Pic Spocket

Just logged in my longest bike ride to date: 200 km! I was off last Friday for Independance day in the US and decided to go out on my bike for the day. I was planning for a long ride, so learning from previous experiences, I went out being careful to not push hard. My plan, which work good, was to stick with a high cadence (80-95 rpm) but low torque on the crank. I limited myself to 30 km/h for the first couple of hours to save myself for the end of the day.

I stopped every 2 hours for a quick break to eat something and strecth my leg muscles. As for the path followed, I basically covered the most part of the shores of Essex county. Here is a link to the interactive map below.

Click for interactive map

What was not soo funny was the wind. While it was not too strong, I had it on my back for the first 100 km, os it means I had to fight against it for the whole return trip. I have to say that the last 10 km were really a chore…  Few Statistics from the ride are listed below. We can see I really slowed down on the last section of the ride. The speed graph is available in the Fitness Log page.

I ran the 5 km LifeStyle race yesterday, part of the WRACE serie. There was a 5 km run and walk and a 10 km events.  Since many people serious about running went for the 10 km race, that left fewer competition on the 5 km race. I did pretty good, running faster than at my last race (according to my GPS, not the official results) at a pace of 4:23 min/km.

Final result: finished 3rd overall out of 79 participants. I thought I would be 2nd, but a guy passed me from nowhere 200m before the finish line.

>>Link to official results

My friend Craig surprisingly could wake up early enough to join me for the race. He did very good too! He actually had a very exciting finish, passing someone right on the finish line. Here are a few pictures.

Here, I am receiving my medal from Miss Teen Ontario , then chilling out after the race.

See the complete album.

NOTE
In order to keep track of my race results, I have added a “race results” section in my “Fitness Log” page.

After my last Triathlon race in Michigan, I had to rush home for the annual Detroit River Fireworks usually happening the last Wednesday of june. They put 3 platforms in the center of the river from which they fire them. I made it home just in time to pack the camera and jump back on the bike and head for the river with Corinne and her mother.

We did not have time to find a good spot to photograph from before the fireworks started. This is also due to the fact that since the city workers are on strike, we could not really use the grassy areas because the grass is too high. As a result, I could not take nice shots with a wide angle showing the surroundings. I made the best of the situation and decided to mostly aim for close ups of the fireworks using the zoom.

Here are a few pictures of the fireworks.

In general we thought the fireworks were smaller and the ‘finale‘ was not as strong as the previous years. This must be linked to the actual financial crisis.

More pics and larger versions in the album below.

Target Fireworks 09

After the Leamington Triathlon race, our friends Tracy and Craig came home for a swim, with their dog Trails. Since we installed a stairway in the pool, Newton is crazy about swimming. He actually bugs us all the time to go in. He does not even need a toy. He’ll go in just for a swim by himself.

Here are a few pictures of that day.

More pics and larger versions in the album below.

Newton and Trails swimming

While I did finish my first triathlon race last Sunday, I had a bit of a bad aftertaste in my mouth because of the way I behave during the race, as described in my last post. I really wanted to redeem myself with the next race. Time or position is one thing, but that is not what is important for me. What I wanted, is to feel I did what I could and be proud of my performance. I definitely lacked determination in my first race.

Therefore, despite the fact that it was a bit too close to the previous race, I headed to the Triceratops TRI in Brighton Michigan, only 3 days after my first race. That race was in the evening after work, a better match with my training sessions.

I have to say, when I got there, I almost chickened out and turned around. The temperature was crazy hot: over 35 deg C (95 deg F). But what scared me a little was the swim again. In Leamington, the course was a triangle, so that the bueys did not look to be far from the shore. In Brighton, this was a single round trip, with the buey at 400 m from shore… However, the lake looked awesome, with a nice sand beach surrounded by trees. So I decided to man up and registered anyway. There was many more competitors than in Sunday‘s race (250 compared to 76).

