffling a deck of playing cards at the personal trainer desk area. At first I’m thinking he might have some free time or something been clients. So after my 15 minute warm up on the stair climber. He met up with me afterwards to mention what we were gonna do for that day.

As he explains instead of doing four sets of 15 reps per exercise, I’d be doing whatever number he pulled from the deck of cards so anything from 1-5 was 11-15 reps and 6 to King was 6 to 12 reps though if he pulled a Jack of spades it was the wildcard and it meant I had to do 20 minutes on the stair climber with the increase the speed by 5.

It seems like its gonna be a simple workout, you think as it’s just four things with so many reps etc.. But the non-stop movement between doing crushes and hamstring curls with the exercise ball, step ups on a plyo box and a few chest presses on the machine. I felt like I had the wind kicked out of me, I mean I barely had time to breathe before I was back doing step ups again or doing crunches against the wall. But thankfully I only had to do the “wildcard” once and it was near the end of the session. But at the time I was back on the stair climber I was cursing at myself because I warmed up on the stair climber. Do have to say he kicked my butt hard!

But what doesn’t make you weaker makes you stronger!

PGN written in the sand

Near the end of the trip, we did find ourselves at a different beach almost every day. It was really nice to be able to enjoy the summer like weather by doing something other then being stuck in a building sightseeing and or drive from point A to B to C all the time. Since I wasn’t really keeping up with my dryland training (crunches,jogging etc) I just used going to the beach to be my dryland training with some swimming, I also mixed it up a bit by doing some body surfing when I wasn’t able to rent a bodyboard.

Some of the beaches we went to were jammed packed with people and others had barely anyone on them which was quite nice as your not always dealing with huge crowds. We did a lot of our swimming when we were traveling along the Eastern coastline/Indian Ocean. I do have to say it was really nice to be swimming in a warm ocean for once. Having brought my Chawel towel with me on trip, I found that changing on crowd beaches a lot easier then having to wait to use a change room.

My Best Friend and I, after a few hours of swimming

An afternoon of Body Boarding

The last time I ventured to the Oval was for a paddling clinic before the 2010 Olympics and on Sunday I was given a chance to take part in a BC bobsleigh/skeleton talent camp.

Right around the mid paddling season point, I came up with this goal/fitness challenge of taking part in a talent camp, if I made it sweet if not I was able to make it that far. The original goal was to enter one next year but after a few bobsledders I know egged me on to do it this year. Do have to say that it was a great learning curve and now I know what I need to work which would also help with my paddling.

It was really nice to be part of a small group of 8 (12 people signed up though) people instead of a huge group of 30+, this way you aren’t waiting around to long. Being the only female who took part did suck as I wasn’t really able to gauge myself against my own gender and all the guys having true track backgrounds which also didn’t help but at least they didn’t laugh at me.

Now the waiting game begins as I wait for my results.

How was your long weekend?

Comment for a Cause (C4AC) is back for it’s 3rd year. C4AC is my way to raises funds & awareness. This year I’ve picked Right to Play as my charity of choice. Each comment this site gets equals $1 that I will be donating at the end of the month.. Don’t forget to keep up to date by subscribing to my rss feed

Since signing up for pilates as an extra workout routine I’ve noticed that I’m more flexible then I thought and it’s helped improved my rotation with a longer reach when I’m paddling. I’m kicking myself now because I really wished I signed up for a class when I moved out here two years ago instead of the other day since the gyms out here are over priced and aren’t well kept up. With that being said I’m really pleased with my outcome so far in the class, can’t wait to see the full results by this summer when the classes end.. I just wish it wasn’t so pricey

Other then that nothing much else is new other then I can’t wait for this Saturday, the boat I paddle on is in our 2nd regatta of the season.. I’ve never been on a team that’s been to it so this is gonna be fun and interesting I just hope that the weather gods bring out the sun instead of pouring buckets of rain like it did last Saturday.

With that being said I think it’s time for bed and I’m please I get to sleep in tomorrow since I don’t have to get up early and cover a route.. YAY!

Comment for a Cause (C4AC) is back for it’s 3rd year. C4AC is my way to raises funds & awareness. This year I’ve picked Right to Play as my charity of choice. Each comment this site gets equals $1 that I will be donating at the end of the month.. Don’t forget to keep up to date by subscribing to my rss feed

For the last while, I just found heading to the gym or even working out at home isn’t doing for it for me anymore.. It just feels like I’m doing the same boring thing over and over again even if I changed something. So after a lot of thought and googling I found a pilates studio that’s about 15 minutes from my house, so tomorrow morning (err in a couple hours) I’ll be taking in my 1st pilates class (signed up for 15 weeks). I’m looking forward to be working out in a different way and not be waiting in line for a treadmill or the weights.

My goal isn’t to have a killer beach body by the summer but to be able to compete the skill tests that you need to do if you want to join the national bobsledding team. The one part of that test I’m NOT looking forward to is the running since I’m not a runner, no matter what if I truly try out for the team or not, I see this as a great cross trainer for my paddling.

What’s driving you to your fitness goal?

Over the years I have wished we had one out here for the longest time to help spice up our training, as well who wouldn’t want to be indoors paddle instead of being outdoors being hailed on? (Been there done that, no more thanks). A paddler friend of mine from Montreal told me that I should attend one of their indoor paddling practices anytime I want to head out east.

Now I can say we finally got a paddling tank out west! That’s in one of the 2010 Olympic venues buildings that worked along side with a Rowing and Paddling Centre and they designed a paddling tank inside the building, for their rowers and us paddlers (dragon boaters, outriggers and other canoeists). It’s got a boat structure of an 8 person skull or a 10 man canoe/dragon boat (dragon boat team normally has between 20-26 people).

