Saugeen Triathlon Club: Nov 29th Banquet Speaker

Boys aren’t from Venus, don’t try to change that

This past week I have been hanging out with my Dad while my mother has had a chance to enjoy her first ‘care-giver’ break in 16 months.  After our trip to Stratford, we briefly stopped in KW to trick-or-treat with my nice, unpacked Mother and then eventually headed back to Bracebridge.  After 5 days with her granddaughter (what more could a Grammie want?) mom has been entertaining us with stories of little Natalie, and contrasting it to my own youth. Read more

Algonquin Canoe Trip

A month ago, when racing was going badly I was thinking to myself… well at least I will be free this fall to get in a canoe trip up in Algonquin Park.  It’s been 4 falls now since I was in the area and had free time in the fall.  Now the trees are changing color, and the bugs have died off, it truly is one of the greatest places on the planet.

My first dilemma was finding a person with canoe experience and free time to head out with.  Then I remembered that my friend SMAK (HUGE thanks for Tak) had dragon boating experience and a half cocked plan was launched. Read more

What I did this weekend

I took this picture by accident today.  It’s ‘snowflake the dog – she’s 12 and acts like she’s 6 (Mom says 4).  So we get along well.

Most of the weekend I was packing up sold items from the pile of things I e-bayed for Cam.  That ended in a 8km TT to the post office to mail them before closing, and 8km tt back.  After that I decided to put my shoes on and go for a 8km run.  The loop has a lot of technical off road, which isn’t really fast, and everything else seems to be uphill.

Read more

Hawaii Adventures pt 3: Maui

Here is a story that I started last November.  It’s been in the draft bin for a while, now, and I thought that I’d finish it off.

I am very sad that there will be no Maui for me in 2009.  I loved Maui.

Read more

Powering down the ’09 Season

Mark and I defended our Tin Man Josh title.  It hurt a lot more than I recall it hurting last season.  Again having to go out of my IM comfort zone on the bike really made me suffer.  I was having mouthfuls of acid coming up until I decided that for the sake of my run I should back off and ride more threshold.

Before the run was the canoe though, I sat in the back snacked and navigated while Mark steamed away up front.  Some clowns had over 4 minutes on us starting the 10 km run leg, but around the 7th km I could see a person running who looked like a fast canoe’r.  Just before the 1 mile climb to the line I passed him.  Damn, that was a tough last mile, and I’m feeling it now.

It was a relief to get a win, even if it was the last race of the season.  I also really liked to run into the win, after having had a few rough runs. Read more

Q: Nat why no blog updates?

When the races are going well, and training is going well then there is excitement, and I post up blog stories.  When they’re not then you get tweets.  I’ve never before had such a lack luster season, so rather than giving you foaming rants I bite my tongue.  I know that was out of character, sorry to disappoint (though the time could still come).

Training went great through the spring.  ~ a week before St Croix I had my first flat workout of the season, and everything seemed to go into a tail spin from there.

By the time IronMan Canada came around I couldn’t even get the power out on the bike.  A 18% power decrease to be exact, so I focused on being as efficient as possible was ended up being only 3 min slower.  I started the run thinking that I’d have a strong effort from my conservation. Read more

Crystal ball for 2010 Cycling

No doping positives this tour, so I thought that I would rant about it anyhow.

Lance Races – Clean Tour.  Lance is somewhat the Mafia Don of Cycling – he controls lots of things, through leverage payments, and IOU’s.  Cyclings Dope testing arm is somehow involved in this web.  Lance was reported to have made a known (how many other private bribes were there?) $100,000 payment to them (paying out of a +ve test?) I can no longer find the story, but he said at the time it was to help keep the sport cleaner.  Right.  And he also bitched about being tested so much. Read more