The Manlius Formation

And Canada won. Big time.

So my friend, Dan, hadn’t been back to his hometown of North Bay, Ontario, since his family left the area about 25 years ago. Recently he discovered that the lakeside town of 50,000 souls hosts a triathlon every year. Our wives were kind enough to let us head north for a weekend so Dan could check out his old digs and we could test our mettle against our northern neighbors. With spousal permission and passports in hand, we headed north last Friday to take on Canada.

The race was a 1 km (0.6 mile) swim, 34 km (21 mile) bike, and an 8.4 km (5.2 mile) run. What you don’t see in these numbers is that the bike course and run course are both out-and-back routes that are uphill on the way out and downhill on the way back.

Due to the twisty, turny nature of the bike course, and my aversion to dislocated hips caused by running downhill in an uncontrolled, failing mass of arms and legs, the benefit I get from going downhill does not cancel out the penalty I incur going uphill. In other words, I anticipated being slowed down on the uphills more than I could make up for on the downhills.

Coupling this with the fact that I can count on two hands the number of good, solid bike training days I managed to fit in so far this year, and that the longest I’ve run is 5 miles, I went into the race thinking I’d approach it as a tough training day and finish in about 2 hours and 10 minutes. Dan’s expectations were similar since he’s biked and run about the same amount this spring and summer.

As you can see in the results, I met my goal – to the second: 2 hours, 10 minutes, and zero seconds. Hey, I’m a Capricorn - that’s what we do. Dan was right behind me, beating his goal by almost 7 minutes. Not bad.^[1]

When all was said and done I finished 48th overall out of 115 competitors, and 6th out of 8 in my age group. While I’d like to finish closer to the middle of the pack of my age group, I’m pleased with this result since I was WAY underprepared for the bike and run. Unsurprisingly, my bike was weak (70th overall and last in my age group), but my run was decent (8 minute miles).

What was nice to see was that all the swim training I’ve been doing seems to be working. I swam an average of about 1:40 per 100 yards, which was in the top 30 swim times, and just happens to be the goal I need to reach for the Skaneateles Skinnyman triathlon with my TMF comrades. Chris and Kathleen, I hope you’re taking the challenge seriously!

Dan was just a little behind me on the swim, faster than me on the bike (you’ll pay for that, Dan) and darn close on the run, finishing 57th overall. Not bad for a guy who bought his bike, like, 2 months ago and just started swimming. I have to start doing secret workouts and find a way to hold him back.

So how about the winner? The winner of the race was Len Gushe from Ontario. I know exactly when he finished, because we were right next to each other on the run course about 50 yards away from the finish line. In fact, we were facing directly at each other. This is because I was just starting the 5.2 mile out-and-back run and he was just finishing the 5.2 mile out-and-back run. That’s right, folks. I was starting the “out” and he was finishing the “back.”

He beat me by almost 40 minutes in a race that took me 130 minutes. I would have had to go about 30% faster in each event to finish with him. In my defence^[2], this is a man who won his age group and finished 60th overall at the 2000 Ironman world championships in Kona, Hawaii. ^[3]

And talk about your coincidences: check out this photo of me, Dan and “the Gushe” (I don’t know if they call him that, but Dan and I do). Len is the one with all the muscles. I’m the peon in the blue shirt near the car in the upper right corner running away from the camera. Dan is the cyclist at left getting ready to enter the transition area on the right of the photo. Check out the gallery for a few of the photos I took at the race.

So, to recap: Fun road trip, I got to see Canada for the first time, Dan and I did a longer race than we were prepared for and lived to tell the story. Not a bad weekend.

1. A note on the results: the two transition times - T1 (swim to bike) and T2 (bike to run) - are usually broken out separately, but based on where the timing mats were located, they seemed to have combined T1 with the bike time and T2 with the run time. I am notoriously slow in T1 – I dry my feet, take in some nutrition, look around, paint a watercolor, write a poem, and then get on the bike – but it’s still no more than 3 minutes. All in all, it shouldn’t affect the bike time too much. However, a 1:40 T2 time translates into about 20 seconds per mile for a 5 mile run. Bottom line though: the first one to cross the finish line wins regardless of how many splits you get. [back]
2. Do you like the Canadian spelling, eh? [back]
3. So how do the distances in the North Bay Triathlon translate into Ironman distances, you ask? Good question. All you need to do is repeat the North Bay swim 3 more times, do the bike 4.3 more times, and then do the run 4 more times. That will give you the Ironman distances of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run. Not for the faint of heart. [back]

Daniel is one dog-year old today. How exciting!

We gave him the choice of a “big” party or a “big” gift. He chose the “big” gift. He was very excited when he (incorrectly) guessed that this “big” gift was a few packs of Pokemon cards. To bad we didn’t know that before we blew an order of magnitude more cash on a Nintento DSi, which he’s had his eye on for some time now.

Here are a few photos from the day, including one with his buddy, Austin, at Johnny Rockets for supper.

My guys are 5 and 7. Wow. The time truly does fly by. On the other hand, we’ll soon be starting 74 days of summer vacation. The boys will be home with Kath most of the day, every day. Time may not fly by so quickly at that point. But that’s another story…

Spinach and beets were the first seeds planted (May 3), followed by carrots and radishes the next day. A few weeks later (May 23) we put in tomato plants and sowed corn and cucumber seeds. Most recently, Thomas helped me plant beans on June 6; they sprouted in 4 days!

As far as harvesting goes, we have eaten or given away loads of radishes, and we’re going to have some spinach with supper tonight. I included some photos below for all you veggie voyeurs out there. If you need to satisfy your craving for higher resolution vegetables, head over to the gardening section of the gallery for full-size images.

Spinach (right) and beets (left) with tent structure for pole beans, followed by the aforementioned pole beans. The idea is that the beans will grow up the poles and provide shade to the spinach and beets since they don’t like full summer sun.

Tomatoes and cucumbers. The cukes - planted in the cross pattern - should fill in around the tomatoes and help trap moisture as the weather gets warmer.

Radishes (top) and carrots (bottom). I can’t believe how fast the radishes grow. Lesson for the future - don’t plant all your radish seeds at once. And, yeah, I know that the carrots don’t like the rocks. We’ll just have to see how that works out.

Corn. By far the one I’m most excited about. I have three rows like this one next to each other. I plan to plant some squash between the rows and see how that works out.

One other thing I’ve learned already - the garden is too small. I have a feeling that this is what happens to every gardener. Still, we’ll get some nice benefit from even this modestly-sized plot. And there’s always next year.