It's RACE SERIES WEEK!

Just a reminder that we have 2 AWESOME RACE SERIES EVENTS this week! If you weren't at Iona Beach and are wondering what the next events are...then read on!

This week:

Thursday - 5:30 P.M. at the club office - we will be jogging together as a group to the start of the ~1 K.M. uphill trail run. POST-RUN: Sushi Social organized by Janis!

Sunday - 9 A.M. at the pool - its AQUATHON time - back by popular demand, its a 500 M swim following by a ~3 K.M. run.

Current Points Leaders:
After one event we see Jamie (Men) and Mads (Women) taking the top spot on the leaderboards. Remember, it's a long race series, and anything can happen! Expect a points shakeup as some of our stronger swimmers/runners come to the fore.

Race Series Results & Upcoming Race Series Events

Last week we had an amazing turnout for our first Race Series Event – the Iona Beach Time Trial. Over 15 people came out and burned it up over the flat 10 K.M. course, despite the super wet conditions. The day started pretty ominously – with dark clouds brewing in the sky. Club President – Seth – was not deterred, and decided the best way to tackle the incoming rain was to eat a pastrami sandwich (Carb gains?) prior to heading off on the bike.

Once at the beach, the race began! Jen (who graciously volunteered to time the event) decided she would get a head start on everybody and complete her race early – secretly we now believe that she was attempting to take advantage of the early morning tail-wind!

The boys set off first, with Jamie and Sean taking the first few positions. Jamie’s legs (super charged from years of rowing) carried him across the 10 K.M. course with apparent ease as he set the day’s fastest time. Next to roll in for the men were Sean and Nima, separated by only 2 seconds! (Drafting suspicions?) Seth was quoted after the race as saying – “I wish I didn’t eat that sandwich”, but still put in a strong performance. Other strong rides that day came from Derek, Guillam and Vincent. The Women’s race was no less competitive with the likes of Mads, Jenn, Vanessa, Kaitlin, Becca and Katrina taking to the start line. But at the end of the race it was Mads who would emerge the victor on the women’s side, with Jenn and Vanessa taking second and third, respectively.

For the official times/points scoring, head to our FB page! Remember this week we have 2 races series events!

1.       Thursday October 16 – Uphill Run

2.       Sunday October 19 – Aquathon

-Your Tri Club Exec

 

 

 

Race Series #1 - Iona Beach Time Trial

Iona Beach 10 K.M. TIME TRIAL!

Hi everyone,

Yes, the moment you have all been waiting for is here.

This - SATURDAY - IS - the FIRST TRI CLUB RACE SERIES EVENT!

Never been part of the Tri-Club Race Series? Wondering what it is all about? Read on to get all the details in advance of this Saturday..

What - A 10 K.M. individual bike ride at Iona Beach (Near Vancouver Airport)

When - Meet at the Tri-Club office at 10 AM - sharp! We will be riding as a group out to Iona Beach.

Who - Everyone with a bike and a helmet is welcome to join!

How - Once at Iona Beach, participants will be seeded based on estimated/guessed time to complete the course. Participants will leave ~30 seconds apart, and will be timed on how long it takes for them to complete the 10 K.M. loop. Once you finish, your times are recorded, and you are awarded points based on where you finish in relation to the top time. Next - check the blog later that day to see the official write up and results = bragging rights for next time!

More questions? Find a club exec or post on our FB wall and we will be happy to answer them for you!

See you Saturday,

UBC Tri-Club Exec

Welcome Back! Weekly Training, Club News and Race Series HYPE!

Hi everyone,

Matt here. Some of you may know me as one of the more elusive members of the UBC Tri Club Executive. This year I have the honor of taking over the blog, and I must say I am feeling the pressure! Last year we were lucky enough to have some great bloggers, including our now CLUB PRESIDENT Seth Blumen..or is it Bluman? (I never remember)...

However, I digress..

First of all, if you are new to the club, or returning for another awesome year - WELCOME! Get ready for another awesome year of training, socializing and of course, eating! We have a ton of great activities/challenges in store for you this year! We are currently into the swing of our fall training phase with weekly swimming/biking/running practices. Swimming practices this year continue to be lead by the awesome Tia, while running practices have been spearheaded by our very own Jen! If you have any questions about how to join us, feel free to contact one of our execs, post on our FB page, or just reply to this post and we will be more than happy to help you out!

Now on to other things...

