Winning the Cadence Kona Challenge vote is cool, but ...

Helping to Cure Cancer is WAY Better!!

I know I've been asking a lot lately - but this is far more important than the contest vote.

Please support the Ride for Roswell this Saturday. You can donate through my ride page or better yet, put on your helmet and come join the 5000+ riders who will be riding and raising money for Roswell Park Cancer Institute on the 28th.

My training and involvement in the contest means I'm getting a late start this year, but its so easy to donate and such a great cause and event and I have no doubt I'll reach (and hopefully surpass!) my goal of $1000 for the 3rd year in a row.

So please consider supporting me, but more importantly supporting the Ride for Roswell and all the vital cancer research and excellent patient care they provide at Roswell Park Cancer Institute!

Click here to visit my Ride Web page
Click here to make a donation

Mail Donations & Make Payable to :

Ride for Roswell, P.O. Box 644, Buffalo, NY 14240-0644

(Please note my name in the Memo area of your check)

Philadelphia Triathlon, Finally a Race Worthy of a Report

On my sixth attempt at a triathlon (4 sprints last year, 2nd Olympic this year) I finally, finally actually raced one. And I'll admit, having a decent race and performing at or at least close to your potential on that day in each of the three disciplines is a hell of lot more fun than totally 'sucking' on race day. I was really good at the latter, crying and hyperventilating on the swim and struggling to make it out of the water, spotting the field a good 20 minutes or more. The mental aspect of that alone was usually enough to dictate the remainder of my poor performances - it honestly was never 'fun' for me and I continually questioned why I kept trying...

The Philly Tri yesterday wasn't exactly 'the performance of a lifetime' but it was a breakthrough nonetheless and after having learned of my selection in the Cadence Kona Challenge just a few days prior it meant that such a race was badly needed if I were to have a chance at completing Lake Placid.

I'm not going to go into all the boring details, twists, turns and mind tricks of the race but there were a few items of note:

1) About halfway into the swim I consciously realized that I was actually SWIMMING, that I was doing it and I was happy - then, Buffalo folks will appreciate this, I honestly told myself "keep at it and don't get too confident, it's not over yet" and then reminded myself that the Buffalo Bills played really well in the first HALF of several Super Bowls and still managed to lose them all ... so I had to keep pushing all the way to the end. (Then I actually laughed at my own joke which resulted in my swallowing a fair amount of the Schuylkill River ... yuck! joke over - "remember the Bills!" ;-)

2) Hopefully the course photographers were looking the other way as I entered the bike dismount area, the only place where the fans were out in force yelling and cheering me on as I approached the bike finish - my adrenaline was pumping as I expertly unclipped my right foot, pushed back in the saddle, came to a dead stop then went to unclip my left foot and hop off, but instead my foot stayed attached and I pulled myself and my bike sprawling onto the ground in front of all of our adoring fans making for an unconventional, but not uncommon dismount! What can I say, it happens ...

3) By coincidence it turned out that the only other Cadence Challenge finalist to compete in Philly was James, the other winner who'll also be going to Lake Placid. It was really fun to see him for the first time on the run (he was WAY ahead of me and we passed on an out and back part of the course). And since Cadence was also a major sponsor of the race it was fun to see a lot of Cadence Coaches and Staff at the race and cheering us on - thanks Cadence!

4) After the race I had the extreme pleasure of just hanging out with James & Wendy and the newest and most handsome Pearson, Ben! ( I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of him, though in my defense, he did sleep the whole time - yes triathlon talk can be that boring, just ask Wendy! ;-)

5)Wearing the Cadence 'Kit' meant James and I were recognized by our fellow triathletes from the magazine and our blogs - it was tough having to fend off all the fans and paparazzi - but we handled them all without out incident. Well, uh, OK, so between us maybe there were a dozen or more folks that spoke with us or wished us well by name - but it was really cool talking to everyone and hearing from people who said they had voted for us, were reading our blogs and cheering us on - thanks you guys!!

