Du It For Shelter

OK folks, this is it. You've spent all winter getting up earlier on Saturday and Sunday mornings than you do to go to work. You've slipped, slithered and shivered on Sunday runs in weather you wouldn't put a dog out in and spent many, interminable hours in the basement spinning endless miles to nowhere.

This Sunday sees the second race of the 2011 season. Yup, although you missed the Aquathon already, we still have a boatload of racing to get through before the banquet (early November, we want to say the 5th, Banook Canoe Club, don't say we didn't warn you). First up, the Du It For Shelter Duathlon (hereto known as DIFS).

A rebooting of the old Hammerman Duathlon of yore, RD Stacy Juckett-Chestnutt held the first event here last year. It's out in Musquodobit Harbour way (map here), an easy hour drive from HRM. Race HQ is at the Eastern Shore Community Centre.

The first run starts from here and we remember it as being a painfully fast 4 km out-and-back, mostly along trail. It was painfully fast as it was pan-flat and we were chasing the Piggotts and Shawn Amirault; neither of whom one should chase with alacrity.

After TZ, the bike heads out due north on Rte 357. It's rolling terrain; think the Waverley Road without the high traffic count. We did it on 72" fixed and never wished for a smaller gear: a larger one yes, but a smaller one? No. It's not a technical course either, and ideally suited to jumping on your P2, assuming the position and heading out to the turn. Last year the course was cut short to ca. 20kms due to road conditions. No word yet on whether you'll get the full monty this year or not.

After returning to TZ, R2 takes the same route. Last year Brad Piggott took top honours with Heather Doucette taking top ladies honours.

As always, the race is TNS Sanctioned and being run under TriCan competition rules and should you have a protest or appeal, TD Linda McLeod will be glad to swap your $50 cash for the appropriate paperwork!

As with last year, Stacy and Tim have amassed a prize-list that is both extensive and heavy. Partly this because they are also running a 5K on Saturday in Shubie Park. Last year there was a prize for the fastest overall time in both events; yup a little multisport stage-race. Modesty precludes us from telling you who won the overall last year, but let us just say we're still drinking the gin! Hic!

So, the weather forecast is in, the sun is going to be out and all this water should have dried off by them. So really, you're all out of excuses. Atlantic Chip, you know what to do! Oh, did we mention it was for the St Leonards Society, raising funds for the homeless here in Halifax?

See you Sunday

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The Italian Job

A little class to kick back and relax to this Sunday afternoon. The scene was filmed in the Italian Aps, near Aosta, host to the Giro Ciclistico della Valle d'Aosta and also to the occasional stage of the Giro d'Italia. The Giro d'Italia starts in a couple of weeks. If the controversial ad on Universal Sports doesn't make you want to tune in, maybe just do it for the racing; it is often more exciting than the Tour de France and besides, Oscar Feire just called the Tour "the most boring race in the world", and that guy knows a thing or two about bike-racing.

Wow, the first blog-post in a month and we're digressing already. After a couple of false starts, courtesy of Run Nova Scotia (Moose, Goffs and the Lung Run) we finally had our first TNS racing rendezvous was this morning at the ZX Aquathon. Some thirty of you braved the wind and occasional drizzly bits to take on the 750m swim and 5K run.

First place, by nearly the proverbial mile, was Italian exchange-student Gianluca Pozzatti, who completed the course in 29:19. Gianluca led out of the swim and never looked back. Apparently, he regularly breaks the hour for a Sprint and one of his training partners back home just gonged-up at European Dus. Second was Liam Patterson and third David Dallin of Victoria, BC. In the lady's, Kayla Boudreau was first in 34:54, followed by Brigitte Sabourin and Mallory Troup.

A big thanks to CFB Greenwood for the use of their facilities, and to all the helpers; Eric, Dan, Chrissie, Yvonne, Ty and all the rest. As always, RD Denis Choquette put on a great event, and as always was blessed with the best of the weather of the day. Not for the first time, the TA voluntolded one of Denis's events at CFB G'wood under relatively benign conditions only to drive home in heavy rain, wind and fog. This may be the last event Denis RDs for TNS, and he used the event to pass the reins to a new RD. Merci beaucoup Denis, c'etait fun. Bienvenue a TNS Guy; à bientôt. Just remember, you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

We shared the event with the Greenwood ZX 10K. Despite the parallel existence of a TNS event at the same time in the same place, some people decided to take on the 10K instead. Adages about horses, water and the taking of the former to the latter regardless of their hydration status come to mind. Alan Miner, for example, only competes in du's nowadays, where the only water is in the turnaround in cups (just the way he like it) so we can understand his reluctance to take on an aquathon but others? Perhaps a fast 10K was in their training plan instead. Whatever. What do we know? Increasingly, we are told, it is nothing!

