Actually, it’s the secret to coming in third, but secret to winning sounds a lot better for a title.

The secret has nothing to do with training or nutrition, or equipment. No the key to winning your local race is to wait until you reach an age where you are sure you are faster than everyone else in your category.

Take the case of my second short track mountain bike race. I could have signed up with the senior men, and got my ass royally spanked, but hey, I am not too proud to sign on with the masters, over 30 group. With only 4 other masters registered, I only had to pass one rider to score a medal. And that's the secret. So here’s to old age.



Actually, it probably did have to do with equipment. After last race, I decided flat pedals and sneakers were not conducive to a rock and tree root infested trail, so I immediately embarked on a search for some new gear. Not wanting to drop 200 Canadian clams on shoes and pedals at my LBS, I searched the internet, and found a smoking deal at Mountain Equipment Co-op.


For a little over $150.00, I got me shoes, one sided flat SPD pedals, a set of double sided SPD pedals for my road bike, and a chain cleaner.

Of course the shoes might split apart after a couple of rides, and the pedals might break into little pieces, but for the money, I figured it was worth the risk, and it sure made a difference in a mountain bike race with your feet clamped to the pedals while you are bouncing all over the trail.

I don’t know if all this punishment to my legs will payoff or not. After two tough trail workouts this weekend, Yesterday I did a hill workout on my road bike. 6 sets at about a 1.0 km climb. The average was about 4:45. I did 3 sets at about this time. The slowest was my third, at 4:50. The fastest was the last at 4:23.

So that punished my legs for today, but I was not yet done. Tonight was long run night. I haven’t done many long runs the last couple of weeks, so long tonight was a little over an hour. No idea of the distance, but it was tough on tired legs.

So tomorrow will be my second mountain bike race, and with dead legs, it’s sure to be a challenge. Can’t wait.

I’ll open with excursion around the bay by Great Big Sea. Have a listen to some good ole drinking music, and feel free to pour up a double dark and dirty while you check out my first post in just under a week.

Like I said, Not Just Gravy, Biscuits and Gravy ! I’m not talking southern cookin, although I do miss the good eatin from my Houston days. No I am talking about my weekend. Stay with me, I’ll fill you in.

If you remember my last post, the plan was to cap off a tough training block with a 4 day, extended long weekend featuring a trip out of town to my wife’s home.


After a hard week which included a 20k ITT, the Paradise Sprint, a 40k tempo ride and a 2.5 hour brick session on Canada day, I planned to not sweat it if I did nothing for 4 days. I planned to take my swimming and running gear, but I really considered any working out as gravy.

As it turned out, on Friday, the morning after we arrived, wifey wanted to go for a run on the nature trail. The trail circles the island, and it is a meandering up and down combination of boardwalks, stairs, as well as pure country trails cut out of the woods complete with rocks and tree roots.


Just to put it in context, one of the boardwalks features no less than 100 stairs that go up from about 20 feet above sea level. If you can picture that kind of a climb, multiply it by 4 on the way out. After about 17 minutes, we reached a convenient turnaround point and headed back for another 4 climbs. Yes, the hills went up, and down. The final tally was a total of 8 hill climbs in 36 minutes. That was the gravy.

The biscuits came the next morning when we did it again. My legs were toast, and I was tickled to get in not 1, but 2 quality run workouts.

So that was my weekend work, and I am now back and in full swing. For those checking back eager for an update, here it is, welcome back.

Happy Canada Day$


After a 40k tempo ride Friday, a short brick on Saturday, a sprint tri Sunday, a hard swim on Monday, and a swim and a 20k ITT on Tuesday, today I took advantage of a day off to do a 2 hour ride, 25minute run.

After all the activity of the last 4 days, today’s brick was tough. My energy was low, and my legs were tired. But tomorrow we vacation for 4 days, so I will bring my wetsuit, and running gear, and if I get the opportunity to train, ok, but if I don’t, I won’t sweat it.

Since I will be gone for 4 days, and Internet will be limited, I may be offline for a couple of days. So if anyone misses me for a few days, I Haven’t given up on bloggy world, just enjoying life.

Full results from this weekends Paradise Sprint are online for anyone who wants to check out how the field looks. For me 28th out of 85 makes me no longer a middle of the packer.6th out of 13 in my age group, but there was a clump of 4 of us within 2 minutes of each other. Check out the results , pictures are coming.

Tonight was my third 20k ITT. The conditions were fair. Cool and overcast, but the wind was blowing opposite to the normal direction, so we had a tail wind going out, and a headwind coming home, but home was downhill, so it made for some fast times.

After Sunday, I thought it would be tough, and I was right. My legs were not sore, just tired. But once I started, I just put the tired feeling out of my mind, and hammered. At the quarter mark, I thought my legs were going to explode. I had to slow a little, but managed to pick it up again to clock a good first half. Coming home was a little slower than normal due to the wind, but still fast. I was only passed by 4 riders, 2 of them right at the finish. That’s a huge bonus for me. The final tally was just really close to 38 flat. That’s almost a 2 minute improvement from the last 20k ITT, and almost 5 minutes faster than the season opener.

I left before results were announced, so I am not quite sure where I placed, but everyone had fast rides, so I expect to be still pretty far down the list.

