Holiday Weekends

You would think, with a 3-day holiday weekend, there would be a conrnucopia of training.  My training logs would be veritably overflowing.  My legs would be shattered.  My arms and core fried.  And I would be desperate to get back to work to “get some rest”.  Especially if the weather was absolutely gorgeous — sun, no clouds and in the high 20 degrees (celcius!  so something in in the 80′s for you Americans out there!).

Well, despite this weekend being such a weekend, my training was not overflowing.  Many excuses – all valid.  And all leave me feeling refreshed and “right” in my decision to prioritize work and play over training (for the most part).

This past weekend was, as wee Canadian like to call it “May 2-4″ weekend.  It’s official designation is the Victoria’s Long Weekend… celebrating Queen Victoria of England’s birthday oh so many years ago.  For all intents, this is the weekend that official designates the beginning of “summer”.  Cottages get opened, outdoor activities begin with ernest, most outdoor sports leagues kick off, etc.

Some years, I have had My 2-4s where I have had to break a thin veneer of ice on a lake in the backcountry in order to put the canoe in the water.  Many have been nice, but cool.  This past weekend was hot and sunny.  Which, while nice now, could be a bad sign of a scorching summer to come! I’ll take the weather now for sure, and take my chances later at wilting in the heat.

This holiday weekend I was responsible for my kids.  Which was great.  Meant I got to spend some good quality time with them.  Nothing special planned… just time hanging out together – with an extra day in there to enjoy.  We spent leisurely mornings crawling out of bed and grabbing breakfast.  And afternoons mixing some “chores” with playtime – either ourselves or with the cousins or friends.

The “chore” that was to be done this weekend was to do some body work on my old car.  For those of you that know my vehicle… you’ll know its a 10 year old Mazda Protege5.  The car is mechanically sound, reliable and (now with new tires) lacking in most maintenance needs.  Generally speaking it has been a VERY good car… the only complaint I’ve ever had about it has been related to the brakes. Well, that and the massive amounts of rust that my car as in the exact same location(s) as all other models of my same car!

So, over about 6 hours of work time in the 3 days of the weekend, my boys and I

• ground the rust spots down to clean metal (or holes depending on how weak the spots were in the body panels)
• patched and filled the body areas with body filler, sanding them as smooth as possible afterwards, and rebuilding certain areas of the car in their entirety (like the corners of the front doors which has been chewed away almost completely over the years)
• Primed and painted the newly patched areas with a (close) matching silver paint.

The results, while far from perfect, are pretty amazing.  I do have some final touch ups to do… first I need to buff some of the painted areas to better blend the new paint with the old.  And secondly some of the rust stains (areas where rust bled down and stained metal / plastic bits below them) need to be cleaned off the car.  Once those things are done, the car will look remarkably better than it even does now!

So, knowing that we were working on the car, and playing around home most of the weekend (one adventure aside which I will describe shortly in another post!) — my training did “suffer”.  I did manage to get in a nice ride on the trainer Sunday evening, and another ride on Monday evening as well.  But beyond that, not much else!

Having said that, my batteries are recharged and I am ready and raring to go! This week will be a big week for training… morning and evening workouts to make up for the lost day.  Looking forward to hammering myself after giving the legs some rest.