The start of our FALL RACE SERIES is less than 2 weeks away. If your new to the club you might be asking yourself - "What is the fall race series?" Fair question... The Tri Club race series is possibly the most fun and epic series of mini challenges/events EVER CONCEIVED! It features several small events (I.e. 1 mile run) in which Tri Club members compete against themselves and others for points. At the end of the series, the person with the most points has their statue erected, in solid gold no less, outside the SUB. Well, ok not quite, but winners are immortalized with their names on a really sweet trophy! Plus..bragging rights for eternity. Its all for fun, and it always ends up being a great time!

More to come on the race series, in the meantime however, see you all at practice!

Bears, Trestle and Spandex - Shawnigan Lake Race Recap

Think you can be an ironman? Meh, too easy…why not then try the trestle challenge then?

Race organizers wanted to hurry honey things up this year and added a new, yet highly controversial, event called the Trestle Challenge (pronounced with a thick accent ZHAU-LONGE...I think).

A 1.5km swim, 45km bike, half marathon run + the bonus mystical challenge.

Rumours Folklore was shared at Camp Pringle on the eve of the raceday in the Laura Butler Cabin. The bad paraphrase of the story went a little like this: tomorrow the spandex claded race participants shall wrestle a bear once they reached the Kinsol trestle along the run course. The trestle was strategically placed along the run course so the race participants would eventually spread out and not over burden the satellites and preserve the bear's garmin data. This garmin data will award style points to the challenge. Course officials only asked that at least a 12.5 metre gap between athletes be maintained when approaching the bear and this rule will be heavily enforced. Penalty tents will be deployed everywhere. More to come on this story…

Image of the Bear + Trestle pulled from the event website.

The UBCTC was well represented in all three categories this year which included the (ehem equally as important) Sprint and Olympic distances. Obviously there were no mystical challenges in these two events; however the downsides you couldn't bear to fabricate any weak excuses (sorry for the bad pun-nage).

In the Sprint Category, nearly most may believe this to be a quick event. Not for Sean Connor. He decided to invent his own challenge by getting to the race site very fashionably. "Challenge accepted", he said to himself. Long story short, let’s just say he arrived fashionably to race site – i.e. close to 11 pm fashionably on the eve of race day. His list of excuses for such a graceful entrance included a missed ferry, delay due to waiting for a late busload of enthusiastic sporting fans, zoo animals to feed, cakes to eat, babies to save and crimes to solve. Yet Sean still pulled off a great result, finishing 17^th place overall and within the top 10% of race participants.

In the Olympic Category, Lindsey Von Bloedau and Stephanie Flynn duked it out for the fiercely contested top spot in the ladies division. There were two scenarios that unfolded after post race interview. Scenario one: Lindsey took a cat nap during the swim and waited until 3km into run to catch Stephanie. Scenario two: Stephanie destroyed the swim-bike and even Lindsey’s bike strength wasn’t enough to overcome the gap until the run. My guess would be the former. The race was on from that point onwards with the two finishing within a close 45.5314 seconds of each other. Lindsey crushed her AG division placing 1^st. Stephanie finished 2^nd in her AG division. On the men side, Joerg posted the 3^rd fastest bike split of the day and a top 10^th  overall finish. Despite a missing aero rear wheel due to some technical difficulties, Joerg was still untouchable. 

Okay now back to the Trestle story. There were no furry black creatures along the trestle observed thankfully, at least none with a cocoa cola in hand to the best of my knowledge and hence fortunately no improv wrestling skills were employed during the challenge to obtain flat coke. It wouldn’t have been a pretty site despite the entertainment value and potential billions of moolahs it would have generated in TV sponsorship. Triathletes are generally cool people, but odd in their own way to the general public. So it was two layers of odd with an odd selection of triathletes doing this challenge. Namely the strong run specialists seem to embrace this event over similar swim and bike lengths Olympic distance. Only exception is Lise Munsie who signed up for aqua-bike trestle challenge under doctor's orders for her weakened femur and had a fantastic result being ranked 1st in that under-rated category nobody really talks about openly (sorry guys it's a triathlon blog).

Stephanie claims there were sightings of dears along the run course. I guess you heard it here first, race organizers will now consider putting on a new Dear Challenge for next year. Oh dear! Blankety blank blank...hey at least it's not a bear. 

PS - I guess if you read up to this point and I failed to completely bore you to death, well zhen here's a link to my race report.

