10 years isn’t all that long, but it can change a lot of things. The whole world seems to be recounting the last decade, and while this period of time doesn’t delimit any certain and distinctive portion of my life, it’s the period of time that is being discussed right now by a few people. I suppose there’s a lot of ways to recall ten years, but recounting a few things seems appropriate. Best or worst – this list is neither. Perhaps most influential is more appropriate. The last ten years covers a pretty broad range of ages for me, 10 years to be exact, so there’s some maturing that occurred along the way in here. Some of this stuff is “coming-of-age” realizations, but that’s an aspect of life, so they count just like the others.

I started writing this bit earlier last week but had to postpone posting it until I could flesh out a few paragraphs after a fantastic ski trip. So it’s not in time for the 2010 list making that happened last week, but I don’t think that really matters. Readers who were going to read it will likely read it anyways, that’s what readers do – by definition.

1. We’re greedy, selfish, love prejudice and are still somewhat racist – perhaps that’s not the most politically correct means by which to kick off a review of the decade, but the specifics making me note this fall chronologically near the beginning of the 200Xs for myself. Spending a year away from Canada in 2000-2001 highlighted the fact that typically we like ourselves a lot and we don’t like other people all that much. My own experience was probably magnified by being in my early teens at the time, the age that’s arguably got the meanest peers of any age for everyone. My own situation as the foreign kid made that all the trickier. I was the only boy in the grade with long hair I was the only one with an accent. I was one of a few from the village three towns down the road from school. I was too tall. I was damn good at maths. I had the wrong shoes for with the school uniform. I didn’t get the right food packed in my lunch (Mom fixed that one quickly though). I fit no molds and while the prejudices I experienced were rather tame compared with the ethnic cleansing experienced by many people groups around the globe they were certainly noticeable to a wee little GCSE student.
   Oh well, back to Canada in the summer of 2001 I’d escape being the subject of these prejudices, and that should hopefully reduce the amount of tension I felt surrounding this issue. But boom, September 2001 rolls around. Maybe I’m more aware now, or just older, or it’s more extreme than it has been before, but there’s racist commentary all over the place. Everyone Arab is suddenly a terrorist. How did that work? Maybe I needed to have experienced prejudices from the being-dealt end before I had reason to feel uncomfortable finding myself at the dealing-out end. Not a lot has changed by the end of the decade, nearly every media outlet I’m influenced was spewing reports about the climate change summit in Copenhagen. None of it made me happy. There’s an entire global community trying to sit around a pie, and debating how to slice up that pie, and every single nation at the table needs to have an above average slice. All the big polluters want some version of a cap and trade system, yet no system based on cap and trade knows how to distribute the quota. From what I understand, the quota distribution system has basically been proven by economists to not work in the long run. Unfortunately that’s the system the big players are pushing for because they know that if they can weasel their way into an unfair share of the global quota for emissions then while the whole world has to tighten their belts they will have to tighten their belts the least. Alberta will profit from this, I know it, and it makes me sick.
   Intentionally trying to deny developing nations an equal shot at using the planet’s resources is just as self-serving as a game called: “Make a flamethrower out of an aerosol deodorant can and try to light the Canadian kid’s hair of fire in the locker room at school.” Maybe it’s because once we’re grown up we find bigger and more complicated words to use to mean the same thing as ‘bullying’.
2. It was this decade that I made a realization world conflict was current. I distinctly remember watching the BBC news in the living room at our home on School Lane, Staveley Cumbria UK. There was footage from what I only remember was some Serbian conflict in Macedonia sometime in the spring of 2001. There was house to house and street to street armed conflict being shown between people who looked too much like me. I remember being somewhat shocked, sure there were wars going on, but from what I understood, Canada, America and Europe had their shit together we were too intelligent, too highly developed, and too “good” (whatever that means) to rely on anything but diplomacy to set things straight in the world. Canada’s army was for sending on peacekeeping missions with the UN, and that was something that should be highly respected. We were so well advanced in my mind, and we should be proud of it. Our soldiers went to Honduras to help out after hurricanes, or to help dig people out of the rubble after big earthquakes, no soldier that I identified with ever did anything that I didn’t think was good. Wars, genocide and armed conflict happened in places like Rwanda or Chechnya, Israel sometimes bombed what I understood to be “the bad guys” in Lebanon. These weren’t people like me. It’s not like I was out of the loop on the whole Kosovo conflict during the late 90s, but up until this point in life I don’t think I’d realized that this wasn’t too foreign. Perhaps, just because they were fighting, they weren’t at all like me. Perhaps it was the fact that I was now in Europe and the footage was from that afternoon and being shown hours later on the same continent. I remember this distinctly to be a perspective changing occasion, my reality was not as peaceful as I thought it was. People just like me fight, and kill each other. Whoa, what an eye opener for a random weekday afternoon.
   This only happened mere months before September 11, 2001 and mere months after that Canada was off an fighting in a war in Afghanistan. These events weren’t such a hard pill to swallow after the TV broadcast that spring, I seemed to know by then that the world was less at peace than I might have imagined earlier.
3. Pope John Paul II died in April 2005. The world paused for a while it seemed, this man had done so much for humanity during his life that absolutely the entire world took note when he passed on. I didn’t know a whole lot about the man, probably average for the average person outside of the Catholic church, but the way things seemed to pause worldwide when he passed away grabbed my attention. It seemed that the whole world converged on Vatican City to pay their respects to this man who had played such an important role in the history of the world. This fascination by the general public meant that I also started to learn about the Catholic church, and when the media died down I kept on going. This would lead initially to just paying attention, but later beginning to attend weekly mass, reading a few excellent books and taking elective courses through the Catholic college on campus. Pope John Paul II’s death was actually rather immaterial to myself but this set in motion a significant change in perspective and appreciation for differing views and values within the ecumenical church.
4. Perhaps this is the only thing on the list that occurred at a certain time and made the impact right away. Most of the others were events that occurred over months, or catalysts for perspective changes that occurred over the course of years. This happened over the course of maybe 20 minutes one Friday evening in front of the TV in the basement. Bono was giving a speech at the federal Liberal Party convention. It was the night where Paul Martin was taking over leadership from Jean Chretien. Bono took the stage and made a strong case for the power of our nation to do good in the world. He suggested that this period of history would be remembered for three things, the internet, the war on terror, and the lack of the first world’s involvement in the affliction plaguing the continent of Africa. That being a combination economic suppression through debt and exploitation as well as AIDS destroying entire generations of lives. It was a combination of compelling statistics as well as sincere human to human communication. The case was made in my mind for two things; first that there were real things that could be done on a super huge scale to make amends for some of the problems facing different areas on the planet. That if federal governments around the world decided to make it a priority to improve aspects of the global community thing would actually change for the better. Second, he changed how I thought about how I could view my government. If I believed that the potential existed to make positive change in the world, then I should be considering which federal party campaigning to form a government was going to behave most appropriately in that global community, not just for what they could provide me. I was for the first time thinking as a resident of planet earth, rather than as a resident of the overprivileged nation of Canada. I recall the speech relatively frequently when thinking about global issues and definitely every time I’ve been able to cast a ballot since then. If you want to read it, someone graciously typed out the Full Speech and posted it online.
5. It was about mid-decade that Canada changed the legislation governing same sex marriage. This, according to my understanding, was the turning point for gay rights in our country. It seemed that over the course of the previous few years there was an ever increasing frustration with the issue swirling around in the public media, and within different circles of conversation that I participated in. Following approximately 2005, when the same-sex marriage legislation battle came to a close within Canada, there has been a chance for the whole country to calm down and catch it’s breath. I’m certain that this has been for the better. All of the slippery slope arguments that had been made over the course of the previous years failed to hold any water. Religious officials had maintained their right to treat marriage as their traditions saw fit, no-one was trying to marry their pets, and no-one was force-feeding our children messages about their sexual orientation. Society had unambiguously improved, freedom had been granted to a slice of the population without taking anything away from the rest of it. Hallelujah! My own experience relating to the actual issue however, was rather unattached. I didn’t write any letters or join any protests, but I was content to see things change, with me on the sidelines.
