Lest We Forget

IM Florida Update Coming Soon

Home from Florida now, and back to Internet access.

I'll get a race report up this week.

Florida Bound

Well...It's been a while since I posted on the blog, and I am not sick anymore.

Tomorrow we pack the car up with three bikes, four people, and head down to Panama City Beach for Ironman. I'm looking forward to it, as the course is one of my favourites. Race day is Saturday, 650am CST. I'm #24, you can track me on ironman.com

If things work out, I'll hopefully lead out of the water. The weather looks great for race day, so we'll see how things go! Hopefully I'll be able to post again before race day.

SICK

The last two days have turned out to be a write off.

I woke up yesterday with a sore throat. I decided to take the day off, pound the Vitamin C and echinicea, and hope to kick the sore throat.

Awoke this morning, and it didn't work. First cold of the year. Stuffed up this morning, still got the sore throat, and a mild headache to boot. Taking the cold medication now, in addition to the Vit C and Ech.

Hopefully I can kick this quick, so I can still get a good weekend of training in.

Over the Weekend

A good weekend of training in the books.

Saturday started out with 4.5hr of riding. Up the Malahat, down to Shawnigan Lake, two loops around the lake, and back home. 30 min run off the bike.

Sunday was a 90 min run. In the afternoon, the snowbirds were performing over the Juan de Fuca Straight and there were roughly 20-30,000 people out on the shores to watch the show. A nice sunny day, perfect for watching the air show. The sights and sounds were amazing!!






Monday brought a 4km swim in the morning, along with a 3hr ride with Jasper, Steveo and Mike. I'm trying to pack up most of my stuff, and get it off to Greyhound to be shipped home. I fly back to Ontario in a week.

Sooke 1/2 Iron Update

I had my final race tune-up before IM Florida this past Sunday. The Sooke 1/2 Ironman was the final race in the West Coast series, and it was a good way to get in another race simulation.

I decided to use the day as a good training weekend, not bothering to rest too much going into the race. To top it off, the course was tough (toughest bike of the year, and the run beats you up as well).

I led out of the water by 4 minutes, and started out on the bike. I've been trying to get comfortable in my new front end set-up for Florida, so this was a good opportunity to test it out for 86km of riding. The course was basically 4 laps of a 20km loop, plus a lil extra to get to T2 (which was 5km down the road). I was riding along nice and steady until just after the climb on the third loop, when all of a sudden a guy went flying by. I had no idea who it was, and he just pulled away from me, despite my efforts to try and match him. I ended up coming off the bike 4 min down on him.

I started out the run fairly strong, trying to cut the gap down, but it wasn't possible. I was 6 min down at 10km, and knew that I was going to be stuck with 2nd. It turns out after the race that the guy was Chris Boudreaux, who used to train up here in Victoria with the crew before I got out here. He is a strong athlete. He just missed out on Jasper Blake's course record.

All in all, a solid day, some good race prep, and after a couple easy days, it'll be back to some miles, with a couple good days of some riding planned this week. I'll switch over from my current events focus to more of my training in the future

Results can be found here

Never Forget

It's hard to believe that it's been 7 years already since the attacks happened on Sept 11th, 2001.

That is a day I will never forget. That Tuesday morning was looking to be a great day, blue skies, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Soon things changed forever. Watching the smoke billow out of the World Trade Center from campus was surreal. A roommate of mine at the time was stuck on the NYC subway when the events happened. She had to literally walk out of Manhattan across the bridge back into Brooklyn.

The aftermath at Ground Zero

It's great to see a couple of memorials finally unveiled (Pentagon, as well as Logan airport).

Unveiling one of the many benches in the Pentagon Memorial

Never Forget.

Week One Bills Rap

Taken from Buffalo Flagship station WGR550

Bills host the Seahawks this weekend. I think it's gonna be a good year for the Bills, and that they'll have a shot at the post season!! The best part of the weekend is that I get the game on TV out here in Victoria, since the Bills are playing Seattle.

Hanna, Ike, and Josephine

If you're a weather geek like me, it's gotta be pretty cool to have 3 named Tropical Storms at the same time.  I've never seen that before.

Back to organized training here in Victoria.  I'll start blogging that soon, I just find the weather a much more interesting topic right now!!

Oh yeah...there will also be football in the blog...NFL starts Thursday Night!!

Gustav..."The storm of the Century"

The first "major" hurricane is making its way towards Louisiana again.

Gustav looks like it should hit sometime on Monday morning/afternoon

"Hurricane Gustav, which already killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean, strengthened quickly into a Category 4 and was poised to become a Category 5 storm, packing winds in excess of 156 mph. It slammed Cuba's tobacco-growing western tip before moving away from the island country into the Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin used stark language to urge residents to get out of the city, calling Gustav the "storm of the century." "

Looks like I'm going to have to get CNN cued up and watch Anderson Cooper reporting on the hurricane!!

Getting out of Town

As much as I love hurricane season, you've got to hope that New Orleans gets spared. It's been 3 years since Katrina devastated New Orleans, and a direct hit from Gustav would cripple the city.

It's Time!

Football is Back!!

the College season kicks off tonite, and the NFL season starts next week.

The Buckeyes are poised for a good season...with a massive game on Sept 13th against USC.

