April 21^st, 2000

Things weren’t looking good for Good Friday. Despite the ‘late’ Easter weekend, Mother Nature was still up to her old tricks. A rainy week turned to a deluge with high winds during Thursday night. Keith called me wondering if it was possible that we could cancel.

I doubted that this violent weather could continue for another eight hours. Friday morning came soon enough. Sandy and I crammed the last stuff into the full-size van borrowed from my work (Thanks, KOSKI GLASS) and we headed toward our Guelph race site. The morning was calm and wet, foggy with light drizzle, a HUGE improvement over last night.

Our BIG TENT arrived and was erected on the same spot as on the last ten Good Fridays. (Thanks, Guelph Products for the Registration and parking site!) George Garrett and Frank Morrow and Fred Pepper swept the corners, put up signage and barricades. George had come with his truck packed full of tables, chairs and other rented equipment for the race. Sandy and Judy Morrow and Albert Penrose got the stuff set up for Registration once we’d set up and dried off the tables and chairs. Randy Brown brought the two large urns of coffee and ten dozen donuts. This stuff was free to race volunteers and for sale to others. Lacking a volunteer to ‘run’ the ‘concession stand’, the ‘honour system’ was used.

Don Sloan and Keith Oliver were kept busy; Keith looked after the finances of the race. Randy helped Chris Kiriakopoulos set up the FINISH LINE platforms, P.A. system and such. Chris provided a power generator which was essential.

The first race of the day, a 9:00 a.m. start for Juniors and Veteran B, C, D got underway a few minutes late. A crash midway through spoiled the day for a few racers. Scheduling was tight. One race would finish and within minutes the next group of racers were called to the line, after which we scrambled through evidence to determine the finishing order of the previous race. We had about six ‘pickers’ for each race, as well as Brad Day and Wayne Langton (commissaires). Big Joe DeMaeyer was the third commissaire; he rode in a following car for each race. I felt that Brad Day did an outstanding job as chief commissaire. Brad is friendly, dedicated and takes on responsibility beyond expectation.

Randy’s video camera and T.V. was the second source of ‘evidence’ to determine the finishing order. This was helpful. Randy is very good with the videocam. We found it difficult to discern numbers, though. Brad Day’s video camera seemed to provide better resolution. Between the three aforementioned sources and some rider feedback we were able to get finishing orders.

The weather held up for the day; foggy, overcast, drizzle at times; but . . . the riders came out! 190 racers – about the same as last year; this was a big relief.

The riders seemed happy to get our custom club medals as prizes; we also gave away two sets of hubs donated by George Garrett and a floor pump donated by "SPOKES ‘N’ SLOPES" bike shop. No monetary prizes were given out, but with a modest $16.00 entry fee, I heard no complaints. The entry fee the week previous was $35.00.

The road closure of Laird Rd. at Southgate seemed to work well, definitely better than previous years. The City of Guelph Traffic Department had come up with this idea, diverting eastbound traffic southward on Southgate Drive to Clair Road, and diverting westbound traffic along Clair where is meets Laird. We still had to allow local access to traffic.

Marshaling was shored up be Frank Morrow and Tina Mayberry who assisted the 10 people from the Community Communications group, who did a good job, and attended to several crash victims as well.

Don and Keith handled most of the driving; joined by Martin Reid, Roman Kleban and Tim Edwards who drove as well. George Garrett was a huge help before and after the race and was present at the finish line to do ‘lap cards’.

Unlike 1999, there wasn’t much of a police presence at our race.

This year we did have some press coverage. CKCO television provided a segment on their Friday night news with several interviews and footage of racing. The  Guelph Mercury’s Ken Doran wrote an excellent article on the race, which appeared in the Saturday edition, front Sport page.

After being apprehensive about holding the race in   Guelph for 2000, I now feel more confident that the race can be successful here again; the venue is well known to racers and if they’ll come out in this iffy weather, we should do even better on a good day. We had bigger (by far) fields of Women and Junior riders than last year, which bodes well for the future. We will need to increase entry fees next year.

A BIG THANK YOU GOES OUT TO ALL THE GOOD FRIDAY RACE VOLUNTEERS! WE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU!

Randy Brown, George Garrett, Chris Komar, Don Sloan, Keith Oliver, Albert Penrose, Judy Morrow, Frank Morrow, Roman Kleban, Martin Reid, Tim Edwards, Sandy Cheskey, Rob Cheskey

by Natasha Yaremczuk

1999 Canadian Junior Elite Triathlon & Duathlon Champion

1999 Vice-Junior Elite Duathlon World Champion

This year the Triathlon World Championships are to be held at the end of April in Perth, Australia. I wanted to escape to a warm place to prepare for the competition, so I went to Florida. From the Beginning of January to the end of March I live in Boca Raton, Florida, which is north of Fort Lauderdale. The weather was great for training! South Florida is having a very dry winter and a very warm one too! The temperature was in the 70’s and 80’s and sunny. Typical Florida weather!

