On the box

I came close to the "W" yesterday but settled for 2nd in the Cat. 3 race (aka " 2nd tallest midget in the circus") at the first Ontario Cup road race of the season. First time ever in a bike race on the podium - they made us raise hands like that...weird!

Anyway for those of you dying to find out how it played out...there was a break of 4 dudes 1:45 up the road with one lap to go. In the first few km of the last lap it looked like the break had disintegrated as a couple of guys were coming back - we had heard there was still one guy holding the gap.

In any case, the front of the race was still 1:45 up and no one seemed overly concerned with catching him for the win so I attacked into a stiff headwind with 15km to go and had a couple of guys follow me. I let them take a couple of turns and it became obvious that they weren't going to be able to help my cause a great deal so I punched it again up a sharp little hill and in doing so ended up alone for the chase with a :30-:45 gap on the bunch.

After about 8km of rolling hills I could finally get a good idea of where the lead was and that I was closing on him. With just over 4km to go we made a final right hand turn and I timed the gap at :40. We had a nice tailwind on this last stretch so deep down I knew it would be next to impossible to close the gap - everyone is good in a tailwind! But I put 'er in the "11" anyway, put my head down and suffered to the line...down :21. I ran out of real estate but kudos to the dude who held on after dangling out front for a good while. Despite (or maybe because of) his pink, purple and blue pastel coloured cycling kit - he toughed it out for the top step.

This bike racing is fun, always new lessons to be learned. It's keeping me busy and fit while we wait for the ice to thaw on the lakes and the start of the real season of racing!

I'm a triathlete again!!

Let's keep it that way!

I've run twice since Wednesday without pain or inflammation in my tibialis posterior tendon so I hope that injury is behind me. I'll have to be careful over the next few weeks to ramp up the mileage wisely but I think I should be good to go!

Other good news is the result of a CP20 test that I did last night. A CP20 is basically 20 minutes as hard as you can go. We'll use these numbers to measure improvement in bike fitness throughout the year and make sure we're heading in the right direction...so far, so good, I seem to be on track with the bike anyway.

I guess I should also talk about swimming (gotta keep out front of my boys Mikey and J-Mo for part of the race anyway) It's going well - I'm never going to set any PB's in training or racing considering I did those when I was swimming 9-10 workouts a week, but I feel good in the H2O. I swim, on average 3 times/week and I try to do some quality in every session. I don't need the real easy technique work or the junk miles in the pool...get in, do the work and get out and hopefully we'll see more of the swim primes like the picture above from St. Croix - man I'm gonna miss kicking Chris McCormack and Craig Alexander's ass this year...in the swim ;)

Cheers, Ian

Put on your Game Face!

OK, maybe I need to work on my game face (I'm the dork sitting 3rd wheel, smiling like an idiot as these other dudes look to be digging into their suitcases of courage). This picture was taken a few laps into the Niagara Classic last spring at the top of the infamous Saylor's Hill...a few more times up and I assure you the poop-eating grin was wiped away!

In any case my competitive season for 2008 is under way, so I put this up to remind me how much I love to race!

I'm still not running - hopefully this week - so I'm spending some solid time in the saddle. I'm also doing a bit of bike racing to keep things interesting and get the competitive juices flowing.

It started this past weekend with a cool race called the Tour of Pelham. The course was a good excuse to get the cyclocross bike out for a spin: a mix of paved road, dirt road, single track, un-improved farm paths and rutted-out mud chutes. As Coach KP said "sounds very 'Belgian'!" While it was no Ronde van Vlaanderen at only 35km in length - it did hurt and it was FUN!

A teammate from my new road/CX team got away very early in the race so I covered moves and made sure his solo breakaway was secure. Once the race was established, I took off from our chase group of 6 on a tough stretch of soft cordouroy gravel road and TT'd home for 2nd place.

This weekend I'm back on skinny tires with 2 road races. I'll race Cat. 3 and hope for atleast a hard workout on what are two pretty tough courses. I'm feeling strong on the bike but the funny thing about road racing is that doesn't always mean you'll do well...unless you're REALLY strong...we'll see!

I'll keep you posted after this weekend, in the mean time, wish me luck with my first run in 3.5 weeks on Wednesday!