Better late then never!...PATCO Race Review

We arrived in Oklahoma on Wednesday the 13th for the race which took place on Saturday the 16th. Wednesday night we got a nice Oklahoma welcome as a number of tornados we're near the hotel. The next 2 days we joined the rest of the Canadian Juniors with race prep for the event. Friday evening we had the race meeting. It was better organized than last year in Mexico but race organization standards almost always seem poorer than they are in Canada, but always a great learning experience for the juniors but always stress out the coaches.The junior women's field had 57 entrants from 16 countries, while the men's race had 72 entrants from 19 countries.

Friday evening we had more storms but the rain stopped at 6 AM and fortunately stayed away for the races.Water temperature was just over the wetsuit cutoff so no wetsuits were allowed. The water was filthy although it was entertaining watching all of the athletes leave the water with mud beards from the dirty water. The girls race started at 8:00 AM. Christine Rideneaur from Canada made a solo break in the swim and left the water with a 20 second lead on a large chase pack. As always in international racing with large fields making the lead pack proved to be the most important part of the race. Marita left the water in 7th place (11:53) only a few seconds behind the 2nd place person. Rachael (12:18) and Stevie (12:22) left the water at the back of this group. I knew watching the race it was going to be tough for them to make the lead group. Rachael had a 48 second transition and Stevie 51 seconds leaving them 7 seconds apart. Both had to ride solo for the next mile to try to catch the pack. Rachael barely made it but Stevie didn't quite get there and once the group gets organized a solo rider doesn't have a chance. By the end of the 20 km bike the lead group of 13 had opened up a 90 second lead on the second group.

Rachael(19:45) had a great transition and made it out onto the run with the lead runners, she had a solid run and ended up 4th. Marita (21:32) had a strong run and held off most of the faster runners from the second pack and finished 14th. Stevie (21:12) came into transition first in her pack and took off running strong, beating most of the runners from her pack, finishing in 18th. In the guys race both Mark and Josh left the water about 30 seconds behind the leaders and both made the second pack. Unlike the women's race the 2nd pack had the better cyclists and managed to ride down all of the leaders except for 2 athletes who held the lead for the entire bike. At about 14 km Mark caught wheels with another Canadian rider and went down. Fortunately he wasn't seriously hurt but his day was over. Josh stayed in the group of 20 and then ran pretty well to finish 18th.

The roads were very poor resulting in a number of bike crashes, unfortunately the results didn't give splits for athletes who completed only part of the event so we have no results for Mark and Josh lost his timing chip in the swim so nothing for him as well. Great results from all of the Manitoban's overall as we managed to place everyone in the top third of starters.

The Canadian team had a lot of success with 4 podium finishes. Kyla Coates won the Junior Girls and Marianne Hogan was third, as well as Connor Hammond placed 2nd in the Junior Guys and Andrew McCartney finished 3rd in U23 Guys.

Click Here for the results http://www.fleetfeettiming.com/results.html

Yes, we swam in this!

Duathlon #2 and off to PATCO

Well today was the 2nd duathlon at Birds Hill Park and only the athletes not going to PATCO this weekend were racing. The weather consisted of on and off rain with temperatures around 10˚ and quite a strong wind. The race went well with once again with great efforts from everyone. Thanks to the Tri-Force triathlon team for putting on this great series. Results can be found here.

Here are some pictures:


Tomorrow it is off to Oklahoma City for 5 MNTC athletes (Mark, Josh, Rachael, Marita and Stevie) who are heading down for the PATCO Continental athletes. Everyone is feeling ready for some fast racing, as well as looking great in their new suits.


Thanks to Olivier Mouyau [kiwamicanada@live.com] for helping set us up with a great suits (more info can be found here)

Also this weekend Riley and Trevor will be going to Thief River Falls for some early season racing, and Shayna and Roseria are doing another bike time trial on Thursday.
As well this over the past weekend we spent some time in the CSCM lab for a bike test and personal bests were had by almost everyone including a new team record for Stevie!

Everyone is looking forward to the upcoming weekend and are definitely ready for some great results.

First Bird's Hill Duathlon

Tonight was the first duathlon of the year at Bird's Hill. Everyone on the team made it out as it was a very nice evening for a race with the temperature around 15˚ and lighter winds then we have had for the last little while. The race consisted of a fast 2km run around the lake, one loop of the bike course ~13km and one more 2km run around the lake. This race was fairly short but certainly not easy. Everyone seemed to be relaxed and excited to go and it certainly showed on the first run with some fast splits. The bike was tough for most people with the wind playing a big factor and possibly some tired legs from Sundays TT. The hard ride made for some hard seconds runs to follow. In the guys race it was Riley who finished first followed closely by Mark, then Josh and Trevor. In the girls race Stevie took the win followed by Marita, Roseria and then Shayna and Rachael (who was not really racing but just helping Shayna out). After the race everyone seemed to be happy and most importantly more ready for some fast racing in a just over a week at PATCO. Results can be found here

Here are some pictures from today:

Road ITT #1 Birds Hill Park

This Sunday, most of us went out for the first bike time trial of the year at Bird’s Hill, which consisted of two 11km loops around the park. The day went fairly well considering most of the team have never time trialed before and weren’t sure what to expect. Josh, Marita, Shayna, Riley, Stevie, Trevor and Rachael all showed up and once we all ready to go we headed out to do one warm-up lap on the course with some 15-30 sec sprints. Warm up went well but we discovered the conditions weren’t as ideal as we would have wanted them to be. There was a big head wind on the south side of the loop making it very tough but, no one let that get to them and gave a maximal solid effort just as we intended to do. While it was a tough race, having teammates with us and great support from the parents made the race go by quicker and gave us motivation to go faster. We finished off the day with a 30 minute run off the bike, to complete a solid day of training. Most of us enjoyed our first time trial (especially Josh who got $50) and look forward to more in the future!

Here are a couple pictures:























































Not sure who this guys thinks he is but he should definitely work on his TT starts:



















Also Congrats to Sarah-Anne on her 16:44 5km over the weekend. WELL DONE!!

Let the blogging begin...

Since everyone else seems to be blogging these days. We decided that we would also like to keep everyone up to date on training, racing and such.

Last weekend we did our first bike races of the season (while actually ever). Mark, Stevie, Josh and Riley raced in Cat 4 and had a great time. The first race on the Saturday was 68 km and when we showed up we were hit by a suprise snow storm which quickly covered the roads. Fortunatly by the time the race started the roads had cleared off. The winds were quite strong making the day tough for the breakaways and ended up in a bunch sprint. Unfortunatly we had no idea what to expect and ended up going to early and getting passed in the last 75 meters. Lnks to results are found on this page. On Sunday only Riley made it out for the shorter 56 km, but made worth the effort winning the race with a solo break away in the last lap. Results are here.

The rest of the week was fairly solid with lots of tough work in the water and some solid bike intervals followed by a threshold run on Thursday.

Most people will be out at a time trial bike race on Sunday and then the first multisport races of the year with the Tuesday duathlons starting next week.

From your friends in central Canada,

MNTC