   A year later, I was confronted face to face by someone I really respected about almost everything. How could I say I was going to vote for the Liberal party in the 2006 federal election when they had legalized same sex marriage? I was caught totally off guard by that statement. I remember anticipating that the discussion of who we would be voting for in the 2006 election was going to be about something like healthcare, or environmental issues, or the gun registry, or dealing with fallout from the sponsorship scandal, or a fiscal imbalance between the federal and provincial governments… One of those issues that the media kept pushing. Nope, I was mistaken, the question went something like this: If I agreed that biblical teaching was that the God-designed plan for relationships and families was between a man and a woman, how could I support any federal party that would permit otherwise? I distinctly remember having to pause and collect my thoughts for a bit. Well, the fact of the matter was that I wasn’t opposed to that. Actually, I was in support of it. The presence of committed relationships between people of all orientations was undeniable, and it wasn’t going to change because someone else was going to label it as sinful. What good was it going to do in the world to prevent some people from participating in a social structure that was largely run by the government, the insurance guys, and the tax-man?
   The discussion turned into a great one, ideas flowed about our largely undeveloped ability to listen to the needs of other people rather than decide what their needs were. The problem solving strategies that we’d been force fed through school and then university, more often than we’d like to admit were trying to cram round plugs into square holes. If there was a bit more listening and less strategical approaches taken in real life we’d soon realize that our plans for others’ issues had our own fingerprints all over them. Our home-grown solutions unfortunately don’t start out custom designed for other situations. In the subsequent months there was a lot of good that came out of what started as a really tense situation. A ton of trust was developed because, as I recall it, we were actually listening to each other once in a while.
6. Lance Armstrong won his 7th consecutive Tour de France during the summer of 2005. I spent that month of July generally in recovery mode from spending May and June sick in bed. The result was a lot of TV watching, and a new found love for the sport of bike racing. It was a realization for me that I was far more interested in this sport than most others, there seemed to be very little luck in the game, there was skill, effort, fitness, and strategy, and ultimately the best guys seemed to be able to win but they had to try amazingly hard to do it. There was something beautiful about a sport where you could earn fitness by putting in the hard work and quantitatively get better at things. That summer was the catalyst for me heading off to do all sorts of things in the world of endurance sports: learn how to swim, do my first triathlon, bike across an entire continent, run my first marathon, actually win a race. and get myself sufficiently enamored with long distance triathlon to sign up for Ironman. If we’re looking for life-changing and not just mind-changing events this one is it, since that Tour de France I’ve found hundreds of hours each year to put into this endurance sports campaign. As a totally unexpected bonus I’ve made some of the best friends of my life as a result.
7. I changed how I thought about food during this decade. Heading off to University required that I was going to be the person choosing what I would eat every day for breakfast lunch and dinner. I did a decent job right from the start, and got a lot better in the years that followed. Whether that was initiated by seeing the whole world go crazy about the Atkins diet in the few years prior, or due to the hilarity of “Supersize Me”, or just because I didn’t know any better than to eat relatively healthy, I ate better food than 99% of the world living in residence. There was a basic realization that the world chooses to feed itself very poorly sometime in the first half of the decade. During the second half of the decade things changed again, there is a difference between not eating poorly and eating well. Making that change takes some time and some effort but the decision to do so occurred based on conversations with real people who had their heads on straight. My friend Tulani had completely quit eating sugar and I tried that for about two months, before gradually becoming more lax on that front. A family friend, John, was eating strictly according to the direction of a naturopath, nothing processed and huge categories of the supermarket put “on hold” until he developed “better blood”. Neither appeared to be missing out on anything, it was just a decision, and their enjoyment of life and food had improved as a result. A simple realization really: I could choose to eat what I wanted, and I was in complete control of how I was going to decide what I wanted. Rather abruptly I pretty much didn’t want all sorts of things.
8. Friends ended in the spring of 2004. This is, I think, somewhat tied to a realization that occurred when Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson’s top in front of all of America at the Superbowl the previous winter. The relationship between society and men and women is far from perfect. Friends wasn’t a show serving up sexist messages, but it wasn’t doing it quite right. If it weren’t for Sarah Jessica Parker being on the TV at the same time and being the go to example of liberated sexuality, perhaps Rachel Green, Monica Geller, or Phoebe Buffay (unlikely) would have been developed into that character. When the second half of the superbowl party turned into a discussion of whether or not the “wardrobe malfunction” was supposed to have happened or not, it wasn’t a marker of emancipation. It was an indication that things weren’t right, despite the fact that people were now suggesting that they were. Sure, women had rights like men but we’re far from having arrived at a solution, or destination. Somehow the end of Friends, made this especially noticeable to me. The fact that the feel good ending to the show is Ross and Rachel back together and Monica and Chandler heading to the suburbs with the twins was kind of a sick joke.
   In theory there’s freedom and equality but in reality in my perception this has just been replaced by almost equally un-beneficial expectations that we just hold in our heads. The issue of women’s rights has migrated from one that existed on paper for one sex to one that exists in the mind of society and afflicts both genders. As of 2004 when Friends came to a close we were far from success. Later in the decade there was an election in America where Hillary Clinton and Tina Fey, err… Sarah Palin, played large roles. Was anything better? Things seemed to be regressing more than they were progressing on this front through the last decade if you ask me.
9. My federal government admits fault with regard to their dealings with the residential schools. This is something that I’d been learning about over the course of a few previous years. Until I had spent a fair amount of time learning and discussing I was almost completely certain that this was not my issue. Despite the severity of the issue or the magnitude of the problem, I was most certainly not involved. Until I started to learn from people instead of books. Suddenly the issue was my issue, but the avenues to do things still seem distant and obscure. I identified with the damage caused and sometimes I think that’s all that anyone hopes from me, to listen, share the pain and to agree that what happened is wrong. When the apology was made in 2008 by the federal government I was lucky to be spending the week with friends, native and white, who also could pause and reflect on the significance of it. Not a lot changed that day, but witnessing the official statement seemed important to me. It was hopefully the beginning of a new renewal and at the time, I remember feeling a sentiment of great hope in so many conversations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission might have gotten off to a rocky start but I’m certainly rooting for it to be able to overcome those obstacles and make a firm record in history on the second attempt.
10. Quantum mechanics soaked up my life for the better part of two semesters of university. What I at first thought was the pinnacle of my education was nothing more than an ivory tower rather detached from the world. By the time I was part-way through my final year of undergrad I could speak differential equations like the best of them. I had knew the normalization constants for dozens of probability wavefunctions off the top of my head and could basically guess at the forms for most others with an uncanny chance of success. I had started to develop intuition with regards to diagonalizing the matrices necessary to make eigenstates of an interaction matrix orthogonal. I had developed skills that even I myself deemed useless. I didn’t have a huge issue with it at the time, it’s not like I suddenly wanted to un-learn these things. It did cause me to back up however, I wanted to decide which skillsets I was going to develop as a part of my education. Quantum mechanics no longer made the cut. It’s no wonder that Engineering Management and my Christian Theology courses were my most appreciated the next semester. I was basically refusing to become a maven of mathematics, a prima donna of process control feedback or an exemplar of electronic wavefunctions. I was done with learning things to score well on tests. I was only going to train my brain to do things that I knew were useful. Now you could start debating with me the merits of training a brain to focus on putting out the most even wattage on a bicycle over the course of 5, 6, 7 or 8 hours, but that’s besides the point.

