Happy Birthday To Us

Well, it's one year ago we started publishing, so that's a happy-birthday to us. Let's see where we stand since we typed "I'm back.....".

On the Facebook side, we have (as of today) 340 "likes", which represents something like 60% of our current membership of 500+. In reality, of course, it isn't so cut-and-dried. We have likes from all over the country, indeed the world including the UK and Australia (I wouldn't get too excited by any page-views from the Philippines, one suspects these are just misdirected searches for the TA's other name). On a monthly basis, about 75% of our "likes" check in with us via Facebook. So, about 45% of our members (75% of 60%) use Facebook to keep tabs on us, which makes it a reasonably effective and efficient way of reaching our membership. Then there's the multiple-reader effect; if one person in a house reads, then it reaches all members of that house.

The demographics of our FB friends mirror what we think our reality is; we are an organisation of 25-45 year-old guys being chased (in the words of ex-Pres Dan Gautreau) by the 25-45 year old women.

Onto the blog you're reading now; the TurnAround. We've published a round 100 articles (101 with this one), with just under 8000 page-views. A huge shout-out goes to all the contributors; Kurt Stevenson, Mark "Cookie Monster" Campbell, Marie-Claude Gregoire, Chris "Bighead"Milburn and Ryan MacDonald all contributing directly, whilst Ron MacDougal, Mike Parker and the crew at Live Multisport have all contributed ideas, content and the like. As we always say, this is your blog, not mine, and a sincere thank-you for making this what it is. Keep 'em coming.

It is nice to see that when ranked articles contributed by Ryan, Cookie and Chris all make the top-ten list.

The global reach of the TA is impressive. Most page-views are from Canada, with 500 from the States, >150 from the UK, 120 from Oz and a handful each from Germany, China, Denmark, Japan, Slovenia and Russia. The TA can take the credit for some of those UK hits when we were updating the blog from Worlds, but we're pretty sure we weren't anywhere near the Pacific or Eastern Europe this year.

Most of you reach the blog through a Facebook update or by googling "triathlon + nova + scotia + blog". In an interesting snap-shot, we see TNS collectively is still predominately on PCs and most of you still use Internet Exploder with a few iconoclasts on Chrome or Firefox or something even more exotic. No judgement, just saying. Very few of you use us Mobile. Is the blog limited on mobile devices or is finding TNS when out and about not of importance to you? Let us know.

Also, as you'll have noticed, we recently automated the Facebook/blog update system. We added a couple of other news-feeds we thought you might like. If you find this annoying (the ITU updates a lot) let us know and we'll think about taking that bit down.

At the recent TriCan AGM and Sport Leaders Conference we collectively found, in talks with communications professionals and other triathlon PSOs, that we could be doing so much more with social media but, and this is a bit but (no jokes please) compared to other PSOs we are kicking ass and leading the way! Nice to see TNS showing well at the national level.

In the coming year we'll try to use these tools more effectively. We've already started to use Facebook as a calendar and we'll continue to use it as a separate online calendar with race-dates and other dates (such as the awards banquet - November 5th 2011 - mark your calendars now). The blog has already spawned a second blog, that of the Provincial Training Centre; between the TA's inane spouting and Shane's altogether saner advice on the PTC blog, we'll try to keep you informed. trained, motivated and occasionally amused.

We said last year we would "sort out" trins.ca and we're still trying to do that. So, in the meantime, use FB and the blogs as your primary point of contact, and whenever anyone asks, send them to those URLs to get a taste of who we are and where we're at.

Here's to another fruitful online year!

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Oh; who's bringing cake?

What happens at the Moose, stays at the Moose....

The TA has a history at this race; this marking our seventh appearance at the Moose run, the sixth with a number. As such we've run this race in snow and rain (in the same race), sun but screaming wind and cold, always cold. This year, the gloves were off, in a literal clothing sense.

Normally the pre-race chat is "what pace are you running" but on Sunday it was also "what are you wearing? Shorts? Really?". The warm-up settled it as all but one of us said 'no' to tights and 'yes' to shorts. One of our number decided "Shorts, definitely, these tights are way too warm. Oh my, I don't think I remembered to shave my legs"; thus highlighting one of the problems with early season races! You do need to remember to shave your legs the night before, just in case shorts end up being needed. How high is up to you as long as you remember which shorts you packed; the long baggy Premier League soccer shorts, running regular shorts or your trusty race-proven shorty-short tri-shorts. Nothing says "neo-Fred" like stubbly legs or a hairy line across your mid-thigh!