When I first arrived I got the opportunity to race in the last two races of an open water Ocean Mile Swim Series. Of course this was good practice for triathlon, since all the swims are held in lakes, oceans etc. The first swim I did was at Delray Beach, a few kilometers from my dwelling. I hadn’t been in the ocean yet and little did I know it was full of jellyfish! At the end of the race everyone was given vinegar patches to help ease their stings. After a solid week of training at the pool, I managed to knock 30 seconds off my PB at the second race, despite an enormous surf. I would have to say one of the highlights of the training camp was the swimming outdoors. While swimming has been my major focus since the fall, the sunshine makes the water more enjoyable!

The cycling on the other hand wasn’t the greatest. The traffic in South Florida is extremely busy no matter what time you ride, morning, noon or night. I spent most of the time riding along the ocean, either north or south. As cycling wasn’t my big focus, I wasn’t too concerned with the terrain. I must say though, after three months of pancake flat riding, I was looking forward to going home. Toward the end of my stay I hooked up with a fast cycling group, and was able to work on my drafting. One neat thing about training in South Florida early in the morning is seeing so many active people, especially cyclists and runners exercising.

I have told you about my swimming and cycling, so now comes the running. Just like cycling, there are plenty of different groups that meet on certain days to train. Since I was more focused on running, my schedule was very individual and I had specific workouts to prepare me for World’s. I spent a lot of time on the track at the Florida Atlantic University, which is only a hop, skip and jump away from where I was staying. Most weekends there is a running race somewhere in South Florida within driving distance and a lot of people always seem to come out to these. In Coral Springs, south of Boca Raton there was a Duathlon Series called ‘In It To Finish". It consisted of five races throughout the winter of 3km Run/24km Bike/3km Run. I raced three of the races and gave the men a run for their money!

At the end of March, my South Florida training camp was coming to an end. On the journey back to Canada, I stopped in Alabama to race ‘Powerman Alabama’. This is a big duathlon, consisting of 10km Run/60km Bike/5km Run, that marks the start of the Americans’ race season. I used this as a stepping-stone for Australia and placed 6^th among the Pro women.

As I write this, with only a few weeks to go until the 2000 World Triathlon Championships in Perth, Australia, I look forward to testing myself against the best juniors in the world.

Training ‘criterium style’ racing began May 2^nd at the HIGH POINT Industrial park in Milton, east off Hwy.25, ½ km north of Hwy.410. We had seven racers, a lap-card-minder and three spectators!

Tuesday, May 2^nd,2000 (first H.C.C. ‘crit’ of 2000)

1^st Jeff Sharafbayani

2^nd Mark Foggin

3^rd Brad King

4^th Dave Hounsome

5^th Bob Davy

DNF Dan Pozzobon (calf cramp)

DNF Taras Kleban (flat tire)

Rob Cheskey minded the lap cards assisted by Ian Fisher and his young daughters, Eilidh and Aislinn.

Our first 15K T.T. event of 2000 was greeted with few riders (Randy, Fred, Martin and Frank) who braved a windy evening. The riders concurred that this course (Sheffield Road) is not in good enough condition for our time trials this year. The road surface, a coarse tar and gravel to start with, has been damaged by snowplows over the winter, giving it a ‘washboard’ effect.

For the rest of 2000, we will use the WHITE SWAN ROAD course for our Thursday 15km time trials. White Swan Road runs south off Hwy.53, west of Alberton and east of Langford (consult road map). The Thursday Time Trials on July 20^th and August 24^th will be at EMPIRE CORNERS

The B.A.R. 40K R.R., held Saturday, May 6^th, 2000 (44K)

1^st Randy Brown 1:15:00

2^nd Fred Pepper S.T.

3^rd Brad King at 1:00

 This AYR course is new for our club 40K R.R. and proved challenging and safe. Unfortunately, we had a very poor turnout.

The first event was held Wednesday, May 3^rd, hosted by Oakville Cycling Club on the Zimmerman course. We had a good turnout of over 30 riders including several of us from H.C.C. A 7:15 p.m. start meant shortening the race to three laps to finish before sunset.

The ‘slow’ group had a four minute headstart on the ‘second’ group who had two minutes on the ‘fast’ group. Randy, Desi and I raced for H.C.C. in the ‘fast’ group. Paul Rego from O.C.C. set a blistering pace; we caught the ‘second’ group during the second lap. Paul got away to chase down the ‘slow’ leaders.

Results are not available at this time.