From Bastion.....

New Years Run & Dip

Hey Gang

Its that time of year again. Once again we meet on New Years Day to commune, convive and generally socialize. We begin at 11:00 a.m. for a run around Westwood Lake and finish with an optional plunge into the Lake followed by coffee, hot chocolate and goodies. So please come out and start the New Year with us and we'll be happy to see you.

Ross

Notes from Dan the trail guy #5

TIDBITS & OTHER BITS

1. New Years Day Run --A number of people have sadly indicated to me that the 11:00 am start time of the Run & Dip is too late for them, as they have other commitments (I am one of those folks, I need to be in Ladysmith at 11:30am). Therefore we have a group heading out from Westwood at 9:00 am if you need an earlier run…Or maybe you want to try and do the New Years Day Double. Get an early run in with ROC and follow it up with a run with Bastion.

2. Bastion’s New Years Day Run & Dip – Bastion Running Club is once again hosting the New Years Day Run and Dip at Westwood Lake. The Run & Dip consists of a loop of Westwood Lake followed by an optional dip in the lake and then coffee and snacks…No $$ fee. The start time is scheduled to be 11:00 am.

3. Run Rotation

January 8th will see us return to the Humility Abyss
January 15th - Lantzville Foothills
January 22nd - Dumont Rd Trails
January 29th - Linley Valley
February or March – I will try to get Snow Shoeing organized….details to come later.
…..all tentative and subject to weather, trail conditions and mood swings.


4. Runners of Compassion - Annual General Meeting - Monday January 10th is the date of the Runners of Compassion - Nanaimo Chapter, Annual General Meeting. The meeting takes place at 7:00pm and is being held in the Nanaimo Hornets Rugby Clubhouse on Dover Road. If you are a member of Runners of Compassion, which most of you that receive my emails are (or better be thinking of being), I would like to ask that you seriously consider putting your name forward for one of the Directors positions. Being a Director of ROC takes very little time, we meet as a Board, the first Saturday of the month after the run. The sacrifice that you need to make is missing coffee at Starbucks once a month.

The Directors who are stepping down from the Board have been involved with the Directorship of our Society since its inception over three years ago and have done an amazing job. We are requesting that members who are interested, and wish to have their name put forward for one of the directors positions, to please do so before the end of December by contacting either Bob Patrick bpatrick@eba.ca or Dan Brady danbrady@shaw.ca

5. Training Clinics – Lots of options – Train for either Port Angeles (June 12th) or Vancouver (May1st), train either in the morning or in the evening... your choice! Now that Christmas has come and gone space will fill up quickly…So Don’t Procrastinate or it may be too late! Details available from Kim Gagliano, Sherri Wade, Stefan Jakobsen, Kari MacIntyre, John Lowen or at Frontrunners

Help Send Wendy to C-X Worlds

Raffle to help send Wendy Simms

Canadian Cyclocross Champion

to the World Championships in Germany

Wendy has qualified to represent Canada (and Nanaimo!) at the World Championships in St Wendel Germany Jan 31, 2005. Because it is not an Olympic sport there is no support for the Canadian team so all funds raised will go towards her trip to Germany.

Prizes include:

• Dinner for 2 at the Discovery Room (Malaspina University-College)
• Dinner for 2 at the Discovery Room (Malaspina University-College)
• Lunch for 2 at the Discovery Room (Malaspina University-College)
• Gift Certificate for the Malaspina University-College Bookstore
• Family Star Gazing night with MUC Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
• Shoes from Frontrunners Nanaimo
  
  Tickets are available at Frontrunners for $5.
  Draw date is January 7th.

Drink Smart-Run Smart

A link to a little article on Victoria's recent Beer Mile:

http://www.triathletemag.com/story.cfm?story_id=9249&publicationID=92&pageID=1705

Good times....good times. Too bad they doctored out my T-Shirt.

Normon

Multisport Masters Swimming

From Sherri Wade:

Winter session Multisport Masters: January 5th to April 11th
Monday and Wednesday mornings, 6 am - 7:20 am
Nanaimo Aquatic Center
Fee: $150.00 / 2 x week
$75.00 / 1 x week
Coach: John Campbell

John Campbell is currently the head coach of the Ravensong Breakers.
In 1973, he started coaching while attending and swimming with UBC. In the following years, he assisted under 3 Olympic Coaches (Deryk Snelling, Bill Rose, and Ron Jacks). In 1981, John was recruited to become a Head Coach for a club in Cambridge Ontario. In 1984, he moved to Regina where he took the reins of one of Canada's largest clubs, the Regina Optimist Dolphins.
John is a certified NCCP Level 2 coach. His swimming program is a progression of technical stroke development using stroke drills and increased training as swimmers improve.