Tri club collectively designed training plans for the 2010 season this evening. While mine has generally been designed, it is not complete. I have a good idea regarding foci for the different seasons and for periodization through until the end of April I’m sticking with the triathlon club’s regime. This is completely a matter of convenience, as it allows me to push it when my friends are pushing it and take it easy when they’re taking it easy. I also don’t have to pretend to coach one kind of workout while I do a different one myself, which is just a silly idea. In any case, as I have moved into my first base weeks of the year and am slowly working on continuing to develop the training plan to beat all others. Being that season of the year, the whole world seems to be discussing this stuff, lots of it is crap. It’s hard to sift the free insight from the for-sale products, but I did run across a good suggestion from Joe Friel. It follows.

Stolen Sourced from Joe Friel’s website:

Success in sport is just like success in any other aspect of your life. One of the requirements is careful planning. Deciding where you want to go in the future begins with knowing where you have been in the past. Recognizing trends and evaluating what you’ve been doing are both important steps on the path to racing better next year. This process can be accomplished in several ways. Talking with your coach or a trusted training partner is probably the best way. But lacking such people in your sporting life you can still accomplish the same end by answering some key questions. Here are some I often use. Your answers can lead in many different directions. Ultimately, the reason for such an exercise is to give you more focus when it comes to training and racing. It may even help you to decide why it is you devote so much of your life to training.

Here are five questions to answer at the end of your race season and before starting to prepare for the coming season:

1. What was the high point of your season? Why does this stand out for you? Was it what you thought it would be at the start of the season?

Quite clearly the highseason of the season was the month of June. While it culminated with me winning the Chinook Half triathlon near the end fo the month I trained excellently in the previous weeks and felt like I was very successful at many workouts. I was swimming faster than I thought I was able to be swimming at many workouts. My run pace was quick, despite not having a huge run volume in the previous couple months, and I was logging very impressive bike rides without getting as fatigued as I possibly should have been. I was racing well at the Tuesday night mountain bike races (threshold efforts), won a time-trial and managed a solid 200kms on my bike towing a trailer into a headwind at the end of a solid 4 day training block. I entered what I thought was a test-taper, but tapered well, hitting workout intensity accurately and cutting weight. On race morning I felt like I had eliminated fatigue but hadn’t recouped freshness, indicating I hadn’t over rested. I spent time during race week getting mentally prepared for race day and I then nailed the race, overcame the race day obstacles of a killer headwind, cramps and hot temperatures on the run. Ultimately I surpassed expectations and put together a race to be proud of.

This period of my season was supposed to be my buildup towards race fitness. I hoped to peak at the end of July, having added cycling prowess first and running speed second during the period of coming to maximal fitness for Calgary 70.3. It doesn’t surprise me at all that I was fast on the bike at this point in the season because I had hoped to be reaching my cycling peak earlier in the year but in retrospect I was impressed at how fast I was able to run at Chinook Half. At the time I thought I was primed to be adding some serious run speed to my fitness portfolio in the next six weeks and hoped to cut my half marathon time by ~8 minutes for the next race.

2. What was your greatest disappointment? Why did this happen? Is there anything you could have done to have avoided it?

The disappointing aspect of the season was my inability to get any faster at running during the month of July. I felt like I had designed a program for myself that was aimed at working on my limiters. I completed exactly the workouts I wanted to complete for three consecutive weeks of my run program. In retrospect I had misidentified what was holding me back from running faster. I was convinced that it was durability in my muscles that I needed to improve after suffering cramps at Chinook Half. I felt like what I needed to run fast was the ability to run tough. Knowing that my goal of running ~1:32 for the half marathon at the end of the 70.3 did not actually amount to running fast I was certain that I would be alright without doing much fast running. The issue was that running 1:32 although not fast, was faster than I had run a standalone half-marathon (Maybe I could have, maybe I couldn’t have, I hadn’t tried). In retrospect I was focusing on extending my ability to run longer along my current speed potential curve than I was at improving my speed potential curve.