Overall, I am very happy with how I did. I performed better in all aspects: I was faster in all 3 activities than Sunday. Here are the official preliminary results:

>>>http://www.tguertin.com/pub/blog/raceresults/090624_tri_triceratops.htm#35Male
       (#10 of the 35-39 Male group)

It seems I was one of the only participant that the timing chip did not work properly. I had my GPS data logger with me, so I do have the times for biking, transition 2 (T2) and the running. Here are a few details:

Swimming +T1 – 800m – 21:08 (T1 = Transition 1)

The swim went much better than last time! No panic. It is still the area where I can improve the most and shave several minutes off my total time. I did not hold my crawl the whole time and did a bit of side crawling of backstroking at times to catch my breath. I also had problems with water entering my googles so I stopped a few times to empty them. Still, I did it much faster than last time. I lost some time in T1 because I had problems removing the wetsuit, and a guy came to give me a new timing timing chip.

Biking – 19 km – 33:24

I was much faster than in Leamington with an average speed of 35.1 km/h. That’s even faster than my best training session. The course was very nice, with a few hills that also made me reach my maximum speed record at 51.7 km/h. I passed a whole bunch of people there!

    Click here for speed graph | Click here for course map

Run – 5 km – 25:16

When I got back in T2, my calves were killing me, so I took time to stretch them before starting the run, and then went out (1 min 18 secs for T2). I have to say, I was dying to stop and walk again, but I remembered how angry I was at myself the last time after the race, so I had to tell myself about 200 times “walking is not an option”. So I allowed myself to slow down but never stopped running. As a result, I was slower than in practice, but proud of my performance!

SUMMARY

Total time:  1 hr 21 min 07 seconds, good for a 57th place out of 250 participants, 47th / 154 males. I ranked much higher than my expectations.

This venue was awesome and I really think I am going to do the next race they have on July 22.

‘Survived’ is the right word because it did not go as well as I was expecting. I am very happy I could finish it, but I am not proud of how I did.

On one side, I have to give me credit for going from a 60 lbs overweight couch potato to finishing a Sprint Triathlon in about 6 months. Especially when considering I just recently started all 3 activities included in the Triathlon.
On the other side, I feel like I could have done MUCH better. Here is how it went.

SWIM – 750 m – 22:05

After about 150 or 200m into it I got completely out of breath and kind of panicked to a dead stop. This was the result from a combination of several factors: despite my plans to start the swim in slow and concentrated fashion, I started way too fast. Also, I kept getting entangled in large seaweed plants, something alien to my training sessions. Also, I felt really restricted (too tight) in my wet suit, contributing to the panic because I felt like I could not breathe. So I stopped to recompose myself, but then I got the people behind me trying to climb on my back when running into me. I tried to catch my breath and resume, but I just couldn’t.
As a result, I ended up swimming the rest of the course on my back, doing the backstroke. But since I could not see where I was going, I zigzagged a fair amount outside of the direct course, increasing the distance to cover.
I will really have nightmares about that part of the race, getting entangled in the seaweeds and all. When I finally got out of the marina, I was completely out of energy from my fight with the water. Result: at least 5 minutes longer than my worst time in training and out of juice!!!

BIKE – 20 km – 43:09 (including both transitions!)

First transition was quite smooth, and I had no problem running beside my bike and jumping on it while rolling. All in all, the bike is the part of the race that went the best. While I was much slower than in training, I did my thing as I felt I could do it at the time. I took it easy in the second transition, even taking the time to clean my sunglasses.

RUN – 5 km – 30:03

I am really not happy with my run. I lacked determination, and allowed me to slow down to a walk not far after the start. I felt completely empty of energy. From then on, I alternated between running and walking until I could cover the distance. I did a few Bricks in training (running after biking) before and I always seemed to do OK.
Now when I look back on my performance, I really wished I pushed myself to keep running the whole course. I lost a minimum of 5 minutes there.

SUMMARY

 Total time:  1 hr 35 min 17 seconds, good for a 60th place out of 76 participants.

So in short, I was disappointed with the way I handled the race. The bright side is that I have something to easily improve upon (I hope!!) if I ever do another one of these races.

