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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Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once

For those of you with a British bent, you will, of course, recognoise Michelle "of the Resistance" DuBois of the French Resistance from 'Allo 'Allo, speaking before she gave vital information on the rescue of the British airmen or the hiding-place of van Klomp's Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies (I kid you not, but then British comedy did bring us Benny Hill).

Whilst the TA may not look as good in a beret, rain-coat and short white ankle-socks (ooh-la-la), we implore you all, to leesten vary carefully, I zall zay zis only wance.

Drafting. We all know it. Following too closely behind the cyclist in front. TriCan and the ITU have even defined this distance for us, it's 10 metres (approx 30 feet) from the front wheel of the bike in front, or about 9 metres from the rear wheel. This is a big no-no in age-group triathlon. Remember how we say the rules are based on sportsmanship, fair-play, safety and the idea that triathlon is an individual endurance event? Well drafting goes against all four.

When you are drafting, you have up to a 30% decrease in drag compared to the guy in front. There is always the temptation not to do your work, to sit in and get some of your speed for free. This isn't fair or sportsmanlike.

The there's the individual endurance thing, Working in a group of two or more isn't very individual.

Finally, there's safety. You need a lot of skill and experience to draft, skill and experience, we regret to say, most of us do not have. You can easily cause an accident, either to yourself or others. Also our roads are not closed, and a driver driving to get by pack of cyclists is more likely to cause an accident either to the cyclists themselves or to on-coming traffic.

Still, people draft. last Sunday at Cyclesmith there was a particularly egregious example, a right bunch going on. You are all lucky, and you know who you are, that you all didn't get canned for that little example of pack riding, and the TA can give you that little tid-bit straight from the officials' lounge. You are damned lucky the TD wasn't, for whatever reason, in a red-carding mood 'cos I would have had at least one of you, maybe more in the penalty box or DSQ. And if I sound pissed, I am. I'm pissed, I'm embarrassed and I'm ashamed. I thought you guys were better than this.

This photo the TA took at a race in Quebec shows drafting. These guys may not be working together a la a TTT, but they're still gaining advantage. Funny story, we got into this group and told them they were drafting, in English, and got "je ne comprends pas Anglais. Maudit triathletes, where's my whistle?

Still, one more chance, so here are the rules.

1) The draft-zone is 10 m x 3 m. Go and pace it out. It's a box that surrounds each and every bicycle. You can only enter this box if you are going to pass.

In the instance below, the guy on the far right is righteous, so is the guy in the middle. The guy on the far left is drafting,

2) Once you enter the box you have two options; pass within 15 seconds or fall back out of the box. Yes, the passing time was 15 seconds when the draft-zone was only 7 metres, we know. Is that fair? Well, maybe or maybe not, but those are the rules. The TA doesn't make them, we only apply them. www.triathlon.org, just leave my name out of it.

3) Our definition of overtaking is when your front wheel is in front of the front wheel of the bike you are passing. Once that happens, the guy you just passed is now technically drafting and it is up to him/her to move back. For this to happen in 15" they will likely have to glass-crank it for a few revs or maybe touch the brakes.

4) You can pass once you've been passed, but you must go 10 m back first, i.e out of the draft-zone.

5) You cannot ride side-by-side. This is called "blocking" in the rules and "half-wheeling" by everyone else. You know, when you get half a wheel in front, then they go half a wheel in front of you and so-on until you're going 27 mph!

6) Do not overtake someone who is overtaking.

7) Crossing the yellow line is an automatic DSQ.

There, that should do it.

If you get popped for drafting, the new rules say you must stop at the penalty box. This should be at the bike turn or the run turn and there will be a board with your bib-number on it letting you know to stop. Either way, stop there and do your time. If officials are short on the ground, we'll do it the old-fashioned way and you'll serve it at your rack-spot. While serving the penalty you are not allowed to eat, drink, pee, whatever, Stand there, do your time and move on. It's a 1 minute penalty if you're stopped in a Sprint for drafting, 2 minutes in an Olympic and 5 in a Long Course and the time starts, as with all penalties, once you stop whinging. In a Sprint, if you get caught a second time it's an automatic DSQ, in an Olympic three times and LC four times.

We are allowed to be pro-active and warn you if you are getting close. This isn't an official censure, just an FYI. If your number isn't on the board in the box, carry on! Similarly, we don't have to tell you from the back of Moto#1 that there's a penalty coming; so keep a close eye on the board,

Now for the FAQ.

