First half of July - Routine is settling in

We had a mixed bag of weather the first couple weeks of July - some cold , some rain, some sunshine, some warm. Most of the time was spent training and recovering.

Our neighbour's cat Digger is showing you want recovery really means

Our summer training facility - Deer Lake. With Jeff's and my K1 in the forefront.

The picture above shows you why we can't train on Burnaby Lake in the summer. The whole Lake is choked up with weeds. Those get caught on your paddle, your rudder, reduce your "sprint" speed to snail pace and you end up covered in them from head to toe. NO fun. But the city will start dredging it in September.

I also started my outplacement services Kodak paid for - they teach how to prepare yourself for finding your next job such as resume writing, networking and self marketing. Their office is downtown so I got to bike there a couple times. There is actually a nice bike route from our place in the southeast of Vancouver all the way Downtown - but you have to get over the hill. Luckily there are more gradual ways than the one I took for years riding to work. Off course I count the biking as cross training.

Some Highlights:
July 5th: Instead of doing a big hike we ended up canoeing up Still Creek (flowing into Burnaby Lake) on July 5th. What a great urban paddling experience on one of the nicer days the past 2 weeks. We saw lots of birds - ducks, eagles, herons - as well as a raccoon, frogs, carp and of course many pretty flowers. No beaver though since it was too early in the day and too hot. One section seemed to be loaded with HUGE carb and Jeff wished we would have brought a fishing rod. For more pictures go here http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/CanoeingStillCreek05July2009

Jeff steering the rec canoe

We saw LOTS of herons or maybe it was the same one all the time

July 11-12: Sprint regatta on Whonnock Lake in Maple Ridge. This regatta is more intended for the new paddlers and fun sprint races. So we had many mixed boats where we mix gender (girls and boys) and age catergories (15 + 40) as well as did some cross dicipline races - meaning I had to race C2 - high kneel canoe. Not pretty but we did finish. See the BCKC blog as well as this link (http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/RidgeRegattaJuly1112) for more stories and pictures.

The mixed WAR CANOE was certainly the highlight of the regatta. I am in seat 4 paddling on the left of the boat. Did I ever mention I love teamboats?

July 13th: This was a regular training day but we did hike up Grouse Mountain again (BCMC trail 1:05) after a K1 (6x 5' on 2') practise session. It was a clowdy and cool day on the mountain and the grizzlies were hiding away as well. But we found some really pretty flowers: