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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

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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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