Living green on Valentine’s Day (and every other day of the year)
Raul is having a contest and asking entrants to talk about how they are “greening” their Valentine’s Day. Dan and I don’t have any special plans for this Saturday and will probably have a quiet dinner at home, however if we do go anywhere I can guarantee we’ll be taking public transit. And if I win Raul’s contest – a snowshoeing evening on Cypress – we’ll be taking transit there too, since we don’t own a car.
We try to live relatively green all year round. We both walk or take transit pretty much everywhere, and I also cycle quite a bit. We bring reusable bags to the grocery store. And now that we both have real jobs we can afford to start paying more attention to whether those groceries are local and/or organic.
Sadly, I draw the line at composting in our one bedroom apartment! The city of Halifax has been doing “green bin” collection for years and I can’t believe Vancouver doesn’t offer the service yet.
Airing my dirty laundry
Now that I’m in the corporate world I have dry cleaning that needs to be done on a semi-regular basis. A couple months ago I went looking for reviews and rates for dry cleaners in my neighbourhood (Vancouver’s West End) and came up empty handed. It turns out the web presence of most local dry cleaning establishments is pretty nonexistent.
In the end I took a leap of faith and decided to try Denman Cleantec because it was the second closest location to my apartment, and the closest location’s rates were astronomical. I’ve had two batches of dry cleaning done there now and am very pleased with the results, price, and service. The first time I went in they pointed out a small tear in the seam of a dress I was dropping off and offered to fix it for free. Their rate for hemming ($12) also seems to be one of the best in the city.
Denman Cleantec
1075 Denman Street, Vancouver
Monday to Friday 7:30am-6:30pm
Saturday 8:00am-6:00pm
Closed Sundays & Holidays
Anyhow, I highly recommend Denman Cleantec to my fellow Vancouverites for all their dry cleaning and minor alteration needs. Hopefully this little review will come in handy to future web searchers. Hmmm… perhaps I can barter some free dry cleaning service in exchange for building the place a website.
Come run with us on Wednesdays!
Our first weekly Vancouver running meetup last week was a success so we’re making it a regular thing.
This week we’re meeting up at 6pm near City Square. I’ve created a permanent page for our group with details on the run. It’ll be updated weekly.
Goodbye grad school, hello real world
As I alluded to in an earlier post, I’m experiencing some major changes in my life at the moment. I have decided to take a leave of absence from my doctoral work at UBC and pursue full time employment. This decision was not made lightly or hastily! It’s something I had been thinking about for quite a while, and I’m extremely happy about finally deciding on this path.
On that note, if you know of any companies in Vancouver currently looking for someone with a usability/human-computer interaction background, please let me know! I’ve got a few applications in and have had some good interviews, but nothing is finalized yet. I’ve updated my C.V. here on the website, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.
Vancouver Twitterers’ Weekly Run Group
The idea of a weekly running meetup has been bandied about by a few Vancouverites on Twitter, and I have decided to unilaterally declare this week our official first run!
The regular time for our run will be 6:30pm on Wednesdays, and the location will rotate based on group membership so we’re not always starting at the same location. For this week, we’ll start in the west end near my apartment. Next week maybe it’ll be Kitsilano or somewhere else convenient to other group members.
What: Vancouver Tech/Blogger/Twitter Running Group
When: 6:30pm, Wednesday September 17th
Where: In front of the Inukshuk on the seawall, near the corner of Bidwell & Beach
All levels are welcome! I know that some people who have expressed interest are fairly new to running, while others are seasoned veterans. We’ll make sure everyone is included, no matter what their experience.
If you think you’ll be able to make it please leave a comment on this post!
Frugal Fitness
Rebecca just announced a new series on her blog called Fitness Friday, where she’ll talk about her own fitness progress and experiences at Fitness World (and perhaps elsewhere?). Anyhow, it got me thinking about my own fitness activities here in Vancouver.
One of the things I love about this city is that it’s just so easy to stay fit! And you don’t need to buy a gym membership to do so. As a starving grad student I’ve managed to find tons of inexpensive activities.
Here are some of my favourite (and frugal!) ways to stay fit in Vancouver…
1. Kayaking
This summer we’ve really been enjoying two-for-one Tuesdays at Ecomarine Kayaks. A single kayak rental usually costs $34, but on Tuesdays you can rent two for that price, which drops the price to a very reasonable $17 per person for two hours of kayaking. Foursomes can rent two double kayaks for $46 – an even better deal! We usually rent from Ecomarine’s English Bay location since it’s just steps from out apartment, but they also have locations at Jericho Beach and Granville Island.
