After getting a call back about the Great Canadian Baking Show this past week I decided I needed to ramp up my baking “training” in the next few weeks in the small chance that this just might actually happen! I have an amazing (and intimidating) baking book that John got me 2 Christmas’ ago and after pouring through it on the day I got it, it’s sadly sat almost untouched on the counter since (thanks to my 2 year foray into Ironmans). It’s basically a textbook on every type of baking you can imagine ie. perfect for Baking Show prep! Also, it’s just got so many interesting tips and explanations for all those frustrating baking mishaps.
So after getting home last night at midnight and waking up this morning to an empty fridge (not even any milk to make coffee!) before heading off to the store to pick up groceries I decided to find an enticing bread recipe to try out. I thought I’d start my baking training off with a new and interesting type of bread because although I make bread almost weekly, every time I try to branch out to something new, John insists that his favourite is a plain and simple 50% whole wheat loaf. And while I also really enjoy it, I can’t imagine it would be a show winner… But Rustic Olive and Thyme Bread? This one looked and sounded delicious and all I’d need to buy was some fresh thyme – easy! Plus with all the rising time and a longish baking time, I find that it’s relatively easy to fit in other activities throughout the bread making process (like 2 workouts and a shower!) so despite being a long process it doesn’t actually consume your whole day.. And bonus – I’d been wanting to try a sourdough loaf for a long time and finally looked up a starter recipe this morning, but I’m heading to Vancouver in 5 days for the weekend to guide a triathlon with Christine so I won’t be around to look after it. But this bread has a similar concept- a poolish which is a pre-ferment that is added to the dough to give it a slightly sour taste similar to sourdough. Perfect!
Rustic Olive and Thyme BreadIngredients:
Poolish: Bread:
1 cup warm water 1/2 cup warm water 1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp yeast 1 tsp sugar 2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup flour 1 1/2 tsp yeast 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp finely
3 cups flour chopped fresh thyme
1 cup pitted and chopped olives
Steps:
1. Make the poolish: whisk the yeast into the warm water until dissolved and let
stand until activated and creamy (about 10 minutes.) Mix in the flour until
completely mixed and moist. Cover in plastic wrap and let sit for 4 - 6 hours.
Make sure your bowl is big enough to accommodate it doubling in size. I had to
switch bowls half way through after realizing this!
The poolish just after mixing.
Two hours later…
2. Mixing the dough: Activate the yeast by mixing the warm water, sugar and yeast
in the bowl of a stand mixer and let sit for 10 minutes. My bowl is metal and our
cupboards are always freezing in the winter so I pre-warm my bowl with hot tap water before starting the yeast
mixture. Add the poolish and mix well. Add remaining ingredients and using the dough
hook attachment mix well for a few minutes until dough comes together.
Mixing it all together.
Time to hydrate!
Drape a damp towel over bowl and let dough rest for 20 minutes to let the dough fully hydrate
(had never heard of this step before!). After hydrating knead for about 5 minutes
with mixer until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place dough into lightly oiled
bowl, cover in plastic wrap and allow to rise for 1.5 - 2 hours.
3. Once dough has doubled in size, place it onto lightly floured surface and pat
down to remove air bubbles. Divide in two and shape into round loaves, pulling the
dough taut as you round them out. Place on baking tray with silicon mat or parchment
paper, cover loosely in plastic wrap and allow to rise again until doubled in size.
About 45 minutes. Meanwhile pre-heat oven to 450 F (but lower temperature to 425
after loaves are in the oven).
4. Cut a pattern into the loaves before placing them in the oven. Cuts should be
about 1/4" deep (NOT like the loaf on the left. Circles were really tricky and
completely ineffective!). Place tray on a rack in the lower 1/3 of the oven. At the same time you can spritz some water or add a handful
of ice cubes to the oven to give the loaves some extra moisture during the initial
baking. I opted for the ice cubes thinking they'd be easier. I'm not so sure it did
anything, but it definitely made me feel like I was a pro!
5. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes (or until 200 C internal temperature). Let cool on wire
rack for at least 30 minutes before ENJOYing! This loaf was sooo delicious. Mine
was a little on the salty side (probably due to the olives) following the original recipe so
I've adjusted the salt here.