We see Colin Edwards is getting faster, posting a 35' and change, coming in 4th, just behind Toby Hennigar. This was a good minute netter than his last outing in anger at the Legs For Literacy 5K last October. We also saw Mike French, Sean Merrett, Gayland Goodwin, Ron MacDougall, Mike Pettipas, Tina White and Brenda Topliss. Usual caveats over the TNS member-tracking software apply.

Meanwhile, elsewhere. 1128kms to the south to be precisely "elsewhere". Yes, we know, the Habs beat the Bruins in the playoffs the other night (again), at the TD Garden (again) but that's not the one. Rather, the other big sporting event happening in Boston this Patriots' Day Weekend; the Boston Marathon. By our count we see Elizabeth Corkum, Peter Hanna, Stacy Juckett-Chestnut, Mike Juurlink, Pat Kennedy, Tracey Mcneill, Shawna Murdock-Moore, Nancy Neatt, Nancy Petrie, Erin Pyke and Steve Saunders. Good luck everyone, and remember not to run the first 10K too fast (Matt Callaghan, we're talking to you). The usual caveats apply, try here if you weren't satisfied!

Of course, NS's hopes are with Rami Bardessy, who is nursing a sore hamstring and Denise Robson, who is nursing a sore lung. We hear BAA and John Hancock still invited Denise to the marathon anyway, and she'll be part of the medal party for the female para-athlete marathon. Kudos all around.

Coming up next, Du If For Shelter (hereto DIFS), a pleasant 4/25/4, reasonably flat duathlon out Musquodobit Harbour way on May 15th. If we're lucky, Stacy will bring some of those croissants again....

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Don't try this at home folks

We seem to have been deluged with cycling videos recently, all of which strain our credulity if not our knees.

Firstly, this one seems to be doing the rounds (so our apologies if you've already been hit by it);

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Yup, urban downhilling. The kind of things our mothers warned us about. Actually, ours didn't, but one suspects mothers in most well-adjusted households tend to warn their offspring about this sort of thing. Oh, and Parisien girls/boys (depending on ones preference).

It was closely followed by this one;

A Hill in Spain from chris akrigg on Vimeo.

It reminded us of this one

Some guy totally invalidating the bike's warranty. I guess it didn't have one of those warning stickers between the gear-bosses! Now we think about it, if a crabon fribé Raleigh can stand up to that pounding, it will certainly stand up to our fat ass!

Then there's this one; some dude climbing then bombing the Stelvio on what appears to be ca, 70" fixed. Well, at least he didn't have to worry about his brake-blocks overheating

SEABASE vs STELVIO from YUHZIMI Ltd. on Vimeo.

If you don't know what the Stelvio is, ask your mother (the same lady who warned you abut urban downhilling). Speaking of things your mother should have warned you about, these guys also brought us this;

SEABASE 83 MOTORPACE from YUHZIMI Ltd. on Vimeo.

Now that's Drafting!

Finally, since we're all still safely locked up indoors on our stationery trainers here's something to emulate;

But of course, if you screw it up, then this happens;

Stay safe, and remember

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Thanks to Tim Chesnutt, who put us on to most of this stuff. Cheers; you've livened up our life no end!

Trail Shop Ski Marathon

Thanks for Cookie MacKilt putting us on to this one. We were aware that a couple of guys had gone north for this event, but there were more triathletes at the ski marathon than at Goffs. Here are a few of the pics from Cookie MacKilt's photo album from the event on Facebook;

Mark Cookie Monster Campbell did, in fact, win. Chapeau Mark

Shawn Amirault, IKON 2009 Fair Play Award winner was 2nd

Mens' podium (marathon)

Paul Newton and Gerrad Lewin (below) were also in the event

Darlene Chapman won the ladies.

In the half, Geoff Bennett (far right) was 2nd overall

Jason Murphy, 2009 IKON Official of the Year Finalist, was in the half as well (seen here mucking about in the waxing hut),

as was Ron MacDougall.