2. Yoga
Vancouver has undoubtedly got to be the yoga capital of Canada. However, sometimes it seems like the price of a yoga class can run you almost as much as a fancy Lululemon tank top! 
But if you look hard enough there are some options for not-so-flush fans of yoga. Several local studios offer karma classes.
Yaletown Yoga runs two karma classes on Friday nights: hot yoga and power yoga. These classes are both by-donation, and proceeds are donated to local charities.
Unity Yoga currently offers its members a karma class on Monday nights. While this requires you to sign up for an annual membership (only $25), the class itself is free. Attendees are encouraged to bring non-perishable items for the food bank.
During the summer you can enjoy free yoga at Sunset Beach every Saturday morning, weather-permitting.
3. Running
Vancouver is blessed with a plethora of lovely places to go running. Since I live in the west end I tend to spend a lot of time on the seawall. However, there are great multi-use paths all over the place! When I lived in North Burnaby I used to frequent the Burnaby Mountain and Burnaby Lake trails.
Need some running buddies for extra motivation? Many local running stores have free run clubs. The Running Room hosts theirs on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. The Nike Runner’s Lounge in Coal Harbour also hosts a variety of free running clinics.
4. Cycling
It’s certainly no Barcelona, but Vancouver is pretty cycling-friendly for a North American city. And a decent bicycle doesn’t have to cost you a fortune in this town. Check out Our Community Bikes or The Bike Kitchen, both of which offer reasonably priced used bikes. They also offer lessons on how to do your own bike maintenance and repairs.
Once you’ve got a bike, visit Translink’s Cycling Around Greater Vancouver page. It includes maps of cycling routes in Vancouver and the surrounding area, as well as other useful info for local cyclists.
Come up with a fun cycling outing. One of my favourite rides is over the Lions Gate Bridge and around North Van, with a stop at Whole Foods on the way home for some yummy treats. To plan your route, check out the Cycling Route Planner developed by UBC’s Centre for Health and Environment Research. It uses Google Maps along with info about local bike routes to help you plan trips based on various criteria including least traffic pollution, most vegetation, or gentlest slope!
And there you have it! My mini-guide to frugal fitness in Vancouver. What’s your favourite inexpensive way to stay in shape? Let me know in the comments section!
Water-ful long weekend
Much of my Canada Day long weekend was spent competing in fun sporting activities that gave me the opportunity to enjoy some wonderful Vancouver area lakes.
I did a triathlon at Whonnock Lake on Sunday that included an 800m swim. I’d never been to the area before and was pleasantly surprised with the lovely lake and beach area. I was also pleasantly surprised by the water temperature: It was a balmy 18 degrees, so I opted not to wear my wetsuit. Transitioning from the swim to the bike was a breeze since I didn’t have to spend any time struggling to de-suit!
Then, on Canada Day I did an open water swim at Sasamat Lake. The extremely hot weather we’d had over the weekend made the water even warmer there (21 degrees!) and I again went sans-wetsuit. My time for the race was definitely a bit slower without the extra buoyancy – I’d never swum that far in open water without a wetsuit before and didn’t realize how much harder it would be – but the cool lake water felt great on such a hot day.
I took a quick nap at home after the swim, then Dan and I decided to take advantage of 2-for-1 Tuesday at Ecomarine Kayaks; On Tuesdays you can rent two single kayaks for $34 plus tax. They’ve got a rental place at English Bay, just steps from our apartment, but in our year of living in the neighbourhood we had yet to check it out.
The rental was for two hours, and we spent that time paddling out past Third Beach, then back to Granville Island, and finally returning to English Bay. Because it was a holiday there was a lot of boat traffic on the water and it was a bit choppy. One powerboat full of idiots decided it would be absolutely hilarious to zoom around us doing donuts! We still had a great time, though, and have made a reservation for next Tuesday evening when the water should be much calmer and relatively powerboat-free.
Nike Runner’s Lounge
This evening I decided to check out a free boot camp fitness class that was happening at the Nike Runner’s Lounge down in Coal Harbour, which is just a short jog from my place in the West End. The lounge has been around for over a year but I hadn’t made it down there until today.
