Real men drink pints

Don't worry, this is actually about gears, not beer, so bear with us. There's a saying back home, real men drink pints. There's also the somewhat sexist corollary, women can only drink half (pints). As such, the TA has even heard of a woman ordering a pint of beer in Scotland and being served said pint as two halves. Honestly.

Interestingly, this doesn't carry through when dealing with the insanely-strengthened Belgian beers so beloved by cyclocrossers. One wonders if this pintism isn't so much volume apartheid as it is alcohol apartheid. If regular beer is ca. 4% alcohol by volume (v/v), then a pint (ca. 500 mL) has about 20 mL of pure ethanol, whereas a 300 mL bottle of Duvel (8.5% ethanol v/v) has 25.5 mL of ethanol. What would happen to "men pints/ladies halves" thinking if Tetleys had the same alcohol content as Duvel we have no idea but we know we wouldn't go down Leeds City centre on a Saturday night! But we digress. Too much Hoegaarden perhaps; only 4.9% but the TA has always been a bit of a lightweight. We must have the dodgy ADH gene.

Anyway. Gears. This beer thing sounds frankly ridiculous doesn't it? But you'd be surprised how many people ask for a lower granny gear on their bikes, but when told to get a compact crank (50 Tooth and 34T chain-rings) instead of a racing double (53T/39T) the reaction is "but compacts are a girls' gear".

Really?

Continued on the TurnAround at trins.ca

Saddle, Horse, Man

Saddle, horse, man is an old cavalry adage that lists the order of priorities in which a trooper would look after his kit. Firstly he would look to his saddle (and all the other tack), then he would see to his horse and only then would he look after himself.

The same can be said for us as bike-riders, or at least that was what the TA was taught in our first bike-club (many, many, moons ago). This is not surprising perhaps, as many of us treat our bikes like horses. The stabling fees may not be as high, but the up-keep certainly can be (Dr Rob Klue DVM?)! We refer to saddling up, go for a trot in the country, bunch gallops and so-on. Maybe this is as far as we should take it; after all it used to be said, a touch cruelly, that the only brains in the cavalry were kept in their horses heads. Sure we're all an intelligent lot, by and large, but we all know some-one (I'm sure) who is regularly out-smarted by his (or her) Di2 controller!

Continued at the TurnAround's new home here (or here http://trins.ca/2011/07/saddle-horse-man/)

A history of aero

Triathlon is a new sport. We're pretty lucky about this. Take our rules, for example. Ratified only in the eighties, they were able to take into account new technology and changing societal attitudes not available to other sports. Take gender-equality; equal prize-money is right there, front-and-centre. Take that Boston Marathon! Or perhaps headphones; banned, outright, from the get-go. None of this prevarication and chin-stroking over the use of iPods in big-city marathons or the use of radios by professional cyclists.

On the other hand, there's a little sibling rivalry and, perhaps, we're always looking for a bit of validation from our parent-sports. Maybe that's why we jumped on aerobars when Greg Lemond won the '89 Tour by the thinnest of margins, and christened them tri-bars, because they'd come from triathlon. Well, they hadn't, they'd come from the Race Across America (RAAM) people, but triathlon got the cultural-meme nod and we're now using tri-bars, not RAAM-bars.

Continued on the TNS blog's new page here (or if links aren't working for you at http://trins.ca/2011/07/a-history-of-aero/)

Lost in translation III; race-day

If there's one nice thing about being an Elite, it's not getting up at the crack of dawn to race. Take professional bike races. They're scheduled to finish in time for the evening news . So even a 7 hour classic doesn't start until late morning. Compare and contrast to say, the B'town LC, where the start is at 6, so as to get you off the roads as soon as possible, which of course means yours truly is often up at 04:30 or earlier.

The ITU clock says women at 12:00 and men at 14:30 and whilst the TD may be at liberty to change things by five minutes here or there, moving the whole smash up by six hours isn't on the cards. So, whilst the race is hard work for everyone, at least you have the luxury of not getting up trop early for the pleasure.

In fact the TA had the relative lie-in of 06:30 and even had time to hit the breakfast buffet at the hotel, albeit the first person at the breakfast buffet, before reporting to race-site for 08:00.

