Cultus Lake Triathlon

It started off as a little bet and a chance for Mark to do his first triathlon. It ended up being a great weekend with some solid races from the NSTC crew.

This was a role reversal weekend for Mark and I. Normally I am the one racing, while Mark holds all my gear, and cheers me on from the sidelines. This weekend, however, Mark was going to try his hand at a triathlon.

On Saturday morning, we all drove to Cultus Lake to get checked in. As there weren't too many places to eat around the campsite, we ended up going to the Cultus Lake Pub with the whole crew. The night started with dinner and a few pitchers of beer and ended up with the boys on the dance floor and much more beer.... not your regular race ritual!

On Sunday morning, we all got to transition nice and early. My task was to find coffee while the boys got all set up. Luckily it turned out to be a really warm day and Mark didn't freeze to death without a wetsuit for the swim.

Mark had seeded himself pretty far forward for the start of the swim. When we first moved to Vancouver two years ago, Mark could barely swim and if we were in the pool together, I would kick along side him as he swam. Needless to say, he has made some HUGE improvements. As the swim came to an end, Mark was about 20th coming out of the water and looking pretty good.

I personnaly thought that as long as Mark had a good swim, he would be set to take down lots of people on the bike. For those of you that don't know, Mark is a former pro cyclist. That being said, Mark has only rode his ride about 10 times all summer and is still riding his steel framed bike that he last raced with in 2004!

As the bike course was an out and back, I did see much of what was going on until they got back to transition. Mark made up quite a lot of ground on the bike and came off in 5th place. At this point I wasn't quite sure what would happen. Mark claims he really isn't much of a runner, and like the rest of this summer, he hasn't trained much at all.

As I stood at the finish line watching the leaders come through, the next thing I saw was Mark coming in for a solid 4th place! Not bad for his first race, eh?!

In fact, all of the North Shore Tri Club that competed that day had a great race and it was so much fun to watch. We finished off the weekend with a swim in the lake, lunch, and mini golf before heading back home. Hopefully we'll see Mark back in action next summer!

One Busy Month!

Mark and I have had a really busy few weeks to finish up the summer. It seems like every weekend there is something going on. Here's a quick recap on how we finished up a fabulous summer!

• The first week in August Mark was busy organizing the World Police and Fire Games. He was in charge of directing all 5 road cycling events which were great to watch. We were also invited to the opening ceremonies - 10,000 police and firemen all in the same arena - so much fun!

• Next up was Allison and Ramsey's wedding. Mark and I had the pleasure of being the MC's for the evening and we got to meet and hang out with all their friends and family for the week. The weekend kicked off with a pre-wedding run and finished up with a post-wedding Grouse Grind! Congrats Allison and Ramsey!
  

• The next weekend we did a great canoe/hike with some old cycling friends of Mark's. It was a relaxing day with lunch at the waterfalls, a little cliff jumping into the freezing cold water and dinner at Shera and Basse's.
  

• We ended up the summer with fun filled weekend at Ironman Canada. Corey came up from Texas and we met up with Mandy and Fraser from Calgary for a weekend of camping and cheering. We arrived on Saturday and met up with everyone at the campground before going for a swim in the Lake and checking out all the pre-race festivities. Later that evening we met up with a few others from the NSTC and went for dinner. Sunday morning we woke up nice and early, stopped for coffee at Tim's before finding a great spot on the beach to cheer everyone on. The rest of the day was spent cheering/eating our way around the Ironman course. Everyone was having such a great race and it was so much fun to watch. A big congrats to everyone from the North Shore Tri Club - especially training buddies Steph, Shannon and Karen - you girls rock!

I have also officially registered for Ironman Canada 2010! Needless to say the next 365 days will be filled with lots of training as I work on getting stronger on the bike and run.... 180km of biking followed by a marathon is quite daunting! Better get to work...