The place was a lot nicer than I expected! They have what seems like an endless supply of water and granola bars, as well as change rooms and lockers to store your stuff while you run along the seawall. And it’s all free! Granted, you have to endure what amounts to a gigantic store-sized ad for Nike, but I’m willing to put up with a little gratuitous marketing in exchange for a free fitness class and a granola bar or two.
The lounge has various running-related clinics happening most weeknights and weekends. Tonight’s boot camp class was called “Built To Run”, and oh boy did it ever humble me! I am not an elite athlete by any stretch of the imagination but I do try to stay in shape. I’ve been pretty vigilant at keeping up with my swimming, running, and biking lately. Sadly, all of that exercise apparently made no difference when faced with trainer Mike from mode athletics. We did sprints, stairs, and a circuit workout, all in under an hour! I suspect I’ll be feeling that tomorrow. Nevertheless, I’m planning to return for more torture next Tuesday.
Sun Run 2008
It’s been a while… In the time I have been neglecting my blog I have:
1. Taken a trip to Europe (Barcelona and Florence) and
2. Run in the 2008 Sun Run
I haven’t managed to get my photos from my Europe trip on Flickr yet so I’ll leave the trip report for a later post. Instead, today you get to hear about the much less interesting Sun Run.
This was my second year doing the run and I went into it with the goal of having a fun time and finishing in under an hour; With almost 60,000 people doing the race I knew I was definitely not going to get my best 10k time! Kate, Deb, and I started near the front of the “green” group (two other groups, the elite runners and the “yellow” group, started ahead of us). While we waited for our wave to start we grooved to music by Derek’s band, The Neurotics, who have been playing at the Sun Run start line for 15 years!
Our wave got off to a slow start. With such a large mob of people running at very varied paces I barely made the 2km mark in under 12 minutes. Yikes! Around the same time I began to wish I had taken advantage of one of the many porta-potties before the race had started. When we hit Beach Avenue, around the 3km mark, I decided to make a pit stop (they had porta-potties located at various points along the race route!) and lost a precious few minutes. I was going to have to work really hard to finish in under an hour.
Luckily I had the final 2/3 of the run to make up for my lost time and I pushed myself the whole way, stopping to walk for a few seconds at two water stations, but otherwise running the entirety of the time. It wasn’t until I passed the 9km mark and my watch read just over 54 minutes and I knew I would make it. The chip times haven’t been posted on the Sun Run website yet, but my time should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 59:30. Just barely under one hour.
All in all, it was a fun run, and it reminded me that I need to get in shape for triathlon season! My next race (North Shore Sprint Tri) is in just under a month. Time to hit the pool to train.
2008 UBC Triathlon
Despite an almost complete lack of training so far this year, I (foolishly, you might say) decided to enter the UBC Triathlon over the weekend. This event started my interest in triathlon back in 2006 when a friend talked me into entering the short course. These days I usually enter sprint distance triathlons (800m swim, 20k cycle, 5k run) but given my current state of fitness I thought it wiser to try the short course again this year (400m swim, 10k bike, 5k run).
On Sunday afternoon I left my downtown apartment in plenty of time to arrive at UBC for my 3:30pm swim start, or so I thought. After a harrowingly long bus trip (1.5 hours to get from Davie & Burrard to UBC! Thank you Translink!), I arrived with just under an hour to spare before my race. That sounds like a lot of time, but I had to pick up my registration package, have my bike and helmet checked out for safety, get my gear set up in the transition area, and get into my swimsuit. Luckily, I made it with 20 minutes to spare. And by “spare” I mean work myself up into a nervous tizzy. Maybe I should show up even later next time!
As soon as the swim started, though, my nerves vanished and I had a great race. I certainly wasn’t at my fastest but I had fun. The temperature was great – not too cold on the bike as I had worried – and my run felt relatively strong (considering my lack of training). My goal for Sunday was to beat my short course time from two years ago and I did that by five and a half minutes. I also placed third in my age group, so hooray for turning 30 and moving up an age bracket! If I had been in the 25-29 age group I would have placed 10th. The full results from the triathlon are here.
Completing this race was just the kick in the butt I needed to get in shape for the summer triathlon season. As soon as I’m recovered from the UBC tri (which may take a while, judging by how sore I am today) I’ll start training for my next race: The North Shore Spring Triathlon.