June 2009 - first half: Round Bowen Race & Relaxing

Ah - my first month off and the weather is gorgeous. Sunny and hot for 3 weeks in a row - one could think I deserve that!!

What's up for this month - well some racing of course, lots of relaxing and coming up with our training plan for the World Masters Games in Sydney in October. After training for long distance racing all winter long till now, the speed is pretty poor. So from now on we'll do intervals measured in seconds rather than hours.

Finally I have time to update all my blogs and online albums to share my life again with friends and family (something which has suffered the last few year with work and training). So take the time and read some previous blogs - well all posted today. We'll see how long I last.

June 3rd: Bike trip with Rene through the Mount Seymour Demonstartion Forrest. A nice shady ride with only little hill on mostly paved road. No cars. Only trees, water and an owl. For more picture see here: http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/MtSeymourDemonstrationForrestBikeTourWRene03June2009#

June 7th: Round Bowen Race in Howe Sound, 32km - Double Surfski with Jeff. The one race we had been training for so hard all winter. Hours in the gym, on the elliptical trainer and indoor kayaking machines, on running trails and paddling of course. And how did we do - not bad but nobody to race with really. Okay there wer two very fast men's double kayaks way ahead of us but they were clearly a class better than us. Oh well, we improved our time from last year although the conditions were considerably slower. The weater was great and the usual BBQ afterwards fantastic. Check out Jeff's race report at http://surfskibc.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/race-results-round-bowen-challenge/ or the BCKC blog http://burnabylake.com/blog/index.html

Good form...

into the finish

June 8th-11th: Fishing Trip to Blue Lake in the interior of BC near Merritt. We haven't been fishing in years and it was about time!!! What a relaxing trip - no fish for me, no bear sighting (usually we see at least one in that area), lots of moskitoes (way more than in May when we used to go in past year) but great warm weather, lots of deer and butterflies and even more relaxing. Jeff and I could not believe how we survived without it for so long. If you are interested in lots of pcitures check out the online album at http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/BlueLakeFishingTrip0811June2009#. A couple pics below to wet the appetite:

Tough road to get to the Lake

Beautiful Blue Lake

Jeff in his boat fishing

My view for hours sitting in my float tube

June 13-14th: Ted Houk Memorial Sprint Regatta in Seattle WA. After all this long distance racing the first sprint regatta for me. My speed was pretty pathetic in the K1 but racing team boat was a lot of fun (check also: http://burnabylake.com/blog/index.html).

After my the 1000m K1 race

The girls for K2/K4 - Kiran, I, Rebecca & Kristin

June 15th: Hiking up Grouse Mountain. After a 1hr 03 hike up the BCMC trail we got to enjoy the grizzlies chasing each other on top of Grouse (behind the fence of course). They put on a great show. More pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/GrizzliesOnGrouseMtn15June2009#