This winter John got an exciting career opportunity to do some contract work for Tesla’s new Gigafactory which is being built down in Nevada. So since the beginning of January he’s been living down in Reno. My work has been generous enough to allow me to go down once a month for a week at a time and work remotely which has been great because it turns out Reno is decently far away (ie. no direct flights) so it really doesn’t make sense for John to come back home for the weekend as we’d originally thought. They’re also so busy that he doesn’t really have time to leave for weekends regularly, or even cook for himself on a daily basis for that matter. So I promised when I came for my visit I’d bake and cook enough to leave him some frozen meals to hold him over till my next visit.
So the week before my first visit in January he requested a shopping list of baking ingredients so that the kitchen could be fully stocked upon my arrival – these cocount cookies topped the list of requests and apparently waiting an extra day to buy the ingredients was too much to ask!
These cookies are delicious, not too sweet, and just different enough from your standard chocolate chip cookie to make them really popular any where they go. I baked quite a few before leaving last month, so John was able to bring them in to work on a few occasions, and when we invited his co-workers over for pizza on Friday night this week, these cookies were requested for dessert! So many cookies were enjoyed on Friday night that I decided to whip up a batch first thing on Saturday morning before we headed out for a trail run to enjoy some last Nevada sun before I had to head home to cold and snowy Calgary that afternoon. These cookies are extremely easy and quick to make, and it also helps that John’s condo is so warm all the time that the coconut oil is always on the verge of melting which makes mixing the dough extremely easy. (Back at home, especially in the winter, our house is always on the chilly side and the cupboards are even colder so the coconut oil is always rock hard and needs to be beaten with a mixer to smooth it out.)
Double Coconut Chocolate Cookies
Baking time: ~12 minutes at 350F Total time: ~ 30 minutes Yield: 24 cookies Ingredients:
1/2 cup coconut oil*, warmed if possible
1 scant cup of brown sugar
1.5 Tbsp of vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups of flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 generous cup of flaked, unsweetened coconut
1 cup of chocolate chips
*The type of coconut oil that you use will affect the flavour slightly.
I prefer the virgin (unrefined) oil pictured above because it has a really
nice coconut flavour and smell.
Mix all the wet ingredients and cream thoroughly until smooth. If your oil is
hard you can beat it with an electric mixer or warm in the microwave slightly, just
be careful not to heat it so much that it’s all melted.
Sift dry ingredients into the bowl starting with the flour and then mix together
before stirring into wet (this is the lazy way to save yourself a bowl to wash).
Once dough is thoroughly mixed, fold in coconut and chocolate chips.
Drop by rounded spoonful on to lined baking tray (as you can see there was no
parchment paper in the condo so I used tin foil which actually seemed to work fine).
Bake for about 12 minutes until edges are faintly golden brown. These cookies are
great soft or crisp, but in general I find soft cookies a lot yummier! 🙂
**This recipe has been adapted slightly from here.
As soon as these cookies came out of the oven we headed out to Keystone Canyon for a run! It was a beautiful and sunny day, but the wind was absolutely howling (up to 110 km/h gusts) and the high altitude (5800 ft at the top) meant there was a lot of snow we had to trudge through along the trail. Such an interesting place!
We’re at the top of a rocky outcrop. It’s hard to see just how windy it was, but my neck was sore by the end of our run from the constant side wind!
I’ve always had this dream of starting my own bakery/coffee shop/ cafe and it feels like it gets larger and more realistic some days and then others it seems completely off in the distance – hardly on the horizon. I’ve baked for a few weddings and plenty of birthdays. I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a blog but shied away – who would actually read it? Do I even want people to read it? Would it be good enough to read? What would I talk about? We’ll finally this summer after coming back from an amazing summer adventure on the west coast of British Columbia we decided it was time. I was so excited when John suggested it. He was suggesting it for our travel pictures – any easier way to keep our family up to date. But secretly I knew it was also going to be my baking/cooking/crafting blog that I’d always wanted! Little did I know how much time it takes to keep a blog up to date. Not only do you spend time thinking up fun/new/yummy/appealing recipes, but then you have to make sure you took pictures at just the right time and place (not so good at this yet), then you have to remember all the tweaks you made to the recipe (I’m always bad with this and kicking myself when something turns out perfectly and I can’t quite remember every little adjustment I made) and then you have to write it all down (before you forget and/or delete your pictures…)
So all this to say that I haven’t been the most diligent blogger since starting this fall. However, as I was browsing Facebook last week I saw that a friend had shared a link from CBC advertising a casting call for a new reality show called… The Great Canadian Baking Show!! This was amazing. I couldn’t believe it. Without a second thought I clicked on the link, read the article to see that they were still accepting applicants and immediately started filling out the application. This was so exciting and would be a dream come true! Not to mention a great challenge and soooo fun!! When I got to the end I hummed and hawed over the photo submissions – only one picture of a baked item? What are they looking for?! I don’t even have that many pictures! Why didn’t I have better close ups from the wedding baking or some artsy shots of all the cupcakes I’ve done over the years.. I went with a picture of the bagels I’d made last week thinking that a good bread would show skill and promise. Then after clicking submit I was instantly regretting it thinking they probably wanted cupcakes or pastries or macarons or anything other than bread. I finally managed to convince myself that if it wasn’t meant to be it wasn’t meant to be.
