June 10th 2007 - Leading the Ontario Championships!

Yup, that's right, I'm currently in the points lead of the Ontario Cup Mountain Bike Championships!

June 3rd 2007 - 2nd! at Mountain Bike Racing Ontario Cup #3

Boler Mountain in London, Ontario, Canada (roughly 3 hours west of Toronto) was a bit of a nemesis to me as in my youth I raced there and got destroyed by the repeated climbs up the Boler Mountain Ski Resort. Boler is a difficult track with plenty of climbing during each of the 8km laps. This time it couldn't beat me. I lead the race 90% of the first lap until I was passed during a crash and couldn't reel in the winner.

May 13th 2007 - 4th at Mountain Bike Racing Ontario Cup #2

This was a great race on a very fast track up in Albion Hills Conservation Area just north of Toronto. I managed to lead a bit of the first lap but started to fall back as my conditioning was in the mail, but not quite there yet. The only problem was that it felt so good to be 4th but absolutely terrible to be so close to the podium and not be able to grab a position on it.

April 29th 2007 - 13th at Mountain Bike Racing Ontario Cup #1

Ok, this was a bit better, nice temperatures, a complete 180 from 23 days previous when I was absolutely obliterated by the frigid conditions. I scored some points and after a front disc brake failure during the race I managed ok and finished up at a respectable position.

April 6th 2007 - DNF at Road Racing Ontario Cup #1

I've never been so cold in my entire life... My water bottle froze. It was -10 when I arrived, a supposed -25 or so when riding in the Peleton. I was defeated by the elements.

March 25th 2007 - First 1st Place of 2007, Plenty more on the way!

Today was the run for the Matzahs 5k and I ended up winning, was a great feeling especially so early in the season. I simply set out to improve my time from the week prior and did so by 1 min 34 seconds which made me happy, especially since I was running a cross country course which was very sandy and power robbing. Considering the conditions versus the previous week's tarmac course (in which none of your power is absorbed by the surface) I was stoked that I could hammer down and knock off time. I paced myself out and found a groove among the top contenders in the first lap of the course and ramped up the pace on the second lap (knocking off over a minute over my first lap's time) and started dropping people who had gone out too hard and couldn't hold up the pace, I put the pressure on by judging by their shadows on this one section where our shadows overlapped each other, I steadily made sure that they dropped lower and lower and eventually disappeared, who says you can't outrun a shadow?

March 20th 2007 - Got me a ride

I have signed on with the D'Ornellas Race Team www.dornellas.com for the 2007 season, they have supported me throughout the years and instilled a lot of confidence in my results and showing good sportsmanship. This year I hope to do them proud with some great results during the season competing in both road bike racing as well as mountain bike racing, participating in all 15 of the road and mountain bike Ontario Cup races, 1 Canada Cup race as well as 1 UCI World Cup which I'm incredibly stoked about. 2007 should be one of the best seasons yet! If there's time you'll hopefully see a decent result in one of the Subaru Olympic Duathlons this season.

March 19th 2007 - M'otional day

There have been a lot of rumblings around lately, I was invited to the Motion Sports Management www.motionsportsmanagement.com volunteer dinner to help support future running events throughout the U.S.A. This year and hopefully in years to come I will be a sponsor of these great events by way of design work, both for print and the web.

March 18th 2007 - Puking isn't just for amusement parks, it's for races too.

Just finished up two races, both the 5k and 12k races at the St.Petersburg Bay-Bay racing event. Overall it was a really cool, windy morning (head wind all the way! woohoo!) but it felt like I was back in Canada, feeling that crisp (a nice word for cold) morning air while running straight into the rising sun. You never really feel free until you do something like that, when that happens it feels like the shoes, socks, shorts, shirt and bib number is all you need in the world, it's a truly excellent feeling.

I had some fast paced tunes on my MP3 Player pumping during the races but I was pretty zoned and humming Sheryl Crow's Steve McQueen the whole way, unfortunately in the heightened state of intense competition your mind focuses on the athletic instead of the brain power so of course during the hour and 30 minutes I was racing I hummed the chorus about a thousand times, glad I like the song :)

Hating to say it, I'm not much of a runner, I started running in January and I have big heavy cycling legs, but good lungs and in my first running race ever I was able to muster a 4th place in the 5k with a time of 22 minutes, and a pace of 7:17 minutes per mile (13.6 km/h average speed).

The 5k race began at 7:45am, the 12k shortly after 8am, so of course me trying to bite off more than I can chew I ran a few blocks, jumped in a good samaritan's vehicle after politely hitch hiking for a few minutes and rush off to the start of the 12k. Now of course I missed the start by a mile, starting the race when the starting line people were packing up their gear ( I watched the pack trot down the course while I was running the opposite direction up to the start). Thankfully the crew of the race decided to lend a guy a hand (more good samaritans) and allowed me to start WAYYYY late, approximately 40 minutes behind the start.

A new surprise for me was starting a race dead last (I usually try to get up to a reasonable position and work my way up from there) and at least 4k behind the pack. It was extremely enlightening to start when the other racers were nowhere in sight. I started back down the course laughing with this giant goofy smile on my face absolutely having a blast with the fact that I was dead last. Interestingly enough this didn't last long, within the first 3k I had caught up to the cop car and fire truck that were pacing the slower people, I went passed them all screaming "Hammer down! WOO HOO!" and getting the same response. I was STOKED now, and my pace ramped up, I was literally running as fast as I could and slowly but surely I picked my way through the stragglers and up to the main pack finishing in 18th place with a time of 1 hour 8 minutes and a pace of 9 minutes per mile (10.6 km/h average speed).

It could have been faster if I didn't stop at the 10km mark to puke and then start running again. All in all a lovely day, I didn't even splash on my runners!