Jericho Oceanman

On Sunday, August 21st, 2005, team "Third Geer" participated in the 6th annual Jericho Oceanman. "Third Geer" was
a mixed relay team consisting of Kai (for swimming), me (for paddling) and Tam
(for running).

The Oceanman tries to be more of an adventure race than a triathlon. In otherwords it is a fun race instead of a competetive race.
This year, to keep things fun, the swimmers got to swim an air mattress around
a special course, the paddlers got to paddle a (keel-less) dingy around a
little course, and the runners got to do some orienteering. Orienteering
involving croquet, that is.

All in all, it was a good race. Kai had a relaxing 1km swim, and came out 30th over all. Despite Tams apprehensions, she did quite well on the run (21st
over all). I thought I was the team anchor, but I surprised myself and was 20th
overall on the paddle.

It was a very laid back, fun race. The salmon BBQ afterwards was great, I couldnt imagine what Id rather be doing on an afternoon like that. I think
well be entering 2 relay teams next year.

jack | posted Wed Sep 7 21:57:42 2005 | #
category: outside/triathlon

Squamish Triathlon

Sunday was the Squamish Triathlon. Tam, Kai, and Kathy were signed up to do it this year, so I thought I would be fanboy again, and show up to cheer them on.

The only problem of course was that the race started at 0900h, and I spent the night camping in Gibsons, after racing a 2.5 hour race, and then attending the resultant party. There are no roads from Gibsons to Squamish, despite the two towns only being about 20km apart as the crow flies.

This means I got to get up at 0500h, pack everything up, and make it down to the ferry terminal by 0600h to catch the 0620h ferry to Horseshoe Bay, and then drive up to Alice lake, where the triathlon was starting.

That hurt.

After forgetting which side of Highway 99 Alice Lake was on, I managed to find the right spot. It seems a common problem with Triathlons is the lack of parking at the race starting point. This race was no exception. I had to park about a mile down a hill from the start, and carry my 25 kg backup up the hill.

When I got to the race start, it was the usual madness before a race. I was supposed to find Tam to give her my HR monitor wrist unit, because it was less likely to interfere with taking off her wetsuit. If you've ever seen a Polar 625X, you'll understand why.

Watching triathlons is slightly more interesting that watching paddling races. With a paddling race, you get to see the start, and the finish. With a triathlon, you get to see the start, finish, and the transitions.

I cheered Kai, Kathy, and Tam through the swim -> bike transition. Although, there were about 3 women in a row that looked a look Kathy, so I'm pretty sure I was cheering the wrong person on at times.

Tam has spent the last few months working hard on her swimming, and was rewarded by shaving 11 minutes off her swim time, beating her own expectations by 7 minutes.

After Tam transitioned to biking, I walked back down the hill to my bike, and rode over to where the bike -> run transition was.

Seeing as how the bike was going to take over an hour, and I had the keys to Kai's car, I spent a while wandering the parking lots looking for a blue Matrix to put my massive backpack in, as carrying it around was getting old fast. But I didn't find anything. Which is probably good, I can imagine Kai's remote working on another car, and then putting my backpack in some stranger's car.

Unable to part with my backpack, I dejectedly wandered back to the bike -> run transition. Kathy came in about a minute after Kai. This time I mostly recognized her. Tam made it in 78 minutes after she ran past me with her wetsuit on, which is pretty close to the 80 minutes she was predicting.

The next step was to wander over to the finish, so I could see them across the line. It was brilliantly sunny out, and I grudgingly decided to air out the tent, as there was still dew on it when I had packed it.

Unsurprisingly, about 30 minutes later, Kathy came across the Finish, and about 10 minutes later Kai came across. Tam made it in about 52 minutes, 2 minutes longer than she expected, although this can be explained away by the nature of the track, a longish transition, and one of her shoelaces breaking.

Although I was really happy for the triathletes, I had begun to fade from having 8 hours sleep over 2 days, a hangover, and a race the day before. I helped Kai, Kathy, and Tam get their gear from the first transition and then wandered back to the tent to pack it up so we could leave.

Happily, I had pegged the tent down, as the wind had begun to swirl. This probably helped it dry, but made it rather difficult to pack. Seeing my difficulty, one of the volunteers came by and offered to help. I was rather taken aback by the offer, but eagerly accepted. Yay for acts of random kindness.