Geoff's Son, Luke Bennett (below left) cleaned up in the 7K; all the kids he beat, bar one, were older than he was: way to go Luke!

Amy Gough (below right) was 2nd in the 7K

We saw a photo of Ingonish RD Dan Murray, but we didn't see his name in the results but Dan has just had a busy time with the Canada Games cross country ski, so he was probable due a break.

To add to Dan's workload he was recently interviewed for Triathlon Magazine Canada as we understand Ingonish was also recently profiled in Triathlon Magazine Canada (and Brooke Brown got a name-check for her Cozumel result). We say "we understand" because, to be honest, the TA didn't get past the picture of Miranda Carfrae on p11!

Thanks to Ron and Cookie for the photos.

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Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go

A certain back-to-school feeling this morning, as we hit the first Nova Scotia race of the season. Well, we say first, we know many have been racing already, but these are races that involved strapping ungainly hardware to ones' feet and moving at improbable speeds on surfaces with suicidally low coefficients of friction.

Cookie MacKilt hit the road again this weekend for another loppet, the Trail Shop Marathon in Cape North, Cape Breton. Cookie stopped off at the Gaelic Cottage to get in touch with his Pictish roots...

(we can't help but feel there's some woad in there) before going up Smokey...

and arriving at Cape North, where he hung with the big dog himself...

We understand Cookie Snr may have been on the winning end of this event, but you know how reliable information on the internets can be, so we'll get back to you on this one.

Back on the mainland and back to the Goffs Back To Basics 8 miler; the traditional Run Nova Scotia season opener. Of course, the phrase "back to basics" was ruined for the TA by both it's use as a campaign slogan by the British Tory party some 18 years ago and an inventive corruption seen on posters around the University of Aberdeen a year or so later (Back To Baa-something or another, we forget). A corruption much in the same vein as Sylvain Morin's unfortunate attack of Sponnerism over the phrase "Atlantic Chip Timing". But we digress.

It was a reasonably warm day at Goffs, plus-something centigrade, but the sun never came out. Nevertheless, it was surprisingly warm out and many runners were feeling overdressed by the turnaround, which was where we were: where-else would the TA be? Really!

We saw several familiar faces. We didn't see the results as we were involved in a slight tizz at the finish, but we'll go on hear-say and how we think it unfolded after seeing the race at half-distance. Rayleen Hill was first lady and, by the strength of what we saw, third overall or perhaps fourth. She was on cracking form at the end of last season and the winter doesn't seem to have blunted her speed. The smile says it all.

Stacy Juckett-Chestnutt was second lady we think, and obviously posted a 54. This wasn't Stacy's first time placing a foot-fall in anger this year and this result comes off a couple of recent excellent placings over 5K and the half-marathon in FLA.

We also saw Brenda Topliss and Candice Stapleton out for an early-season leg-stretcher, the latter rocking up to registration in her Team Canada walk-out gear from last year's Worlds; tres chic.

For the guys, we think Chris MacKenzie was the first one of our guys back. He reckons he's not fit because it's still fishing season and he hasn't started to train yet. We can't speak for the fishing, but he clearly seems fit! Garth Spinney also made the trip of Yarmouth, and had a good race. We couldn't find a pic of either of them racing, but we did find a pic of them trying to put the frighteners on a course-marshal :)

We're gonna need a bigger boat!

Also out there were Alan Miner, looking strong as always and eyeing the du season. Finally, we saw Ralph Davis who, as you can see, raced in his own indomitable style.

The usual caveats about the reliability, or fallibility, of TNS's Member Tracking Software apply!

Goffs is rarity, being an RNS race run by RNS itself with RNS as the race organiser! Most RNS events are run by an independent race organiser and are sanctioned by RNS. TNS runs on the same general principle (just an FYI). As such, many prominent faces in RNS are to be seen helping out at Goffs, not racing. We saw 2009 banquet guest-speakers Dave Nevitt and Ray Williams staffing the water-table for example.

Rather like Stacy, Dave has just come back from a successful racing trip down south, where he clocked two marathons (his 81st and 82nd if anyone's counting) and a 100K Ultra. Or put another way, let us know if you clock 184 kilometers of running races this year - Dave has that already (Ron McKilt and Cookie need not apply).

