Sorry Forgot to mention Ben was at Folk Fest last weekend!

Hope he had a good time!


According to worldweb.com it is one of the top 10 festivals in Canada!

Last weekend's racing and on to this week!

Last weekend athletes from MNTC were racing all over the place. We had Tyler, Unger, Charles, Riley M and Janessa racing in PATCO. Stevie and Sarah racing down in San Francisco and a few of the younger athletes (Darian, Ashlyn, & Madison) made there way down to Minneapolis, Minnesota for the youth event at the Lifetime Fitness triathlon. Here is a link to some results from the weekend.

Most of MNTC met up in Kamloops, BC in between the races last weekend and the race in Penticton this weekend. We picked Kamloops because it will be the site of the Western Canada Summer Games triathlon in a few weeks. It was a very beautiful place to spend a few days and do some training. We were staying at Thompson Rivers University and have been swimming at a very nice pool near by. We checked out the site for the races at WCSG and it looks like it will be a interesting and challenging race.

Now we have moved down to Penticton which is the site of the race this weekend. There are 2 girls and 5 guys taking part. The race has a chilly swim in Lake Okanagan, a 8-loop 20km bike along the lake and a 5-loop 5km run. Briefing and relaxing is on the schedule for the rest of the day and then tomorrow the girls race at 10 and the guys at 11:15.

Cable Cars and Buses and Bikes OH MY!!!

The MNTC had to split up this weekend to attend various races (PATCO, Minneapolis race, folk fest) and Stevie and I got the best part of this deal as we’re chilling in San Francisco for a few days before we race a Pan-American Cup on Treasure Island on Saturday. We made it to our hotel with all our belongings yesterday. We took the BART train from the airport to the heart of San Francisco where our hotel was. We had to be quick to get all our luggage and bikes out before the doors closed, but we made it!
We’re quite impressed with the biking skills of the many commuters zooming through the downtown streets here. Although it’s hard to really pay attention with all the cars, other bikers, buses, streetcars, cable cars, taxis, pedestrians moving about.

We found food – (Whole foods store!) and we made it out to the course today. We had to take the transit bus across the bridge to get to the Island. We got to rack our bikes to the front of the bus and hope that they would be safe will we drove out. We sat in the front of the bus (where handicapped and/or elderly people are supposed to have priority seating) to make sure nothing would happen to them. We did realize that there wasn’t much we could do if indeed something horrible happened, but it still made us feel better to be able to see them.

The bike course is rather twisty but our superior map-reading skills allowed us to successfully navigate the old naval base. It’s quite the location for a triathlon. All military buildings are shut down so our half of the Island is very much empty (which made it great to bike around, especially after the crowds of downtown San Fran).

Our next challenge was finding a pool to get some swimming in. We decided the best way to get there would be, again, public transit! We got on the bus with about 1000 short Asian people. After driving throughout Chinatown (who needs to fly to China when you can go to San Francisco and get the same experience), and little Italy, missing our stop and going around the building twice to find the pool door we got in and were told it was closed for another hour. But we were ready! We went for a run instead, and we made the decision to go one after the other so that one could watch the bags while the other ran. We both ended up going approximately in the same direction, by the fisherman’s wharf (which we plan on exploring Sunday after the race). Sadly, I decided to rely my sense of direction to get me back to the pool instead of following the logic that would say “take the same route out and back since you are all by yourself with no phone/money in a big, foreign city”. But no. I ended finding a cliff where the street I was following should have gone and had to go around the mountain. Stevie didn’t worry too much but it cut our time in the pool a little bit. The pool was quite crowded but we managed not to hit anyone and get most of our workout in, after being told to take a shower and to NOT jump in the shallow end (that was Stevie, she's a rebel). We also made a few new friends.

To get back to the hotel, we decided to go the scenic route and take the Cable Car. The terminal is right below the window of our hotel so it was perfect! Except for the long lines and the rather relaxed drivers who took quite the eternity to get everyone loaded, payed and ready to roll. We got a great “driver” who made everyone on the trolley aware that Stevie was Stevie. She got applause after NOT falling off the wagon during a particularly sharp turn and got a nice goodbye from everyone once we got to the terminal. Great experience.

Also, there are enough weird people in San Francisco that walking around in the summer wearing a tuque and drinking tea out of biking water bottles (to warm up from the cold ocean breeze on the cable car) will never get a second look. That’s not surprising when we have to compete with bongo playing bike riders (playing and riding at the SAME time!)


