“Don’t forget to smile and wave at your friends!”

October 1, 2006 Lake Tahoe, NV
5th place M30-34

Results: click here for results
Photos: click here for photos
News: click here for news

After an awesome spring race season, with age group wins at Escape from Alcatraz, Xterra Granite Bay and Xterra Western Regional Championship, a 3rd place at Sea Otter mtb singlespeed and a 2nd place (singlespeed) at the Cascade Cream Puff, I took a much needed break for 3 months- June through August. I maintained a base level of fitness, swimming and running about once a week, and cycling up to twice a week.

I was planning to allow myself enough time to get ready for Nationals and Worlds, but somehow time and motivation got away from me. I ramped up my training, but not quite early enough to be ready for Tahoe. Knowing this, I tried to set my expectations low, but found myself still hoping for a solid finish. My best result was 3rd in 2003, and I’ve been 4th or 5th 3 times. I couldn’t help but think of how much I wanted first place, and the much-elusive National Champion jersey!

This race is one of my favorites. It’s practically in my backyard, so I definitely have a home-court advantage, plus a huge cheering section! It’s also fun since we host a few friends, making it a social weekend as well: Rich Blanco (Sycip Cycles), Danelle Kabush (Timex) and Adam Feltz (SRAM). We held a dinner at our house on Friday night, and 35 people showed up, including several friends from across the country in town for the race, and another Timex teammate Erin Ford, and her husband Dave.

The weather was perfect for race day, unfortunately no sign of the foul weather we had last year, where I excel. The water was calm and cold (60 degrees or so), and the air temp was cold in the morning but warmed up to about 65 degrees. The swim seemed rougher than usual- I found myself caught between two converging packs- one to my left and one to my right. I thought of my friend Kurt Oeler, a professional swimmer who after experiencing a few triathlons, sent me this note:

“Why you triathletes are so obsessed with being ‘rough and tumble’ at the beginning of open water is beyond me. Swim races generally aren’t like that; swimmers know that it’s better to draft behind people, not climb over them.”

I couldn’t agree more, but found myself “fighting” more than once, which frustrates me, as it’s such a colossal waste of energy. I came out of the water in about the same place as normal, but a little more tired than typical, partly due to the physicality, but more a simple factor of my lower fitness level, which I’d pay for soon!

As I headed out on the bike, I enjoyed a nice pull by my local friend Justin Thomas (Haverty Cycles/Saucony) to the bottom of the climb, where I bid him good luck as he climbed ahead up the hill ahead of me at a pace I couldn’t maintain. I rode strong for about the first half of the hour long climb before I ran out of fitness. When I reached the second half, I found that I couldn’t maintain the pace, and had to slow down to avoid popping. I was passed by 3 racers in my age group before reaching the top of the descent, which has never happened before, especially on this course! I was able to catch back up with to one right before transition, but he immediately passed me again as we began the run.

I suffered through one lap on the run, then decided to focus on having a good time and smiled and waved at the supporters along the course. I turned my grimace into a smile- it didn’t slow me down at all- and plugged away to the finish. One more competitor passed me during the run, so I ended up in 5th place in my age group. I’m not overjoyed with the finish, but not disappointed since it matches my preparation, and after all, it IS the national championship!

Next up, I’m busy preparing for the World Championship race in Maui on October 29th.

One of the highlights of the race was being featured on the national ad featured in Triathlete Magazine, City Sports, and other local publications.

Yesterday morning at 7:07 local Hawaii time, I was awakened by the sound of glass breaking, pictures falling off the walls, lamps crashing to the floor and the fear that our building had just been hit by a bomb.

In my confused state, I called my wife, Brooke, who is on the mainland and started to explain to her what had just happened to me and she said “Get out of there, it sounds like an earthquake.” I’m not sure why my first instinct wasn’t to get out of there as fast as I could and was pretty calm and collected considering now what we had all just lived through.

Just as I was finishing my call with Brooke, an aftershock hit and I finally decided it was ready to high tail it out of the condo. As I left my condo, all of my fellow team was standing outside already and was yelling at me to get out of the building.

It is hard to explain my thought process but through the entire ordeal, I never felt scared or threatened until the hotel workers next door was yelling at people to go to higher ground for fear that a Tsunami could strike at any time. It’s amazing how fast a natural disaster hits you and you have no time to react.

My condo was trashed. Every picture on the walls either fell down or was hanging crooked, all of the kitchen cupboards opened up and spit out wine glasses, coffee mugs, bowls and an entire spice cabinet. Broken glass was in the living room 12 feet away from the kitchen, in the bathroom and down the garbage disposal.

Since the power was out over the entire island of Hawaii, it was difficult to find food anywhere in town and all of the supermarkets suffered major damage and were closed. Cell phones were not even working. It’s at that time when you go into survival mode and reality sets in and it’s very frightening.

I am very thankful that we are all safe here and appreciate life that much more knowing that it can be taken from you at any time. Thanks to everyone who called or emailed yesterday concerned about our safety.

With a 2-hour commute into and out of New York city during the workweek, I’ve had to add a little creativity into my schedule in order to try to fit some swimming in. So, on Monday mornings, when my alarm goes off at 4am, I take something additional with me on the metro-north train, rollerblades.

I’ve found the need to add the rollerblades in order to save time, while still getting a decent aerobic workout as part of my commute. The train leaves my station at 4:40am and usually gets to 125th street in New York around 5:35am. I then exit the train with my rollerblades on and make a comical decent down the stairs to the streets below.

Then it’s about 15 blocks of interesting early morning activity until I enter Central Park. Once in the park, it’s a very enjoyable skate down to Columbus Circle, where there is an Equinox, that has a 25 yard pool. I’m usually there around 6am and then can get a quick 30-40 minutes of swimming in. It’s not the ideal workout, but I make it part of my early week schedule and I’m able to still be at my desk by 7:15am.

Cheers,

Chris

One of the greatest things about living in Colorado, is that almost no matter what type of activity you do in the mountains, you almost always walk away with a feeling of inspiration. The combination of altitude, spectacular scenery with whatever sport you are doing will hopefully leave you with good memories and probably in better shape than when you started.

On this particular day over Labor Day weekend, my friend and I were not exactly sure what to expect on our ride to the mountains, but we were ready for an adventure.

Greg Krause and I have been training together on an off for a few years now. As a professional triathlete, new dad, and strong cyclist, I try to train with him on the bike as much as I can. I feel that training with fast people is a great way for me to get better, not to mention, passes the time.

The plan was to ride from our house in the Highlands Ranch/Littleton, CO area northwest through the mountains and end in Winter Park. We were guessing it would take us around 8 hours so we planned to leave very early Sunday morning. After a night of minimal sleep, my alarm went off at 3:30AM and I was out the door half-hour later. Yes, I began riding at 4AM, in the dark.

Since there is a large state park in-between where Greg and I live, we decided to each leave our houses at 4 and meet in the park at an overlook at 4:15. So here I am with my head and tail lights in place on my Quintana Roo Seduza descending into Chatfield Park, tugging at my brakes most of the way because I can barely see what’s in front of me.

Soon enough, I got into the park and to the overlook where I see another biker, with a stylin’ reflector jacket on, climbing up the hill. “Greg, is that you?” I said. “Yup,” he said “Are you ready?” We were on our way.

I have to admit, it was a spectacular morning for a ride. No clouds, no wind, and when ever I would look up into the sky, the stars just seemed to go on forever. We started out going north on the C-470 trail parallel to the highway & foothills so we would have a little more light from the street lights.

I was a little apprehensive going on the roads because the night before I had heard on the news that the most dangerous time to be out at night was between 3-5AM because of drunk drivers. Here we were at 4 AM on our bikes on a Sunday morning, nice and safe…ya right. I’m sure our wives were worried.

At around 5:30, we got through Morrison and headed up right by Red Rocks Amphitheatre, one of the more famous outdoor theatres in the nation. Right after we passed through Morrison, we descended into Golden, and it was about then that we were 2 hours into our ride and the sun was barely coming up. We were soon on Indiana Street headed towards Boulder, where we had a view of the entire city of Denver, all lit up by a luminous peach color of the sun.

It was quite incredible. We chatted about how lucky we were to see things like this from our bikes and gabbed a little bit about I’m looking forward to being a father. He was giving me some advice about how to train and be a dad, but I know it’ll be a little different for me as my wife is expecting twins.

It was a nice stretch of road into Boulder and the sun was warming us up enough to take off our jackets & arm warmers. After three hours of riding, we finally rode through Boulder and headed up route 36 towards Lyons, one of the final towns before Estes Park. We traded off drafting a little and before we knew it 4 hours had passed and we arrived in Lyons at around 8AM.

As most of our ride until now was climbing, it was in Lyons when the “real” climbing began. Lyons lies at an elevation of 5,362 feet. We stopped at a gas station to fuel up and began the long steady climb to Estes. We had a nice talk along the way, talking about races, the weather, how his daughter Taylor is coming along, and what I have to expect. It was a really nice time.