Thier website did not have much information about this paddling tank and even in the email I got back from them saying no more then 10 people in the room. So there goes my idea of having 10 people in the structure and rest of the team on the edge of the deck.

On Saturday I was offered a chance to be in the first dragon boating paddling clinic being that was put on by my coach, in the clinic there was only five people in it so we got more one and one time in the hour that we had then we would have if we had a full boat of 20 paddlers out on the water doing the expect same thing. More pictures on flickr.

It would be interesting to see how much will be changed in the paddling tank once the Olympics is over. I know they will be putting up the mirrors then and adding a video system but not sure what else. A few of us noticed when we first stepped into the boat structure that there wasn’t anything for our feet to go against and if you weren’t careful there were lag bolts sticking up from the corner of the bottom. Hopefully that gets fixed or looked at.

Now we got to wait until April before they re-open up their doors again to the public.

If I had to rate this venue out of three out of five paddles. As not 100% finished and its more of a rowing tank not a paddling tank but it is something.

I’m thinking about take up land paddling (a long board with a kahuna big stick) as my cross trainer this off season instead 6man outrigger, I’m looking forward not having to travel an hour to/from get to practice especially on those crappy nights.

It may not be the correct stroke that I do but from the videos I’ve been looking at, you can get a lot of good top arm drive, the whole body gets a workout and just think about the balance one can get from that too. Using this and my other core exercises would for sure help strengthen my core muscles that I lost due to the surgery I had back in April.

I want to be on the A boat next year, which means there is a lot of work a head of me to do.

What do you do the spice up your exercise routine?
Would you use a sport to strengthen another sport?

Sunday, I just hung out with my Mom and brother by going though some boxes of my late grandfolks. Its been three years since they passed on, but we just haven’t gotten around to sorting some of their boxes that were from a filing cabinet. One of the great fines was a 12 page typed written story with some handwritten notes from late great uncle about a week long a canoe trip that he took with my uncle back in the late 60′s. I never got a chance to meet him but from the stories I heard about my great uncle he was interesting character and being blind never stopped him do anything either.

Holiday Monday was gonna be a day of relaxing, and re-organizing my computer desk but I noticed my site’s counter showed my site had a few unwanted visitors (spider-bots and spammers) so spent a good hour and a bit fixing that problem. If you’re unsure about having a site counter you really should get one. Nile’s latest post explains why you should get one.

How was your long weekend?

Photo credit: Loren Zemlicka .

BC Childrens 11th Annual Paddle for Kids charity event happened on Sunday, 30 teams registered though only 24 teams took part in the event. The weather was nice, wasn’t to hot out either. H2O Geeks raised over $3441 dollars in 7 short weeks and were ranked in 6th spot as of Friday afternoon for most fund-raised, which is not bad if you ask me. In the end Paddle for Kids raised over $95,681 dollars that’s over half a million dollars for BC Childrens hospital in Paddle for kids lifespan.

Our team H2O Geeks could have arrived on site on Sunday never having a chance to be in a dragon boat and then race, for me that was not an option, I wanted this team to be on the water as much as possible, for one get use to the boats and to learn the stroke. Like the old saying goes “practice makes perfect”. All summer long we never had a chance to paddle with a full boat (of 20 paddlers) until race day. It was a great experiences for all.

Some might have called this a “Tweet Up” on water, for me it was a way for Vancouverites who are also in the Vancouver Twitter Community to get together in a non bar setting and to meet people you wouldn’t normally meet at one of those functions and of course give back to our local community. We all know of someone who’s has been in a childrens hospital for one reason or another.

A video of our last race of the day: (I’ll youtube it later) We are in lane 3

We took part in 6 events though out the day, four of them being replay races (on land) and two races on the water. The water races consisted of doing an X obstacle course then line up the boat again and we do a spirit back to the start line. Our afternoon race was a lot better then the morning one (normally afternoon races are better then the morning), we just got more focused and kicked butt placing 7th overall. We stunk doing the relay races but we didn’t care, we were just having fun.

@paddlinggeek, @susanmain, @daydreamz @adeline604, (@bcchf came to support us) @winebard, @jonjennings and @skop
missing from picture: @juicybags, @erinlouise, @joshlavoie

I think Jon said it the best, next year we will have two boats of twitters. So Vancouverites you got two choices either join our team OR support our cause.

Though not everyone was able to showed up to practice (due to work and the long weekend) so instead of two boats (22 people per boat) heading out on the water, we had enough people for one boat and lets just tell you it was one of the best practices ever. I’ve always found teams that combine their A and B teams every once and a while will make both teams stronger. But this team doesn’t think that its either A or B. I disliked it that some of our A boat folk don’t know the names of our B boat paddlers.

Anyways there were not a lot of people at the lake or on the lake but the waves from the few motor boats made it feel like we were paddling in Hawaii. We decide half way though practice that it was getting to hot, so the team beached the boat and most of us went for a swim. We also got to watch 3 deer as they walked by in the trees. Though we didn’t see the two eagles that normally fly over us/watch us as we practice.

Yesterday I had a small group of friends over for a bbq it was great fun. No long weekend is compete without a bbq. That was the 1st bbq I hosted (without family around) and I was surprised that all there wasn’t any food left, so I can’t have left overs this week oh well… But I guess that’s better then having a lot of food untouched.

How was your weekend/long weekend?
With long weekends do you find yourself staying home or try to get away?