Next up? The Moose Run; a hilly 25 kms in Eastern Passage on March 20th. This rce won't tell you if you're on track for your spring marathon, but it will sure tell you if you're not. So if you're Boston, Ottawa, Toronto Waterfront, Cincinatti or (God help you) Bluenose bound, you need to get this on your calendar. After that, it's the Lung Run, a flat 5K on the Halifax waterfront.

Then we get going with Stacy's Double-header; the Shelter Challenge - the Benny Bulldog 5K and the Du It For Shelter Duathlon (May 14/15). Last year, the TA won a bottle of gin for winning the weekend (sorry Rambo); for the sakes of our liver please put these dates in your calendar!

Hic!

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Photos from David Holder and rRon MacDougall; thanks guys.

Sublime, or ridiculous?

This one goes out to all you weight-weenies out there, we know there are a few. Courtesy of the veloptimum blog, we bring you a decidedly non-UCI legal 2.85 kg bike.

There's precious little here that's not carbon. Naturally the frame, fork, rims, handlebars, seat and so-on are made of our (well your) favourite layered, composite material. Interestingly (and I do mean this, as opposed to many people who say interestingly when it is only interesting to them) it appears even the chain-rings are carbon.

We wondered about the durability of those rings, and got us to thinking what good is a 2.85 kg bike, that costs goodness knows what but you can only get one good Olympic distance out of one? Well, the makers claim it's good for 23 000 kms, a figure we (for one) find remarkably precise!

Looking at the stock items on the frame, aficionados will see that Campy Record 10 and SRAM Red all get an outing. The pedals of choice for this weight-saving exercise were Speedplays; which is good news because an informal TZ poll shows that Speedplays are TNS's pedal of choice already! The AX-Lightness rims are commercially available, but are for tubs only, not clinchers. Which is probably good as choosing the wrong inner-tubes could significantly add to the weight of the bike! Also, the brake-calipers appear to be stock items and not custom (if a fully carbon brake-caliper can ever be considered something as mundane as "stock"). So, if you're serious about looking to shed some weight from your whip, there are a couple of small pointers here without having to go all custom on us!

We were most interested by the retro gear-levers. They gutted a set of Record 10 brifters and left them as old-school brake-levers, mounting some even more retro-looking downtube shifters to the headtube. So again, in the interests of weight, something to consider. If you're road-racing in a pack, having fingertip control over your gears is a massive advantage, and one the TA would be loathe to give up. However, if time-trailing is your thing, and you're resolutely sticking to your tried and trusted Cinelli 64-42s, then perhaps old-school might be the best school!

It's not even that an iconoclastic thing to do either. Remember; even in the days of STI/Ergo Marco Pantani famously used an old-school left-hand Record brake-lever and corresponding down-tube shifter on mountain stages, ostensibly to keep weight down and improve his climbing performance. Check out the photo below and you'll see what we mean.

In hindsight, the 60% haematocrit probably helped too. And there's the second lesson (the third, if you count "don't take performance enchacing drugs"). As cool as this would be, if your BMI is up there, perhaps it would be cheaper to watch the grams in your diet, not the grams on your bike.

Keep drooling

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Travelocity Gnome (TM)

TNS has it's own version of the Travelocity Gnome! Cookie MacKilt has been going places recently, certainly more places than his erstwhile guardians. And more cookies! He even has his own Facebook page where you can follow his progress across the endurance-sport world.

Here are a few examples of Cookie's recent travels. Here's Cookie at the Fundy Loppet.....

at Leah Jabour's Ugly Sweater Run.....

(Hmmm, brunch, nom nom nom)

the Falmouth Half & 10K.....

(left, no right, no Coookies)

the TNS Banquet....

(Hey, Kilt-guy, you give me Coookies?)

(Hmmm, lashings of extra lasagna, nom nom nom)

and the TNS AGM

(yes, the meeting was chaired by a Muppet)

That cookie-lovin' monster sure does get around.

So head on over to Facebook and Friend Cookie. I'm sure if we try, Cookie could have more friends than Triathlon New Funswick by the end of the day (sorry Scott!). Oh, and if you're searching for him, remember, even though TNS is a non-sectarian organisation, nonetheless it's Cookie MAcKilt (with an 'a'), not McKilt (without).

Hmmm, Coookies....

Or if you're feeling highbrow, Hmmmm, biscotti....

AiDa

Many, many thanks to Ron MacDougall!