A whirlwind and wonderful weekend!

This past weekend was a super active one but it was awesome!
It started at 5:30AM on Saturday with a 3 hour drive to my brother-in-laws new home outside of Kingston.    We were heading out to celebrate a 25th anniversary and visit the house for the first time.  It was worth the drive out there!  The new house is the perfect cottage/home.  It is located on a gorgeous lake that is about 2k long, you can not see a neighbour at all.  It is located about 40 minuted from the nearest major town/city so the traffic is very quiet.
Once we arrived for our visit, I put on my shoes to head out for my long run.  The weather was a little cooler that the rest of the week, but it was still awesome sunny out.  I put on my Dermatone face and lip sun block(which works awesome).  Even with sweat pouring off my face and head it does not get into my eyes and it is still super effective.  With the amount of forehead(lack of hair) that I have i must be careful on sunny days, I am not a big hat fan so I need to use sunscreen.  The run was great!  It was on a country road with very little traffic.  Anyone who did drive by waved at me like I was a brother or neighbour and pulled far to the other side of the road as they drove by.  The route was a good one as well, it was very rolly with a few longer hills along the way.  As it was very hot it was a great day to work on HR and hills.  My entire run I managed to stay in low  HR2, even on the longer hills I did not explode as I have often tended to do.  It was a great learning run as I managed to figure out pacing adjustments to keep my HR from climbing and biting me a later on.  I did a 21k run in 1:55 managing my HR with the hills.  It is not lightning fast, but it is not meant to be.  It is a great deal faster than what I would have done a year ago and progress is what I want to accomplish!

With the run out of the way, I had to take advantage of the awesome open water that they live on.   I
 up and headed down to the water for my open water swim.  After spending some time with the coach last week, I have some areas to focus on for 2 weeks to begin to pattern some new things.  So, with those ideas in mind I started along the water.  Ouch!  It is a big change to make after doing something one way for so long and acutally getting OK at it.  But, I know the pain today will pay for the long run.  The concept of bi lateral breathing and making it yours is tough.  The first KM I struggled, stopping to have to catch my breath along the way.  When I did the turn it started to fall into place a little better, but still a lot of work to do.  As you can see from the video, it is an awesome lake to be swimming on, very calm vary quiet, I wish I had that in my backyard!  It was a great day out for training and then to spend time with family and enjoy the new pad!

Sunday AM started at 4:45AM with another drive.  Back towards the city for an event being held by LULULEMON that I was helping out with.  For their customers they host an event called Tri-LULU.  It is spinning, a run and a yoga class.  It is a great event as it it gets their community out and playing together and enjoying a great weekend!     I had the easy job for the day, I was greeting the runners as they got back from a 4 or 6k run and giving out medals and water!  It was great to see them all coming on with smiles on their faces!  The the yoga class was my turn to play!  It was awesome, there were 225 people in a park by the lake sharing a morning yoga practice.  The attached photo only shows the people, it doesn't come close to showing how much fun it was!   I had a great time at the event both helping out and being able to play for a while as well.
With that much fun on a weekend, work had to come into play at some time.  After my morning enjoyment and relaxation I spent the rest of the day in a strategic planning meeting for this coming winters ski programs.  It is tough sitting inside talking about skiing with the beautiful sun outside!
I hope your weekends were awesome and you are off to a great start!