Your Fitspeek Friday drops in on this wet weekend with a great conversation with a guy whose middle name should be “git er dun.”
As you may know, the Vancouver Triathlon was held, as a TRIathlon and not an aquathon last month. No small feat with all the challenges of Covid-19 protocols.
Add to the mix, the morons who thought it would be fun to start feeding coyotes to set up their perfect social media shots, turning these usually elusive critters into a dangerous nuisance in Stanley Park. Heaven help us when these bozos start chumming the orcas! In our conversation, we talk to Trevor about those last stressful days leading up to the race. Talk about pulling a rabbit out of a hat. And although you can’t satisfy everybody, the fact that the race went ahead was a welcome breath of fresh air in a very stagnant smelling 2021 race season.
Also in the interview, we ask an obvious question “why the hell would you want to be a race director?” as well as the obvious follow up question, “what does a race director do to feed his family (pictured above) when they ain’t no racing?” All this and more including references to Fitspeek’s big BOY brother, and Mikey’s Top Five List, comes your way with the push of that button you see below.
Fitspeek is brought to you by Tri*Joy: The Spirit of Multisport. You can experience the joy with a very limited time offer. The Tri 4 50 special is back on. Wanna play Tri? Click that link below!
A lot has happened since we last chatted with Canada’s triathlon gladiator from the West Coast: Covid-19, a new home in North Vancouver, and a battle between a Ventum and a bear!
Also in our feature interview Nathan explains what he has been doing to keep both himself and his athletes motivated while they wait and wait and wait for racing to finally resume out here in BC.
We end off the interview with Nathan taking off his cycling helmet and putting on his hardhat and we talk about tips on home renovation. As a trades kinda guy, Nathan is just as comfortable on his band saw as he is on his aero bars. 45 minutes of intensity, hilarity, and bear-ity comes your way by pressing play below.
If you did your first Ironman Canada this year, you would have to be doing one every year until 2053, if you wanted to match the current record of Seattle’s Ed Wong.
As one of the pioneers in long-distance triathlon, Wong used his background as a hospital pharmacist to devise a sound nutritional strategy that served him well in his 31 consecutive iron-distance events that included both Penticton and Whistler.
Wong, along with Ed Russell from Kamloops and Dick Ensslen from Edmonton, collectively known as the “Dick Eds” have done almost 100 Ironman Canada races between the three of them, becoming an inspiration for athletes of all ages. You can find out why the DickEds got their name, and how this episode got its name by pressing play below.
This week we have an in-depth conversation about all things triathlon with our guest, the editor of Triathlon Magazine Canada, Kevin Mackinnon. From the return of Ironman in Penticton, to Canada’s Olympic hopefuls to the shores of Lake Ontario, we cover it all.
The real work for today began just as Paul Anka and Odia Coates were having a discussion on “Having my Baby” on the Mission Swimming Pool’s sound system. (my apologies to the tender ears of the lifeguards on deck, who undoubtedly, would have been the grandchildren of those heated loins of the summer of 1973, but hey, it was the THEM who control the music for the pool).
Buoyed, or perhaps that should be, tethered to the success of last week’s breakthrough session, I went to work on recapturing that control and balance that I achieved doing the alignment turnovers. “Damn near as good as Brent’s on the video,” I boasted to myself. Not one to totally delude myself (well, usually) I expected to have to start almost from scratch, to regain the form. I was right!
The next 15 minutes were spent patiently, methodically, trying to get the drill right, and maybe improve on it. Improvement, hell! A sense of humour goes a long way when you are trying to swim gracefully on your side, repeatedly hitting the lane rope, over and over and over. And over again, not only hitting it, but the body pushing into the lane rope and wanting to join my neighbour in the adjacent lane. For some reason things were just not going well.
As much as I tried to maintain a positive attitude, self-doubt crept in, like a raccoon into an attic. “What if last week was a fluke?” “What if you don’t swim that final 100 metres as quickly?”
I wasn’t super bummed out but last week’s successes had bred expectations and when expectations are not met…it’s hard to be in the moment. No stranger to disappointment, I gave myself a couple of minutes to refocus. It seemed to work. I got back to practice, and even though I don’t think I achieved the same flow as last week, I was satisfied.
