Home sweet home!

I m very lucky to staying in boulder this summer..... and here is a little bit of my life!

the road to lake placid

ok, i m back to silly blogs... i forgot that i had a blog... i promise tons of pictures as i got my camera back in working order...maybe some video also...

the pic is one of the road in boulder called Lee Hill. as we look, it s facing north east....toward lake placid a few 1000s miles away!!!!

what s coming up, a lot of training to get ready for lake placid. I will first race in boise on june 1st and then Muskoka chase on june 15th. Then lake placid on july 20th.

The training as been good but a bit boring. I m still not in ironman specific prep but more in general training phase and i get a bit bored. So i been doing tons of stuff outside my triathlon life...

anyway, time for bed, more silliness tomorow as i will show everyone where i live and what are the great attractions at the Weathersby villa!!!!!

getting the word done

This is a picture of me and one of the cervelo engineer at the San Diego windtunnel in feburary. I learned a lot and in this particular case, we were observing the airflow around the bike and the body of the cyclist. A small string attache to the stick would show me well when the air would be disturbe or smooth and what direction it would go around the different part. As you can see if you look at the large version of the pic, the wind is blowing at 30mph!!! it s cold in there!

This week as been amazing. It's my first week in boulder and i m falling in love with this place. People are so nice and friendly and the training roads and trails are next to none. The only negative aspect i could find is the lack of good open water place to swim and the expensive pools all over town. But for the rest, boulder is definitly a place to visit!

I been doing a lot of hard session and threshold work. I might be taking part in the boise 70.3 and for sure will be at the Muskoka chase on june 15th! Then, it will be time for lake placid!

We had some snow today for a few minutes and i took my mtb out as it was pretty cold. I got a awsome 2.5h ride all over the trails and a great swim with mark. I m doing the work and should be ready for july 20th!

tomorow is ice cream day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what really happen on the mountain

Today was a great day in Boulder.

It started with a hard swim with Mark. We did a nice 10X200m on 2;30 and 3X300m. I have to say that i suffer a lot on that set and i m not use to the altitude but it was a lot of fun! total was 4km. Oh, i should mention that mark was actually doing the 200s on 2;15 holding 2;07.... i have a lot of work to do:)

I then headed to Andrew's place where he was super nice to fix my mtb and adjuste everything so i could ride with them on flagstaff mountain. With us was also Erin and Blake.

We started with a fun downhill and Andrew and Blake are two very good mtber so they simply took off right away and i was left in there dust. To be a gentlemen, i rode behind Erin as i knew she as the bad habbit of falling of her bike and wanted to make sure she make it in one peice down the hill. She might have think that she was actually riding better than me but the reality was, i was just polite and making sure everyting was alright.

I have to admit that i felt a lot better going up the hills and we were very lucky that andrew and blake were nice enough to wait for us every 5 minutes!!!!


we then stopped for a taste of the scenery of boulder!

i then finish the day with a great 1h run....and was lucky to have some leftover home made pizza that Denise made tonight!!!!!

i m dead now but cant fall asleep, it s only been 3 days back to training and i m already overtrain!!!!

Back to blogging

My vacation are over! time to get back to training and make every day count. I m in a very good mental space right now and ready to get the work done.

I had a amazing vacation in florida for 2.5 weeks with some amazing friends. I was helping my friend bruno in coaching a triathlon camp and i got to do a bit of training everyday and had a lot of time to share some good laugh and hang out with people that are important to me.

I m now in boulder! Yep, Boulder is gona be my home for the next few months in preparation for ironman lake placid. My coach want me to try this altitude training and i m very excited about the new challenge. I rode for 4h today at altitude over 9000 feet and i can tell my lungs were screaming for air!

Yesturday, i had a great dinner with some people from boulder. I got the chance to meet with Mark, Erin, Dennis, Laura, Jen and Andrew and having a good welcoming dinner.

I m presently living at the Weathersby villa and we have a automatic coffee machine! I will post more about this of course but i m extremely lucky to be staying with them and i have the perfect set up to get ready for the summer races!

time for bed.

Yesturday was 1h run, 2h ride and 4km swim
today was 4;30 ride, 1h run!

