2009 Victoria Half Marathon, Here I Come

Its official. I will be racing the 2009 Victoria Half Marathon. The countdown screenshot below shows just how much time I have to prepare!

40 days should be plenty of time to get running race ready. I still have one last half ironman left, however, I am not expecting anything too great that day so this is really my big season ender. I've created a team so if anyone wants to race the half marathon and wants to join my team just search in the drop menu for "Team Awesome" and you can join. The more the merrier.

That being said, I've trained my entire season on a pair of Newton Stability trainers, and I've just ticked past the 800 km mark in these shoes, so I figured it was time I got a replacement. I really liked them so decided to go with nearly the same shoe. The only difference being instead of the trainer, I went with the racer. As seen below!

Is that NEWTON?

Believe it or not that yellow doesn't even give it justice, much brighter in person.

I was originally a little concerned with using a racer for my training shoes, however, these aren't really "racers" in the same sense as my New Balance or Asics are. Those both come in around 6 ounces were as the Newton's are 8.8. Quite a bit more support.

I have a few goals in the back of my head as to what I want to run during the Victoria Half, however, I'll have to wait a bit before I share that with the world, see how my progression goes etc.

In other news. I went over to my friend Tony and Marta's place last night for some delicious steak dinner. And after dinner the conversation of Rock Band, the game for playstation came up. I have never played this game and although they were reluctant I got them to pull it out. He is what I would look like if I was a rock star! I don't want to brag or anything, but at level easy, I WAS PRETTY GOOD!

I just need tighter jeans!

Fall Race Series.

Alright, I've decided this fall semester to spice things up with the UBC triathlon club.

How am I going to do this? Simple, organize a race series that can all be done during practices as a means of test sets, devise a scoring system that evens the playing field for beginners/elites and keep track of the results.

The difficulties I will have with this, some people don't have a bike, so can only participate in 2/3rd of the races. For those that miss I'll have to come up with an average score to apply to them. Or make it top 5 out of 8 scores count of something.

My idea's:

Already we do a

5k Run TT

Swim Test Set (usually 500m or 750m)

Beer Mile

What I am proposing is a whole bunch more things like this. For example;

Uphill Run TT

Uphill Bike TT

Flat Bike TT

Running Relay (ex 3 X 1k) Put slow with fast to even out the field.

Swim Relay (same premise as run relay)

Brick TT

A group of friends of mine do this already through the Vancouver Cycle Series however, this year, they won't be hosting one. In their absence I thought I would step up.

Anyone have any other suggestions for events?

I'm pretty excited about this for many reasons. It allows people to get some practice in a race situation without the cost of racing. Its also a great venue for smack talk to build, which is among the most important parts of racing.

So any suggestions are much appreciated, and I'll keep you all posted as to what evolves.

Wonders of Craigslist

My brother Luke was asking me about road bikes, should he put the effort in to fixing up a 30 year old rusty road bike which would probably cost him 200-300$ and still wouldn't be very good. Or simply suck it up and spend 500$ on a decent road commuter road bike.

I suggested he look up on craigslist to see if he could get something cheap. To help him out, I did a quick search of my own to try and provide insight into what he is looking for.

Along my way this title caught my attention

I've never even heard of a Macadam bike, let alone in triathlon circles. Lets dig a little deeper and see what we find.

Exage motion??? I can honestly say I have no idea what that means. So lets look at this mysterious triathlon bike.

...

ok...

I don't see anything that makes this "triathlon" related.

Anyways, the bike is only selling for 220$, somewhat of a rip off, you bet. Entertaining? Was for me at least.

Should I XTERRA

As my race season is winding down (only one race left) I'm contemplating a lot what I want to do next summer. Will I be traveling? Racing?

If I am racing, what type of races do I want to do? Although I have enjoyed them a lot, I don't want to do the same 4 races again. I was reading through an e-mail and the side bar advertisements gave me an idea. There was one of an XTerra race. Pretty much all this is, is a cross country triathlon. No I don't mean a coast to coast triathlon, although entertaining as that would be, it may be too time consuming. This is a cross country, as in cross country running and cross country mountain biking. It is shorter and all through trails. Seems interesting. I obviously don't want to pursue this as my main race objective for next summer, but my curiosity was spiked. A quick google search showed that there is actually a race nearby in Squamish at the end of September. Short, roughly Olympic distance in length. This could be fun. I would need to borrow a mountain bike. But the 8k trail run would be a difference experience for me.

Anyways, those are the thoughts that pass through my mind as I drone on in lab. If anyone has done an Xterra race or something similar, let me know, I would be interested in hearing what you have to say.

Leaving Town

Heading up to Kelowna for the weekend, Meyrick and I are driving up, he is racing, I am just watching the races/visiting friends.

Should be a good time, its Triathlon nationals and there will be a lot of big names there.

I'll be back Sunday night and things should have settled down by then and I will be able to have a real update.

Drive to Kelowna

Hey, anyone driving to Kelowna this weekend? I have friends going up on Thursday morning, but as a working stiff that is a little early for me. Ideally sometime friday works best.

Anyhoo a bus will be my last resort which isn't too much of a hassle, but figured I would but the word out since half the triathletes in Vancouver are heading there for Naitonals this weekend.

Good luck to all racing.

Funny post

Paul Tichelaar a professional triathlete had a funny non triathlon blog post today. Check it out, I found it pretty entertaining.

http://ptichelaar.blogspot.com/2009/08/finally-update.html

WOW, thats FAST

Getting Fat

After work today I went to the gym, you know, pumping iron, getting huge and stuff...

Before starting I weighed myself, thinking I would come in low because I haven't had the most "ideal" nutrition today, as in I kinda skipped lunch (late breakfast). Surprise surprise, I weighed in at 150.0lbs. I've never been that much. I'm using the same scale as I've used all year. Last summer when I was preparing for the marathon I actually hit 139, so 150 is in my opinion far over my race target weight.

I blame this on the laziness I've had over the past couple of weeks at the beach and next to zero training I've put in.

Could this mean that I've reached the age where my body is catching up to me? If I get lazy I will get fat! OH NOES!

This is going to be a big weekend for training, lots and lots of biking and I'm going to try and break my record on Seymore (shouldn't be hard, I've only ridden it twice and once 100k into a ride).

On that note of my being fat, time to go for a run. I've got lots of updates to post, but catching up on work and life take priority at the moment. Sorry Chris