Airport Reception

There was a large group of people who waited patiently at the Victoria airport yesterday. Patiently, because the original flight from Beijing to Vancouver was delayed 2 hrs, and thus people missed their scheduled connector flights to Victoria.

As it was, the Olympic athletes were coming back to Vic in a couple of waves, with the triathletes (Simon, Colin, Lauren, Carolyn) being on the 5:25 arrival. Joel was stuck in Vancouver for bit longer, arriving 2hrs later I think.

Colin got me a sweet Beijing Hat, as well as a T-shirt! I was pumped!

Waiting for people to emerge

Ryan Cochrane

Carolyn Murray and Simon Whitfield

Simon gets to see PK

Colin signs autographs

Silken Laumann was at the airport, to greet the rowers I'm guessing

A shot of the crowd, about 15 min after people came off the flight


Simon and PK


Colin doing a TV interview


One of the Rowers, no clue who though

Various Pics from Kelowna

Here are some various photos from Nationals in Kelowna.

In other news, tomorrow I am bringing my bike in to Fort St Cycles to get the front end swapped out to my IM Florida set-up. I'll post a pre and post comparison.

If you are near the Victoria airport tomorrow, there are a lot of Olympic athletes flying back into town between 2:00 - 3:00 pm. Included in the group of rowers, triathletes, swimmers, and divers are members of Canada's Gold Medal Men's 8 rowing crew, Olympic Silver medalist Simon Whitfield, and Bronze medalist Ryan Cochrane. I'll be up there to give Colin a lift back to his place, so I'll make sure to bring the camera along.

Also, a big congrats to Colin, who got engaged while in Beijing!

Brent and I

Our lead group of 4 (Brent, myself, Sean, and Kalen)

working to stay on up Knox Mtn

Lead group of 15 or so onto the run

End of Lap 1

Lap 3 I believe

Cool Video

Here's a cool youtube clip of the race

More Olympic Musings

Timothy Carlson (formerly of Triathlete Magainze) wrote a preview piece for Slowtwitch handicapping the Mens race. Granted, trying to handicap a race such as yesterdays is a tough one.

It was great to see Simon basically make Tim eat his words yesterday.

Here's what Carlson wrote about Whitfield.

"While Simon Whitfield gave us the textbook example of Dave Wottle-style impossible come from behind stretch runs at Sydney in 2000, Simon sadly is now well into his 30s and does not have the old snap."

"Sad to say, while exuberant, funny, joyful Simon has improved his swim and bike to the first rank eight years after his stirring 2000 Olympic victory, his run is no longer his invincible ace in the hole. Just ask Matt Reed, who out-sprinted Whitfield to the line at Vancouver."

HA. Take that.

Here is a video interview of Simon as he went to Canada House over in Beijing

Click Here

"CBC drew its biggest television audience of the Beijing Games on Monday nigh with coverage of Canadian Simon Whitfield winning a silver medal in the men's triathlon. A peak audience of 2.57 million viewers tuned in at 11:49 p.m. ET as Whitfield, of Kingston, Ont., took the lead in the final 100 metres of the 10-kilometre run before finishing second, five seconds behind hard-charging German Jan Frodeno.

An average of 1.59 million viewers watched CBC's Olympic Prime show (6 p.m. to midnight ET). Pacific Prime saw its largest average audience yet of the Games by attracting 746,000 viewers.

Story link Here.

What a Run!! (Updated with pics)

I don't think I've ever seen a run like that. Guts and determination to get back on to that group of 3 in the last km. Wow!

Congrats to all of Team Canada!!

Pics to come as I find them

2008 Men’s Olympic Triathlon
Ming Tomb Reservoir, Beijing, China
Monday, August 18, 2008

Results
1. Jan Frodeno (GER) 1:48:53
2. Simon Whitfield (CAN) 1:48:58
3. Bevan Docherty (NZL) 1:49:05
4. Javier Gomez (ESP) 1:49:13
5. Ivan Rana (ESP) 1:49:21
6. Daniel Unger (GER) 1:49:43
7. Hunter Kemper (USA) 1:49:58
8. Rasmus Henning (DEN) 1:49:57
9. Igor Sysoev (RUS) 1:49:59
10. Frederic Belaubre (FRA) 1:50:00

Jenkins doing his job

Race Day!

It's almost time for the Men's race in Beijing. I am pumped to watch three guys race who I've had the pleasure and honour to train with for the better part of the last two years. The guys are going to kick some ass, and leave everything out on the race course, that much is for sure! Here are a couple pics that I took from Joel's flickr account.



I was up in Kelowna on the weekend for Nationals. It was my last short course race of the season. I had a pretty good race, getting into a small group of 4 at the start of the bike, and we stayed away until getting caught on the 5th of 6 laps by a group of 10-12 athletes. The bike was pretty taxing on the legs, luckily the pace wasn't killer on the climbs.
Onto the run, I couldn't get the legs turning over in the first kilometer, but they came around soon after, and then I was able to pick off a couple of Canadians in front of me, and finished 11th overall, and 6th Canadian. I was able to pick up some decent prize money for 6th place, which was an added bonus.

Results

I was able to watch the womens race last night in Kelowna, and it was awesome to see Kathy have a wicked swim, and be in contention in that lead group on the bike. Lauren was involved in a crash on the bike, (breaking her wrist or arm and wasn't able to finish, while Carolyn ran well from the 2nd chase group to finish up as the top Canadian.


LET'S GO BOYS!!!