TO REGISTER OR FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Sherri Wade
swade@pacificsport.com

Cabo Beer Mile Race Report

The inaugural Cabo San Lucas Beer Mile went ahead as scheduled yesterday. A location was scouted and the local soccer pitch with its dirt field was chosen. Negro Modelo was the beer of choice for Jason this year (kind of a dark version of Corona), and while Alison toyed with the idea of a Pina Colada mile, she decided to act as the official for the event and sacrifice her race.

As sunset fell on the community, Jason and Alison walked to the soccer field and set up the transition zone. The pitch was empty except for someone learning to drive on the field, and another local engaging in unknown activities but who did throw some curious glances our way.

With transition set, Alison started her watch and Jason quickly opened the first beer and downed it (having warmed up with Pina Colada's and Chichi's at the resort happy hour just prior). He set off around the field, dodging the driving lesson. While the first beer and lap was a respectable 1:45, it went downhill from there. Jason had some trouble with subsequent beers (maybe the happy hour wasn't a good idea) and narrowly avoided an extra lap punishment when a foam ejection was ruled a "burp". The finish time was a sorry 9:08. However, the distance cannot be officially confirmed and is suspected to be slightly longer than 400m, dodging driving lessons notwithstanding.

Photos were taken to legitimize the event, however the camera USB cable was forgotten at home and so will follow at a later date.

The beer mile was followed by dinner at a restaurant with chickens walking around, and Jason agreeing to a timeshare presentation in his inebriated state.

With the stage set, it is our recommendation that the Cabo Beer Mile be an event repeated at least biannually.

Notes from Dan the Trail Guy #4

TIDBITS & OTHER BITS

The definite highlight of this week was handing over the $1000 cheque toThrifty Foods. According to Dan, the manager of Thrifty Foods the timing of the cheque from ROC couldn't have been any better. The $1000 enabled Thrifty Foods to deliver 50 grocery hamper bags to Haven House on behalf of Runners of Compassion. Apparently Haven House was very close to running out of the food that it had available to use for ChristmasHampers. The $ 1000 was part of the proceeds from the Half Marathon.

Run & Sip - That's right a Run & Sip, not a Run & Dip...Bob Patrick andI will be meeting in the Frontrunners/Longwood Pub parking lot at 2:00pmon Christmas Eve (Friday) for a short run and a quick beverage afterwards in the pub. Please feel free to join us if you feel you need of a quick run and a beverage to remove the stress of a hectic week. Please try and park away from the pub and the store if you can.

Boxing Day Run - The Boxing Day Run is 8:00 am Westwood Lake. Come along on a nice run through Morrell and surrounding areas.

New Years Day Run & Dip - As you may or may not know, Bastion RunningClub is once again hosting the New Years Day Run and Dip at Westwood Lake. The Run & Dip is a loop of Westwood Lake followed by an optional dip in the lake and then coffee and snacks. No $$ fee. The start time is scheduled to be 11:00 am. A number of people have indicated that the 11:00 am start time is far too late of a start for them, as they have other commitments (I am one of those folks, I need to be in Ladysmith at 11:30am). Therefore I will be taking a group out from Westwood at 9:00 am if you need an earlier run. Please let me know if you think you might becoming so I have an idea of who/what I need for leaders..thanks.

Run Rotation - Starting with the January 8th run we will be away from the Westwood Lake area for the better part of the January as we get backin to rotating the location of the runs. January 8th will hopefully see us return to the Humility Abyss for a run. January 15th will be the Lantzville Foothills, January 22nd will be Dumont and January 29th willbe Linley Valley...all tentative and subject to weather changes and mood swings.

All the best to everyone over the holidays! Try and eat lots of fattening food, try and drink lots of eggnog but most of all try andspend some quality time with people you care about.

Merry Christmas,
Dan

Notes from Dan the trail guy #3

Wow, what a turn out today for the run..over 50 people came andconquered the beast known as the GutBuster. The Advance Group took a wrong turn (??) and managed to keep their feet dry most of the way. They ran the lake trail to the power lines and missed the two first stream crossings that the rest of us did. Now we know why that group is always faster than the rest of us, they take short cuts..?*

Owen Carr, the Treasurer of ROC mentioned today that he just did the latest bank deposit and the cook books have now grossed more than$4,700, net proceeds just tipped over $2,500. Amazing results. For those of you that don't know, Kathleen Richardson and Ruth Laird came upwith the ROC Cookbook idea earlier this year. These two women single handedly berated and bullied us all into handing in our favorite recipes, they then arranged the design, layout, printing and selling ofthe finished product. Thanks to the two of them, ROC ended up with afurther $2500.00 to use in our charity work. On behalf of ROC and allthe folks that will benefit from your hard work I would like to say"Thank You" to Ruth and Kathleen.