Quick note -A speed potential curve is the curve you get if you try predict other distance race performances from a single distance race performance (or a couple performances) and plot them on a graph: Depending on your method you’ll likely get a curve – try it. If your curve is a straight line it means your prediction method is bogus, it should curve. If your body listened to what you drew on paper, the best strategy would be to get awful fast at 400 yard sprints you’ll be able to draw a better curve, and you’d in theory be a great marathoner. That theory would be a bad theory. In general though, your ability to run fast at 5kms should translate to run fast at 21.1 kms with the caveat that you run with sufficient weekly volume. Extending the longest distance you can run on your speed potential curve requires doing tougher long runs and long volume. Shifting your speed potential curve towards faster running requires doing those shorter and faster runs. A balanced approach to training sees you do some of each, but at any one point in time it may be most appropriate to focus on one or the other.

Whether or not I could have improved my run speed during July with a different run training focus might not be the only question. I spent July rather tired in comparison to May and June, I felt on occasion that I was trying to stick it out until August and then I’d get a break. That feeling I don’t believe was a symptom of my choice of training focus, it was more likely a symptom of where I was in my season as a whole. I think it’s pretty clear looking back that I had come to a rather sharp peak in my season at this point in time. Cutting weight going into Chinook half was a dumb idea, it likely extended my recovery from the race as well as made July tougher on me than it should have. I was trying to do some of my hardest training when I was already in my best shape. This is something Chris McCormack has talked about on and off, but I haven’t actually read much on the topic from people in exercise physiology. Not because I haven’t tried. I imagine these sorts of things would be terribly difficult to study, there are a million variables and unfortunately (for the researchers) one of the largest is probably motivation. Chris McCormack is also a big guy and his comments went like this, paraphrased of course because I have no idea where to begin looking for a direct quote: I often came into Roth [Late Aug] very light, and then tried to do my kona training while in excellent shape. That didn’t work because I had nothing left to improve as I built towards Kona. I learned that if I went into Roth feeling a bit flabby and out of shape I could still race well, maybe I’d have a hard time running sub 2:50, but it meant that when I started my Kona block I had a little bit extra to give. I’d come into Kona feeling fast and light and that’s what counts. endquote

Cutting 7 lbs during my taper into that race was also not the reason I stagnated in improvement at that point in my season. It’s quite possible that I was just extending my season for too long. Late February and early March had seen some of my biggest weeks ever in terms of dedicated training as I put together a key block of building towards the Yakima River Canyon Marathon. I had taken the shortest break possible after my marathon before getting back to training, everyone’s talk of how much time it takes to recover from a marathon had seemed like a challenge to me: how fast can I recover and get back to putting in big weeks? What that meant was, that I had tied the early season run focus directly into my summer triathlon focus. Taking minimal break probably made me run faster at my mid-season race but cost me the ability to keep building fitness into my end of season race.

3. Looking back, do you think you trained as wisely and as hard as you could have trained?

Without re-hashing the wise-ness of all my decisions relating to my disappointment in ability to continue running improvement through July I’ll comment on training “Hard” through the different months. I felt like I trained extremely hard during March. I was putting together a tough run program while at the same time coaching a tough bike program which I participated in with the triathlon club. March’s goal was to build muscular endurance on the bike and it meant for some hard sessions, combined with running longer than I had ever run before and with more volume than I had ever run before this made for a tough month. My swim frequency suffered as a result. March needed to be a hard month, and thus it was, I wouldn’t say it was too hard though. April was a fun month, I was reaping the benefits of a tough March (fitness wise) and was hitting key workouts hard and reveling the ability to finally get outside in good weather. At the time I didn’t feel like I was close to any limits of my ability to train but I was probably training too hard, not taking as long a break after the marathon as I maybe should have makes this month count as a net “too hard“. I backed off a bit in May from the aggressiveness of training in April knowing that I didn’t need to get too fast too soon. This probably saved me totally crashing in July, probably perfect execution this month. June I hit hard, no questions asked and July I probably tried too hard again! During July especially I was accumulating too much fatigue during the week for me to recover during easy sessions. I was replacing days completely off with easy swims or easy bike rides when I probably should have taken complete rests. Then I raced Calgary 70.3 and the triathlon season came to a close, of the 5 previous months I had netted too hard twice but never too easy, is there any secret I didn’t feel like I could perform my best?

Early August was a complete break and that was great, I didn’t want to train and I hardly did for two weeks. I then followed that up with a super challenging bike trip at the end of the month (Too hard – but that was exactly the idea) and tried to ease into Cyclocross season. I was successful at easing into Cyclocross season as I improved significantly through the course of the season fitness-wise, not just skill wise. It probably took a while for me to reap the benefits of that big bike trip but once I did my TT strength was definitely there. It took until the Blow Street Cross race before I put together my best race of the ‘cross season. Had I not gone down with piggy-flu I might have peaked for provincials, who knows. I’m confident I structured the intensity of training properly following my break in August.

4. What is the one thing you most need to work on for next season in order to perform better?

The race by which 2010 will be measured is Ironman Canada. That’s a fact that I can’t avoid, so while I’d like to take a good run at a few road races, maybe upgrade to Cat3, hammer hard at two half ironman races I have planned, set some PRs at the spring cross country race series and an early season half marathon, stick with the racing-pack at the Tuesday night social mountain bike races, and maybe place top 50 at the national TT championship, it is necessary to make the metrics for 2010 performance relate to Ironman Canada.

Of secondary importance on that day, I need to do quite a bit of work swimming to make that swim reasonably comfortable. To me, that requires technique improvement and swimming endurance. That is only going to be solved by bumping up my swim volume and continuing to accept feedback in the pool. This is currently why my shoulders ache from swimgame, it’s going to be a comfy 2.4 miles on race morning.

Primary importance on race day however, is my ability to run home with a good marathon. It needs to improve significantly from where I’m at right now. Based on my experience this summer I felt that once I was into the triathlon season my speed was capped. I could bump up endurance and my ability to run off the bike, and even my ability to run hills under control improved this summer, but my speed did not. I need to bring myself to a new level of running speed during the off season so that once the triathlon season gets going in full force next spring (when weekends start to be taken up by long bike rides and weekly volume gets stupid large) I don’t find myself trapped at running one pace and stagnate through the season. I need to have the capacity (base fitness, coordination, power, efficiency, pacing skills) for a far faster marathon than I have at the moment if I have hopes of running ~7:3X miles along Skaha. That will come with doing threshold run work in the off season allowing me to build into longer endurance runs when it counts next summer. For those 15-20 milers to wind up being fast, I need to start out with faster short runs in the early season.

5. What would you most like to accomplish next season? Is it a good stretch and yet within your reach if you do things right?

I will run the entire marathon at Ironman Canada August 29, 2010.