By our count triathletes only made up 8% of the field on Sunday. That's not to say that there were any fewer triathletes Moosing, rather than the good weather meant a record turnout of 150. Indeed, the race was slightly delayed as there was still a good queue to sign in with ten minutes to go. Rather than rely on our notoriously patchy memory, we came armed with a pad and pencil and came up with the following list (in no particular order); Kurt Stevenson, Ron MacDougall, Dan Thompson, Tina White, Steve Saunders, Laura Keefe, Ian Hayward, Brenda Topliss, Brigitte Sabourin, Lyn Vernon, Mike Kennedy and Steve Abbot. Furthermore Bev Richardson, Mike Pettipas and Shannon Read were there in support, backing up runners. Shannon and Mike were mobile on the course on their bikes, Shannon to cheer people on and Mike on official RNS business, topping his cycling togs off with a fetching fluorescent-green tabbard.

As predicted, Rami Bardessey won the overall, running within a minute or two of his course record. We mentioned in the preview that a ringer might turn up and put twenty minute into all of us, and we were nearly correct. A guy no-one had seen before, and whose name I can't remember despite being introduced several times (sorry!) signed on and ran a 1:30 for second place. He's aiming for a 2:35 at Ottawa this year and we wouldn't bet against it! The ladies also went as predicted, with Denise Robson winning with a two minute PB.

As the Duke of Wellington is reputed to have said "one may as well write the history of a ball as of a battle" and the same can be said of races, the perception of which can be quite different depending where, and when, you are. So what the TA saw of the race race might not be an accurate representation of the day. One thing common to us all was probably the perception of it being well supported. Not just by the race organisers though (which it was). In the preview we forgot to tell you about the relay; teams of three, each taking on ca. 8km. (after all, 25 km is a distance not to be taken on with alacrity) . The tag-zone was at the second/fourth water table at the corner of Cow Bay and Bissett Roads. This made for a little cheer-zone at what traditionally felt like the low-spot in the race and really made the event feel like a lot more fun.

One story we are familiar with is Laura Keefe's. She was locked in a battle for a good part of the race and came home second lady, or first regular person as we prefer to call it. She spent many of the 25 kms of it with Kurt Stevenson, who (for the record) ran a 2 minute PB. Remember how we said that the Moose wouldn't tell you if you were in shape for a spring marathon, but it would tell you if you weren't? Well, that huge result must have been good news for Kurt, who is preparing for his first marathon. Not that we think he's obsessing about it but he told us in days how long until the big day!

Knowing we had a date with a large plate of pork-based breakfast products we had to leave before the results were up, but when we find them, we'll post them. Big props by the way to the RD and RNS team who between them compiled a 150-strong results list armed with a stop-watch and clip-board.

We don't have any photographs yet either; the TA's overall visual impression of the race was something like this...


...but there were a goodly number of cameras pointed in the general direction of the race, so when we find any, we'll either post or link to them.

How did the TA do? Well, it wasn't our best Moose ever but it wasn't our worse either. As you might have guessed from the picture, was a hard day out. Of course, we probably shouldn't have gone out at our 5K pace (give or take a few seconds). We hung in there though, scoffed gels and played the mental game, concentrated on our form and tried to ignore that we weren't having "good sensations" in our legs (as a Euro-Pro cyclist would say). As a dress rehearsal for bigger, longer races in the depressingly near future it didn't bode too well, but Brenda Topliss has since convinced us that we made our mistakes in the dry-run and the main show will go fine!

A big chapeau to RD Tom Harmes, who as always puts on a great race and we were so happy that his event was finally blessed with great weather. Congrats to all for running great races; everyone was looking fit and seemed to be raring and ready for the season.

Our next date will be the Credit Union Atlantic Lung Run on Saturday April 10th; a pan-flat 5K around Pier 21 and possibly the fastest road-race in Nova Scotia. Then there's Stacy Juckett-Chestnutt's 5K and 4/28/4 duathlon double header on 8/9 May. Best go and sharpen up our fast-twitch muscles and lactic threshold then.


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