A Big Thank You to Norm, Stefan and Kari for hosting us backat the store for coffee, juice, bagels, muffins and doughnuts. It was agreat time. I think the customers coming in were a little confused as to who the heck the rag tag bunch of mud covered people were in the store.

The Runners of Compassion Board of Directors are happy to tell all of you that the Funds Distribution Committee will be using$1000 of the proceeds from the Nanaimo Daily News Harbour City HalfMarathon and 10K Road Race to purchase pre-packaged Christmas GroceryBags from Thrifty Foods. The food bags will help make a number ofNanaimo citizens Christmas season a little brighter.

Monday January 10th is the date of the Runners of Compassion- Nanaimo Chapter, Annual General Meeting. The meeting takes place at 7:00pm and is being held in the Nanaimo Hornets Rugby Clubhouse on DoverRoad. If you are a member of Runners of Compassion, which most of you that receive my emails are, I would like to ask that you seriously consider putting your name forward for one of the eight Directors positions. Being a director of ROC takes very little time, we meet as aBoard, the first Saturday of the month after the run. The sacrifice thatyou need to make is missing coffee at Starbucks once a month.

The Directors who are stepping down from the Board have been involved with the Directorship of our Society since its inception over three years ago and have done an amazing job. We are requesting that members who are interested, and wish to have their name put forward for one of the eight directors positions, to please do so before the end of December by contacting either Bob Patrick bpatrick@eba.ca or Dan Brady danbrady@shaw.ca

Thank you,
Dan

Merry Christmas to all of you and your families. May all of you enjoy awarm and joyous holiday season.

Murray Drew shows some improvement

Great news: Murray was able to move his left leg yesterday. See
http://www.bcmasterscycling.net/
for futher updates.

Help Murray Drew and family

"I suppose you have heard the news about Murray Drew, if you have you can skip the next paragraph.

On Wednesday about 6PM he was turning left on to Haultain off of Foul Bay Road (in Victoria). It was dark and wet out. A car driver did not see him (obviously) and hit him from behind. Murray was air lifted from the Jubilee Hospital that evening to Vancouver. Bottom line is he broke his C3 vertebrae in three places and is a quadriplegic at this point. The CT's and other scans showed no brain damage and no internal bleeding. But I'm afraid you can not get much worse than a C3 being broken.

The point of this email (post) is to let you know that I have decided to organise a by donation fund to help the family with travel expenses for the next year, or however long Murray will be living away from home. At this point "The system" is taking care of Murray, I think we need to help out those often forgotten in situations like this, and that is of course his family. We all know that by helping the family out, it would please Murray a great deal.

Karl at Oak Bay Bicycles 1968 Oak Bay Ave, V8R 1E2 has agreed to be the focal point to receive all donations. At this point (Sat night) I understand that Karl will be working with Murray's son Jeff to open a bank account for this purpose. It may be best to consult the Masters Web page (as per above) before you make out the cheque. For those of you unable to do this I am sure that if make it out to Oak Bay Bicycles Karl will deal with the money transfer. Just ensure you put "Murray Drew" in the memo section of the cheque. But please check the web site for the correct addressee of the cheque to save Karl the work. THANK you Karl, for being the focal point in this. Please donate anyting you feel is appropriate. The focus of the funds will be to support Murray's family in their time of greatest need. We would like to cover his family's travel and lodging costs, as well as demonstrate the support of the cycling community. As you are out Christmas shopping please drop of a donation at Oak Bay Bicycles. If every rider in town dropped off $5-$15 to support the need, Murray's family could focus on Murray and not on the expenses. As a club, I am trying to organize a large donation to help aleviate the financial burden that accompanies berevement. There has been so many phone calls and emails sent to me I am happy to say that thanks to the Masters Association ALL information about Murray's condition will be focused on their web page located here www.bcmasterscycling.net So if/when you're wanting to know how he is doing this will be the best place to go.

