Will Exercise for Food
About a month ago I travelled to Vancouver to for my final race of the season. The race went pretty well (see previous blog post) but the real stand out of the trip was the food. One of the top 5 reasons I love triathlon is the ability to consume as much food as my heart desires, and it desires a lot. Also literally all of the restaurants we visited had top notch service (I’ve worked in the industry for quite some time now so I’m extremely aware) and deserve a shout out.
Friday
Friday was pretty uneventful. I had to work until noon so my dad and I left after lunch. Mom packed us a bunch of food so we could basically drive straight from Calgary to Kamloops without stopping - minus the pee breaks, emphasis on the plural. We arrived in Kamloops pretty late so I went straight to bed after unpacking.
Saturday
Saturday started with grabbing a quick bite to eat at the hotel’s complementary breakfast - a bagel with peanut butter and honey. We repacked the car and got back on the road. Our destination - Vancouver. Traffic in Vancouver on a Saturday is terrifying. I don’t love large crowds but can normally deal. For some reason all of the people on the streets and the bumper to bumper traffic for miles gave me really bad anxiety. It didn’t help that our hotel was right in the middle of downtown.
Instant mood booster: having a reservation at Joe Fortes for lunch. It took approximately 20 minutes to walk to from the hotel.
Funny story: My dad is a hoarder and clean freak. It makes for an interesting combo, as he is very good at hiding all of his hoardings. For example, all of his clothes from the 70s were found in a bunch of ‘empty’ suitcases. His other favorite things to hoard? Cooking books, shoes, dinnerware and glassware. As we were walking along the sidewalk a lady was carrying a bunch of boxes of stuff out of her apartment onto the grass (to be thrown out). Of course dad was able to spot a cooking book in one of the boxes so guess who owns a new cookbook :)
Back to Joe Fortes. We arrived around 3 and it was packed. Unfortunately, when we made our reservation we weren’t aware dinner doesn’t start until 4 and we were given the brunch menu. My dad got to talking with the our amazing server Tim and mentioned that we were there for the triathlon. Tim’s literal reaction: "Ok so I’m going to grab you the dinner menu because it has bigger portions, we are going to get you your own bread basket, lots of pasta, do you also need potatoes?” Tim is now my best friend and Joe Fortes is officially my favorite restaurant. I ordered the seafood linguine (mussels, clams, mushrooms, jumbo seared scallops & prawns, white wine cream sauce) and subbed the cream sauce for tomato. So good. Also I’m pretty sure I had almost 10 pieces of bread because of the dipping oil.
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Stanley Park and walking along the sea wall. I was still pretty stuffed from my late lunch so we walked over to Milestones for a lighter supper. I ordered the surfside salad (grilled salmon and shrimp seasoned with child salt on a bed of greens with fresh avocado, grilled pineapple, sweet peppers, crisp rice noodles and fresh cut salsa tossed in our honey citrus vinaigrette). A couple of years ago I ordered this salad when it first came out in Kelowna and it was amazing. The next time I was at Milestones in Calgary I ordered it and the portion sizes of the seafood were soo small and I was really sad. Fortunately my portion sizes in Vancouver were HUGE :D
Sunday
Sunday started with a 20min shakeout run along the seawall.
After breakfast, we decided to spend the morning exploring Quay Market in North Vancouver. I much prefer North Vancouver over downtown Vancouver - it reminds me more of Calgary. Quay Market is small but has some amazing local shops. We grabbed lunch at The Soup Meister and I had the seafood chowder (tomato based with pretty much every type of seafood you could imagine). It was probably the best soup I have ever eaten. Somehow they managed to put an entire fish into my little bowl.
I spent the afternoon with my team where we biked the course and went for a quick swim in the ocean. This was my first time swimming in an ocean. For some reason I really enjoyed how salty the water was - reminded me of pretzels.
For dinner we checked out a cute italian restaurant by our hotel - Ciao Bella. Once again my dad mentioned we were here for the race and I was instantly brought plates of bread (I could get used to this). I ordered the linguini alla mediterranea (wild salmon, baby shrimp, tiger prawns, calamari & scallop tossed with a garlic basil white wine rosé sauce) and once again subbed for tomato sauce. I was a little hesitant about the calamari (I like it when its breaded and deep fried but am not the biggest fan of it when its naked). I was able to deal with the small pieces but couldn’t stomach the mass of legs. My inner foodie was pretty disappointed in myself. The portion size of the dish was massive - I think this was the first time in my life that I was unable to finish my meal. Well done Ciao Bella.
Monday
Race day! See previous blog for that recap.
After the race we went over to Granville Island. But first we checked out the condo building my parents lived in when they were first married. It had a 25m outdoor pool - the dream.
Granville Island is pretty cool. There are so many cute shops and tons of fresh produce. With this being my last race of the season I decided to get pretty wild with my food choices. We grabbed a bite to eat at Celine’s Fish and Chips and I ordered halibut and chips. I was already halfway through it when I rememebered to take a picture. The portion of fish was massive. For desert I had some gelato - pink grapefruit. So so good.
We drove back to Kamloops late and opted to go to Milestones for a quick dinner. I once again ordered the surfside salad and once again was not disappointed. Large serving size = happy Catherine.
Tuesday
My last day in BC. My first year running x-country for RDC nationals were held in Kamloops. The day after the race our coach took us to the Kerry Cartwright Park for a shake out run and the trail/view was pretty amazing. I was pretty excited we had enough time to stay in Kamloops and explore this park again. There are wide, packed down trails and single track grass trails.
The park provides maps that show all of the different trails (including their difficulty and length) and how they connect. At each junction, there are posts with arrows telling you which direction each trail is. It’s pretty cool. We spent about 2 hours hiking to two different summits. Miss Sadie would have loved it. Speaking of Sadie, I’ve spent the past 3 weeks of my off season exploring the trails in west Calgary and Cochrane with Sadie as my sidekick. Stay tuned for a review of my favorite trails.