Fat-loading at breakfast. Word of the day; oeufs au miroir

It was pretty slow to start for us, as the groupe d'age was still in full flow. It was interesting to see the low age-grouper turnout, which had many at TQ grumbling. This was by far the smallest TQ event the TA has ever seen, no bigger than a G'wood or a C'Smith, about 100. It made us feel better about our (TNS) own poor turnouts, when even a powerhouse like Quebec can't always get bodies on pontoons.

Seeing the groupe d'age racing allowed the ITU guys to get familiar with the course in action. We were able to see the swim-start (even though the age-group didn't dive off the pontoon), check out the dodgy turnarounds as they were taken at speed by the better age groupers, and make some race-day adjustment to the course as required; move this cone here, alter that tear-drop turnaround there, get some paint down. Nothing big.

Then the Elites started to turn up and the machine swung into action.

Pop-quiz: what is the TD's race-day job?

If you said everything, having seen us at provincial races, you'd be excused for saying so.

In fact, the truth is a little more mundane. If the TD has done their job right, then there is very little to do on race-day. You're available to put out fires, make big calls, run the very specific things peculiar to a high-level event such as an ITU Continental Cup and make sure the run-sheet is carried out. And if you've done your job right, and she had, there were very few fires to put out and consequently, very few big calls to make, 'cos she'd already anticipated them.

Here was something unseen. Many of the Elite athletes were way tall (big Jorden Bryden, we mean you), way taller than the bike-racks. While most of the women were OK, virtually none of the mens' bikes fitted in. It was like racking adults on KOS racks! So we ended up with a bunch of volunteers holding the bikes upright in the racks...

Yes, it looked like the start of the world's largest Team Time Trial!

Co-RD Marie-Jose (white shirt) helps with the TTT start!

That's not to say we are doing things wrong provincially. More like that there is a world of difference between a high-profile event where you have access to the site for days beforehand, and most provincial-level events where one often turns up at 06:00 only to have to totally transform an empty parking-lot into a race-site by 09:00, run the race and have it all torn down again by lunchtime

The race-day heavy lifting is done by the head ref!

As Assistant Technical Delegate (ATD), our role was even more amorphous. The book says we were to "assist the TD with her duties", so we looked over her shoulder a lot. We had to remind ourselves that we were supposed to review the false-start camera with her, rather than just get off the pontoon and into TZ. It also said our billet for the day was part of the ITU Technical Education program. We had a laugh at that, and Janice would conclude even the most inconsequential of statements with "consider yourself Technically Educated".

We remembered some of the ATDs we've worked for in the past, and tried to take pages out of their books (John Petrides, we're talking to you!). So we ended up being a bit of a super-domestique, filling in where needed. So we ended up doing bike check-in, swim-start, mount/dismount, a little bit of human run-pylon (check the video), finish line, a bit of our own Technical Educating and even helped to stage-manage (and we choose our words with care) the medal-ceremony. That latter one was a totally new one to us.

The TA had the best seat in the house. We were quite literally behind Kathy Tremblay on the pontoon and held the tape she broke two hours later. We saw all the mount/dismount action. Plus, as bike check-in, the sheer amount of bike-porn that flowed through our hands on Sunday afternoon was astounding. There was so much Dura Ace and Red, at some point one would check a bike "merely" specc'd with Ultegra and think "Ultegra? Man, what were you thinking, bringing a knife to a gun-fight?".

Here are some random photos from the event, mostly ours with a couple from Triathlon Quebec.

Scrim and zip-ties. Together with gas-station coffee the two indutible signs our summer has arrived!

Lining the athletes up for introduction onto the pontoon. Eventual winner Kathy Tremblay is the first in line, as the top-ranked female athlete.

Ready to go. Top tip - when they dive off the pontoon, it's several hundred kilos powering off one end of the pontoon. If you don't take a bracing stance, Newton's Third Law will have you in lake too!!

It's thirsty work, this triathlon business. Fortunately, the RD had us covered!

Closest we'll ever get to an ITU gold medal.

