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