Well, hello there, stranger...

Time for a long due update!!

Wow, its been a while since we posted on here. Lots and lots of changes happened since the turn of the new year and our trip to India.

Since the last time I wrote,  me and Garima were getting on a plane for a trip back home to New Delhi, so its only fitting that I can formally announce…

Me and Garima are now married! 

Needless to say, the trip was hectic and very eventful, typical of Indian weddings.

 

We were also very glad to be host for our common friend from our Carleton days, Cindy, who traveled all the way from Ottawa to be part of our wedding!! Thanks Cindy!

For our honeymoon, we went to Maldives for a week. It was pure bliss. Both of us usually only take one vacation every year, and its usually to travel back to India, so we haven’t got a chance to see much of the world or take a real lazy vacation ever since we started working full-time. 

      

 So we had a blast…lots of scuba diving, snorkeling, canoeing…

 

…sun-bathing, getting local tours of Maldives islands
 

…and obviously, fishing having tons of yummy seafood/barbeques!!

   

Then we went back to New Delhi for a few days before heading back to Canada, but in these few days, Garima had a little orientation into my family:

 When we came back to Toronto, I was really depressed seeing a white sheet of snow firmly planted on the landscape. I thought to myself, “Well, at least its Mid-February now, only 1-2 months of winter left”.

Little did I know…here we are sitting in Mid-May and its only in the last 2 weeks that it’s really beginning to feel like summer. What a sucky winter we’ve had!

Of course, once we were back, normal life resumed. Work’s been tough lately, and was hard to adjust back to the grind.

Getting back into training mode has been rough…sometimes plagued by the “why I do this?”, “…there’s really no goal race to train for this year, so what should I work towards?”, getting sick due to change in weather between India/Canada, getting caught in the flu season., and when not plagued with these ailments, just sucking at workouts because of the 1.5 months break from January to Mid-February and lack of consistent training. Bah.

Taking this vacation also meant that we used up all of our vacation this year, so we’re working like mules for the rest of 2014, which, in turn, meant that we couldn’t travel back home again in April for me to attend my cousin’s wedding. Boo.

Anyway, that was a quick update, stay tuned for more since we’ve already been busy competing in running races this year!!  Plus, some summer trips and visits from family!

Happy New Year 2014!

As we head to New Delhi, I am writing this from the LHR airport lounge, I’ll reflect a little bit on 2013 and look ahead to what’s coming for 2014!

So, What’s in store for us in 2014?

• Get married!
• Get settled: a car, a house, taxes??
• Continue some resemblance as endurance sport athletes after the damage done from the wedding! :D
• Hopefully travel a bit, participate in some races and have fun!
• Plan is for both of us to do a destination race this year…nothing fancy. We’re thinking about visiting the East Coast (Nova Scotia, in particular) for the EPIC Dartmouth race (Sprint/Olympic/Half/Full distances) as well as a few cycling/running races thrown in.
• One of the other highlights will be the 1^st edition of MSC Niagara Half Iron distance Duathlon, unique because of its point-to-point course and run next to the Niagara Falls! Cant wait!

Finally, 2013 in review from a sports perspective:

The good:

• Represented Canada at Age Group World Duathlon championships: CHECK.
• Had fun? : Mostly! CHECK
• Didn't get injured: CHECK
• Didn't get fat: CHECK
• Maintained motivation to train for 2014 despite no specific goal race in mind: CHECK

The bad:

• Focused on my swim: Uh...a tiny bit. FAIL.
• Improved bike times: Yes, but not much. Sort of FAIL.
• Improved 10k and marathon: Sort of FAIL. 
• Had a nice meltdown at Goodlife Marathon, 
• But running strength (not speed) improved overall by a lot, especially on hills and trails, which helped for Powerman

• Cured my nagging neck/shoulder/trapezius ergonomic chronic pain: FAIL.
• Things got much better than 2012, for sure, because of chiro/RMT and semi-focused rehab exercises, but these neck pains still keep me from getting stronger shoulders/traps...

The effort:

I don’t have Garima’s stats since she conveniently chooses not to keep track, but I jotted down a summary of my exercise related activities for this year. 

• I try to record all of my activities, including weights, swimming, running and cycling, but don’t keep track of any walking or calories burnt from day-today activities. We walk on average about 4-5 kms a day to the gym/work and a lot more during summer wandering around town.
• So, from exercise alone, I burnt an average of 29,100 kCal a month. That’s a staggering 350,000 kCal in the year and an average of almost a 1000 kCal a day! When you consider that we usually don’t work out on weekends unless there is a race, its even more surprising! We both do a lot of weight training (3X-4X/week: 5-6 hrs/week), so this is not just from aerobic activities like cycling and running.
• For perspective, what does 350,000 kCal look like? 
• Approximately 39,000 grams (39 kgs) of pure FAT. LARD.
• Approximately 87,500 grams (87.5 kgs) of carbohydrates and proteins including sugars, breads, meat, dairy, whatever.
• Since during any given aerobic activity, you burn a combination of ~40% fat and 60% carbs on average, it is probably closer to 16 kgs of Fat and 52.5 kgs of Carbs.
• Yes, in simple terms this means that if I ate like I did during the year, and not do a single exercise related activity, I would easily gain ~30 kgs in bodyweight of FAT at the very least. In a single year. Of course, I wouldn’t eat this much if I just sat on my backside all day! Or would I…?
• Keep in mind that without exercise, a person of my size and build would need around 2500 kCal a day, just to do daily activities like walking, sleeping and going to work. So all these calories are in addition to the 900,000 kCal in a year that anyone like me would normally NEED.