Until today. This afternoon, during lunch, when I got a phone call. From a Toronto number which I almost didn’t answer because I didn’t know who could possibly be calling me. Well The Great Canadian Baking Show it turns out!! For my first round interview! Which was quite similar to the application questions. Here’s to hoping it went well and I receive another phone call in 2 weeks for the second round of interviews!! And in the mean time, a little collage of the photos I managed to scrounge up of some recent baking.
Notice how most of them have candles in them?
Chocolate Coffee cupcake with coffee buttercream icing.Banana blueberry cheesecake for John’s birthday.Gingerbread and vanilla sugar Christmas cookies.Coconut cream cheese mini cupcakes for Sarah’s 30thA Chocolate Dragon Cake for Soren’s 4th birthday.A chocolate T-Rex cake for Dane’s 3rd birthday!Red velvet layer cake with cream cheese icing and assorted cupcakes for Elaine and Bertin’s wedding.
A close friend of mine recently got engaged and although she and her fiancé are currently living in South America, they decided to have their wedding on Salt Spring Island this summer. Not only was this exciting because it’s Salt Spring (beautiful quaint little island off of Vancouver Island that I have fond childhood memories of cycle tripping around stopping for freshly baked gigantic cinnamon buns and also – weeks spent at the best summer camp any kid could imagine – Camp Narnia!) but also because it’s close enough that I could offer to bake for her wedding! I’d been wanting to bake for some more weddings lately but also hesitant to actually advertise my services in case dates and commitments and expectations didn’t work out. But this was perfect! Another 80-100 person low key wedding which was just the right size to be comfortable and manageable and when you’re doing it for friends it’s always more enjoyable. And the fun thing about weddings is the chance to try something new. For Inshan and Madiha’s wedding I got to perfect my coconut cream cheese cupcakes. For Bertin and Elaine’s wedding it was finding the right chocolate coffee cupcakes and branching out my flavour repertoire in general.
Alysia’s flavour requests on the other hand were completely new to me. Both options were flavours I hadn’t even really heard of – Spiced Whisky Chocolate Cake with Whisky Caramel frosting and Salted Caramel Apple Cake. Clearly there was a caramel theme going on here that I would need to get comfortable with!
I opted to go with the caramel apple combo for my first recipe trial. I thought cupcakes would be a quicker and easier way to test the recipe and tweak it as I always do. And it would also allow me to make a smaller amount that I could bring in to work to pawn off on coworkers. (When I say pawn off it’s not that my coworkers aren’t eager to gobble up free baked goods, it’s that these cupcakes would come with strings attached – anyone who wants to eat one has to fill out my comprehensive Cupcake Evaluation Form – an extensive cupcake rating spreadsheet that John put together for me when I was trying out new flavours and recipes for Elaine and Bertin’s wedding. It’s fun to make people be critical and actually think about something they normally wouldn’t. And when people take it really seriously it makes it a ton of fun to read! Such as this comment from Amy: “kind of plain- could use more spices (DOUBLE spiced? Make it triple!)… perfect balance of sweetness, needs a bit more icing only because I was left wanting MORE..”)
The caramel sauce added some work to the overall cupcake effort, and in my opinion even just the added caramel drizzle made for a very sweet cupcake. I usually try to tone down the sweetness by reducing the sugar since I know the icing will always make up for it in the sweetness department. All in all I think the cupcakes were a success especially if you’re a caramel person! Stay tuned for more pictures and the recipe!
