Canmore Weekend

The weekend of June 20th the family decided to go down to Canmore and spend the weekend in the mountains. Everyone else met up in Calgary on Friday morning at the zoo, but because of Kate's work, Kate and I left Edmonton Friday night. This trip had two purposes; first was the relaxing weekend with family and second Kate and I were running the 100 mile Kananaskis Rely with Kate's firm. More on that later. We ended up pulling into the condo in Canmore pretty late because although we got away from Edmonton in good time we stopped in Calgary to have diner with the 10 person relay team.




The place where we stayed was really nice and had a great view.



A couple of months ago Kate started talking about this run up in the mountains that her firm was going to put a team into. At first she sort of made it sound like I might be invited to run with their team, but only if they couldn't fill it internally first. She kept sending me the web page to look at to see which leg of the race I would want to do, but I felt like I was in no position to pick anything and would be happy with whatever leg they wanted to give me (if any at all). As the race came closer Kate started to sound more confident that I would be running and that I should really pick a leg. This time I took her advice (sort of) and I tried to look the website, but none of the links on the page showed up, so I put it off.

You get sort of get a sense of the hills from these. I like the second one because if you look close you can see a 7% grade sign for traffic going the other way. I'll never look at those signs the same way again.


After some time Kate told me that all of the legs were full except for one, so I was stuck with it. Turns out that no one else wanted this one because it was 18 Km of hills, and no not the nice gentle inclines or better yet declines, this was ascending to the top of a mountain pass with all but 3-4 Km going up. Of course no one wanted it. Well, anyways that's the leg I ran and considering the hills, the altitude, and the heat I felt pretty good afterward. (The leg after mine has 9Km down hill). Each team was responsible for water and support of their own runners so while we weren't running we would stop on the side of the road and wait for our runner to go by.

Kate trying to "mist" me with water as I run by. Turns out it was more of a full stream that hit me in the face.


Kate ran later in the day and her run was pretty challenging too. I wasn't at the start of her leg because I was dropping people off at their start points, but did catch up to her. I think her ran 16 Km and it was really hot. Her biggest problem was that she drank too much ahead of time and was feeling the effects of that a couple of Km in and of course there are no bathrooms on the side of a highway so she had to go in the "not so concealing" bushes (at least it wasn't between two cars at a car dealership in the winter. You know who I'm talking about). She finished and said she felt pretty crappy but that wore off after a few minutes and she was already planning her next race.

If you couldn't tell from the pictures it was a beautiful race.


"The Nolans"
In case you forgot this post started off about the weekend with family in the mountains, and that's what the rest of the weekend was. We ended up doing a couple of little hikes around the town and swam in the pool at the condo, we even ended up playing board games which is a rare thing we do.

Drumheller

Two weeks ago Kate and I went camping in Drumheller with the Smiths. We were going to try to get away in the late afternoon but Kate had had a crazy week putting in a lot of hours and we didn't get away until the early evening. We arrived in the dark and set up camp in the dark. Our air mattress had hole in it, which we only found after pumping it up, so we slept on the ground.

We went on a hike the next day in the badlands. There wasn't really a trail to follow so we kind of made it up as we went along which meant that we ended up doing a hike that was a little longer and technical than we probably should have considering we had a 3 year-old and a 1 year-old. Down in the valley where we hiked it was hotter than at the top. We ended up hiking for about 2 hours and Moses walked most of it but he let me carry him for the last part after he had played shy in the morning to me.

We ended up spending a lot of time at the splash park in town. It was a fun weekend and it was good to get together with good friends

Marathon

With classes finished for the year, I headed home with a brief stop in Calgary to run a race. In January I looked at my schedule and tried to find marathon that I could run in my time at home and the Calgary marathon fit. The only problem was that it was on the it was run only two days after my exams which meant that I had one day to travel and the the next day I'd run, but I decided that this was the year that I'd do my first marathon. So in January I put the bug in peoples ears to see if I could convince the other runners in the family to join me and they didn't disappoint; Christy and Dad signed up for the half and Trina and I signed up for the full.

The run was going pretty good considering that I trained at sea level and was running the race at elevation (the opposite of what you should do if you have that option). I was a little surprised that I had no joint, stomach, or muscle problem for over the first half of the run. Then at the 32 km mark my right quad tensed up and I had to slow down. That didn't help. By 36 km both my quads were throbbing and could only run 800m of every km they felt like they were going to explode. Those last couple of kilometers were killers.

I finished in just over 4 hours. Not the time I expected and I was a little disappointed that my legs gave out on me but I guess it gives me a time to beat next time.

You probably can't tell this from the picture but the medal that all the marathon runners got for finishing the race also doubles as a belt buckle. Looks like I'm getting a new belt.

The day after the race I'm a little sore and walking is a little uncomfortable. Kate's got me sighed up for another 17km race in the mountains with her firm.

