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!!!

Quick Update

It's a bit lonely here in Victoria now, as everyone has left to get the job done in Beijing.

I am dog sitting for Joel, so I have been spending the week at his place downtown. I get to watch the Olympics in HD on his TV!!

Saturday morning I am heading up to Kelowna for Nationals the next day. This will be my last short course race this year, as I'll be shifting focus to IM Florida afterwards. Should be a good race, it's always been a tough course in Kelowna, and they've now made us go up Knox Mtn 6 times instead of 4. Should be interesting.

In other news, Warner Bros. has delayed the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from November until July 17th now! Booooooo!!! I guess they want to have ensure a summer time blockbuster.

Let the Games Begin

I caught a bit of the opening ceremonies this morning on CBC before heading off to swimming. What a display. I read that the cost of the opening and closing ceremonies topped $100 million!

I was lucky enough to see the Canadians march in, the order was determined by a sequence based on the number of strokes it takes to write their names in Chinese. Greece, birthplace of the Olympics, was an exception, given its traditional place at the start, while the 639-member Chinese team lined up last.

Not all of the Canadian athletes are over in Beijing yet. Some are at training camps in Asia, while others like the triathlon team are still prepping in Canada. There is a opening ceremonies party tonight at Fort St Cycles here in Victoria to celebrate the team members who are in town (Simon, Colin and Lauren). We'll be watching a taped version of the opening ceremonies from this morning, and having some chinese food!

Training has been going pretty well this week. I've joined in with Colin and Lauren to do heat training with them up at the MET trailer at Pac Sport. The trailer is pretty awesome. Wendy (CSC Pacific physiologist) is able to monitor the temperature/humidity in the trailer, and we basically ride in there for 90 min. Wendy is able to monitor our internal temperatures, as well as determine our sweat rates afterwards. I've done 3 sessions this week so far, and manage to sweat out about 3L in each 90 min session. Colin sweats out 4.5 L

36 C and 72% humidity. That gives a humidex of 54 C

Wendy reading Colin's internal temperature

More Hurricanes!

Strong Start Increases NOAA’s Confidence for Above-Normal Atlantic Hurricane Season


"In the August update to the Atlantic hurricane season outlook, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has increased the likelihood of an above-normal hurricane season and has raised the total number of named storms and hurricanes that may form.

NOAA now projects an 85 percent probability of an above-normal season – up from 65 percent in May. The updated outlook includes a 67 percent chance of 14 to 18 named storms, of which seven to 10 are expected to become hurricanes, including three to six major hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale."

Read the whole story here.

Training update to come later this evening.

Hard Training

This one will be short, as I'm tired!

Couple of hard days of training over the weekend

Saturday was a 3 hr ride, with a solid chunk of moto-pacing in the middle. I kept yo-yoing off the back on the climbs, until I Joel finally told me to ride back easy.
40 min run with some pick-ups through out.

Sunday was a long hard day. Ride out to Theits Lake (40 min). Open water swim, with a few solid efforts. We rode as a group to the "Beijing Loop", which I have come to despise. It is a 50 min (or so) loop with lots of rollers, and a couple decent climbs. I always get popped on the climb. Ditto for today. 40-45 min of solo tempo riding for me. Ride back home afterwards. Total bike time 3hrs.

Track workout at Oak Bay track. 20 x 400 on 2:00. Holding 75-76 per 400.
Legs are smashed right now. Refueled for dinner at Da Tandoor for some Indian food. Chicken Tikka with a Medium Hot curry and rice. Had a great sweat going, might pay for it tomorrow though!