Questionable Math, Rain and a Pressing Need for More Hangers and Closet Space

The sacrifices made on behalf of the ladies in the club in favor of their teams are enormously appreciated, both Sherry and Lindsey put their teams first and put in some great performances today. Keely’s 16:23 today put her third on the women’s podium in the individual event, less than half a minute from the competitors in front of her. Teams composed of triathlon club members managed to finish with times of 12:30 and 12:52 for first and second place in the campus wide CoEd division.The cohesive group of Lindsey, Sean, Chris (Hart), Sebastian and Tiffany were able to consistently lower their times all week- 13:50, 13:17, 12:52. If races stretched into Friday and Saturday there is no telling how quickly they could have completed the course; they were clearly improving every time they raced together.



Last year’s most threatening team made up of dentists in training finished in 13:23 today, proving the triathlon club never did and never will have anything to worry about.

Anyone who thought yesterday’s “mid-sized log in the spokes” comment was facetious, think again. Sadly, the ol’ "log in the spokes trick" wasn’t quite enough for one competitor to clinch a victory. The leader recovered quickly enough to lose only minimal ground. Nor was cutting 11% off the bike course, breaking the strap of one of the better swimming competitor’s goggles seconds before the race or commandeering the wall man of a second competitor who was definitely, definitely better at getting over the wall. Next year, actually training will be the last resort if cheap tricks fail him again.

Even once Daniel got to use his actual Wall Man and got his elbows on top of the wall, another competitor who had already finished the race grabbed his ankles and attempted to pull him back down into the mulch. Unsuccessfully. He always has next year. Antics like that were legal in the 1980’s. Spectator turnout was three times what it is now for the full contact version of Storm the Wall as well. Correlation?

Much like hockey referees are instructed to not break up fights immediately, you can clearly see the REC staff in this photo only half heartedly trying to stop the illegal interference. The photo would seem to indicate that having his wall man stolen away from him allowed Daniel enough time to put on some nice khakis and a T-shirt.
The triathlon club men's individual results:

1. Brendan Naef 13:53
Jonathan Heinz 13: 43 DQ (inability to count)
Daniel Helm 14:02 DQ (too tall to be eligible to compete fairly)

The extremely qualified REC volunteers in the bike lap counting tent were consulted after the race. The sheet below looks complicated, but rest assured all bike-lap-counting volunteers complete an intensive six week training course before being considered for the privilege of sitting in a lawn chair in the rain. Classes include: Counting Carefully up to Ten, Actually Being Able to Raise Your Voice Over 30 Decibels and Keeping Your Composure While Mostly Naked Hunks Cruise By You. It’s a tough job, they actually aren’t allowed to leave until all cyclists complete the course for liability reasons (REC takes waivers seriously); they are still out there huddled under an umbrella. REC staff are bringing them sleeping bags and are trying to contact the fraudulent cyclists, trying to convince them to come back for one more lap so the counters can finally go home.

Anyone who may have performed well today and was omitted from this post either chose a dumb team name that is not their real name for an individual event or does not have the words “Triathlon” or “Club” in it. Or you were just plain overlooked. Apologies in advance. UBC REC’s website is so poorly organized; there is no way I’m sorting through that giant single page of unsorted results. Want to look up a friend’s time from 2013? You had better have the next 40 minutes free and a lot of patience. My grade 4 swim meets had live online streaming and results available up to the minute, no reason UBC REC can’t. They need an overworked, underappreciated volunteer IT staff member.

IKEA promotional staff were seen circulating the wall this afternoon, handing out 40% off coupons for hangers and closet organizers as many club members found themselves left with a slightly larger wardrobe than they did on Monday. The Sweedish never miss an opportunity to capitalize on marketing.

The week’s races are not over; a mile still has to be contested while keeping the contents of your stomach off the play surface for the children of Queen Elizabeth Elementary. It rains enough in Vancouver that we shouldn’t feel bad about it, right? At least we pick up our empties. Although leaving them strewn about would probably be a bigger contribution to the community. 10 cent cans don’t last 30 seconds on a front lawn in Kitsilano.

Watch out for the man doing 3 laps instead of four, drinking 1% Kvass in 191 ml really thick glass bottles. He will bear a striking resemblance to one of the authors of this blog. Daniel says he is drinking four of these and running the four laps on his knees, just to make things fair. The winner gets a two gallon pail of Polysporin. Extra motivation for Eddy to win.

Daniel will be back from his quick promotional tour in Jerusalem for the beer mile, we wish him well while he is there. Images from his trip can be found below.

Want to know who won the spring race series?? Come to the Year end banquet to find out!