VIRTUAL OLYMPIC SPOT!

Heck yea I now own a third spot for Canada for the Olympics...although it does not mean squat right now I still think that it is cool!  I moved up in the Olympic Rankings after these last couple races to be ranked 52nd.  Only 8 countries can have three athletes represent their countries next year in Beijing...and I have now earned Canada that last spot to have three athletes.  We are fighting with a couple other countries to keep that 8th and final spot to send a full mens team.  This next year is going to be tough to keep it but the Canadian Men are doing good right now.  You can check out the Olympic Simulation here.

A quick recap of the last couple races:

Des Moines World Cup - Lisa made her way to meet me in Des Moines for the weekend to watch my race and be my support crew...it was great to have her there with me!  Other than that Des Moines sucked!  The city is dead on the weekend as everyone lives in the suburbs (Joel calls it Urban Rot).  It was hot, hot, hot!  I never really felt that good right from the start.  The swim I was able to hang in but my turnover was getting really slow on the second lap.  The bike was tough and the run was tougher...pretty brutal!  Not pretty.  But then again a third of the field dropped out so but I ended up finishing.  The run felt like a jog...hard to keep moving forward.  I felt like I was melting out there!

Edmonton World Cup - After Des Moines I flew the next day to Edmonton and stayed at Paul Tichelaars condo for the week.  He let me have the whole place to myself and he stayed at his girlfriends place a couple blocks away.  Over the next couple days my recovery seemed to be taking forever.  I was feeling really tired all the time and my workouts were sucking.  But by Friday I was able to have a good treadmill run which gave me hope for the weekend!  In this race I felt a lot more sharp then last.  The air and water were pretty chilly so it took me a while to get the feel for the water but I kept strong for both laps.  Hopped on the bike and made it to the front pretty quickly and a group of about 18 formed and worked pretty good for the remainder of the bike putting 2 minutes on the chase pack.  I ran the first loop of three with a group of runners that were much faster than me.  I just wanted to last one lap with them and see what happens from there.  I got dropped from them after that first lap and suffered on the second lap from the fast pace of the first.  By the third lap I had recovered a bit and was able to finish strong in 13th place.  I was happy with my performance on the day.

So far I have done 7 out of the first 8 World Cups this year.  I knew coming into this year that I would be doing quite a bit of racing to get as many points as I can.  Last year my best placing at a World Cup was 21st.  So far this year I have four top 20 results with one of them being in the top 10!  I am really pleased with how this year has panned out for me.  BUT there is still lots of work to do to get ready for the next block of races.  BRING IT ON COACH!