Sometimes I wonder why it is hard to remember the privileges that I live with each day. Remembrance day is fortunately not one of those days, our culture has decided it is important enough to remember, at least once a year, that we’re showered with blessings. I felt this even more today than I would say I have for the remembrance days of the last decade or so. We are grateful for those who made a sacrifice so that we don’t have to. Remembrance day reminds me to enjoy the things I love. Take hope, not sadness, from this day – the opportunity to live with freedom is empty when we refuse to seize the day.

Would it be easier to live with appreciation if we lived in the shadow of these sacrifices? I’m not sure. If we decide to be aware I don’t think it matters if we ride our bikes through Flanders or Fort Saskatchewan, over the cobbles of the Kemmelberg or the hills by Kapasiwin, or whether we battle headwinds in Dieppe or Devon. The choice to live lives that make the sacrifices of those that died count is ours. It’s ours whether we live on the battlegrounds of Europe & Afghanistan, or live in a nation blessed with the freedom that was fought for both generations ago and today. For me Remembrance Day 2009 was a Carpe Diem kind of day.

My third race in the Expert category went down this morning. Fun times – challenging course with the conditions we had which were slick clay and mud that really caked on the wheels. I was riding tyres that were the shape of my fork and my seat stays for much of the race, nicely moulded that way as the mud was scraped into that shape. I felt like the course was going to be not the kind of course I would find it easy to pass on. really quick accelerations would be required, so I opted to go to the front off the start and make people pass me. I rode about 3/4 of a lap in the lead before some guys went to the front and really started pushing the pace. The whole race sped up at that point and by the time we were two laps in (of seven) I wa running about 6th place which was where I probably belonged.

In front of me were 3 guys who have all upgraded from the sport category this year already, there is no secret, the novice field had been pretty tough competition earlier this year. The truth is though that the cream has also been skimmed off the top of the Expert field over the course of the past 6 weeks with a bunch of upgrades. In any case, I felt like I was placed well and rode the next 4.5 laps in that position really fighting to stay there, even though I was quite a ways off the lead I still felt like I was battling it out which was totally fun. The mud caking was tough for me but it got worse for the women who raced next as we chewed up the course and mooshed all of the leaves that were nicely initially shielding our shoes from the mud into the mud. In any case the womens race was a mud-fest. The Elite men who raced afterwards however had far more favorable conditions as the course started to dry out, by the end of their hour the course was really improved. OK, back to my race, in the end we pulled in Tommy (Juventus) because he had to disconnect his front brake due to mud an couldn’t go as fast anymore. We nearly caught another Calgary cycle guy who we were rapidly gaining on (400m more would have done it) who had a stick and mud jammed in his cassette and was restricted to his easiest two gears. I wound up fifth. Not bad at all!

The elite men were great fun to watch – footage follows:

In the end it would have been nice to see the fast guys struggle with the worst conditions of the day instead of the best. It’s amazing what a difference of just one hour can make. A few more photos follow – Derek raced sport, Lesley, Bridget and Karen raced with the Women and Jon, Andre, Dave, Mike, Mark and Peter all raced with the Elites. I was the lone Hardcorian amongst the Experts. Quite a fantastic showing by the club today!

I made my debut in the Expert Category this weekend and in my opinion I managed to have a respectable set of performances. Saturday’s course was very flat and had only very short technical sections, in the end it was basically a cyclocross time trial. I nailed it, with an average heart rate 176 BPM average for the 50min race. That’s huge, basically it means that there’s no recovery out there on the course and I really benefited from that, I really reeled some people back in during the final push to the finish. I overtook for fifth with about 400 yards to go and then was lucky with fourth trying to pass for a podium position and driving himself off into the tape and onto his bum. I just kept pushing my surge through the finish and took home fourth place only a second ahead of fifth and sixth!

Sunday’s race was a long paved climb and then a winding and sometimes flowy, sometimes technical descent on mostly grass. There was a long sand section to ride with a corner in it which proved to be a challenge and some really fun winding bits in a natural bowl in front of all the spectators. An excellent course to watch the race from. I started out knowing that I had to go really hard when I was going and do my best to recover during the flowy and fast descent. I found it incredibly difficult to push harder than my threshold effort on the climb without totally self destructing and starting to make errors on the descent. After 3 of the 9 laps I had resorted to backing off on the hard bits to only a threshold effort which I found was allowing me to make time on my competition on the descent instead of giving it away. I was following two guys quite closely and knew that I probably should be able to out-do them in the end. They got tired faster than me and eventually were caught taking it easy where they should have been working. I passed both of them and nailed the finish, moving up to ninth. Very respectable again considering the course was not designed to my strengths. I filmed the elite race, footage follows:

I’ve also been asked a lot of times why people would try and bunnyhop the barriers if there’s a way larger chance of screwing it up. Same deal with riding a challenging portion of sand, sometimes it is just as fast to get off an run and you’ll wind up less tired; why ride? The answer is simple, if you can do it successfully you are definitely the rooster amongst a bunch of chickens.

It’s the same reason that the caveman decided he was going to spend all day trying to kill a woolly mammoth for dinner instead of going out and collecting berries and digging up roots, an almost guaranteed way to stay fed. The chance that he’d return home to the cave with no food following a day of hunting was way greater, but the reward for coming home with a woolly mammoth leg over your shoulder is way greater: you’re a hero!

Lunch-hour findings: Video of the C-race at the Dark-Knight cyclocross race in Calgary a couple weeks back. I wound up second place after a hard-fought battle. I rode off the front from laps 2-4 and was then passed. I got caught up in a corner which doesn’t make it into the footage from this clip when lapping one rider who was being passed simultaneously on both the left and the right, and decided to step left, into me! Anyways, I did bring down the gap over the last lap and had caught first place but lost traction in a corner (legs running on all cylinders – brain running on none) and had to unclip, hobble a bit and get going again. The damage was done then and the leader’s gap going into the final sand pit was too long for me to run past him. I finished only a couple seconds down (I’m wearing the hardcore kit and have glow-hoops in my white helmet). In any case, roll the footage:

Thanks to Dallas Morris for the video footage. And to Bill Quinney for the following photos:

The next day I wound up 5th place and more than a minute back of the leader at ‘Oval Cross’, run on the same course in significantly more challenging conditions (super wet and snow). I really struggled to clip in with my cleats which cost me a couple seconds about 4 times per lap, there were sections I was riding very quickly but to do well over-all you need to be able to put together the whole picture at the same time and that didn’t happen on that day. 5th was still good enough for an upgrade to Expert though and I’ll be racing there on the next go-round of ‘cross racing.

