ACL 2007

Gordon & Amanda

Amanda, Kate & Tim

Last year we introduced our friends Shelley and Damien to ACL festival. This year it was Kate and Tim's turn! They drove over from Houston Friday night and we had a delicious sushi dinner at Uchi to celebrate their upcoming one year wedding anniversary (Oct. 6th). It was a fun evening.

Saturday we went to ACL festival. Probably got there a little bit too early (2pm) as it was very, very hot and we spent the next few hours trying to stay cool! I had my first shaved ice, which really hit the spot and cooled me down for a little while. We drifted between various stages in the afternoon, sat down and listened to Stephen Marley, which was quite relaxing and groovy. It was just hot hot hot!

Of course, the true reason for being there in the afternoon (other than people watching, hanging out, or catching your favourite band) is that you really appreciate the beautiful weather once the sun starts setting. It makes it worth being out there in the blistering sun, so as to enjoy the gentle cool breeze and beautiful sky as it rolls into evening.

We wandered on over to the AMD stage to see Arctic Monkey's but I must say I am not a huge fan of that stage. It is weirdly set up on a hill, and there are even more people with chairs hogging all the space and even putting chairs in a circle, ridiculous! So we decided to go over to the AT&T stage and catch the tail end of Damien Rice and then watch The Muse. I wasn't very familiar with the music of The Muse prior to their show (knew only one of their songs) but they really put on a great show. We stayed right through to the end and rocked out to the awesome music.

Of course, the real highlight of the day was just hanging out with Gordon, Kate and Tim, and enjoying the sights of the festival.

Things I am really bad at ...

Updating my blog and, apparently, relay exchanges.


I am a huge fan of the "skinny" lens that the photographer obviously used, I don't think I've ever looked so malnourished! You can also witness my terrible relay hand-off to Gordon, which was actually marginally better than my hand-off last year (thank goodness they didn't capture that one on film!).

Weekly training summary: Wk7 of Longhorn

This week was week 7 of the training schedule for the upcoming Longhorn half-ironman. The race will be held on Sunday October 7th. It's a 1.2mi swim, 56mi bike ride, 13.1mi run.

So what happened to the first six weeks of the training schedule? Well, a few bits of training here and there but nothing very structured and so I find myself a little bit behind the training plan. But no worries. I'm not trying to win Longhorn, just want to use it as a way to keep training and keep my fitness level high so that I can cruise into Ironman training in Dec/Jan with a much higher base fitness than when I started Ironman training last November.

This week was my first real week of training since Arizona - I actually hit 8.5hrs! For the past couple of months I had been hovering around 4-5hrs per week and just trying to aim for consistency. This week I stepped it up and started working out according to the training schedule. Although, I did skip the 1hr ride + 7mi run this morning, in favour of a 3.3km swim, as I am feeling a slight hint of soreness in my right arch. If you recall, this is what I first started feeling during Arizona training prior to developing a bad case of shin splints. So, with the benefit of hindsight, I stayed off my feet and swum this morning and I plan to visit Performance Wellness this week (if they can fit me in!) and get working on some strengthening exercises.

Highlights of the week:
- Wed. night track workout in 100F heat!
- Tough spin class plus post-spin yoga on Thursday night.
- Awesome hilly ride on Saturday (Fitzhugh).

Hours this week:
Swim - 2h
Bike - 4.5h
Run - 1h
Core - 1h

Truly back into the swing of things ...

Gordon and I raced "Jack's Generic Triathlon" today. It was our first race since the Ironman back in April. Since April we haven't been working out that much - in fact, the first couple of months were very lazy and this past month we have started picking things up again but on a much smaller scale than Arizona training. We're both pretty excited to be back into training and today at Jack's we were reminded how much fun (pain/sweat/hard-work) it is to do a race. The adrenaline, pushing yourself hard physically and mentally, and of course the camaraderie and socializing with our T3 training posse.

Jack's Generic has also become our annual "head to head". Last year I won bragging rights, and despite the fact that I think nearly everyone in our training group wanted Gordon to win, I managed to pull off another win again this year!

Both of us were a couple of minutes slower than last year, but given the lack of recent training we were both pretty stoked to have done so well. I didn't come away with any hardware this year (last year I won my age group) - I ended up 4th in my age group this year, even with the same time as last year it would have only been good enough for 3rd ... it was definitely a tougher showing this year.

It was a fun race and a fun day and I'm even more motivated to get back into full training. We both have a half ironman in early October, so time to get some long runs and long bike rides under our belt!

By the way, I think summer is officially here!

Fast forward to 20th July 2008 ...