**note: I like to ice and finish decorating my cupcakes when they’re in their transport containers for their final destination as this lessens the chance of disaster when transferring a (very) top heavy cupcake from dish to container, however I realize this makes it look like I’m just taking pictures of cupcakes I just purchased from Crave and passing them off as my own which I assure is NOT the case! I just like reusing Crave’s transport containers because I can fit a dozen cupcakes in my backpack which is perfect for riding my bike to work 🙂
I’ve always considered bagels to be an elusive baking project. Something that seems like a great idea when you’re having a delicious bagel-wich on a patio at the local bagel shop, but then the minute you’re done your sandwich suddenly seems like a rash and completely unnecessary undertaking. At least this is how my internal bagel roller coaster ride seems to go, round and round but I never quite take the plunge. Until today. Almost completely out of the blue. At about 3 o’clock this afternoon I was ready for a snack or a walk or both. Mostly something to get me away from my desk and the chocolate that had been staring at me for the last 2 hours. So I met Rebecca (coworker, friend and fellow snack-walk enthusiast) downstairs and we meandered over to the food court/ corner shop to see what our options were. As usual they weren’t very good and after debating whether or not chips from the corner shop or a muffin from Tim Hortons was more bang for the buck, we settled on a bagel and cream cheese. And then proceeded to reminisce about where all the bagel shops had gone which lead to reminiscing about Kettleman’s Bagels in Ottawa. An infamous 24 hour bagel shop just down the street from me during my time at Carleton. The bagels were that good that we’d been known to stock up at 4 in the morning before heading to the airport for adventures, or to send home with our less fortunate friends who didn’t have a 24 hour Montreal-style bagel shop in their neighbourhood! So why hadn’t I tried this at home yet? I realized I had no good answer. So 4 and a half hours later, voila, our house smelt of freshly baked Montreal style bagels. Mission accomplished, finally!
Recipe
Time: 2.5 hours total
Yield: 16 large bagels
Ingredients:
1.5 cups warm water
2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1.5 tsp salt
1 egg
1 egg yolk
¼ cup oil
½ cup honey
5.5 cups flour (3 cups all purpose/2.5 cups whole wheat)
Sesame seeds, poppy seeds for topping
Directions:
Mix water, yeast, sugar and salt until dissolved. Whisk in egg, yolk, oil and honey until completely combined. Switch to hook attachment if using stand mixer and slowly add in flour until dough is no longer sticky. Knead for approximately 10 minutes. Remove dough hook, cover with an inverted bowl and let rest for 15 minutes.
Punch down dough and divide into 16 – 20 pieces. Roll each piece to about 10 inches long (long enough to wrap around your hand) and gently roll the overlap back and forth until it is joined (so it doesn’t separate during the boil). Dust the bottom with flour and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment. Cover with a towel and let rise for 30 minutes. Meanwhile bring a large pot of water to boil and set the oven for 450F.
After bagels have risen, place in boiling water (about 4 at a time) for 30 seconds per side. Remove from pot with slotted spoon and place in plate full of sesame seeds or other topping. Cover with seeds then place on baking tray.
With January came cold weather, lots of snow and the start of a new training season. So on top of trying to get back into shape, I’ve been running to and from work every day since the snow has made the roads un-rideable. Or at least it seems like it’s quite unsafe to ride a bicycle on them so I haven’t (also because my pedal fell off the last time I rode in to work… but that’s another story!). So instead I run to work and home from work since this is often the quickest (and cheapest) way to get to downtown on my schedule, and it can be a convenient way to get an outside run in the winter when it’s constantly dark and cold. However it can also be exhausting with a backpack full of food, clothes and swim gear and the one large hill on the way home every day doesn’t help either! That combined with starting a new training plan, and I’ve suddenly been constantly hungry at work every day. I can never seem to bring enough food and the snack options near my office just never seem to cut it (health or craving wise). So this week I decided to try to find a “healthy” cookie recipe to help me get through the afternoon at work and provide enough energy to make it up the big hill on the run home each night and also get me through my evening workout or ski lesson or whatever I’m up to. I found a sweet potato based recipe on Pinterest that seemed interesting but also too much on the healthy side for my liking, however I thought I could use the general idea of the recipe and get something enjoyable. It was a bit of extra work using the sweet potato but after a bit of tweaking, I think they turned out great! Hope you enjoy this healthy-ish snack as well! 🙂
Sweet Potato Cliff Bars
Bake at 350 ◦F for 12 minutes. Makes 10 “cliff bar” sized cookies.
Ingredients:
3/4 cup mashed sweet potatoes
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/8 cup of butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
2 Tbsp chia seeds
Directions:
Peel, chop and boil sweet potato until soft. Puree in food processor with some of the liquid from boiling.
Preheat oven to 350 ◦F.
Add the first 6 ingredients in a bowl and mix until creamy.