If I can keep improving my 20k times, I should be close to my PB by end of the summer, and I am looking foward to some good times, and some good rides between now and then. For now, I have an extended long weekend starting tomorrow, thanks to Canada Day, or for a lot of people, Memorial day. One more hard ride tomorrow morning, then a couple of days rest.

Boy, from the comments on yesterdays post, there sure are a lot of bored people out there, posting that they are looking forward to my race report. Either that, or they are trying to make me feel good, OR, they really are interested in triathlon.

A couple of things about this race. It was the first annual for the town of Paradise. And the weather on race morning was excellent. Cloudy, and warm with light winds. I got there early, set up my transition, went for a quick swim warmup, then back to the finish area for a quick briefing.

The race director gave some instructions for the routes including instructions not to go off the main trail at about 3.5k into the run, and onto a private trail over a small stream. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR LATER.

THE SWIM

Overcast skies, and low winds meant excellent swim conditions. The pond was flat, and visibility was good, but this was the roughest swim start I was ever involved in. Including Ironman Florida. I was punched, kicked, and swam over, but at the end, I was on the beach in 13:26.

THE BIKE

3 loops for 21k. I got out quickly, and grouped up with a couple of my agegroup peers. We all traded off a couple of times, I couldn’t shake any of them including RB.In 8 years of racing, I only beat him in 1 race. Last year at Ironman Newfoundland 70.3. On loop 3, I started to fade, and lost the group, but I was still having a solid ride. Into T2 in 43 minutes.

THE RUN

I was out of T in under 20 seconds, and onto the trail. Doing a trail run around Octagon Pond meant soft footing and little traffic, but limited visability. There was no way to see who you were chasing until one out and back section at about 2k, I was behind all my usual peers, but making ground on the closest 3. I was running hard, keeping my stride short, and my turnover high. Then at the afore mentioned private trail, and bridge, out came RB. He had taken that forewarned trail, and went off course long enough for me to catch him. We ran neck and neck for about a half km, until I pulled away. I tried to break away and put distance between us, but after I passed him, I couldn’t see him. When I reached about 200m to the finish, I thought I had it until about 50m left, and one of the spectators yelled he was catching me. When I turned for a peak, he darted past me and beat me to the line.

THE FINISH

It was so close, and RB and I pushed each other to a 1:23. I really would have liked to jump up a spot in the agegroup. But upon reflection, I was really pleased with the effort. Good swim, solid bike, and a very good run. We finished with a BBQ at the community centre. I’ll have a couple of more chances to make move up in my age group. Can’t wait for Carbonear.

What an absolutely awesome day for a sprint triathlon, and since it was the first ever Paradise Newfoundland triathlon, it was even more special.

The swim was cool, but seasonable. The bike course was mostly flat, and fairly fast. The run was on a 5k trail, excellent running, the only drawback was that you couldn’t see the rest of the pack, and who you were chasing.

The damage, on the day for me was a 1:23 battle with several other of my agegroup peers. Full report will follow.

I decided to preclude my weekly Friday Funies to blog about my most awesome ride this evening. Yes, as all you booze hounds were out at your favourite local for a few cool ones and maybe a pint and a basket of wings, I decided to take advantage of an absolutely beautiful evening to finally get in my 40k Trial. Yes, contrary to popular belief, we don’t all hang at Geroge Street on Friday.

The conditions were perfect for a hard ride. Overcast, but warm with light winds, in fact this was the first ride of the summer that I could ride in just cycling shorts and a jersey. I did my 40k route from my house to the town of Paradise, and back.

Here are the stats.

1:24:32 for 23k.
Average Speed 29.5 kmh
Maximum Speed 64.5 kmh

But the best stat was 52 kmh in the 50 zone. Yes, I was speeding. It was a part of the route on a slight downgrade that levels off just as the speed limit goes from 100 to 50, if you get up enough speed on the down portion, and concentrate on staying aero, you can pick up some wicked speed. And tonight was perfect for breaking the limit. And if you go back to the last time I did this loop, its almost a 5 minute improvement over the 1:29.

And for my recovery supper, and Charisa would be so proud of me, Caesar salad with tofu chicken nuggets. Don’t worry Charisa, I made up for it last night with Don’s ultimate wings from Don Cherries.

With barely a little more than a week away, I thought a few TDF memories would help spark everyone’s interest. This article is from Bicycling Magazine, and features a top 10 moments by our favourite Texas born cycling champ.

My fav is number 6, but they all brought back some memories. I’ll be on vacation, so I’ll likley miss the opening couple of stages, but It will be awesome.

I have written so many articles now that I could almost start a blog on heart health by itself. The latest article I came across was on the CBC website, and it was actually really good news for us here North of the Border.

According to the article, Deaths and hospital admissions from cardiovascular disease dropped almost 30 per cent in the decade after 1994, but slightly more women than men were dying from cardiovascular causes, Canadian researchers say.

With an aging population and a public health care system, this is indeed good news. 4,000 fewer Canadians died from a heart attack in 2004 than did so in 1994. However, and there seems to always be a however, there continues to be an outstanding need to tackle obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

The article noted that the increase in obesity and diabetes are risk factors that could push the number of cardiac deaths in Canada back up.

So for everyone exercising and following a healthy lifestyle, Thanks for skewing the stats in the right direction, and for everyone else, get off your butts and get on your bikes and ride.