Big Weekend for the Lavallées

From Left to Right: Luke, Tanis, Mom, Dad, Lilia, ME!

What a good looking family!

Seeing as how its almost the next weekend, I figured it was time to recap the last one.

It was a pretty big week for my family (The Lavallées). Lets mix things up and start right to left. Hey look, thats me!

I had my last race of the season this weekend in Sooke BC. It was a half ironman and I won't really go into too many details because I will shortly put up a full race report. Needless to say it did not go all too well. As I said, details to follow.

Next up, Lilia. She is the the youngest of the Lavallées at 21 and participated in her first triathlon! She raced the Montreal Sprint last Saturday and despite her complaints about being horribly out of shape for racing I think she did very well. Swam a little off course at times but finished pretty much on par with my first swim (coincidentally on the same course back in 2003). had a fantastic bike, 33km/h on her 4th bike ride of life (if my memory serves me correctly), and then a cruised run of 25 minutes for 5k which she later said she was disappointed with because she felt like she had a lot more gas in the tank when she was done. Hopefully she's caught the bug and is ready to continue racing next year. I think she did.

Next on the list, My older sister Tanis was at the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters Fair. For those of you who don't know, my sister is a small business owner and dyes and sells her own yarn. This knitters fair is a really big day in her year where she is able to introduce herself to lots of potential buyers along with sales from the fair itself. I'm happy to announce that the weekend was a huge success selling out of some stuff before noon! My mom went to help out with that so she was busy as well.

Tanis' booth at the knitting fair

And last but not least, the oldest of the Lavallée kids, Luke. Now Luke didn't exactly have any big event last weekend, however, he was probably off saving lives being a doctor and all so I guess thats acceptable. But come on Luke, only a doctor, no races or knitting fairs? Just healing sick patients. Pick up the slack.

Unfortunately my Dad was working overseas and wasn't able to partake in any of this because I'm sure he would have loved to be witness to any and all of it, but he gets back tomorrow, so I'll just wish him a safe trip back!

Thats it. Not a bad weekend don't you think?

Clash of Titans

As the triathlon season comes to a close there is one final battle to decide the bragging rights of the 2009 season. The battle field will take place in Sooke BC on September 13th where current University of British Columbia Triathlon Club phenom and run coach Vincent Lavallee will take on UBCTC Alumn and reigning two time Storm The Wall SUPERSTAR Derek Westra-Luney.

Vincent Lavallee will try to hold his rule of the Subaru West Coast Triathlon series over Derek Westra-Luney and make it 3 for 3 of the season while Derek will try and crush his good looking competition as he has done two years running in Storm the Wall.

Finally competing on an even playing field, these two titans of the 20-24 age group will settle the score once and for all on the harsh fields of Sooke.

A third member of the UBCTC racing in Sooke on this fateful weekend is Claire Toffelmyer participating in the sprint triathlon in preparation for her season ender later this month in Miami Florida.

A small skip across the channel and you will find the UBCTC represented in other races as Nathaniel Janzen is testing himself in the Cultus Lake Olympic Triathlon.

All round should be a good race weekend filled with great racing and perfect weather.

Good Luck

Bucket List

I stumbled across the website for the movie, The Buried Life. Story: 4 guys make a list of 100 things to do before they die and document themselves doing it.

Well I was thinking about this and I know one thing I would put on my list.

Make an explosion, and don't look at it while I walk away!

WOW that hurt!

So today I was walking down Agronamy Way, minding my own business telling Paul a riveting story about myself, when a wasp decided to ruin everything and fly down the collar of my shirt and bite me. What a jerk. Right on the clavicle. Check this out!

!!!

The rough part being that its right where my shirt rubs, not good. Clearly this is going to bother me for the next 15 minutes!

In other news. Today is the first day of classes back at UBC. Very exciting time. So many new faces walking frantically around campus, not knowing yet how to get out of the way for traffic on the sidewalk. With that we had our first Triathlon Club practice today. The UBC triathlon club met for our first swim of the year at 1:30 in the outdoor pool (I'm writing everything out in case someone googles it). We didn't have the largest showing today due to short notice of our pool booking, but hopefully now that its all been nailed out we should get more in the coming days.

I am trying to think of ways to publicize the club better in the first few days of school, I was asking Paul where he thought I could get chalk to write on the sidewalks. He didn't buy my advertising story and started telling people I was practicing hopscotch.

On that note, if there are any local triathletes looking for someone to train with, come on out and try a practice or two. Its a great substitute for the UBC Masters Swimming and at a fraction of the cost, especially since the masters has a waiting list right now.

I start coaching run practices tomorrow night, with the new UBC track open should be easy coming up with some fun workouts.

Upcoming post

-new steep hill found

-pre race thoughts

-introduction to the racing series with UBCTC!

Quack

I'm always disappointed when something like this happens. I was cooking dinner, potato pasta or gnocchi if you would prefer. This is a meal I have never made, so I decided that I would follow the instructions. It said one package would serve 2-3. Sounds good. It looked small but who was I to judge. Plus, I've already eaten dinner, this is just a snack.

Sure enough I cook it up, fills a plate and I finish and am STILL HUNGRY. 2-3 servings, for what? children? Was I satisfied?

In the words of Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory, "I'M NEVER SATISFIED!"

Keep that in mind Derek, 2-3 servings not enough to feed me a late night snack. THAT is the hunger of a CHAMPION!

I decided to see what my competition was eating.

Derek, there must have been an easier way of doing that

Um... No Not quite there

Well, your hitting your mouth now, but I don't think you want to eat that...

Oh No Derek, haven't you heard about eating late at night? Check Link

Quack!

Proud Canadian Moment

oops!

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!