Busy time of year

I'm sorry I haven't updated for 2 weeks - I didn't realize it had been that long.

Wow, am I ever tired! One week back at school and I was so tired I was in bed by 9 last night and slept until 7:30 this morning.

The last week of August was spent attending workshops and preparing my classroom for the onslaught of little kiddos on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Erik and I managed to get MOST of our stuff organized by Thursday, Aug. 28th so right after our workshop, we dropped the dogs at the kennel and drove to Nelson. Since we had to take the dogs to Westbank, we ended up driving south through Oliver and Osoyoos and then all the way to the Anarchist Summit. While it's only an 8km climb to the lookout on my banner above, it's over 20km to the actual summit, then 10km or so of rolling hills. I'm glad we were driving that day. :)

We stayed in our usual corner room (#336) at the 110 year old Hume Hotel on Thursday night and had a late dinner downstairs in the cozy "Library Lounge", listening to live jazz and drinking wine.

I went for a run through the flatter part of town the next morning before we enjoyed a full complementary breakfast. My shins and knees complained a bit so I interspersed a few walk breaks and only ran about 4 km in total. After breakfast, we packed up and drove to the Balfour Ferry, longest free ferry ride in the world,

and then continued on to our friends' gorgeous log home with views of Kootenay Lake. We spent the night there, then headed back toward Nelson the next morning. We stopped part way along the highway at the Harrop ferry crossing, parked the van, and took our bikes onto the little ferry that crosses the Kootenay Arm. We rode the rolling hills to Proctor,
had a snack at the General Store,
then rode back to the ferry. After we crossed back, we rode up the highway towards Nelson for about 15km, stopping at a Provincial Park and checking out the scenery, before making our way back to the van. It rode just under 50km, the weather was warm and sunny, and it felt good to be on our bikes again.
Saturday afternoon we checked back into the Hume and had wandered around town some more, checking out a few of the places where the movie "Roxanne" was filmed. On Sunday, we took it easy then drove back to Kelowna. It was a nice easy getaway and we were able to put school thoughts out of our heads for a few days.

On the holiday Monday, I went for my planned 'long' run. It was supposed to be 10km but I knew I wouldn't be able to go that far given my sore shins and my low mileage recently. I decided to run 5 minutes and walk 1 minute for the first half hour, then as I warmed up, I ran 10 minutes at a time. Overall I did 8.25 km in just over an hour. Pretty slow but felt ok. Later that day, we went for a hilly 35 km ride in East Kelowna.

Erik, Carmelle, and I went for another hilly 28 km ride after school on Tuesday and on Thursday, I tried to do a 5 km run but my legs were pretty sore. My Zensah compression sleeves had arrived that day and I was eager to try them out. They felt good but obviously aren't going to work miracles and again I was forced to do a walk/run.

In theory I should be doing my long run again today but I'm not sure. I might wait until tomorrow since my lower legs are still sore. I don't know. If you read my blog from the beginning you know that I whine about my shins on an ongoing basis. I have the compression sleeves on right now, just walking around the house and I look oh so cool in my sundress and black sleeves on my shins. LOL...

I have not been in the lake or the pool since the tri and I'm not too worried about that at the moment. September is always a challenging month because there are so many meetings and appointments that mess up my schedule and I'm always so darn tired. I am going to focus on my running for the next month and if I have time to go for a swim, I will. I am planning to book my laser eye surgery in early October and that will mean I can't swim for 3 weeks so I may just wait until that's all done before I get back in the pool.

It's also time to get my eating habits back on track. I've been enjoying eating whatever I want for the past 3 weeks but I've gained about a pound a week with the extra calories and lack of exercise. Three pounds is always my warning sign to get back on the diet so I will reluctantly start watching what I eat again. Ah well, it was nice while it lasted.