5 ½ hours soon passed and we arrived into Estes Park, elevation 7,522 feet. Unfortunately the only wildlife we saw up to this point were a few cows grazing in a pasture, but we were hoping to see the famed Elk that are commonly seen all over Estes Park, but no such luck.

By now we were at hour 6 and headed out of Estes Park and into the highlight of our trip, Rocky Mountain National Park. This was the main reason I wanted to do this ride. There is a famous road in the park that connects Estes Park to Grand Lake named Trail Ridge Road and climbs to over 12,000 feet.

I had heard that this road was a great road to drive, but even better to ride over, and it certainly did not disappoint! It was a pricey $10 per person to get into the park, and that was just on a bike! It was worth it though. The park is very untouched. It allows all that drive, ride, or hike through it truly see the beauty that Colorado has to offer.

As we looked at our Timex Bodylink watches we figured that getting to Winter Park was going to take a lot longer than 8 hours. Meanwhile, Nikki, my pregnant wife, was supposed to meet us there and pick us up at 12:30. Well, let’s just say that didn’t exactly happen.

On Trail Ridge Road there was no cell phone service, so we just began our climb and I planned to call Nikki in Grand Lake. About 20 minutes in, I got a flat, which was actually OK because we hadn’t really stopped all day. As I changed my flat, I also realized that I only brought 650cc tubes, and not any 700’s. Luckily, Greg had a patch kit and I got it changed. While I was changing it, he introduced me to “fruit leather” which was kind of a modern day fruit roll-up. It certainly hit the spot.

It was when we resumed our climb that I started to feel the fatigue in my legs. I was happy it was at that time because I was getting tired. The day before I had ridden 100 miles and ran for 1 hour in my preparation for Ironman. We had tourists from all over in their cars cheering us on and even taking pictures of us out their windows, as it is not very common that people ride their bikes on this particular road.

Our goal on this climb was to get to the summit on the road which capped off at 12,183 feet. We passed tree line and were pushing each other pretty hard. There were many switchbacks so after each one I as thinking we were close, but they kept going on forever. Finally, we saw the top and the visitors center.

We pushed a little harder and cruised into the visitors center where there were wall-to-wall people eating doughnuts, chips, pretzels, and candy bars. I was good with PowerBars and the fruit leather, while Greg got a $4 hot chocolate which tasted so good! After our break, we got in some of the most awesome views of the park and Longs Peak, and started our decent into Grand Lake.

It was a great 20 min coast downhill and before we knew it we arrived into Grand Lake. I called Nikki at 1:30 and told her to meet us in Grand Lake instead of Winter Park. She was worried, but bless her heart to drive all the way up there to met us. We saw her dive up and Greg and I called it a day! Total mileage: 136 and over 10,000 ft. of climbing.

We both had our running shoes in the car, but even though we were late to meet Nikki, I had to see if she would care if we went on a brick run. Well, let’s just say that 9 hours was enough that day and we soon headed back to Denver with our legs tired, stomachs empty, but with memories of a great Colorado biking adventure!

Hi All,

As I prepare for my 8th Ironman, I have chosen to race the Ironman Florida on November 4, 2006. This will be my second Ironman of 2006, as I was in Tempe Arizona in April for a very enjoyable race in the desert.

Both of these events have proven to be a challenge, as I live in Canada and training can be, well, “a little chilly” at times for these events that are on the fringe of our summer. After giving it some thought, I guess that is why I chose Ironman Florida.

Where I live it is quite mountainous, so finding any prolonged time where I stay aero to simulate the Florida bike course is difficult and all part of the challenge. Running is the same given the rolling terrain of the east coast of Vancouver Island.

I have spent the summer doing a couple a series of races from sprint to 1/2 Ironman and just having a great time. The last couple months, my coach & I have been working on training specifics to make my race in Florida a great experience. We have a bit of a new plan for the race and nutrition which I am excited about and know it will spell success.

This is all happening with many of the hockey leagues already starting in Canada, and Thursday marks the start of the National Hockey League schedule. With that said I am am off for a long run before settling in to my last big week of training before the taper.

Oh did I mention that the night I fly into Tampa on my way to Panama City I have tickets to the Tampa Bay Lighting vs San Jose Sharks hockey game. I guess I truly am Canadian :)

See you in Florida (I can hardly wait)!

Bruce “IronCanuck” Bauman