Mix remaining dry ingredients separately and add to bowl.
Drop dough on to cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for approximately 12 minutes.
Not only was this recipe simple and delicious, but the acorn squash is from our garden – bonus! We didn’t actually plant any acorn squash this year, so were pleasantly surprised and intrigued when we found a rogue squash plant growing this spring. I could tell it wasn’t a zucchini or cucumber which were the only squashes we’d planted, but I didn’t know what it was so I left it, excited to wait and find out. When we got back from our vacation, we discovered it was a hardy acorn squash that was taking over the garden and alley! We cut it back quite a bit to let the other plants have some space (and give the neighbours some room to drive by ) but it had already grown 10 little acorn squashes which was really exciting so of course we let those stay and ripen. And, ta-da!
I was looking for an easy and yummy recipe to use up our squashes, and I came across this one on pinterest. This was one of the only recipes that featured savoury stuffing – most had a sausage, apple and cranberry type combo which just wasn’t particularly appealing to me, so I decided to give it a try! I swapped out the rice for quinoa because I prefer it over rice (plus some extra protein!) and they tend to substitute pretty well. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Mushroom, kale and pecan stuffed acorn squash
Ingredients (serves 4): Total time: ~ 1 h
2 acorn squash, cut in half, seeds scraped out
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
6 mushrooms, sliced
1 cup quinoa
2 cups chicken broth
1 bunch of kale, washed and roughly chopped
1/2 cup of pecans, chopped
1/2 cup of fresh shredded Parmesan
Turn oven to 425F.
Place cut squash halves on roasting pan and lightly drizzle with oil. Roast for 30 – 40 minutes till tender.
Cook quinoa in chicken broth. Start this after you put the squash in the oven so it will be done when the squash is ready for stuffing.
Saute mushrooms, garlic and onion in large frying pan with oil. When onion is clear, about 5 minutes, add in chopped kale and chopped pecans and continue to saute for another 5 minutes or so.
When kale has wilted slightly, remove from heat and add grated parmesan. When quinoa has cooked, add to pan and mix thoroughly. Remove squash from oven and stuff. Return to oven for 5 – 10 minutes to melt cheese. Serve warm and enjoy!
The day before the big day! Dropping our bikes off at transition. (I’m on the left and Nyssa is on the right).
It’s hard to know where to start with this one. I had a lot of excitement and expectation building up to this race. Especially after the let down of last year’s race. I was pretty sure I was coming into this one fitter, more prepared mentally, and more experienced. I was still nervous (does anyone NOT get nervous for an ironman?!), but not the same way wondering if I could even do it. Last fall I’d done a marathon which had gone relatively well – I’d fallen apart at the end (but doesn’t everyone?), and still managed to finish within my “B” goal time of 4:05. And I’d done the full swim and ride distance several times now and knew I had no problem with it.
Looking back at the race 3 months later I’m not nearly as emotionally attached to the race as I was in the days after or even first few responses to “So, how was it?!! You’re an Ironman now!”. (Read: I’m sparing you the full race report version ie. play by play saga of the entire day long race!) Even though I’m not training for an Ironman anymore, the last few months have been busy in other ways. I’ve been diagnosed with a chronic health issue (possibly part of the reason I’m not meant to be an Ironman athlete) which has taken up a lot of time and emotions, and it’s also helped to put the race into perspective for me. We’ve finally had time to be social – to hang out with friends more regularly, finally try an escape room (best thing ever!) and get back to doing things around the house. So, here’s the short and sweet version of my 2016 Ironman Canada race.
Race morning started off bright and early – at 3:30 to be exact. My alarm was set for 4:30 but I just couldn’t sleep. I’m not sure how or why I woke up so early – I couldn’t get to sleep from restless, nervous energy till about midnight, so I was definitely not refreshed when I woke up, but I couldn’t get back to sleep so I tip-toed out and went downstairs to start making coffee and breakfast. I was so nervous that I could hardly eat breakfast, but I knew that I needed energy so forced down the bagel with peanut butter and banana and one egg. At 5:00 AM Nyssa and I headed out. The house we were staying in was on Crabapple Dr, exactly half way between the swim start and the shuttle bus pickup, so we were going to walk to the shuttle bus since we needed to get body marking done and drop off our run transition bags. We were kind of banking on catching a ride with some other race goers and figured anyone driving at that hour would be a part of the race and would offer us a ride into the village since we were wearing warmup clothes and carrying our race bags. Which is exactly what happened. After less than a minute of walking we were offered a ride by a friendly american and his cheering squad – perfect timing! Everything went smoothly right up to the race start. This year the race was implementing a rolling start, so after they played Oh Canada, Nyssa and I hugged and went off to our respective start waves.
