PaceDJ Giveaway!

Do you run with music?  Do you use an iPhone, iPod Touch or Android?  Then give PaceDJ a try!  What is PaceDJ?  It's a new app that lets you match a song to your desired walk or run cadence with music you have on your phone - apparently without changing the pitch of the songs.  One thing I'm trying to work on this year is increasing my run cadence, and I think this will be a great tool to help with that.




PaceDJ is looking for testers to try out their app.  It's normally $2.99, but they're giving it away free if you want to help test it out, and they're also supplying testers with a $5 Starbucks card.  I'm going to give it a try, and if you want to as well, just leave me a comment with contact info, or email me (keple.alison at gmail dot com) and I'll hook you up.  The trial period starts Monday, so you have to let me know before that.  They're only looking for a limited number of testers, so if you're interested, let me know asap!

Moi? Wow, thanks!

I just found out I have won an award for a top health & fitness blog!  Sounds crazy, as there are a lot of great blogs I read, and I'm not sure I would have tossed mine in among them.  But hey, thanks!  I feel pretty honoured that someone liked my little slice of the interwebs enough to nominate me.  Truthfully, it's flattering to know that someone other than Jason and my parents read my blog.  Wait... maybe one of them nominated me...

If anyone would like to 'fess up to nominating my blog, let me know so I can send some appropriate thanks and love your way.  Perhaps in the form of chocolate?  In the meantime, check out these other "Top Health & Fitness Blogs": award winners.

Sunday Run Day

I love days like this...

Finisher Medals

We have a bit of a finisher medal situation at our place... in that we're running out of room for them.  Actually, for a long time I kept only the "important" ones and discarded the rest.  But I recently got over myself and now I keep them all.  Jason races often enough that I could see him being selective with his medals... but me?  Anway, we wanted to clean them up and get organized, but keep them as souvenirs and reminders of all this fun stuff we do.

You can probably guess which trophy shelf belongs to each of us...

Jason wearing all his medals.

I had an idea to collate them all, photo album style.  We bought some photo album inserts and binders, took all the medals, and placed each one into a pocket on the inserts.  Worked perfectly - the medals are nice and visible (I put labels on the backs of ones that didn't have dates), organized, and out of the way.  It will be easy to look through when we want to, but they're not cluttering up the guest room.

Putting them all together.

That's my final off-seaon project completed!  Time to start the real training of 2013.

Season Plan

Things are going to be a bit different for me this year as I'm trying out the self-coaching thing. The last few years have been pretty easy to simply do what is on my training plan (the irony of it being easy to do what I'm told is probably not lost on my family members...).  I have learned a lot and am headed out into the great unknown of making up my own training plans.

I have lots of ideas, but the first thing I decided to do was to get some expert advice.  I called up Noa, from PT Performance Training, who is super savvy.  She has a great combination of scientific knowledge and experience that I respect and admire.  I sat down with her yesterday and we mapped out a rough plan for the upcoming year.  Now it's up to me to fill in the details.

I'm going to try to train a lot, and when I think it's as much as I can do, I'll do a bit more.  I'll keep you posted on how things go.

My rough draft of 2013 training.
Also got to play with my Sharpie collection.

2012 By The Numbers

I spent the following amount of time this past year training:

• swim 113.5 hours
• bike 239 hours
• run 145 hours
• misc 38 hours.

One thing that's painfully clear from that - I did not do enough cycling.  Good thing I worked hard when I was on my bike!  I am going to need to increase those numbers in 2013 for sure.

It would be interesting to know how much time I spent doing laundry.

A Year of SWIMBIKERUN in Pictures

I know that Jason and I are extremely fortunate, and are always presented with wonderful opportunities.  We spend a lot of time exploring... and much of that is exploring by swimming, cycling, or running around new and old places.  2012 was no exception, so here are some photos of some fab places I got to visit this year.

If you know me, you know I love to swim outdoors!  I swim at the UVic outdoor pool as often as possible in the summer here, but if I'm traveling to a sunny destination, the first thing on my list is to search out a great pool to swim in.  Some real highlights this year were Tuscon (the condo owners we rented from gave us access to their country club pool - sweet!), the ASU student rec complex in Tempe, and the am-ah-zing Henderson rec center when Jason raced the Vegas 70.3 Championships.  That pool made the milk-run flight I took to get there worthwhile...

I also got to cross something on my life-long to-do list... the iconic Alcatraz swim!

Looking out towards Alcatraz Island from Aquatic Park.

I logged a lot of cycling hours, and explored some new roads that definitely made the all-time favourite list.  Tuscon was a cycling mecca for sure, and Kirsty took me on some great SoCal routes.  She knows I love the waterfront, but forced me away from the ocean and showed me some great stuff.

Tuscon!

Many routes of San Diego's North County.
Thanks Kirsty for the variety - I loved it all!

Of course there was one ride... the Dudley's day... that I will be back to conquer.  110 degrees Fahrenheit, tired from travel, and making some dumb mistakes along the way led me to DNF this one (excuses excuses...).  I will be back again to make it someday!

Somewhere climbing to Julian...
next time I'll make it to the end!

I also got to run in some pretty cool places:

San Francisco, custom-made for hill repeats.

 

A couple of deserts, St. George UT and Las Vegas, NV.

Shelter Island (San Diego) - a fun nostalgic run for me
as I spent a lot of time there in 1991.

Some cool coastal runs in SoCal - Moonlight Beach at sunset,
San Eligo Lagoon in the early morning, and many more!

But in the end, there's always coming to the best place on Earth... how can Vancouver Island be beat for our roads and trails?  

There's no place like home!

What will 2013 bring?  I can hardly wait!