You can’t spell bicycle without also spelling ‘bile’

Nationals was a hurting situation, my result was +2 laps, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it to the finish but did kind of expect that I’d last until my penultimate lap before being passed by the race leader… and then a while later by the rest of the eventual podium. I entered the race not anticipating that I’d do well, but didn’t really realize that pretty much no-one else had similar plans. Plenty of the guys who race (and race well) in the Elite field in the Alberta Cup series were well off the back of the race.

Bile… well I was/am sick which in retrospect I’m only kind-of surprised by after a chilly and wet last weekend, a wet and cold ‘cross race on Tuesday night and a very cold ‘cross lesson on Wednesday night. Pre-riding the course on Friday night was evidently the last nail in the coffin and by midnight I was sick. Race-morning I managed down some dry toast and went back to bed instead of going out to the race site to watch Lesley win Hardcore/Triathlon Club what I believe is their first ever national championship (mega-congratulations!). I did eat a proper lunch before heading out to the race site and did a lousy warm-up. I didn’t have a trainer and riding around in the minus 5 degree weather to get the legs warm resulted in wind-chill to get the chin and toes really cold. Oh well, after running what I felt like was a respectable warm-up lap I staged for the start along with 38 others. Not willing to throw elbows and shoulders in the sprint down the start I took the first corner in last place… not to be relinquished. Not to be totally ridiculous I stayed on the pace for 3/4 of a lap at which point my HR was already 185 bpm and I needed to let it go. I didn’t actually puke (this time) but was starting to debate where I should hurl for maximum crowd-appeal, so maybe it’s a good thing they pulled me off the course.

All in all I’ll probably chalk it up as a good learning experience if it turns out that I didn’t get a whole lot more sick by doing so, the jury’s still out on that one. After two laps I had a rather jarring crash and was already well off the back of the pace. I had a legitimate reason to quit, besides crashing and being covered in snow and aching on my right hand side my brake hoods were way out of square and I had to bash them back into line to release the brakes. Quitting can’t be an option I had to tell myself as I hopped aboard and mentally ran through a list of body parts checking that they all still worked. If quitting is allowed to be an option things can turn south quickly, on August 29 there will inevitably be a reason to quit. The list of reasons to back off the pace is guaranteed to be long, not accepting the offer to quit is the name of the game.

School of Cross – Elite Men –

Hop ‘n Hurl – Expert Men –

Hop ‘n Hurl – Women –

Hop ‘n Hurl – Elite Men –

There are more photos in the Cyclocross 2009 Gallery

Cyclocross is a sport that has a couple really defining attributes. That’s nothing special, every sport has defining attributes. The thing that makes it different is that it’s mostly the loosely associated attributes or that make it great, the barebones aspects of cyclocross racing aren’t all that exciting. The sport of cyclocross is the result of a set of decisions that independently don’t create something amazing, but together the maybe unexpected ramifications create something really great.

Here are the basics:

• The race surface can be composed of any combination of the following: grass, dirt, asphalt, gravel, mud, sand, puddles… and whatever else the race organizer can find to make you ride over. The changing terrain emphasizes handling ability much more than road racing.
• The course necessarily includes places that require dismounting from the bicycle. This can be in the form of a super steep hill that can only be run up, sand too soft or deep to ride through (beach volleyball courts), or plank barriers typically 18 inches in height. These obstacles add a required skillset to racing, successful competitors must be able to quickly and efficiently dismount and remount their bicycles. They must also carry the bicycle through sections of the course, making the ability to pick up their bike and sometimes shoulder it while running an additional skill to learn. Getting off the bike as close to the barrier and back on it as soon after the barrier is ideal, as running is slower than riding in almost all circumstances (when it is possible at all).

• The race-course is based on time not distance. Racing is done on a lap and based on how fast the race leaders do the first couple laps organizers calculate how many laps to make them to. Typically at the end of the second lap the lap countdown starts so racers won’t see it until the end of their third lap, but they’ll know how long the race is supposed to be before they start: somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes based on category.
• The bike is a modified road bike, running knobby tyres somewhere around 32mm in size with extra frame clearance for mud around the wheels. Cantilever brakes are used and often only a single chainring is run up front with 8-10 gears in the rear. Cable routing on the frame is arranged to minimize catch-ups while picking up and carrying the bike.
• Racing is organized into classes similar to road and mountain biking, in Alberta there are three categories for men and two for women which are always (sadly) merged during competition (because the sport is short on females: what’s new in my world). Provincial and National Championships however are split by age. If you are good in your category you’ll eventually get kicked out and have to move up to some tougher competition. If you’re at the top of the best category, someone will inevitably entice you to go and race in Europe where you will be slaughtered by some really fast guys.
• Speaking of fast guys; the fast guys in this sport are really, really good. As a huge bonus, amateur ‘crossers get to basically participate in the same sport as the pros. It’s not like pro road-racing where the professional version is a completely different kind of competition than the amateur version. Sure, some aspects change a bit, like having a second bike and a mechanic in the pit lane just like a nascar race, but the concept is still ‘ride as fast as you can over this course’. Road-racing at the elite level is all about teamwork, peloton dynamics, leadouts, and whether or not the breakaway is going to be allowed to be successful, hardly about riding your bike as fast as you can over the course. For me this is definitely a pro – getting to race like the pros.

The fast guys are really good – did I say that already? here’s some proof from the World cup races last year:

Why choose to take up the sport? It’s not likely because you think that you really enjoy 1 hour threshold or near-threshold efforts on the bike. It’s not because the idea of jumping onto the seat of your bike at a full run is super appealing to you.

In fact that’s probably the most off putting aspect for many first-timers. The fact that other people are doing it however, and having fun, is a likely reason I think most people start. There is no secret, the sport really looks fun because the people racing are having fun. It’s also time limited, only happening for a couple weeks each year, and there’s an urgency not to miss out. Perhaps a few esoteric reasons too; the handling skills gained in cross are valuable to bring onto the road (and even triathlon) and the top end speed is something that can be added at the end of a season to a solid base developed for other forms of racing. Cyclocross is meant to be hard, and that’s an appealing reason to start too, it’s a heck of a challenge but I’ll get to that later. Ultimately though I think the apparent disorganization and chaos of a race makes for a good time, and as with all sports, it’s about fun times. Here’s someone’s story about what made ‘cross appealing:

We walked around the course with our coffees and I was getting stoked. Then we got the the first run up. There was a plank at the bottom of steep hill. This was something that clearly nobody would be able to ride. Riders would be forced to get off their bike, run over the barrier, and then remount at the base of an impossibly steep run up. People were crowded all around and cheering and yelling and cowbelling. At this point the tail end of the Masters A racers were coming though, and well, they certainly weren’t making it look easy. Everyone was struggling.