Ready to go!
The swim went relatively well. I knew I was a bit fitter in the swim but I wasn’t going to go for a faster time, instead my goal to come out with the same time as last year which would hopefully mean I had used a bit less energy. Somehow I managed to do exactly that and came out with a swim of 1:09:27 which I was very happy with. Even though the rolling start was supposed to make for a smoother more spaced out swim, I ended up getting swum over and had my goggles knocked off in the second lap which seemed strange to me since the year before, everyone had gotten nicely spaced out by the second lap.
The bike started off slow but well. I had my stopwatch set with a timer to go off every 20 minutes to remind me to eat or drink. I thought that not enough nutrition was the cause of my bonking last year and was determined to eat more no matter what this year. The climb up to Callaghan was slower this year, but I was also trying to conserve energy and not get into the mindset of racing anyone or even myself and to just ride at whatever pace felt comfortable. About 50km in as I was cruising through Whistler on a slight downhill, my chain suddenly jammed. I couldn’t move my pedals at all. Not backwards, not forwards, not even an inch. I tried not to stress out while stopping my bike and getting off to take a look. There were a few spectators nearby who came over to see what was wrong. They were aware they couldn’t help out without compromising my race so they stood to the side and just asked if there was anything I’d like them to do or if they could talk me through anything. But I couldn’t even figure out what was wrong. Nothing was moving. Everything seemed fine – the derailleur, the rear cassette, the chain, I just gotten it all replaced in May, but it was completely stuck. I had no tools on me other than to change a tire (but let me tell you , I was ready to change lots of tires with my 4 CO2 cannisters and 2 spare tubes!!) but no screwdriver or multitool which would’ve been helpful now. After about 25 minutes of fiddling with the rear derailleur I started to take off the rear wheel and noticed that the rear derailleur hanger was hanging with one screw half out (on the wrong side.. what??) At the time, in my race mode panic after fighting with the bike for 25 minutes I didn’t even clue in that the screw was stuck in the wrong side of the frame, I just saw that it was on it’s last thread and that it looked like the other screw wasn’t even in. Frantic, I put the rear tire back in and cranked the quick release as tight as I could hoping that that would hold it in place for the remaining 130km. That seemed to do the trick because the chain finally started moving again and I hopped on bike instantly to try to continue the race. I had just been reaching a breaking point where I’d thought I wouldn’t even be able to finish the race and was in tears as I got back on my bike. I knew how important it was to stay calm and get back into race mode so I worked on that for the next 5 minutes till I calmed down and got back up to speed. I think it helped a lot that I was leaving Whistler and there was mostly downhill for the next 30 km to Pemberton. I tried really hard not to think about the lost time, and to just have a good ride and get to the run. Which seemed to work pretty well. I rode the flat out and back from Pemberton to my parents place and back in the aero bars the whole time and kept up a decent pace. As with last year, when I reached the aid station my parents were running, and waved to them it felt amazing and gave me a huge boost of energy and excitement. The ride back into Whistler got a bit stressful when I heard something grinding on my bike. I was already nervous after the derailleur incident that something else would go wrong and I just wanted to be back to transition and done with my bike. I ended up making it to T2 with no issues after 7 hours and 5 minutes on the bike. Not the time I’d been hoping for, but close enough with the time lost dealing with the chain. I’d really been hoping and assuming that I’d be faster this year since I’d been doing so much bike specific training for the tandem racing and my training rides had all had better splits without conscious effort. But I didn’t want to be worried or stressed out about times, so after handing off my bike, I calmly walked through transition looking for my bag. Which I couldn’t find. And all the volunteers were busy helping others. It took me a while to finally grab what I thought was my bag and make my way into the change tent. My first priority was to get all the black bike grease off my hands and legs. As I was doing this a volunteer started taking stuff out of my bag to help when I realized the size 12 running shoes weren’t mine! So while the volunteer ran out to find my actual bag I continued to try to clean up the grease which was everywhere.
10 minutes later, I was finally degreased and in running clothes and making my way onto the run course. As soon as I left T2 I saw John running along and cheering which was exciting! He ran beside me for a bit until I waved him off so I could focus on my pace and get into the run.
5 km in and smiling.
