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Multisport season has hit the Lower Mainland! And so has running season and cycling season. We have your recent race results from the UBC triathlon/duathlon, the Try Events March races, and the Escape Velocity Spring Series cycling races. All this, plus news of our new contest thanks to F2C nutrition out of Pitt Meadows, and our usual features make Fitspeek your go-to-source for fitness, wellness, and endurance sports. Hear all that is fit to print by pressing play below.
Even though the weather has been pretty ugly out there, it has been very sunny in the Fitspeek studio. Kevin Watt and I have just completed Fitspeek Ten. It is our most ambitious podcast to date. Be listening for the Wenting’s Word of the Week in the last ten mi
nutes of the show. You will want to enjoy the whole enchilada though, as we have episode 3 of Bob’s Bits and the great interview with Burnaby’s Craig Premack. On his journey to do his first Ironman and Paris-Brest-Paris ride Craig had to overcome a major setback. Hear what and how by pressing play below!
And as we mentioned at the top of the podcast for the parenting courses that are being offered for free in Maple Ridge you can contact Karen at 604-467-6055.
Fitspeek number nine is broght to you by the letter B, as in Bruce Butler, the author of the e-book “Letters To A Driving Nation” and as in Bob Babbitt from Babbittville.com. Both are featured interviews in the show. With the start of the race season here in the Fraser Valley, we will also be spotlighting the overall winner of Try-Events Historic Half races. As usual we have our weekly shout outs, the upcoming events calendar, our Wenting’s Fit Tip of the Week, and our very helpful Fit Tip of The Week. 45 minutes of Fitspeek comes your way by pressing play below.
To get Bruce Butler’s book, you can go here. http://www.brucebutler.ca
Both Kevin Watt and I have been busy doing interviews and research to bring you episode number 8. In addition to the Wenting’s Word of the Week (which is in the first half of the show!) we have a list of winners from the Chilly Chase, shout outs to the Instagram crew (some of which were unwise enough to watch our live broadcast of the podcast production.)
We also have our weekly events schedule, a fit tip of the week that taps into your Inner Arnold, an interview with PTSD Run Race Director Brenda Brennan, and our first “Bob’s Bitts” segment that features pieces of my conversation with Ironman Hall of Famer (among other great achievements) Bob Babbitt. This hour may have 22 minutes but Fitspeek eight has six more! Happy listening.
To enter the PTSD run in Abbotsford click on this link
https://www.events.runningroom.com//hm/index.php?step=&sub=1&start=0
Surviving the horrors of snowy streets and Christmas gluttony, hosts 
Kevin Watt and Kevin Heinze are serving up the year’s first Fitspeek Feast. Our appetizer features a healthy heaping of encouragement for those Abbotsford Triathlon Club members and Instagram followers who shared with us their New Year’s Goals list.
Kevin Watt serves up the main course this week, with an interview with Victor and Mike from Maple Ridge who have started up a new running club there, we will have our upcoming events schedule (ever heard of Kangaroo boots?), our Wentings Word of the Week, and for your desert, an Adults Only fit tip of the week. Fitspeek Seven, weighing in a at portly 28 minutes is now being served by hitting the play button. Bon appetite!
To connect with Victor and Mike about the new running club in Maple Ridge email them at goldenearsrun@gmail.com.
Although not everybody is into the New Years Resolutions thing, we here at Fitspeek are and we wanna help you with yours.
In addition to having specific and measurable goals, one of the best ways to help achieve your resolution is by using a commitment device (so says the Huffington Post as well as other Social Science researchers.)
A commitment device is basically just fancy talk for yelling it out at the top of your lungs from a rooftop so that everybody in town can hear.
The Fraser Valley’s fitness community is your town, we supply the rooftop, you supply the lungs.
Post your resolution as a comment below by either using your real name or nickname and we will let others in our community know what your goal/s are and if you are so inclined, HOW you intend to achieve your goal/s. Don’t be surprised if we drop your name in an upcoming Fitspeek podcast.
It’s all about fun. fitness, and community.
Check out our list so far over on the New Year’s Goals and Resolutions page on your menu to the right.