Overall Rank 777 of 1892
Class Rank 12 of 56
Swim 00:34:37
Swim Rank 1472 of 1892
Trans1 00:03:32
Bike 01:10:05
Bike Rank 251 of 1892
MPH 21.2
Trans2 00:01:56
Run 00:56:18
Run Rank 1014 of 1892
Pace 00:09:04
SexRank 149 of 597
Final 02:46:30

So does that qualify as a 'race report?' If you don't have anything better to do, feel free to compare it to my race two weeks prior, the Keuka Lake Triathlon (same distance - my place was 195 and I show up on page 6).

Just Checking My Email ...

CADENCE KONA CHALLENGE WINNERS DECLARED BY TRIATHLETE READERS' POLL!Since the summer of 2007 it's been quite a trip! From narrowing down thousands of applicants to a pool of the Top 100, to an exciting and emotional weekend of testing, and finally to the selection of the 6 CKC semifinalists, it's been an incredible journey. The six semifinalists showed extreme perseverance and dedication to the sport of triathlon. Not only did they include us on their personal highs and lows as they challenged themselves psychologically and physiologically, they took us along as they trained and raced to become better athletes. All of us at Cadence have the greatest respect for the CKC finalists who took up the challenge, faced their insecurities, overcame their weaknesses, and built upon their strengths during these last seven months. In our opinion, you're all winners!

Now the final results are in and Triathlete magazine has notified us of the outcome. The two CKC athletes with the largest number of votes are James Pearson and Mary Lou Hoffman! CONGRATULATIONS JAMES AND MARY LOU!!!

Stay tuned for more information and to follow the training, trials, and tribulations of James and Mary Lou as they prepare for IronMan Lake Placid with the goal of qualifying for Kona!Lastly, we again encourage all of you to support the sponsors who helped make the Cadence Kona Challenge such an amazing event. Please support these brands: they are the best in the world at what they do, and, above all, they are passionate about triathlon and triathletes. The CKC sponsors are:

Triathlete Magazine
Zoot Sports, USA
Suunto
Cyfac/VeloEuropa
Zipp Speed Weaponry
IronMan
Sidi
LAS
Enervit

Cadence Cycling
4323 Main Street, Philadelphia, PA 19127
P. 215-508-4300
174 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013
P. 212-226-4400
1-8PRO-CADENCE

This email contains images, if you can't see them please add our address to your address book or click here to view this email online.

Blog Interrupted ...

So I’ve been trying to come up with a clever and redeeming way to give my first Triathlon Race Report of the season - the Keuka Lake Tri (way down on page 6, #195)– an intermediate distance event and my longest ever. The race didn’t go anything like I’d imagined and other than the heat we all suffered, I was having a hard time trying to justify and explain my poor showing. There was humor in my swim placement – putting me as 232nd but then only listing 225 swimmers – mathematically unlikely, but seemed about right to me (they didn’t list the DNF’s).

And after the swim things went from bad to worse, so I’ve been procrastinating. I didn’t want to make excuses for my poor showing and had a feeling my ‘career’ in Triathlon may be a short one. It was discouraging to me that after 9 months of diligent training and coaching I’d faired little better overall than my very first tri, the sprint distance in this same event, exactly one year ago.

So cue the coach – my Cadence Coach, Ryan Oelkers, had a different perspective on my race and managed to twist it around enough until some positive things started squeezing out – including having dealt with the heat and conquered the mental struggle of a poor race, but primarily he pointed to some realistic expectations of such a novice swimmer … so thanks for that Ryan.

Between his evaluation and pep talk, the great feedback & support I got from everyone at Cadence Philadelphia and then Kevin McKinnon’s Muskoka Tri Camp, and all the continuous encouragement and enthusiasm I get from everyone who knows about this contest in my everyday life; folks at my gym (the Buffalo Athletic Club), the Buffalo Tri club, the people at my local Weight Watchers meetings, my “Bruce” friends at E Street Canada, my cycling club (Niagara Frontier Bicycle Club) even my local bike shop (Handlebars) – and of course all my friends, family and coworkers (both past and present), I decided, with less than a week left in the contest, I had to get the word out and ask people to send in my name for the contest finale, Ironman Lake Placid.