My plan for the run was to take a gel every 7 km and to sip on water at every aid station. I had thought that the nutrition on the run was where I’d messed up last year and had been a huge focus on my training this year. I purposely kept my pace slow this year as I wanted to minimize energy loss and make sure I was able to digest my food. Everything was going well until the start of the second loop. I was on my third gel and I just didn’t feel like eating it. I was starting to feel nauseous and was worried that if I tried to push through and not eat it, it would backfire later so I let myself walk with the focus on getting the gel in. But I just couldn’t do it. It was completely unappealing and I was continuing to feel nauseous. At the aid station at the 22km mark I sat down to get rid of the nausea and realized I was sitting beside a friend and fellow Ironman athlete who was now volunteering. Hearing my situation he told me I was salt-depleted and needed to drink some chicken broth to get rid of the nausea and headache. He gave me two cups of broth and told me to walk until I could drink it all then I’d start to feel better. So I headed off determined to get it down so I could get back to running. I was slowly drinking the broth and walking around Lost Lake but not really starting to feel better, when suddenly I felt a lot worse and everything came back up. I vomited everything out. It was horrible and I felt horrible. I was also starting to get stressed out because I realized this was starting to feel a lot like last year. I slowly kept walking to the next aid station where a spectator had alerted the first aid staff that I was sick and on my way. They made me lie down while they took readings on all sorts of things and asked all sorts of questions. They seemed pretty concerned with my situation and brought me more chicken broth to deal with the head ache and chills that I was experiencing. After the last reading was taken they let me sit back up to finish the chicken broth.. when I promptly vomited again. At this point I was getting antsy to get moving again since it was going to be a long walk to the finish at this rate. They were skeptical of letting me go on, but agreed to as long as I had someone to look out for me. So they were able to get a hold of John who said he’d follow me along the course for the rest of the race. To make a long story short, this pattern continued for the rest of the race. I would try to eat or drink something (eventually only water) and a few kilometers later I would vomit it all up. At one of the next aid stations with 15km still to go, I was feeling pretty dejected after another sick stomach and was wondering whether or not to continue, when the paramedic there came over to me and said, “everyone feels crappy at this point, just get up and keep going!” I looked at her a bit dismayed, but also relieved and thought, okay, get up, I need to keep going! I eventually met up with a veteran Ironman-er named Sharon who was speed walking on target to finish in 17h. So I asked her if I could tag along and walk with her. She kindly agreed and chatting with her and knowing that I would be able to finish in time took my mind off my stomach problems and gave me some much needed positivity. I stopped trying to eat or drink anything except really tiny sips of water every second aid station as I knew it would just speed up my stomach troubles. I finally finished at 11pm, 16 hours 9 minutes and 56 seconds after starting my swim. 4.5 hours later than I was expecting. I didn’t feel that great sense of accomplishment when I crossed the line. I hardly even heard them say that I was an Ironman. I was so exhausted mentally and physically and generally dejected by how things had ended up and was just relieved to be done.
I never expected to be finishing with a glowstick. But I have to say, the last few hours of my race, speed walking with Sharon and all the other people we met along the way were pretty amazing in it’s own way. When you’re out there and you’re no longer chasing down a PB or a spot at Kona, and you’re just out there to finish, to make the last cut-off, to struggle through, it’s a different world. Everyone was encouraging each other, chatting with each other, helping in anyway we could and joking with each other to ease the pain and exhaustion we were all feeling. When we heard (bear banger) shots going off in the dark (there was a bear with her cubs up a tree over the course which had caused an off-road detour for use earlier in the race) an American walking behind me jokingly said something along the lines of, “So that’s how they pick off the stragglers up here?! That’s some good motivation to finish on time!!) before picking up his pace and heading off ahead.
I’m glad I did it. I’m relieved I finished. And while I immediately started planning my next attempt after finishing, I’ve since decided to step back and take a break. I think my body is trying to tell me that for the time being, races over 10.5 hours aren’t my thing. No matter what distance I am into the race, this seems to be the point in time where things shut down. So for now, I’m going to listen and stick to distances and events that don’t require full days of training and thousands of calories just to get through. I’m going to be guiding a half ironman with Christine next summer which is exciting since we haven’t raced together in 2 years, and I’ve been doing some casual training this fall with a few 10Ks thrown in. It’s going to be a change in mindset since for the last two years it feels like I’ve been consumed with all things Ironman, but I’m looking forward to it!
John’s favourite belt (fixed!) – a Great Glebe Garage Sale discovery from his Carleton days!
