Category — race reports

This past Saturday Pat “Malavi” Malaviarachchi ran the 5 Peaks Enduro course at Burnaby Mountain. This 9.8km course offers 614 meter of elevation gain on trails and single track. Pat a great race placing in the top 20 overall.

We congratulate everyone who participated in the 2011 Oliver Half Iron triathlon. The SAA had a very large contingent on what turned out to be a very hot and challenging day.

Racing at Oliver were Daniel Buschert, Leslie Burgess, Colleen Cunningham, Andrew Do, Jan and Courtney Frail, Barb Hinds, Dave Holder, Michelle Horstmann, Jennifer Kay, Michelle LaPorte, Mary Lovelace, Dan McLaren, Al Pearse, Derek Shimozawa, Les Pereira, Barton Pietras, Fay and Marinus Waterberg.

Special congratulations go Michelle Horstmann for winning her age group; and to Dan, Courtney, and Jennifer for completing their first Half Irons. I hope I didn’t miss anyone. And finally a big thanks to everyone who came out to cheer on our people. Well done everyone!

This weekend we had SAA members participating in several different events in varied locations.

“El Presidente” Stephen Ptucha was competing in the Shawnigan Lake Half Iron, while the “First Lady” Susan Gelinas was also there competing in the Olympic distance, finishing third in her age group. Our own Marathon Maniac Tracy Marshall was out in Abbotsford competing in the Run For Water Marathon. And finally our world traveler Benji Chu finished the Comrades Marathon in Durbin South Africa.

Well done everyone!

Congratulations go out to George Tiller for completing Ironman Lanzarote. This IM course is e one of the hardest on the circuit. Well done George! We look forward to hearing all about the event.

I’d like to thank Jim Fox for all the work he did during his term as VP, especially tracking and reporting the race results of SAA members. Jim put in a lot of work gathering all the data, and I know it was very much appreciated by all members.
 
As we move into a new club year I’d like to remind everyone to e-mail me in advance the details of the events you are doing. Not only will this help us recognize your efforts, but occasionally there are discounts or other benefits that we can get if we register as a group. And if you prefer to not have an event result posted, just e-mail me that info too.
 
Marinus
vicepresident@thesaa.ca

Well it was a beautiful day. A bit chilly to start the day, but, it warmed up and no rain or snow.  So, it was near perfect weather for a race.

Tracy Marshall started the day with the Richmond River Run. This is a fast and flat run that uses mostly the dyke from #3 Road and includes around beautiful Lulu Island and Sea Island. Only 12 people did the race, but, it was a beautiful day and Tracy had a “fabulous” time and enjoyed the race. Great job Tracy.

Meanwhile, out at UBC the SAA had a large contingency for the UBC Triathlon. Back to it’s normal March schedule after having to move it to May last year due to the Olympics. It’s not known for the best weather, but, at least there was no rain or snow.

And what a great set of results today at UBC.  For the Olympic distance the SAA had 7 people competing: Leslie Burgess, Jimmy Chong, Barb Hinds (2nd in her age category), Fay Waterberg (2nd in her age category and a PB), Marinus Waterberg (3rd in his age category), and both Dan McLaren +  Al Pearse did their first Olympic distance triathlon – and that qualifies as PB’s for them. In the Sprint…  Quanny Van  PB’d this race by almost 9 minutes) and in the Short… Erin O’Connor who came in 2nd in her age category.  Great job everyone.

And, in Sydney, BC for the Synergy Health Management, Bazan Bay 5k, Brandon Jones ran this and PB’d it by about 36 seconds.  This is the 4th race in the Timex Road Race series – could Brandon be doing them all?  Great job Brandon… a 5 km in under 17 minutes.

Congratulations to everyone who raced this weekend.

On Saturday, at the Whistler Olympic Park, Barton Pietras did a cross country ski race called Sigge’s P’ayakenstut. The race has 3 different distances and Barton did the 15 km skate race and he came in 1st in his age category with a 1:04:45 (3 1/2 minutes ahead of the next person in his group). Great job Barton and Congratulations.

It was a cold, but clear morning for a race.

In Fort Langley, for the Historic Half Marathon and 10K. Erin O’Connor ran the half marathon and Nikki Scott ran the 10K. Both did well in their respective races.

And, just across the border for the Birch Bay Marathon the SAA had three runners. Dave Burrows, Benji Chu and Tracy Marshall all who did well. Birch Bay has a beautiful course and it is a small but fun run.

Great job everyone.

For those of you who are interested in Pat’s experience at the Rocky Racoon 100 miler in Texas a couple of weeks ago, Pat has supplied a detailed report.

2011 Rocky Raccoon Report

 Again, congratulations to Pat on a job well done.

Well, what a great day for the first half. The rain held off until most of the SAA members had finished… And, the temperature was pleasant for the middle of February. This has to be the largest SAA contingency for any race so far – so this could be the longest single race report that I have written. There are a lot of people who deserve mentioning, and, I hope I didn’t miss anyone.

There were 30 SAA Club members running the First Half, Half Marathon. For Brandon Jones and Russell Sham, this was their first half marathon.

From what I could determine, Personal Bests were acheived by Stephen Ptucha, Andrew Shing, Marinus Waterberg, Jackie Davidson, Carmen Cameron, Fay Waterberg and of course Brandon and Russell. 

Stephen, Jackie and Carmen all ran New York Qualifying times as did Michelle Horstmann and Brandon Jones.

The rest of the group running the First Half from the SAA were Chris Chan, Benji Chu, Andrew Do, Suhkpal Dulay, Brian Flett, Jan Frail, Ken Frail, Calvin Gehlen, Susan Gelinas, Linda Hilts, Roger Keatley, Bev Kong, Michelle LaPorte, Mike LaPorte, George Lau, Erin Lee, Tracy Marshall, Carrie Ng, Les Pereira and George Tiller all who did well.  I know some of you are coming off injuries and sometimes your work gets in the way of training – still this was a great representation of the SAA (and, it was nice to see so much Blue/Orange + Pink/Purple out on the race route).

Great Job!!! and Congratulations to everyone on their race.