Then Barry Wicks came though like a cool breeze, bunny hopped the barrier and rode his bike up the hill. A man on the hill with an enormous cowbell chased him and screamed in his face, over and over again:

I CAN SEE YOU!

I can see you, I can see you, I can see you! That didn’t make any sense to me, but I loved it. I would later realize that shouting the most obvious shit is the best way to heckle your pals.

Turns out it was Bruce from River City Bicycles doing the yelling. It was that scene right there that did it for me, that made me want to try cyclocross: Bruce yelling in Barry’s face, and Barry riding the hill with an ear to ear smile.

Brian NoLastName – 2009

Others have described Cyclocross as “You make a bike race as stupid as possible, but it’s still a race, so people do it. And then you rationalize that, like, it’s so stupid that it must be fun”. I agree that the concept works for some people but I don’t think that’s how you’d sell the idea to a bunch of athletes who are actually looking for a physical challenge, which ‘cross is in spades, but perhaps the sheer stupidity is part of the reason for some folks. For the people who want to go out and race ‘cross, what most of them are really relishing when the whistle blows to start the race is that this is really really hard. The courses are laid out to prevent rhythm, just when your heart-rate is getting out of control there’s a hill to really add some nails to your coffin and bury you if you’re not careful. Just when your legs are tired from a long section in soft grass there will be a corner that really requires you to slow down and re-accelerate out of it to remind you that your legs are really tired. When your hands are starting to ache from all the jittering and shaking after riding over some really uneven terrain you’ll have to hop off your bike and grab the top tube of your bike with a serious grip to pick it up and run over the barriers, yeilding a big ache in the knuckles. When you think you’ll get to run up some speed down a big hill there will be a U-turn at the bottom, or maybe even a double barrier dismount to prevent you from reaping the benefits of the climb you just did. The changing pattern isn’t something that can be practiced as it’s different from week to week, the ability to change pace, position and focus is the underlying key, while at all times keeping the effort level high. Cyclocross happens in the autumn and early winter. For Edmonton that’s September to November; for Belgium and the rest of northern Europe, where this great sport began, it’s more of a November to February sport. The result is the potential of miserable weather. Why is that a good thing? Well, it makes things hard! Cold and wet sap determination. It makes the win go to the toughest competitor out there. If it’s hard, why do I love it? Probably for some of the same reasons that I’m signed up to tackle Ironman in August.

Maybe it’s the mud, or the bruises, maybe the beer, or the loose semblance of camaraderie. I think what it boils down to is that I feel more alive during a cross race than at just about any other time. Cyclocross is the most intense hour of effort, pain and joy I have ever encountered. I’m attracted to cross because I can put everything I’ve got on the line for 60 minutes, come out of it totally exhausted, covered in rain, mud and grime, perhaps with a trickle of blood running down somewhere, craving ibuprofen, blowing mud out of my nostrils, placing top 30 if I’m lucky, and loving every minute of it.

Kelly Hobkirk – 2008

Unlike road-racing where team-tactics play a huge role in competition, cyclocross is more of an individual sport. Co-operation on the course is a definite possibility but more often than not it’s co-operation with riders from another team. The main role of team-members is cheering when they’re not racing and maybe snapping some photos, that’s it. In that sense, everyone is on the same team. The pre-race course inspection and post-race random shenanigans are shared amongst the entirety of those assembled at the race. The event of cyclocross lasts more than the length of the race, it lasts the entire duration of the time spent at the park. Things like this would not at all be considered to be out of the ordinary:

One of the best things about cyclocross is the attitude. Gone is the testosterone-induced yelling and uber-competitiveness. Everyone seems to respect each other, no matter how talented or strong or skilled they are. Everyone cheers for everyone.

Kelly Hobkirk – 2008

The Cyclocross season began last weekend with the kickoff race in Red-Deer and this weekend was the first double-header weekend of the year. I raced on both Saturday and Sunday… and hopefully will be doing so for the rest of the races for the next six weeks until the provincial championship.

I slapped knobby tyres back on my bike the same day I returned from my excursion to Penticton and have been going hard at it for four solid weeks… so much in fact that I haven’t had runners on in 40 days, and counting. I’ll get back at the running at least on an occasional basis before the end of the cross season but taking a break is just fine with me too. I’ve needed to dedicate focus to the cycling though to prepare properly for cyclocross season. All summer I’ve been working on developing a giant 12 cylinder diesel engine for triathlon time trial riding. It also happened to work alright for powering me through a giant and somewhat ridiculous bike trip across BC. Anyhow, that big diesel engine isn’t going to get me anywhere in cyclocross so I needed to try and add on some substantial top end speed. I also felt like my ability to generate some significant power was definitely there, but I didn’t have the ability to do my max power, recover and do it again and again and again. That results in a limited potential for racing well at cyclocross.

- The Training -

The prescription is somewhat obvious, I need to do intensity in my training at a level that I haven’t done in a long time. That means putting together some race effort work, meaning threshold efforts, and intervals that bring me slightly above threshold and then trying to quickly recover below threshold before punching it back up again and recovering again. They’re hard workouts but fortunately they’re short. I’ve been able to structure the triathlon-club workouts that I’m coaching during this period of the training season to serve two purposes, the adaptation and skills sort of work that’s necessary for people who are just starting out as well as allowing me to sit on that stationary bike and go stupid-hard during those intervals at the same time as other people are just getting used to turning the pedals for an entire hour. I’ve also been doing Wednesday night lessons, taught by a previous provincial champion with a pretty good group of riders from Edmonton, we’ve got a full range of beginner through amazing there which gives me the big benefit of riding on some good cyclist’s wheels and allowing me to learn, learn and learn. I’ve also been racing on Tuesday nights at an informal race series with a twoonie entry fee which serves to provide a good long warmup, about half an hour of serious work at race-effort and then a long cool down ride home from the park. Those three sessions each week plus racing or skills based riding on the weekends has the makings of a HUGE bike focus. It’s fun though and I’m getting better. Hopefully the big diesel engine comes back without too much effort after November.