With about 10 minutes left in the practice, I started working on the isolated 1/4 turns. Having never done these very well at all, I didn’t feel the pressure to “perform.” I just did the work. It wasn’t pretty and I really had to work on not dipping my head too far into the water because the snorkel top would submerge. I developed a bit of a flow with these, with my body almost wanting to swim on its side. Maybe this is a good thing?
By the time Andy Kim was singing “Rock Me Gently” I only had 3 minutes left in the session. Among the warm up, drills, self-loathing, Paul Anka, (not connected to the self-loathing), and my time outs, the 54 minutes of swim time evaporated.
Moment of truth. 100 metres easy. Will I still have it? Hit the start button on the watch. Off! For the 1st 2 lengths the ball bearing feeling was there. Maybe not quite as strong, but I was still rolling through the water. By the 3rd length it deteriorated. By the last length, I had to push it a lot. It was no longer easy swimming. My ego and the desire to achieve “the goal” had won over the objective of the test, of doing 100 metres EASY. I failed the BIGGER test. Good.
As much as failure sucks, sometimes success sucks too, but, in a different way. The expectations that success brings with it can be motivating but also stifling. Doing a personal best at anything is certainly a double-edged sword, whether that best is physical, financial, professional, whatever. If you get to live long enough, as I have, and you come to accept that reality, you can move on. And if you don’t, you’re gonna be a bitter old bastard.
With the latest travel restrictions imposed by the provincial government, we can see just how wise most race directors in the province were by cancelling events for 2021. As of April, we are in a holding pattern, with numbers of Covid still at a serious level but with vaccination rates skyrocketing weekly.
There’s no bringing back a race, once it has been cancelled, but could you, would you, participate in a do it yourself event if travel restrictions were rescinded? That is the question we put to Fitspeek members Mikey Ross, Kevin Watt, & Roy McBeth. Hear the discussion question, as well as an update on the cycling and triathlon scene by pressing play below.
Start off your shortened work week with 57 minutes of inspiration on Fitspeek. We kick things off with a review of pro cycling & triathlon as Roy McBeth joins host Kevin Heinze for the roundtable. After that our feature interview, is with one of the folks bound to make a difference on the multisport scene in BC this year.
When Ironman decided to discontinue the 70.3 race in Victoria, local tri-coach and race organizer Paul Regensburg came to the rescue and the Victoria Half was reborn. This locally-based race features all the things that you came to love about one of the best half-Ironman distances races on the planet including the famed hoodie!
We chat with Paul about his decision to put on the race again, the steps he is taking to making a Covid-compliant event, as well as some training tips to ensure your success on race day (Sunday July 18).
To end the show off, ATC head coach Mikey Ross reflects on some of the good things that are happening in his home swimming pool in Mission, as he dives into another edition of his Top Five List. Hear it all now by pressing play below.
Having been in almost every aspect of multisport (including being a 9 hr. Ironman guy), Steve Fleck knowns a thing or two about triathlon. He’s been an advocate of endurance sports for years.
On Fitspeek 125 we talk with “Ontario Steve” about his experiences behind the announcer’s microphone and what makes him uniquely qualified to do what he does.
Calgary’s Angie Woodhead made the most of her unwelcome time off during Covid-19. She took time to think about how to better serve the athletes who do her races, all of them.
Her actions are revolutionary and bound to challenge other race operations and sanctioning bodies such as Triathlon Canada.
Starting this year, Dynamic Race Events will be offering a third option, when you choose gender on your race registration.
Hear about how she made that decision and how it will be implemented on this episode of Fitspeek.
Fitspeek 122 captures quality time and insightful moments with 2019 Triathlon Magazine’s Athlete of the Year, Cody Beals, who I think has a lot in common with this other dude from Ontario.
Not your average tri-joc interview, we cut through the crap of “I train because I wanna win Kona some day” bravado and try (successfully?) to find out what leads folks like Cody into trying to eek out a life as a pro triathlete.
We talk Guelph, Queen’s, rivalries, fears, dreams, beers miles, what pisses him off, and of course the animal question.
Also on the program, fresh from his pain cave, Abbotsford Triathlon Club coach, Mikey Ross drops by for his Top Five List. Kick off your 2021 with 46 minutes of sugar-free Fitspeek by pressing play below.