Don’t get me wrong; I seriously considered sending out an email asking them all to vote for anyone BUT ME! But at the eleventh hour I guess I had just enough confidence from everyone to think I just maybe, just might be able to finish an Ironman event. And then ultimately decided, whether I knew I could finish or not, it would be way too chickenshit to have gone through all this and then not even try to be the one selected. And soliciting some votes surely didn’t mean I would be one of the ones selected.

So I sent out an email to about 50 friends and family 5 days before the deadline asking people to vote for me … I don’t know what exactly happened out there in cyberland – but you all have a huge hand in changing this girls life – pushing me so far out of any ‘comfort zone’ that I don’t even know if I still have one anymore – putting me in a position to do the improbable and you’ve helped me believe anything is possible … ‘Thank You’ doesn’t even begin to express my gratitude ….

O Canada!

So much to say, so little time … I’ve been terribly negligent in my blogging and I apologize. I think initially, after the marathon it was because I didn’t really have much to say – everything seemed a little stalled and I was generally feeling lukewarm about the whole contest and my ability to complete an Ironman.

And then the vote was announced and, to be honest, with the pain and difficulty of the marathon still fresh on my mind there was more than a small part of me that questioned whether or not I even wanted to try to be voted into Lake Placid – it’s so soon, and an Ironman is so far – I found myself wondering how I even got myself into this in the first place, and if I really had it in me to do 140.6

Then things changed – I went to an awesome Triathlon camp up in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada. I found out about it through the Subaru Race series (I’ve participated in a few of the tri’s & du’s over the past few years and really enjoyed them all). I’ve lived most of my life 30 minutes from ‘the bridge,’ I grew up with Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada as the highlight of our household television week and spent 20 years of summer family vacations in Bobcaygeon, part of ‘cottage country’ a few hours northeast of Toronto, I’m a fan of Canadian music and any excuse will do to head north for a show and come Springsteen tour time I hang with the greatest, luckiest group of Bruce fans, E Street Canada. Is it possible, that through osmosis, or CTV and CHUM-FM and shows at Massey Hall that I’ve become part Canadian?

Ok, so I think you get the picture that I don’t need to be bribed to spend time north of the border. And Kevin MacKinnon’s Mackatak Tri Camp at the Clyffehouse in Muskoka was no exception. Still dragging from the marathon I felt I needed to refocus and could use all the help I could get with this Triathlon thing. The Memorial Day Tri camp, except in Canada it was just another weekend :-), was just what I needed (uh, minus the black flies!!) The coaches, Kevin, Jay & Greg were great! Helpful and encouraging and very on point with their comments and evaluations (except I'm still waiting on some pictures Jay :-).

Along with the great coaches it was so fun to meet and train and hang with ‘my fellow Canadians.' ;-) Everyday folk who also happened to be great athletes; Ironmen, Ironwomen and marathoners galore! So impressive and positive and fun to be around. And a special thanks to my ‘cottage mates’ Mary, Mary, Gail & Jackie for being so inspiring and encouraging (I do believe this fall’s Muskoka 70.3 is now in my future too – see you there! ;-)

Since I’ve been back when asked about the camp, I’ve told everyone exactly that, but also noted that, for me personally, it was a big confidence builder. Everyone, other than myself, seemed to think I had an Ironman in me, and similar to the contest weekend at Cadence, by the time I left the camp I had joined in the chorus.

But as they say, a journey of a thousand miles, or perhaps more appropriately, 140.6 miles, starts with a single step – and that first step is your vote, so send your e-mail to triathletemagcontest@gmail.com with my name in the subject or text and then let’s see how far we've come!!

Matchbox Twenty - How Far We've Come (video)