Pictures and results to follow…

St. Malo - Race 1

Just yesterday all junior elite athletes competed in the first of four Junior Teck National Series races. It was slightly cloudy, although humid and warm. Luckily, the water was warm enough that wet suits weren't an option. After a successful start the men were off, quickly followed by the women. It was obvious from the start that the swim would not break into that many small groups. Onto the bike it turned out to be one lead pack containing fifteen athletes, some stragglers, then another chase pack a couple minutes behind containing seven athletes. On the female side it looked like a lead group of three or four girls, followed by some stragglers, then another small pack or two. The run was fast in both races. It tough to say how things played out there. It was a hot and long run though.
Congrats to Tristan Woodfine and Ellen Pennock for clinching their first victories in the junior series. Also congrats to Francis Lefebvre, and Marc Christin for second and third place finishes. And also Christine Ridenour, and Gabrielle Edwards for second and third as well.
It was a great effort by all the athletes competing.
Congratulations are also in order for all the MNTC athletes. Tyler leading the men in seventh place, followed by Riley Mac in tenth, Charles in thirteenth, Unger in fourteenth, and Ben in nineteenth. On the female side we had Janessa finishing with a strong twentieth place finish. Also a congrats to Patrick Naylor for placing twenty-sixth, and Kevin Macduff of Manitoba for thirty-third place, and Kaitlyn Weins for a solid twenty-sixth performance considering it was their first draft legal race ever.
Age groupers are never to old to be forgotten.... Sarah-Anne Brault. Congrats for the easy victory in the age-group sprint distance. We promise not to judge you to harshly...
Let us not forget the KOS athletes of MNTC that competed on the Saturday. Congratulations to Ashlyn and Madison for finishing first and third, respectively. Our best wishes go out to Darian for a speedy recovery after a bike crash on race day, we wish you all the best.
That's all for the race report! I hope I didn't forget anybody. Check back in a week or two for the Penticton race report!

Yay Sarah!

Recently there was NCAA and Canadian Nationals.  First was NCAA's where sarah placed an astounding 71st, unfortunately her team did not qualify so she ran individually.  Shortly after Sarah hopped on the plane and headed to Canadian Cross Country Nationals in Guelph.  She placed 8th in the senior women category.

Here's  a picture from NCAAs:

and a video of the senior women's race at Nationals:

Basics

Here's a link to an very good blog post by RTC Guelph coach Craig Taylor about some basic principles towards training.

Riley Unger's Blog

Our program this fall includes some "team bonding" led by our new student sport psych person Christine. Every three weeks one person will be writing an update about training and such. Our very first one this week comes from Riley Unger.


Here it is:
The team has just lately got back into the full time training together. Due to cross country season just finishing there has been a lot of focus on running. So we were having morning swimming/strength and after school it was on your own training with our school cross country team and some biking in there too. The last 3 weeks have been fun and also some hard work in there too. We are just focusing on getting back into shape right now and back up to speed in our other two sports.

This week was an easy week following the last two weeks of hard training. In the first week of hard training, daryl came out with some heart rate monitors and gave me and a few others a wake up call about how hard the different zones are. Now we are required to train with heart rate monitors on the bike. It really helped with familiarizing us with the different zones.

Just recently we have started doing some outside of training team bonding. On October 29th we had a halloween party. After training that night we went out to six pines and got a little scared. We all dressed up in our halloween costumes. Riley M went out as a disco man, Janessa was road kill, Ashlyn went out as dorothy, Stevie went out as hannah montana/ lady gaga/ ....... she wore a blonde wig and everyone got something different out of it i guess. Charles went out as a great clown, the costume fit him perfectly! Tyler went out as a lion, rawr! Ben couldn’t make it unfortunately, he was in ottawa at the time, Darian was some beastly looking creature, and i went out as a christmas present. Everyone got some great and also not so great comments about our costumes. The lines weren’t the greatest but at the end of it all, it was a great experience and found out that tyler has a bit of a sensitivity to scary things(He came up to me and hugged me, i think he was just a little scared). The barn of doom was great and the best of them all. There was also the train of terror and a magic show! There was this one person on the train of terror that was just hilarious. Once we were finished all the activities there, we went back to Riley M’s place and got some halloween treats.

Saturday the team did their first 400m swim time trial of the year, and it was a solid effort all around, especially for this time of year!