"How many times can I pass?". No, contrary to rumour, there isn't a rule saying you can only pass some-one x times. Have a ding-dong battle all the way to your heart's content. Just remember to go 10 m back before having another go.

"I can't get past him". We hear this a lot. Now, listen very carefully, I shall say this only once. You've been watching too much Versus. This race is won on the run, not the bike! If you two are evenly matched and you can't get by, well don't. Go 10m back and save your energy by not trying to pass any more, bide your time and smoke the guy on the run!

Crystal?

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Too early?

In light of the "we really need to relax a bit more and enjoy our sport" conversations we've been hearing recently, we came across this on the interwebs recently and it was way too good not to be shared.

The pedals are legal for KOS, but those tri-bars are not at any age. The rules are silent on fenders, and were unsure if both those rear wheels need an independent brake.

It does, however bring an entirely new dimension to calling those Profile bar-mounted hydration systems "triathlete sippy cups"!

I want my mum!

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A grand day at Grand Desert; Cyclesmith 25

A grand day out at the Cyclesmith 25 Duathlon was had by all today. After seemingly six weeks of rain (Noah had less), the clouds parted for this event's silver jubilee.

Exactly 100 athletes toed the duct-taped line across Rte 207 at Lawrencetown Beach for the off; 85 in the main duathlon, nine youth and three teams of two. As predicted, the main race was stacked with talented athletes with the winners of both this years duathlons (Evan Pemberton and Jamie Haynes), two Cabot Trail Relay leg winners, past provincial champions and a ringer from Montreal.

In contrast to previous years, where the overall leader led out from the gun (or horn or whatever) this year wasn't quite so one-sided. Montreal's Garry Mathieu and our own Gerrad Lewin led the main pack in off R1, closely followed by a pack including Shawn Amirault, Mark Campbell, Dan Thompson, Matt White, Jamie Haynes, Alan Miner and Denis Choquette. Evan quickly exerted some dominance over the field on the bike, converting a 20 second deficit on R1 into a two minute lead by T2.

Behind him there was, regrettably, some silly buggers going on, with quite the pack being reported to TD Pat MacDonald. We'll cover the drafting rules in a post soon, but for now, let us just say some people were lucky the TD was not in a red-carding mood.

However, on the plus side to such shenanigans, we are lucky our races are attracting such a deep field!

Speaking of drafting, we were amused to hear one of the officials "officially" advise athletes to "pass aggressively". Of course, what they meant was once you go through, don't immediately slam on the brakes but keep your speed up. But of course, what we heard was something different, as "passing aggressively" to us means overtaking someone then throwing a stick in their spokes!

So much for sportsmanship and fair-play!

Back to the race, and Evan extended his lead on R2 to finish in 1:37, some five minutes ahead of Gerrad Lewin with Garry Mathieu another thirty seconds back.

If anyone is counting, Garry Mathieu posted the fastest R1, Evan the fastest Bike and Lee McCarron, who we think was one of the CTR leg winners this year, the fastest R2.

In the ladies, former provincial champion Suzanne Ferrier, looking natty in her Team Canada skin-suit lead from gun to tape. She was closely followed into T1 by Ellen Klein and Brigitte Sabourin, there were only seconds in it, but she pulled out a two minute lead on the bike and maintained that on R2. Behind her, Hali Bauld came through Brigitte on R2 to take third, behind Suzanne and Ellen. Meanwhile, Micheline McWhirter came in 5th, but posted the fastest ladies' R2.

Big thanks to RD Paul Shaw in his traditional orange hat, Cyclesmith, Paul's volunteers, Gary and Mary from Atlantic Chip Timing and the officials from TNS for making the event happen.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from the event, scoured from Jeanne Ju, TNS and Cookie MacKilt's Facebook pages.

See you in Greenwood

TNS ED and a Muppet collect registrations, waivers and memberships.

Now that's what I call a task-force. Navy Tridents ladies steam into TZ.

Gerrad Lewin rode out to the event and still placed 2nd. Get some rest before Coteau now Gerry!

Awesome water-stop T-shirts for Erin and Jacob

If Cookie gets the drafting rules....

and they're off...

Two unidentified cyclists approach T2, Good job they'e unidentified too, as that doesn't look like 10 metres!

A line of runners, including 17 y.o. Armand Caron (2nd from left) come in to the finish.

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