Now you see 'em

Now you don't

TD Janice Ryan doing a bit of MineSweeper during the bike. Only kidding, she was doing the awards protocol!

Finish chute

It's the little things that make an event, like personalised no-parking signs!

Race set-up was on Fete St Jean Bapiste, so we rocked Quebec socks in honour of our hosts

Vest, accreditation, two-way radio with curly, white earpiece! Add the Oakleys and we were the triathlon Secret Service!

So, next stop for the TA will be running the swim-start and finish-line, not to mention the bits in between, at Olympic Provincials at Guysborough on July 24th. We can't say anything about the upcoming standard of officiating on the bike-course this year, but we can promise you we're going to run the hell out of the medal ceremony!

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Lost in translation II

This place makes me feel old. I don't think it matters how young or fit you are, or feel you are, everywhere you look there is a thinner, fitter person going for an easy run at 3:45 pace. They are everywhere that is, except the hotel restaurant. They don't eat there, fatty sauces, chicken with the skin on! Eek! They're likely in their rooms eating dry granola with bananas and washing it down with soy-milk for the protein.

So, speaking of athletes, we were in an officials' meeting in the hotel foyer yesterday, the TD, HR and ourselves, when one athlete comes up and asks for directions to the race-site, having got lost trying to find it today. We gave him directions, wished him luck and he went on his way.

Sounds like a normal, everyday occurance; athlete can't find something, asks race officials to help, race officials help, job done. Except he could only speak Spanish and our group could only speak English or French. Eventually, one of us set Google Translate on a lap-top and we had a three-way conversation via that and Google Maps. In hindsight, it was quite funny! As for the hegomony of Google, we can talk about that later.

This story illustrates one of the challenges of working races such as this; the language factor. This weekend has the seeds for a linguistic nightmare. Most of the athletes are Canadian, but then most of those are Quebecers. As we saw first-hand, not all the overseas atheletes speak English. We remember having to communicate significant information at World Dus off the back of Moto#2 to athletes of every linguistic stripe with varying degrees of success. On the officials' side, the Quebec officials are francophone, all but one are bilingual to a greater or lesser degree. This is useful, as we remember staffing a mount/dismount line with unilingual francophone officials once and we pretty much had to communicate by interpretative dance. Dinner was with the same officials, but after two Hoegaardens we were having less difficulties in getting ourselves understood! Despite the TQ officials' knowledge of English, remember the TA is a Brit (and even those of you who know me still ask me to repeat myself once, twice or three times) and the TD is a Newfie. Throw in the radios, which garble voice transmissions anyway, well you get the picture! The official language of the ITU may be English, but when English is in a minority, you have to work around it! Back to interpretative dance then.

At Summerside, a few Newfie expressions were added to the tri lexicon, so expect to hear out of the radios at some point on Sunday "the arse is out of 'er" = "chute" = "please send ambulances" and "I could eat the arse out of a low-flying duck" = "j'ai faim" = "some of the vounteers have been there since 9, could you please send them some food?". Drafting is sillonner, a regular -er verb (je sillonne, tu sillonnes, il/elle sillonne, nous sillonnons etc) but as we're at a draft-legal race we shouldn't have to do any conjugating off the back of Moto#1.

Breaker breaker

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Lost in translation; Soulanges ITU Continental Cup

Bienvenue a la belle province. The TA is here as part of the officiating team at the Soulanges ITU Continental Cup and, if you don't mind, we thought we might do a bit of blogging from here, a behind the scenes at a big race.

We got here yesterday after driving from Halifax. The first 1300kms were OK, but it took over 2hrs to do the last 90! Imagine taking all the cars in Nova Scotia and, for kicks, PEI, putting them all on the peninsula, close a bridge and a lane on the Rotary and then ask everyone to get home. Chaos! Add to this a suicidal GPS thar wanted us to take the shortest route to Valleyfield, which was crossing to the Ile de Montreal and then crossing back again, a route which would have entailed yours truley spending most of Friday night in traffic jams.

