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SPORTS

Personal best

North Shore athletes train
for Ironman competition

IN ROUGHLY nine days' time, 950 athletes from around
the wortd will be packing their gear in preparation for their

imminent descent upon Penticton.

will be
running

Two days later they
swimming, cycling and
the race Of their lives.

But it’s more of a personal than
a competitive type of race for
many Ironman Canada partici-
pants, according to several North
Shore athletes making the trek to
the Okanagan next week.

“If there's two words that sum
it up, it’s commitment and deter-
mination to that goal.’ says
Patricia Daw, a fitness instructor
and general recreation = staff
member of the North Vancouver
Recreation Commission.

Daw, 26, says she wanted to do
#n Ironman before she turned 30
and has set this year’s Aug. 26
race as the one where she will

compete and complete (many
don’t) her first Ironman.
Coming from a marathon

background, Daw is one of fewer
than 200 women in this year’s
Ironman.

The race itself consists of a 2.4
mile swim, a 112 mile bike race
and 26.2 mile run.

To put the race into perspective
for North Shore residents, Daw
describes the race as a swim from
recCentre Ron Andrews to the
foot of Mount Seymour and most
of the way back, followed by a
mountainous bike ride from North
Vancouver to Squamish and back,
and then a run over the Second
Narrows Bridge, around Stanley
Park and back.

“That scares the hell out of me
when I say that,"” Daw says,
laughing.

By Elizabeth Collings

News Reporter

Although she won't be alone in
Penticton — her fiance, David
Jensen, 25, will also be racing his
first Ironman -- Daw says train-
ing for the race is definitely a soli-

NEWS photo Mike Wakefield
WARMING UP: Patricia Daw of North Vancouver will be drawing
on her marathon background to help pull her through her first
lronman.

Wednesday, A.qust 15, 1990 -

North Snore News - 13

em ee ee ene ne MRE

NEWS photos Neil Lucente

LOCAL IRONMEN: North Vancouver's Robert Paige (above) fine tunes his strokes at Kits Pool.
Paige, 24, has set a goal of finishing his first !ronman Canada while Dean Milner, 30 (left), is trying
to shave time off last year's performance. This ultra-triathlon of swimming, cycling and running
makes for a combined total of 140.6 miles.

tary pursuit.

“Because there’s going to be
nobody with you up there, you
might as well get used to being by
yourself.**

Dean Milner, a recreation pro-
grammer at recCentre William
Griffin, echoes Daw’s sentiment
that the Ironman is an individual
challenge.

“You're really out there on
your own, so for me, if I train on
my own it helps me keep the
mental discipline on the day of the
event,’’ Milner, 30, says.

Coming from a_ competitive
swimming background, Milner
finished his first lronman last year
after entering it with a group of
five friends. This year he and one
of those friends, Roger Teeple of
West Vancouver, is returning for
a second crack at the course.

His goal is to improve his time,
hopefully to 10.5 hours.

However, he admits that ‘in
the back of my mind,’’ lurks the
Ironman Triathlon World Cham-
pionship in Hawaii for which the
Penticton race is a qualifier.

But Milner says that anything
can happen during the event
(which has a 17-hour cutoff time),
especially when the potentially
scorching heat is factored into the
day.

Drawing from his experience in
1989 fronman Canada, Milner is
tailoring his workouts to improve
his transition times between the
events and to bolster his weakest
event, cycling.

An average week of training for
him consists of approximately five
three-mile swims, daily three-hour
runs (sometimes broken up into
two runs) and 30-mile cycles on
weekdays with 90-rmile rides on
weekends.

Meanwhile, another North
Vancouver resident, Robert Paige,
is gearing up for the lronman with
aslightly different philosophy.

The 24-year-old forklift
salesman decided to go for the
Ironman Canada as part of his
New Yeur’s resolution.

On Feb. |} he started his first
day of training and has since built
up to a point where he now trains
approximately 30 hours a week
with the Steveston Triathlon Club.

After competing in some

duathlons and a half triathlon, “Last year at this time if you
Paige says he is ready for a race told me | was going in an fron-
he once thought he would never man, 1 would have laughed in

see. your face,”’ Paige says.

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