One Down

I just finished my first year of dental school, only three more to go. I have to admit that at on the first day the end of the first year seemed like it would never come, but now looking back on the year it seems like it just flew by. With the first year having finished I have a short 5 week break which of course will be spent back in Edmonton. I started and finished my exams last Friday. I only had one day of exams, but it was 6 hours of tests covering five subjects spanning this whole semester. Needless to say it's good to have that over with. I flew out on Saturday afternoon to Calgary where Kate picked me up from the airport. My whole family was in Calgary this weekend for the Calgary marathon. It's good to be home.

Part of the Ride

Yesterday after school I went over to my cousin, Susie’s place who’s in Manhattan for a couple of months. I went over there to babysit her kid so that she and a friend could go to a show. When they got back they mentioned that it had just started raining pretty hard as they came in the door. I didn’t think much about it though because I figured I had an umbrella and would be fine; how bad could it be? In fact, I’d all but forgotten about the rain when reached the building’s lobby an hour later after talking with Susie. Sure enough it was still raining, and raining hard. I only needed to walk 3-4 blocks to make it to the subway station but within only one block I was soaked from my waist down. After another block or so it started to rain under my umbrella as the water had made its way through the fabric. I thought about stepping into a restaurant and getting something to eat while trying to wait out the rain. I was tempted but I figured I was already soaked and couldn’t get much wetter. The streets flowed like rivers and the taxis were followed by rooster tails of water on the near empty streets. I tried to avoid the big puddles and the spray from the cars but once you’re wet you’re wet. I could feel the water sloshing around in my shoes.
The subway station had water dripping from the ceiling in some places but it was nice to be out the rain. Service at night is greatly reduced so I ended up waiting for 15-20 min. for a train. The MTA train was fairly empty, maybe only 10 people in the car I was in, which made it easier for the two homeless people covered with coats and dirty blankets to lay on the benches not to be disturbed. I guess it’s like a two dollar hotel room that keeps them out of the rain.
The MTA train doesn’t take me into Jersey so I had to transfer to the PATH train. The PATH trains runs even more infrequently than the MTA at night, so there were a lot of people waiting on the platform when I got there, but I still had to wait for another 15 minutes for the next train.
I haven’t said specifically what time any of this was taking place but it’s important to fully appreciate the next part of my voyage home last night. It was about 1:30 am when I arrived at the PATH station, apparently the perfect time for people to be leaving work, shows, or bars and heading home and those were the type of people waiting at the station. The subway is a great equalizer, there were guys in tuxes and women in evening dresses, but there were also others smoking and stumbling around the station.
I was able to get a seat on the train. The first thing I noticed was that sitting right across from me was two girls that had obviously been out partying and had too much to drink. One was passed out and laying in the others lap, I didn’t see her move until her friend dragged her out of the train at their stop. The other one was awake to start with and apparently let someone else know where they needed to get off because someone had to wake her up at her stop. Three collage aged guys drinking out of paper bags what turned out to be one liter bottles of beer started talking loudly about everything from politics to business to geography. Of course it was drunk talk so some of it was pretty funny and they even drew a couple of other people in the car into their weird conversation. Most people were doing a good job at ignoring or enjoying these guys except a large guy standing close to them who looked like he was ready to pop one of them in the face to shut them up, but nothing happened. The guy sitting next to me started talking with the drunk guys and I noticed out of the corner of my eye what looked like water dripping on to his sleeve. I looked up at the ceiling to see if there was a leak and was confused when I couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from. I looked back at the sleeve of his sweater to see if the drip was still hitting it and was even more confused to see that the drip wasn’t landing on his sleeve, the drip was coming out of his sleeve. It was the weirdest thing, to see drip after drip materialize out of his dry sleeve and then all of the sudden it stopped. I was a little grossed out as I tried to figure out what the heck that liquid was; it was like he had just sprung a leak. I was happy to get out of there when my stop came.
I finally got home at around 2:00 am. It wasn’t exactly what I expected to be doing last night but it’s all part of the ride.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

Last weekend a classmate of mine that lives in Brooklyn invited me and couple other guys from school over to go to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It only took me 40 minutes to get there despite the fact that it was a Saturday and the trains don't run as frequently on the weekend and that I had to take three trains. Last weekend was the first really nice weather that we've had here this Spring so lots of other people had the same idea as us to take advantage of the weather. It was a really nice place especially with most of the trees in bloom.

Magnolia flowers

Later that night as I went grocery shopping, like I always do for fun on a Saturday night, it was still warm out so people were outside on their steps talking, playing guitar, and singing. The funniest thing I saw were two girls who must of been under 10, fencing in the middle of the sidewalk with epees, masks and uniforms. Not the type of thing you normally see happening on the street.

Chery tree blossoms and more magnolias

More of the same

Just so I don't have all flower pictures, this is an army memorial that's outside the park

Spring Time for Jason and Jersey City

The winter wasn't as cold or as long as back at home but the Spring is still a relief. About a week ago the first flowers started showing up with grass poking through the cracks in the sidewalks. This week the trees started to flower. This splash of colour and life is a nice juxtaposition to the concrete and the cars of the city.