We went for a short run in the rain this morning. Well, it was supposed to be a short run, being our first run since Johnny Miles, but we got a bit lost. Getting lost is a good way to get a nice run sometimes. Today? We intended a 30 or 40 minute run, but we got a bit too lost and ended up at the Bistro St Hubert. Whatbwas ironic is that we couldn't find the Bistro last night, when we wanted to find it, but today we found it straight off the bat. Unfortunately, it's 5 miles from the hotel, so we found ourselves 5 miles from home-base at the half-way point of a four to five mile run! D'oh. We managed to find a bit of a short-cut home, so we were only out for 9 miles!

The race is looking good, unlike last year though there aren't any local (NS) lads to cheer on. Still, a good field with the likes of Cathy Tremblay down to race. We'll try not to look too star-struck.

It's looking like a non-wet-suit swim, but of course that's going to be Janice's call on Sunday. The course is flst, you'd be hard-pushed to find any elevation on it. It more than makes up for this by being technical; lots of corners and quite narrow. You need to be a good bike-handler to survive on here. Fortunately, it should be dry for the race, the weather forecast for Sunday is for sun, but for now it contiues to rain. Thank-goodness for our rain-coat from World Dus. One suspects it'll see a lot of action this weekend.

Well, just a short break then it's back to making lists. You know, one can't shake the feeling something's been forgotten, but we can't work out for the life of us what it is!! The course is all there, it all looks good. The RD has everything under control. Maybe that's what it is; at this point the TA is used to rolling up our sleeves and slinging racks, painting signs, anchoring bouys and generally doing anything and everything meeded to make the race happen on time. With a race this size however, all that RD stuff is covered by the RD, allowing the technical officials to concentrate on being technical officials. So having said that, back to the lists....

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Letter from an ex-president

Well, I suppose for the first time in a long time, I have no clearly defined role in the hierarchy of TNS. Let me explain why.

For reasons that are long and complicated, I do not feel that I was doing my job as president very well, certainly not for the the first few months of this year. Do not worry, I am not ill, incarcerated or in Coventry, but my sincere thanks to all for asking. Nevertheless, my failings in leadership were noticed by the board and they called me on it. After an all-too-short period of introspection, I recognized that that I was unable to provide the leadership and commitment that was required. You, the membership, deserve the very best that TNS can deliver, and I was not delivering it. Stepping aside was the logical choice.

This was not so much a resignation as a leave of absence, which will last until September, and which point I will re-assess along with the board, my ability to continue as President.

The ship TNS is in good hands. Paul Shaw has stepped up from VP to President, as indeed I first did many years ago to fill a void left by Dan Gautreau. Sarah Wood continues as ED. Shane McLeod, the newly appointed CG coach, will continue to run the coaching side of the house, Phil is still the money-man and Linda McLeod continues to run the technical side of the house.

Speaking of technical, I am not totally leaving all my TNS duties. I will continue to, and have continued to, officiate at my share of events in Nova Scotia, but if you will forgive me, I will not be doing the honours at Bridgetown this year! It will be the first Bridgetown I will have missed since 2007 I think, and I will miss it dearly. The same goes for Greenwood; this will be the first time this event has happened without me and believe me when I say I will feel a pang of guilt when I'm not sitting in my car in the car-park at 06:00 eating a sausage breakfast sandwich waiting for Denis!

I will also continue to write in the TurnAround (at a new URL as soon as I get my head around it, check us out), and also make random comments on our Facebook page.

As many of you may be aware, I have recently started a new job at Cyclesmith. Ironically, it feels I am doing more for TNS at the shop than I ever did as president. Latterly, I would chair one board meeting a month and brief-in a race of 100 to 200 every couple of weeks. Now, I get to see you guys one-on-one on a daily basis. Like I've always said about my new job, I get to drink free coffee and talk bikes and triathlon all day: what's not to love? Oh yes, the occasional freebie that come my way! You see those sweet Oakley Flak Jackets I was wearing at the du? Oh yeah!

Even though I have no leadership role, my proverbial door is always open. If you want to talk, comment or make any noise about TNS, then feel free to bend my ear, either in person or virtually on-line.

I'll see you at a race soon, or pop in and buy an inner-tube and say hi!

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