Fantastic spring for our athletes :)

It has been a great spring for PT Performance Training athletes so far! In April, Bert and Darcy started their season with a great race and mini training camp in the heat of Kona. Sooke sprint tri was a success for those who raced (see previous post), despite the snow the day before the race! Calgary cyclist Michael Godfrey has had a fantastic start to his season with a couple of strong, dominant races. What a great confidence booster for the main events of the season.

Kate W Brown has been training with me for a year a half and she is one of the first PT Performance Training athletes. We have done alot of work together, and had some good races, and some disappointing races (all were successful in my opinion though). She run her first marathon in Eugene, Oregon several weeks ago. As training progressed, we both knew it can be a BQ (Boston Qaulifier)... and it was. 3:45 for her first ever marathon and a BQ at first attempt. Pretty impressive stuff!! Well done Kate :)

This past weekend has been full of fantastic races and other kinds of success. Lets start with one triathlete, who entered the Oak Bay half marathon instead of doing her long run on her own. The plan was to run the race as a long run, not as an actual race... its hard to enter a race and not race it. It takes a lot of self discipline, focus and determination (just like racing, really). The end result was 1:46 for a nice and comfortable 21km training run after a pretty tough week of training. Another athlete; a cyclist turned swimmer/cyclist experienced her first ever open water swim. It is typically extremly hard to learn how to swim as an adult and even harder to jump into the open water for a swim, but she did it!

The Shawnigan triathlon was also held this weekend. Most of the team athletes that raced did the sprint triathlon in preparation for the rest of the season. Out of 6 people, 4 of them ended up on the podium. Gordon Roy came in 3rd in his age group (9th overall), which is pretty impressive since he was on a navy ship for 5 weeks prior to that race and had a 3.5 hour ride, a brick run and a swim the day before. Dave Robertson was 2nd in his age group, smashing his time from last year by 4 minutes. Scott Davis and Chris George had a little battle to the finish line... I have designed a very creative training plan for Scott and seems to be working like a charm. Chris had the 8th fastest bike split of the day and the fastest one out of the age groupers. Aynsley O'Carroll went out there after a very hard week of training with 2 goals in mind: to have a solid transition training session and to race, not participate... And race she did, winning her age group and coming in 5th women overall. Christina Kadin, in her first race of the season, has done a fantastic job putting it all together, placing second in her age group.

This coming weekend Michael is very likely to have another strong weekend of racing, while 3 other team members will be racing in the Oliver half ironman: Christian, Suzanne and Kim. Stay tuned...


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Change of plans

So I'm not going to run the 50 mile in Colorado... I'm going to China instead! The International Olympic Committee puts together workshops as a part of an existing sport science conference for its sports nutrition post graduate students (Im currently enrolled in that program). These workshops happen once a year and we don't have to attend then to complete our studies, but they are an awesome opportunity to learn more about sports nutrition and attend sport science conferences around the world. This year, they have decided to run the workshops as a part of the pre Olympic congress in Guangzhou, China during the first week of August.

The only problem is that I can't go to China and race an ultra marathon in Colorado a month later with Ironman Canada in the middle... it might be too overwhelming for me right now. I think going to China is a fantastic opportunity, that doesn't come very often. So I am looking for another ultra to run a bit later in the year, or even early next year. Any suggestions?!

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Coaching anyone? (take #2)

Last time I published a post looking for a coach to join my team I was kind of shooting in the dark because my blog was brand new and I didn't really think people were reading it... but I got an email straight away from D'arcey. I guess it was pure luck and was simply meant to be :) It also lead me to believe I should try that again! So, here goes: I am looking for multisport coaches to join my team... contact me through www.ptcoaching.ca if you are interested in finding out more.

I look forward to hearing from you :)

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