Here is a link the official results:

http://homepage.mac.com/ben.balkwill/ltw_pastresults/2009/tomatomanT.htm

My friend ‘Sneaky Craig’ also did the Triathlon with me. I call him ‘sneaky’ because he registered a few weeks before the event, but only revealed it a few days before the race.  That was a very good surprise and I was happy to have somebody with me for this first experience.

Craig did very well considering his preparation. I am really proud of him and he did impress me. He finished 2 spots behind me, in 62th place. That’s awesome considering he did not even swim once in the months before the event (and he was never a swimmer either!). He did his thing, ran at his rhythm without really stopping and made it through. Congratulations Craig!

Craig in action:

Few pictures from after the race:

Our friend Tracy had prepared a surprise gift for us, which was a nice attention on her part!

See the complete album below for more photos and larger pictures.

Leamington Triathlon 09

In my previous post, I talked about the Red Bull Air Race that Windsor was hosting last weekend. Here are my pictures of the weekend. Most of them were taken with my 100-400 mm IS zoom, but few ones with the 70-200 mm IS + 1.4x adapter.

Before going in the day-to-day recap, here is my best, or at least luckiest, shot from Race Day on Sunday. I happened to click at the exact moment when Michael Goulian was hiting one of the air pylons. This was not even taken during a burst. Here it is:

The Friday before the race weekend, pilots usually practice the track. This is often the best day to take pictures because there’s only a few spectators on the side of the river, so you are free to move and place yourself. During the race weekend, you are lucky if you can find a decent spot close to the shore unless you head up there early. I had taken the Friday afternoon off, so I got a chance to see the end of the practice run. Here are a few pictures from the practice session. Among these, Kirby Chambliss (White Plane) showing a good example of knife flying; Rookie pilot Matt Hall (blue and yellow plane), zipping through the track.

Saturday was the day for the qualifications. The weather was very cloudy that day and it was hard to get good pictures through the smoke left by the planes. There is also some pictures of the side acts they use to keep people entertained before the race starts.

Finally, the sunny weather came back for Race Day. Side Acts:

And the actual race:

As usual, larger versions (and many more pictures) available in the photo album.

Red Bull Air Race 2009

This was the Red Bull Air Race 2nd stop on the Detroit river last weekend. Last year, Detroit was hosting the race but this year was hosted by Windsor. I highly recommend that you visit their website and look through some of the videos to get a taste of this motorsport. They do an awesome job with marketing, that’s for sure! But it is very nice to see in action.

Basically, it’s a race against the clock throug a very demanding course through air gates. Depending on the color of the gate, some must be passed in level flying, while others must be passed in knife flying. The latter is not evident because the plane has no lift in this position, and the pilots have to fly very low. The top of the gate is only 60 ft in the air! The pilots must endure crazy amounts of G-Force, up to 12.0G, which is the limit they can achieve before being disqualified.

I missed my chance last year, but not this year! I’ll post my pictures in the coming day or 2.

To give you a taste of the windsor race, here few videos from the red bull air race website:

New Final Four Finals:

Windsor Race Highlights:

Official picture from the race:

My first trial in a triathlon race is coming next week, and I decided to run the “Tortoise and the Hare 5k Run/Walk” competition just to combine my running training with some kind of race experience.

The official results are here : Overall Results | Results by Group

I finished 17th overall out of 104, 16th of Male Runners and only 2nd in my age group (35-39).

According to the official results, I finished in 20 min 48 seconds at a pace of 4:10 min/km. Somehow, these stats do not fall in line with my GPS data (see fitness log), but I will accept them

I am pretty happy considering I have been running only 3 weeks. Not sure I could do better even with months of additional training though…

More Pictures

Many thanks to my wonderful wife for her support, presence and nice pictures!

In order to help me prepare for my first Triathlon race and better track my workouts, I have upgraded my Fitness Log page with a color coded Google Calendar holding all my activities rather than just biking and rollerblading.

Also, I have started to list my Running Statistics since I just started this activity.

The page is now pretty long, but you can use the links at the top to go to a specific location.