- Cutting my teeth -

The first Tuesday night race I competed in I was absolutely slaughtered by the competition in the B category. I was dropped by the lead pack off the start and I felt like I couldn’t push the pace anywhere to try and regain ground. It was actually pretty humbling, I had no ability to go when I tried to tell my legs to go. The next weekend though we were off to Red-Deer for my first race in the provincial series and after taking an easy day prior I felt pretty good at the start line. I felt like when I wanted to go I could really go, which was a fantastic feeling. I rode reserved for the first 3 of 6 laps, staying with the leading group of 6 but refused to make any effort at the front. I tried to run as easily as I could through the sand but found that my heartrate was absolutely skyrocketing when I hopped back on the bike. I had lost my chain three times already by the time I tried to make an attack on the fifth lap, but had lost it at convenient points where it didn’t take any time to get it back on. I made an attack with the tailwind on my fifth lap and had put in a decent gap until I dropped the chain on a really bumpy descent and wound up having to dismount, re-chain the bike and start from a standstill at the bottom of a hill. Such is life I said to myself, I obvious hadn’t installed my chain-keeper properly when I switched from 2 rings to a single ring up front. I was now back in fourth place and really had to push hard to try and bring back the leader. The course was too short however, and he picked up the pace on the last half lap to stay away for the win. I was about 5 seconds back in second and third was about equally distant behind me.

- The ‘W’ -

The next Tuesday night race was a sweet one indeed. A relatively flat and winding course with one power climb and a fast descent. I started out slow, anticipating that I’d likely wind up about 10th place again and let about 20 people ahead of me off the start, slotted myself in the train and then started to get to work. I found quite quickly that I was alright at maintaining momentum where some others were not and as a result I was pretty quick on the flats, quicker than all the guys in front of me. I slowly picked them off, one or two at a time, until I was chasing people who were quite clearly faster than me. I was OK with that and just sat on their wheels and tried to keep the effort level high I had no idea who was from my race and who was from the race ahead of me, so was content to just ride. Into the finish I descended the hill near one guy and decided I’d try to race him for what I though was probably fifth place. I nabbed the win with a half wheel length on the line. It turns out that was for first place! Now I’m kicked out of the B category and have to race with the fast guys for the rest of the season, that means tough work!

- Wow this is tough -

Weekend #2 of ‘cross racing started on Saturday morning with the ‘School of Cross’ on a very technical course in my opinion. The mountain bike guys didn’t call it technical, just curvy, and that’s probably true. It wasn’t super technical but it did have some tricky bits and the corners were all very sharp. The result of this was that many many short accelerations were required on each lap and they really sapped my energy. Contrary to the previous week where I felt strong and fast, this week’s race I felt miserable and tired after only the first of five laps. My heartrate was above 180 bpm every time I looked at it and I felt like I was riding extremely slow. I wasn’t going all that slow though, I was actually doing very well. I started relatively well and got into the course in 5th position but the first three were getting away and it took me some time and a few tries to finally get around 4th place and try to reel them in. By that time the had formed a gap that I couldn’t cross and it was too long to pace off of them. This was less than ideal and probably contributed to me feeling like I was doing terribly. Second place got rope in his derailleur and had to pull out and by the last lap I could tell that the new Second place was fading and fourth place was gaining. I really pushed to the finish but wasn’t all that close to catching second but did hold off the charging fourth place guy for a podium position. All in all, a very difficult race and after a collapsing under a tree to catch my breath I think I could even decide that it was fun.

- Fun Fun Fun -

Day two of my first ‘cross double header was a course suited to my strengths. We built it the evening before at Goldbar park including what I’d consider three distinct sections. The first was a rather quick but curvy lap of the lower park, including some tricky sections that required very low speeds, but overall it was a matter of running corners as wide as possible and taking the line that allowed you to conserve the most speed. This fed directly into a climb with a mandatory dismount at the top and double barrier. This fed into a section of off camber riding and turns interspersed with short climbs. It went pretty quick but really required that attention was paid. I felt like I addressed this section well considering the technical bits are a weakness of mine. From there on out the course was a matter of pushing a big gear and cruising with your head down through a long gradual climb and a long and fast descent. At the end of the climb was a triple switchback uphill that was very tight. I insisted on building it like this and unfortunately it’s also likely the bit of the course that cost me a position on the podium but that’s getting ahead of myself. I took the race out slow and in 10th place, not wanting to go to hard right off the bat. After a half lap I started to increase my urgency and by the time I was through the first lap I was pushing hard in 5th place. I moved into third with a double pass just as I was passed by another young guy and fell to fourth. First place was off the front and looked to be pulling away and I think everyone had resigned themselves to the fact that the Juventus rider who had won the first two races and should have been upgraded by this point was likely going to win three in a row. The Pedalhead rider in second had faded badly the day before and I was expecting him to fade back as well so I worked hard to stay with third place and did so for the third lap. By lap four it was obvious that we were reeling in second place and made contact before the last climb up to the barriers. I pulled even with them here but ran slow to let the both go ahead. I didn’t need to lead into the wind on the next section, I wasn’t about to offer my huge draft to these guys. Up to the final zig-zag I decided I was going to run, which I had tested prior and experimented with once during the race. I was convinced that it was not any slower and prevented any chance of errors or overlapping of wheels in the tight section. It was probably the wrong choice however because by the time I was back on my bike I they had a tiny gap of maybe 5m. It was enough that I wasn’t poised to pass where I anticipated needed to pass and couldn’t push quite hard enough to get by them on the long fast downhill. It was about this point that I started to wonder why I was breathing at all, it felt really useless to pump air in and out of my lungs because it didn’t seem to be doing anything anyways. I took huge speed into the last climb and rode the descent on the wheel of third place. Unfortunately when we came to the line I was still a bike length back, the run in to the finish wasn’t long enough to permit a high speed acceleration, it was mostly a matter of maintaining as much speed from the downhill as possible. Fourth place. I fertilized the nearby bushes in true ‘hop ‘n hurl‘ fashion but felt alright within about 10 minutes, I was pretty happy with how I raced though and felt strong and worked hard… perhaps I could have stuck with the leader if I’d not have given away those 10 places off the start but I don’t deal well with really hard starts, so I know what I need to learn.

The day saw some fantastic racing in all categories and John Clarke took the win for Hardcore at our own race in the Expert Category as he now moves up to contend with the big guns with the Elites. I suppose the saving grace with a fourth place is that I am still 3 points shy of an upgrade and get to contend in the Dark Knight as well as the Oval Cross with the slower categories. Hopefully this increases the chances that someone from the Hardcore racing team can with a pig on Saturday night as we’ll be represented in all of the races. A win would be nice, but winning the pig I think is potentially more important. (A scavenger hunt on the course that involves beer for the winner… details to follow if the story turns out to be worth telling)

Youtube coverage of the Expert and Elite Mens’ races will follow pending a free lunch-hour at work to do some video editing. I snapped stills for the women as I was supposed to be marshaling in one area and the field spread out too much to make for exciting footage. Not that the race was unexciting.