-   Garima is generally in the same neighborhood of calories and time, except a few instances per month where I generally worked out longer than she did (curse of long distance racing!). So if you adjust for her weight and size, she would also have incinerated around 210,000 kCal in 2013, or 575 kCal/day. Pretty wild.

2013 - Total Exercise Time

Of course, you can dig into my numbers and find that they may be overestimated by about 5-15% because they’re mainly based on my custom estimate of calories burnt per hour of a specific activity, but not based on any actual metabolic testing. I’ve found it to be reasonably accurate (in the same ballpark) since I don’t really track calories on a day-to-day basis for eating and rather go by feel, like everyone else. Our weight and eating habits have not really changed since the last few years.

However, I’m not highlighting these figures for bragging rights, but rather to show those unaware how calories work and how they can add up due to lack of attention to one’s diet, (even an excess off by 200 kCal/day = 1 large cookie is 73,000 kCal in a year and 8 kgs of fat!).

Nobody needs to count calories every day, just be attuned to your body’s daily needs and be aware of what you really put in your mouth everyday! Its not as simple as counting calories for most people (although it can be!) You can consult your family physician about your personal goals for nutrition and be careful of any approach with radical changes to your routine.

Another interesting fact is that if you compare this with any serious endurance athlete around the world, we are probably on the lower side of things. Most of these “serious” or professional athletes my size can easily burn up to 50,000 kCal a month and don’t “waste” so much time doing weights like we do. However, what I’m proud of is the fact that we stay consistent throughout the year and there are not too many deep peaks and valleys, except my 6 week trip to Europe/India in September/October…

So as we embark on 2014, everyone needs goals. Do you have yours?

Alrighty, on to the connecting flight to Delhi! Familia, here we come!

Toronto Pearson Airport - iPad equipped seating is everywhere! And free!

Keep pedaling.

Bye-bye 2013!

Well well, it’s been a while since we wrote here!

As expected, once we came back from India in October, things have been mad busy.

But it’s the end of the year, time to reflect on 2013 and plan for 2014...so thought I'd chime in a quick update of what we've been upto:

Me:

• Driving Exam + Prep : Got my G license 1 week before my G2 expired! Finally!! It did help that our good friend, Jeff, was able to loan me his car (Fiat 500!) for practicing and the test, which made parallel parking a joke!
• Professional Engineering Exam: Ethics exam. Pretty open ended and I think it went well…need to wait for the results till February 2014.
• Canadian Citizenship Exam (yep!!): This one came out of nowhere. I applied only back in April/May 2013 and the anticipated processing time is usually 2-2.5 years, so when I got the notification to write the test late in November, I was pleasantly surprised. With all this other stuff going on, I hardly had any time to study for it, or realize how seriously I should really be taking it! With a mere 2-4 hours of distracted studying and practice exams, I decided to “wing it” on exam day and PASSED! Only after looking at the implications of failure (re-test followed by an in-person interview, which could take up to 2 years in wait time!) did I realize how stupid my approach was! Ah well, at least this ended well!

 Movember 2013!!

Garima:

• Professional Engineering application: Same as me, except Garima is a year behind. She wrote up all her experience summaries and dealt with the complicated application procedure. It changed a lot since I applied for it last year.
• Driving Classes (G2): Not one to be ‘taken for a ride’ all the time, Garima bit the bullet and signed up for driving lessons this year. It’s a combination of in-class lessons and driving sessions. She’s had some frustration dealing with her driving school, but we can’t say that we should have expected any better for what we paid! ;) Long story short, she’s still attending classes and hasn’t sat in the driver’s seat after 2 months of these sessions…

 

Both:

• Wedding planning: We’re really thankful for our parents and families for this as they’ve been doing the bulk of the work on this front. We sorted out most of our clothes, outfits while on our last trip to India and provided our inputs on any other logistics where we could be useful (very limited! Haha..). We’ve been thankfully spared from all the nitty-gritty details and attention to detail that goes into planning an Indian wedding!
• Planning our trip to India: Wedding invitations, buying gifts and other miscellaneous formalities
• Planning our honeymoon:  An all inclusive trip to a MALDIVES resort for a week! Booyah!
• Working like mules…really busy times at work in the past few months.

Both of us have also been doing a lot of SHOPPING. I'm generally dragged everywhere really like a whiny kid when it comes to shopping, so you can imagine how scarring the past trips to the Eaton Centre have been like! Again, these were mainly for gifts and household/wedding related stuff.

However, there was something I bought as an early present for myself:

A NEW BIKE! :D

Welcome Cervelo S2!

I got a good deal on it and couldn't pass it up. I'm still getting used to riding a road bike position again after training solely on the triathlon bike (P2C) for 2 years. My hamstrings have been complaining a lot more...

On the training side of things, we’ve been able to squeeze in a few long runs, bikes and even some ‘endurance’ swims somehow in the past few months, but this one ride on a fine and snowy Christmas day takes the cake!

(You were longing for some data plots, you say? Well, your wish is granted!)

Christmas Workout!

Appropriately named “Disaster” on TrainerRoad, this workout is deceptively hard, even after you’ve mentally gotten over the fact that it’s a 4hr 10min workout. I was tired from 2 days of intervals before this workout and couldn't hit my power "targets" most of the time. Those 2 min VO2 max intervals after 3 hours left me cross-eyed until the following 45 mins at 85% had my legs feel like useless pieces of flotsam.

After Christmas comes Boxing Week, and yep…more shopping!
And some fun seeing family, hanging out with friends...!

          

 HAPPY NEW YEAR TORONTO!

 

Keep pedaling.