I M BACK!

still alive

i m still alive. On the beach of cocoa beach in florida relaxing and recovering from the hard racing and training. I m also trying to get fat and put on weight! I been eating a lot of McDonald, ice cream, fry chicken, chocolat, cheescake and more!!!!!!
I m actually coaching at a training camp in clermont and working with some very awsome athlete. Here is me and cynthia working on the swim stroke technic.
Here i m showing the proper position to enter in the water!!! I m really enjoying my time as a coach!

silly group pic before a lake swim with the gator watching us on the shore....
me explaning the latest technic on how to succesfully survive a attack by aligator.
me and one of my first ever coach, Daniel Rozon at the NTC pool.
i once awile get in the water with the athlete as i need to not get to hot of shape! I did a good 1000m that day!
Me and annie claude working on the catch phase!

well, i will be here for another 10 days.... keep working hard and trying to help these very motivated and fun group of athlete. I will be going to St Petersburg for the triathlon next weekend! hope to see a lot of you out there...

time for bed

A picture says a 1000 words....

Desapointement, frustration, mad!!! Dam it!!! Can we redo this race again tomorow? I m so fit, i want to have another shot at it right now, not tomorow, now now now....

The ironic part is that this pic is of me crossing the line in 8h48 in 6th place of a ironman. A year ago, i would have been on cloud number nine. But today, i just walk straigh pass the finish line and try to shallow the pills.

The race started well with a good swim. I was on TJ feet and gumbel was setting a good pace. I came out of the water in 5th and got on the bike and rode the first lap so so easy. it was a smart move as pretty much everyone rode the first loop so hard and started to blow up by the second lap of the bike. I was on the same strategy as jordan to increase the effort at each loop and i was so excited to see that i was actually keeping the leader with in 6min and actually gain back on them on the second loop. I was feeling great and only increasing the pace slowly as the ride went on. I also had a short chat with jordan a bit before half way...he was on a good mood and so was i!

Close to the end of the second loop, as i was coming back to the hot corner, a police motorcycle coming in the opposite way decided to cross the cone line and come face to face with me. I had no choice but to take a hard right on the side of the road and hit a huge bump(put hole or a grill??) It hitted really hard and my handlebar moved down. I was now riding with the extension pointing toward the tire. I could also feel a bump on the front wheel and was really hoping i didnt break my zipp 808. Nop, it was broken, i had a flat! I jumped off the bike to repair as quickly as possible but made a stupid mistake of now opening the valve of the spare so when i plugged the co2 cartridge, nothing went in.... I then had to run to the ''hot corner'' on my bike shoes were i SCREAMED at Paul Huddle where i could find a new wheel!!! He pointed me towards a mechanic tent and sended someone to help me out. before getting to the tent, i had to cross the most busy intersection of the race with tons of athlete coming by on both side. I was simply going crazy... this was a total nigthmare.... finaly made it to the tent and the mechanic took my wheel and proced to change the tube. I right away asked politely if he could just put a brand new aero wheel on my bike... I M ON A HURRY! he did... i was now outfitted with a flash point 60. I then took a allen key and proceded to repositionnate the aerobar to his normal position and make sure it stays like this.

and then, i was back out of the course about 8 minutes later after a freaking police motorcycle did think that it could be kind of dangerous to ride in opposite direction from traffic with bike coming at 30mph.....

i was simply broke down mentaly... i even stopped on the side of the road to tell paulo i would simply pull out as i was out of contention and didnt see the point of going. He of course started to screem at me and as he looked very mad, i decided to keep riding.

Another thing a noticed later was that i had lose all my bottles and as i race on maltodextrin only, that would now be a challenge to survive with the on course nutrition! I reallised i was facing a lot of adversity at this point and had the choice of feeling sorry for myself about it or just try to pull it off and save the day. I rode the last loop pretty strong and got on the run. Paulo asked me to simply focus and get the work done. He didnt give me any split or position so i know very well i was out of the game. I ran with as much passion as i could find...there wasnt much but i keep on plugging in and made it to the finish line with a 3h marathon. I was happy to make it to the line and got a nice high five from jordan but was of course very down at the same time. I think frustrated is the best word actually. I done the work and was fit and ready to go, But life is life and it happen, nothing can be change and i did learn a little hard piece of HTFU. My wallet will sure notice the difference and i think that it s the part that hurt the most....

To finish, i want to highlight the performance of my friend jordan rapp. WOW... that is smart clever racing! He race like a experience guy and almost pull it off for the win. That is only the beggining and i m really proud of you rappo!!!!! I really hope to get to race you again soon!

jonathan