ASTERS SWIMMER Joan Pamell, 62, with medals she won at the 8.C. Seniors Games held at >equitlam. A backstroke specialist, Parnell is looking forward to the 1993 World Masters Games in the U.S. and the 1984 World Swimming Championships in Montreal, where she'll be in a new age NEWS erry Miko Waketield Kona heat slows competitors - -HAWAII-SIZED heat slowed but didn’t stop Gord . Cosby. and Red Aylwin of North Vancouver at the Hawaii Ironman held Oct. 19 in Kona. ‘Corby, 29, finished the race * ia 10 hours and 12 minutes — 36 minutes behind the 9:36 qualifying time he posted at Ironman Canada in Penticton this past August. He was 242nd overall from a field of 1,300 triathletes who finished the Hawaii race. “You didn’t notice the heat right away, you just noticed you're slowing down,’’ says Corby. The course, hillier than Cor- by had anticipated, is a 2.4- mile swim (3.9-km), a 112-mile - bike (180-km)}, and a 26.2-mile run (42,2-km). Although race-day temperature was a tolerable 85°F, the heat reached almost - 100°F in the lava fields where approximately one-third of the bike course and half of the marathon were held. Two-thirds into the bike tide, Corby says ne started to “‘blow up’’ from going too By Elizabeth Collings News Reporter hard but was able to recover for the run. “*} still managed to run a 3% (hour) marathon which I don’t know how,” he said. “It wasn’t easy the last three to four miles of the run. I had to keep talking to myself: ‘I'm not going to start walking.’”’ Another first-time Ironman competitor, Aylwin, 52, also had a good race. He finished at 12:32, slower than his Pentic- ton time of 12:07. Meanwhile, Paul Granger, 31, was an unfortunate victim of heat exhaustion. He laughingly describes his race as ‘‘nice swim, nice bike but I didn’t like the run.”" Granger says that although he realized the heat was taking its toll during the bike segment of the course, dehydration didn't claim him until mile 17 of the run — only nine miles short of completing the race. “It was too bad for me. The heat just got me and that was it.”” While he is not crossing Ironman off his race list for the future, Granger is focussing now on the Nov. 30 World Duathlon Championship in Palm Springs. He leaves next week for San Diego to train for the race. Last year he finished ninth overall. ‘‘We'll see if we can improve on that a little — see how it goes.’” Corby is already casting an eye to the 1992 lronman Canada but says that, if he qualified again for the Hawaii ironman, he would opt to do the race in 1993 rather than in 1992. “SI think six weeks apart wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough time to physically re- cover and mentally prepare for a hard race.” Wednesday, October 30, 1991 - North Shore News - 43 Masters swimmer finds stride at Seniors Games Joan Parnell collects nine gold medals at competition “HELL OF a backstroker, that gal,’’ commented one of Joan Parnell’s swimming colleagues. By Elizabeth Collings... News Reporter The comment —. respectfully made -— seems rather funny com-. ing as it does from a guy less than half Parnell’s 62 years. . But she is, indeed, a hell of a backstroker — and any. other stroke you'd care to name. In 1987, when Parnell was 58, she set four world records for her age group in the 50, 100, and 200-metre backstroke and the 1,500-metre freestyle. “They (the records) didn’t hang around 100 long because the Americans got after them,’’ she says. Parnell’s latest feat is eight gold medais — nine, if you count the relay — at the B.C. Senior Games held recently in Coquitlam. She has competed at the World Swimming Championships in _ Japan, and in the World Masters Games in Toronto and in Den- mark. Parnell humbly acknowledges. that she usually. comes home from these meets with two gold medals for backstroke, her favorite event, and perhaps one for breast stroke, even though she claims she’s los- ing her touch at breasi stroke. : Parnell started ner competitive swimming career at age six in Vic- toria. At 21, she represented Canada at the 1950 British Empire Com- monwealth Games~in Auckiand, New Zealand. The trip took three weeks by boat, which, Parnell says, ‘‘prob- ably added to the reason we didn’t swim so well because we couldn’t practise.’’ But she did meet her soon-to-be husband, runner Bili Parnell, who won a gold medal in the one-mile race and a bronze inn the half- mile event at the Commonwealth Games. Parnell then left swimming to start her family which eventually grew to four children. When her youngest turned five she started to teach swimming, renting private pools for lessons - because Nortls Vancouver didn’t have any: public pools. Since then, she has. taught for the North Vancouver Recre- ation Commission-for 25 years. he 1981, Parnell competed in ‘first masters swim meet, pean she says), “because it was there.’” -“F think when: “you give up a sport, you miss something. It’s like when a woman gets married | and loses her -maiden name, she misses something,’’ says Parnell. « Although she’ doesn't ‘get: net- - ; vous at national meets, she still - gets pre-competition jitters at in- ternation! championships. **] do put. pressure on my when I swim. internationally, I know it. I wish I could change that. Maybe. it makes me swim better,’’ she says, shrugging. For .a week before leaving Canada for the 1989 World Masters Games in Denmark, Parnell lived on Danish .time to adjust to the time change... - “So Iwas up all night, cleaning the house and writing letters,’’ she says. *‘It made it very simple.’’ Although Bill Parnell, a retired Handsworth PE teacher, rarely watches her race, he does accom- pany her to international meets. ‘*He’s supportive of me in that - whatever I- want to do with my. swimming is fine. If I want to drag him along to Denmark or Japan, fine.”’ She trains with the masters swim club at recCentre Ron An- drews where she tends to set the . pace in: the slow lane, usually followed by swimmers half her age. She also coaches Swimfit, a masters group she’s coached for the past I1 years. That group and competition is what keeps her go-° ing. “I have to motivate them so I motivate myself, too.” Westview cyclists take cross-country challenge SEVERAL CYCLISTS from Westview Cycles in North Van- couver placed well at the Cheakamus Challenge ’91 cross country mountain bike race held recently in the Cheakamus Valley. The race started in Brackendale and followed a 63-kilometre course of logging roads, trails and a smail stretch of the highway be- fore the racers arrived at the village of Whistler. The Westview cyclists who competed in various divisions among a field of 360 competitors include: @ Expert men: Jeremy Brown, 13th, Jodi Bales, 19th; @ Sportsmen: Gord Moreside, llth, Kevin O'Brian, 17th, Chris Bishop, 35th, Greg Heyes, 46th, Randy Rutherford, 48th, Sean Kirk, 75th (with three flat tires during the race); @ Sportswomen: fourth; @ Veteran men (35 and over): Bill Carry, lith. Katie Drew,