As the event was timed by raceheadquarters, the results were posted almost immediately after the race was finished.

jack | posted Tue Jul 12 16:14:26 2005 | #
category: outside/triathlon

Fanboy for a day

Sunday, Jun 19th, 2005 was the Victoria Half-Iron Triathlon. I got to play fanboy for two relay teams for a day.

Seeing as how I was a fanboy, I decided it wouldn't matter if I was wrecked on Sunday morning. So I spend most of Saturday night hanging out with an old friend and turning the air blue with geek talk.

Indeed I was wrecked on Sunday morning. When my more athletic companions were preparing themselves for the trials of the day, getting up at 0500h to eat bagels before their 0720h swim start, I was loudly snoring. I got up about a minute before we left, and woke up several hours later.

The triathlon was run out of Elk Lake, and of the half iron distance (2km swim, 92km bike, 20km run). My companions had taken the slightly more sane approach of signing up to do the course as a relay team of three. Typhanie and Kai were doing the swim, Steve and Emlyn were doing the bike, and Tam and Kristi were doing the run. Steve injured himself in the Oliver half-iron and dropped out, to be replaced by Kathy (the announcer mentioned this as Typhanie crossed into the transition zone). This made for a all-girl relay team (Typhanie, Kathy, Kristie), and a mixed relay team (Kai, Emlyn, and Tam).

The winning time was just over 4 hours. The cutoff was 8 hours. That's a long time.

I managed to wake up on the way to the race site. Which is good, because I got to park the car. Seeing as how there is parking for about 1/2 the athletes, I elected to park on the other side of the lake (the turnaround point for the swim, incidentally), and walk 15 minutes. That 15 minute walk gave me ample time to reflect on how far 2km is to swim (just over 23 minutes for the top male, apparently).

The race started on time, and Kai and Typhanie started in the relay wave, about 30 minutes later. Kai finished in 31:41 and Typhanie finished in 44:31. The swim to bike transition is pretty quick for relay teams, as they just have to hand off the timing chip.

The bike portion of the race is pretty long, so the rest of us decided to find a spot on the bike route and cheer on Emlyn and Kathy. So we all piled up in Kai's car, and found a spot on the route. The bike route was an open route, which means that there were still cars on the road. We were on a downhill section of the course, and the cyclist were probably cruising at 50-60kph (in a 50kph zone, no less). This made for interesting traffic hazards as the slightly clueless and incredulous locals who were trying to get to the church up the road. We didn't see any wrecks, but there was plenty of opportunity.

We cheered on cyclists at that spot for almost an hour. Enough to see Kathy go by twice, but not Emlyn. It is hard to recognize a cyclist going past at 50kph, but one of us should have seen him. Kai deduced that he must have had a problem, which turned out to be true. At the end of the hour, I drove Kristie, Tam, and Typhanie back to the race site, and Kai elected to run back to the site.

I dropped off the girls at the site, and drove back over to the rowing centre on the other side of the lake to park. When I had walked back (noting again the length of the swim course), Emlyn was waiting. Apparently about 17km into the course, his chain came off while he was shifting. Then somehow his rear derailer got caught in a spoke and locked the back tire. Emlyn wasn't hurt, but the bike wasn't going to finish the race. The upside is that Emlyn got the fastest bike time overall (1:31), completing the course in the back of one of the event support vehicles. The downside was that the relay team got listed with a big fat DNF on the penalties page, sandwiched between the disqualifications for nudity in the transition zones, and penalties for drafting.

Kathy finished the bike section in 3 hours 5 minutes, and entered the transition zone to hand off the timing chip to Kristie. Except that Kristie wasn't in the transition zone. She had run off to the washroom for one last time, and Kathy finished the course faster than Kristie expected. As a result the bike-run transition time for Steve's Sexy Bitches (Typhanie,Kathy,Kristie) was about 2 minutes longer than any of the other relay teams.

The rest of settled in on the beach and waited for Kristie to finish her first lap, which happened 41 minutes later. Another 43 minutes put the all women relay team in at about 5hours and 15 minutes. This netted them 3rd place for the women's relay teams.

We hung around so that the women could grab their prizes, and then dashed madly off to catch the 1700h ferry.

jack | posted Mon Jun 20 16:37:43 2005 | #
category: outside/triathlon