Spring Classic Duathlon

3 VO2 Athletes kicked off their multisport season and nearly swept the podium at the Spring Classic Duathlon in Portland Oregon last weekend. Gerry Marvin took the overall win while Charles Rivers and Graeme Roche took 3rd and 4th respectively. A strong showing and great start to the 2011 race season!

Ironman Hawaii

Here's my race report from my first Hawaii Ironman experience. It was a rough day out there, but an amazing experience. Can't wait to get back there!

Being my first trip to the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, the whole week was really an amazing experience. There’s so much energy and tension circling Kona leading up to the race and not only do you run across pro triathletes just hanging out doing their daily routine, but everyone else in the town also just looks uber fit and they’re out strutting their stuff all week. I could easily double the length of this race report talking about the leadup to the race itself, but I’ll avoid the temptation.

Kirkland Triathlon

Ethan and Erin take wins at the Kirkland Triathlon! Zach also raced with a strong 2nd in his AG in only his second triathlon.

Charles at Pacific Grove

Last weekend saw Charles racing Pacific Grove taking 7th overall (2nd AG) in a time of 2:06:12. Check out his race report below:

Pacific Grove Triathlon was a huge focus race for me this year. Going into the weekend I was fit and looking to finish top 3 overall. I knew there would be many strong competitors and it was going to take a perfect race to get me up there.

Ironman Canada

IMC 2010 Race report

Going into this race was a little bit bitter sweet for me. The season had been really good to me with some great results early on and training was going well. However, the family had been thru some rough times in the month of August as two of my grandparents passed away; Frank Marvin early in the month and Shirley Frederickson on the Tuesday of race week. It was a little difficult to reconcile the intense focus I’ve had for nearly a year on my training and this one event with the emotions and struggles of the loss. Each had been so supportive of my goals and focus on the sport that I knew in their memory laid the strength I needed to succeed, so I made myself some reminders of why I was out there to carry me (and them) thru the day.

Erin's Lake Stevens Race Report

Better late than never, here's Erin's race report from her first half Ironman at Lake Stevens 8/15/2010:

Pre-Race: I’m running late!! I arrived at the venue at 6:05am, about half an hour after I wanted to be there and 15 minutes before transitioned closed. Thankfully I was able to organize myself in enough time to get myself set up and ready to race. I was only able to squeeze in a 5 minute jog as a warm up, but I think my nerves/excitement at this being my first half iron man had me warm enough so in the end it didn’t matter.

Charles' Lake Stevens 70.3 Race Report

I want to say that I think it is some sort of cruel joke that every half-iron (four different races) I've done this year had temps rising into the 90s. Surely Lake Stevens would have been cooler.. right?.... um, no way.

Swim:
Getting started I wanted to make the lead pack on the swim, unfortunately I was boxed in by some slower swimmers who were eager to be up front at the start. I gapped the group by swimming on the inside of the buoy line and surged hard to catch the leaders. I was a little hesitant to push too hard this early in the race, so I didn't quite catch them, but was still close enough to see bubbles in the water. By the turn buoy they were still only about 10 meters up and I could see there were about 4 or 5 of them. Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to sight anything in the sun and I just couldn't close the gap as they slowly swam away from me. I was feeling very solid and rhythmic out there (I've become very comfortable in my TYR Hurricane!), but because I was alone practically the whole time I was a bit slower than I expected out of the water at 28:30 and in 5th place.