It’s interesting, inspiring, and validating to be an endurance athlete in the age of social media and be privy to the immediacy and personal disclosure of some of our sporting heroes. It used to be when there were only print media sources such as Inside Triathlon, you would get race results and analysis well after the fact. And of course because column space was limited in print media, a lot of the truly interesting and juicy stuff had to be left out.
In retrospect, wouldn’t it have been cool to be subscribed to Scott Tinley’s Twitter account back in the day? Natural personalities, I believe, would have flourished even more with an opportunity to spout off right there and then. How about a Greg Welch Instagram feed? That would have been great for Welchie’s brand and his fans.
For those who remember, one of the more entertaining features of the Slowtwitch website was back in the sunset years of The Terminator’s aka Skid’s aka Scott Molina’s pro triathlon career. Molina wrote the occasional article under the provocative masthead “Skid Marks.” Molina would fly the flag of unabashed political incorrectness on a range of topics from Ironman to parenting, and naturally stammtisch (check out the link at the bottom of the page for more on that).
But enough wallowing along memory lane as this article is really about the here and now. In this week’s Slowtwitch, Tim Carlson has compiled some of the year’s best triathlon quotes. Although none of quotes, are as poetic as the words of a Sagan or a Voigt, one of this year’s gems comes from yet another non-native English speaker, this year’s Ironman World Champion Jan Frodeno. In a post-race interview, Frodeno illuminated the dark places that were haunting him him during parts of his run while he led the race. Frodeno quipped, “I did want to give up three times actually. I wanted to pull off. I was thinking I will make up some excuse. Make it sound good and go home.” As you can see, feeling like hell and coming up with creative ways to quit a race is not something that only middle and back of the pack athletes experience.
Another inspirational piece of self-disclosure from this year came from Lionel Saunders. Once again, this dark place that Saunders was in, was while leading the race. On his way to producing the fastest Ironman race (brand not distance) ever back in November, there was a part in the later stages of the run where he was starting to fade and feel like heck. To keep himself fired up, he started yelling out loud to himself, “C’mon, C’mon, let’s go” (along with I am sure, some non publishable motivational phrases). He later admitted to Bob Babbitt, spectators along the race course and his fellow competitors likely thought he had mentally snapped but it underscores to the extent that self doubt and anger can exist while we race.
Getting to the finish line of a race, be it a 5K or an Ironman can be incredibly difficult, especially if you are doing it right. Sometimes the self-doubt and hopelessness of the situation (even if you are leading the race) require some of us (like Ryan Boulter and myself) to harness the dark side and use some creative solutions to get us to the finish line.
What’s your dark secret that gets you through a race? Share it here.
And for the fans of Molina and beer, this link is for you. http://www.slowtwitch.com/mainheadings/features/skidmarks/stammtisch.html
This edition of Fitspeek features all the belles, whistles, and candy canes for your holiday season. We learn of Strava Kings, spin sessions, Billy’s conquest, and how to stave off the almost inevitable Christmas paunch. Also listen for the Wenting’s Word of the week to claim your prize! Fitspeek six is ready to roll down your chimney by pressing play below.
You can reach Ryan Clifton to sign up for the Mission Masters Swimming Club here. aakandt@gmail.com
You can get more information on the Phoenix Velo Speak & Spin here. http://phoenixvelo.ca/
The Fraser Valley is home to some EPIC bike rides and running trails and even more EPIC athletes. In our newest feature “Kings & Queens of Strava” Fitspeek’s roving reporter (and Liv Cycling’s Ambassador) Crystal Lambert speaks with some of the people who are crushing it out there on Strava. For our first King of Strava, we need to go no further than our back yard…the Seventh Avenue Climb in Mission. All will be revealed by pushing play below.
Chef Kevin Watt and myself have baked another edition of Fitspeek. This program may contain: traces of nuts, race results, spin queens, reindeer, Santa Shuffles, Lido Shuffles, cool down reasons, and to promote our new sponsor Wenting’s Cycle and Mountain Shop – FREE STUFF with the Wenting’s word of the week. Listen for it in the program and go to Wentings to claim your reward for listening to Fitspeek.
For more information on Marie’s Santa Shuffle visit Santashuffle.ca/abbotsford