Thats the funny way to think of these last two weeks. the truth is almost every morning, before the wind picks up, all is still and the smoke from the ridiculous amount of forest fires in BC settles in the valleys over night. It really does smell like a wood fire BBQ, nice redwood/cedar smoke, toss in a little Fraser fir, and Hemlok. Life in the last two weeks has been almost completely normal for me (kind of crazy to think this way but its true), I have not strayed one millimeter from my routine. Every day I set out and do my training. The smoke here in whistler, really has not been that bad, the first few times it really shocked me, and I was able to notice the smallest amounts. Now i seem to take it more like "oh, its smokey again today, oh well, i'll just train a little later, give the time for the wind to pick up and push the smoke out of the valley." That is the most these fires have affected me...physically. Mentally, as a newcomer to BC and totally foreign to the thought of forest fire danger I have been "internally" freaking out. The first was the fact that 4 fires surrounded the valley. the closest was 32.4KM from whistler, yet as soon as that number was under 100km, it seemed to knock a little louder on my door. It was still well south and over the whistler mountain, so not too bad. Than, Blackcomb. In the blink of an eye, it was burning right in town! (not literally, because it was still a little ways away, but you could definitely see it from the village). This is what truly made the whole forest fire ordeal strike home. It made me realize that this danger was totally real, and that this is something that fire crews, no matter how big can't really do anything about. Try as they may, without rain, they would not win. Two days of thinking over what would happen if I were to be evacuated, and I realized, I can prepare myself as much as I want, but it really does not matter. For now, the fire is burning, but away from the village, it is on the east side, and we have had nothing but westerly winds. So really there isn't any danger there. Unless the winds change. They never seem to here.
All this while, I was keeping the good training happening. A couple of really good Rollerski intervals at WOP, some nice rides, and some rockin strength sessions kept the volume up for me, so I didn't really have the time to worry about any of this.
Last sunday was the workout of the year for me so far. At the beginning of the week, since I felt like i was still getting better from a super hard calf day at the gym, Lee proposed that instead of ski walking up Blackcomb (and because the fire was still going) that we would do a long ride. Not any ride either. It was one I had been looking foreword to since hearing about it. Duffy Lake Rd. The plan was for me to ride from home, meet Lee who would bring the van to Pemberton, continue riding together on 99 climb the legendary Duffy Lake Rd hill, and come back down and finish at the van. It ended up being three hours and 40 minutes for me total, and the climb was an hour and three minutes of that. to be in the saddle once again and climbing for that long really reminded me of my ride up Alpe d'Huez last summer. And nothing made me happier than completing it. The epic climb, and the decent which took about 15 minutes, hitting 75km/h a times, just made the day absolutely unreal. I think if I was not a Cross Country Skier, I could totally do the cycling thing.... But I don't deal well with heat that much... So winter is way more fun!
So now I have made a couple of deals with people (bets) to finding a job before a deadline, and the house hunt is (cross my fingers) in its final stages. And life is good!
So I'll keep the training going smoothly, last big week until Canmore!
Cheers,
C
C
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