The prong had come loose and fallen off John’s favourite belt (a Great Glebe Garage Sale find from our Ottawa days!), but because it was the favourite belt we couldn’t just throw it out, but it was also not usable anymore, so it was relegated to the dresser where it sat. And sat. And sat.. until I got annoyed that it was still there and decided to deal with it. I thought for sure Fabricland would have a replacement prong or some nifty trinket that would do the trick, but to my dismay they did not. Nor did they have anything even remotely close. So luckily Fabricland is right next to Home Depot so I just headed over there thinking I could find some sort of nail or screw that I could tweak into a belt prong. I was naively thinking I could bend the end of a nail into a loop and then just cut the rest of the nail to length… Luckily I didn’t have to resort to that! It turns out the belt buckle was the exact length of this $2.00 latch hook from Home Depot. I was pretty excited to get home and start working.
With some needle nose pliers I managed to prise open the loop just wide enough to take out the screw and put the belt buckle in. And with the same pliers I squeezed the loop shut again. Then using a hack saw I cut off the hook end of latch to fit the buckle length. This took two tries to get right. Then using a hammer I flattened out the latch end and tried to get it to bend slightly to conform to the buckle. This part was pretty tedious and it took both John and I holding and pounding the latch on various curved surfaces with mostly no success. Eventually we gave up and after filing down the end to make it smooth and flattening it a bit more to make it more belt like, it was done! All in all, a pretty simple and relatively quick project.
After putting this project off for the better part of a year, I finally decided to do some Googling / Pinterest searching to see if this was a project worth undertaking or not. Turns out it’s a pretty simple and quick fix! These are John’s favourite work pants and clearly go through a lot more wear and tear than the rest. They’d been sitting in our closet for quite a while so I thought it would be a nice surprise if I could fix them one weekend while John was gone. Less than an hour later and for about $2.00, the pants were ready for work again!
Measure zipper length and buy a replacement zipper. The replacement zipper options weren’t quite the same colour or length as the original, but since it’s not visible, as long as it is long enough and strong enough it will work. I used a 7″ zipper from Fabricland that cost about $1.79.
Cut out the old zipper. Pull out all the stitches for the old zipper, then cut the old zipper off at the top where it disappears into the waist band of the pants. I decided to not take apart the waistband in order to minimize the amount of visible stitching required to sew everything back up. Much less pressure this way!! You will need to rip out some stitches at the bottom of the fly to get the zipper through (the two pieces of fabric that hold the front and back of the fly together).
Another pair of pants showing which stitches will need to be taken out (plus all of the stitches holding the other (left) half of the zipper.
Cut the new zipper to length and pin in place. Make sure to not cut the new zipper below the metal stopper otherwise the zipper head will just zip off when doing up the zipper.
Pinning the new zipper in place.
Sew the new zipper in place! This was my first time using a zipper foot attachment on my sewing machine so I was pretty excited to try it out. It also made it so easy to sew the zipper on – who would’ve thought?!
Note – for the side of the pants that will be the front (your left when wearing the pants), you won’t be able to sew all the way to the top of the zipper before hitting the waistband with the machine. You will need to finish sewing this part by hand (see below).
Make sure the zipper foot is on the correct side for the zipper side you are sewing. Your sewing machine manual should have instructions for this.
None of the stitching on this side will be visible when the pants are worn, so feel free to do multiple passes all the way up and over the waistband.
Sew the top of the zipper by hand.
Finish with the top stitching. This is the one seam that is visible so it needs to be smooth and the thread colour should match (or contrast appropriately) the fabric. You may have the imprint of the previous stitching still in the fabric, but I could hardly see it let alone follow it while sewing, so I just took this seam slowly and hoped for the best!
Not quite perfect, but definitely good enough to wear again!
4. Cut a pattern into the loaves before placing them in the oven. Cuts should be about 1/4" deep (NOT like the loaf on the left. Circles were really tricky and completely ineffective!). Place tray on a rack in the lower 1/3 of the oven. At the same time you can spritz some water or add a handful of ice cubes to the oven to give the loaves some extra moisture during the initial baking. I opted for the ice cubes thinking they'd be easier. I'm not so sure it did anything, but it definitely made me feel like I was a pro!
5. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes (or until 200 C internal temperature). Let cool on wire rack for at least 30 minutes before ENJOYing! This loaf was sooo delicious. Mine was a little on the salty side (probably due to the olives) following the original recipe so I've adjusted the salt here.
The Adventures of John & Lindsay 