Anti-doping and road running in Victoria.

This is the first year that I've been fortunate enough to be part of the WADA's anti-doping testing pool. I'm now required to have my "whereabouts" updated for every day of the season, showing where in the world I am and where Anti-doping can come find me. The website is terrible (though I hear it was worse before), and it can be pain-staking updating your location, your one-hour testing window (a time slot that you can guarantee to be found in), your daily recurring activities; especially with a slow internet connection. The calender ends up looking a bit like this:

This is a simpler month because my locations are only Victoria and Scottsdale, but I still need to add in a couple competitions happening later in March. 

Bright and early (6:40am) Thursday morning while still lying in bed, I heard the chiming of the doorbell here at my girlfriend's family's house. I have to admit that it's a bit flattering that people will track me down and grab my urine to ensure that I'm not cheating. Well, as I've been saying, there's nothing like starting the day with your pants around your ankles and a stranger watching you pee into a cup. I'm hoping that my girlfriend's parents were okay with us handling vials of my urine on the kitchen table. 

This morning I ran the Bazan Bay 5km road race out in Sidney (about 25 minutes drive out of downtown Victoria, by the airport). It was flat out-and-back with some wind on the way out, but overall pretty nice weather conditions for a race that runs 20 metres from the ocean shore most of the route. I finished first in 14:20, apparently a new race record, and got a great workout from the run. The race annually draws on the area's top road racers and triathletes; it's really quite a good run, and has developed the reputation accordingly. Complete results here. Racing a road 5km beats the hell out of having to do a Sunday long run. 

It's been a very good, very normal week in Victoria (outside of the pissing in a cup thing). I saw some friends, and my sister, spent as much time as I could with my girlfriend, had a couple rounds of Dairy Queen. It's been a vacation from the intensity of training in Scottsdale, and a week back in Canada is always more than long enough to make me sad to leave. There's really only a month and bit left to put my head down and pound out the workouts; come middle of April, the Olympic A standard chase begins. I'm going to savour my last day here, and maybe even grab thirds of Dairy Queen.