PLEASE forward this email to any and all people who know Murray be it cycling, personal or business associates. If people get more than one copy of this email sorry, but that's how email works. On a personal note, I felt very lonely on the ride of 20 people this morning. Something I do not think I will ever be able to totally overcome [this]. Pat Leask"

December 18th ROC Run

Some people were prepared with headlamps as we headed around Westwood and off to take on the Ridges this morning. 3 days awat from the shortest day....it was dark. Group 1 did a "modified" Gutbuster route and were bragging about dry shoes at the parking lot after. The other groups stayed true to the described run for the day and were a little damper. Frontrunners was buzzing with everyone popping in for coffee and snacks after the run.

Marty did not get his groups wrong this time and waited at the trail junctions for everyone....great dog!

Merry Christmas R.O.C.

Notes from Dan the Trail Guy #2

Tidbits and News Bits of the Week

Stewart Mountain – was this past Saturday and was attended by Tom Barr, John Hannon, Tom Buckley, Super Dave Kuhawly, Russ Watson, Stefan Jacobsen and Bobbie Jenson. Stefan won the inaugural event and Bobbie was the third place female. Congratulations to all of you that went. Here are a few quotes from those hardy soles that went and conquered Stewart Mountain;
· “Forget whatever Stefan says about the race, 'cause the mountain climb was f...... hard!! I guess it's a love, hate thing 'cause I'd do it again in a snap. It certainly puts the Gunner Shaw race to shame”
· “The race was pretty wicked, so much water, lots of climbing, single track, mud, yet sunny out! Couldn't have asked for better conditions. Turnout was a tad low, most likely due to the proximity to X-Mas, but still a great first year event. A good preview to March”!
· ”it was an awesome run, quite wet and muddy, twice as good as Gunner Shaw. Went through the mud hole twice and another one for fun. Then through lots of holes that were twenty feet long with no escape, with roots and hidden stuff and a long, long hill that was %#!#// long to the top of the mountain .was a great time to be had .the first hour I was thinking I should watch TV on Saturdays NOT!!! .it was a very enjoyable time”
· “Gunner Shaw on steroids is the way the course was described before the start. It lived up to its name. We crossed the swamp twice, mud everywhere, had three creek crossings (knee high with a good current), and probably 10 -15 (puddles?) which were mid calf to knee high and muddy. The 'puddles' also hid surprises which consisted of sunken logs, rocks, and mud, did I mention mud? My feet would go a little numb after coming out of the water but soon warmed up with running”….So get ready, March 12th is the first race in the 2005 GutBuster Race Series and Stewart Mountain is the first race of the series….more details in the New Year….mark your calendars. It is only 14 weeks away.

Cedar 12k – Bastion Running Club is in need of volunteers to sign up for the club's Cedar 12k race on February 13th, 2005. If interested please contact Darrell Orosz at janddorosz@shaw.ca or call 754-5139.

Marathon Training Clinics – you know the drill….info at Frontrunners

Thursday Morning Road Run –rain or shine from the New Starbucks at Country Club at 6:00am sharp.

Waiver Form – Don’t forget to bring it along.

Après Run - Coffee and Trail Gear – Frontrunners would like to host us after this Saturday’s run for après run coffee and sweets back at the store. We will meet and run the Westwood Ridges as planned and then come back for coffee at the store. Norm, Stefan, Kari and the rest of their “band of renown’s” will show off all the latest gadgets, gear and footwear that you can use when running off road. A little bit of an expo. Norm and Stefan can entertain you with stories about their great adventures around the world if the expo doesn’t interest you.

Boxing Day Run – seeing how Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, the run will move to Sunday (Boxing Day) and we will try and have a bit of a social run..,.. Are there any preferences of location? Steve G, can you please invite the Bastion membership to come along to any of the runs we do.

Bastion Running Clubs New Years Day Run & Dip – will be on New Years Day, 11:00am starting in the Westwood Lake parking lot at 11:00am. This is a free drop in event, so plan on coming out and running out those cobwebs left over from New Years Eve…..


Okay, here are the run details for this coming weekend, December 18th, 2004

We will be running the actual Westwood Ridges or what is better known as the GutBuster Route. Start time is 7:30 as usual. This will be the last “tempo run” of the year as the following week is scheduled to be a Social Run. We will break the group up as per usual based on tempo. So if you haven’t run the Ridges before or have had it on your list of things to do in 2004 this is your chance. We should have a group that will fit most people’s ability. If you have been comfortable with the past 3 or 4 runs (Lantzville, Humility Abyss, Westwood Valley) that we have done you will be okay with running the ridges…. See you Saturday. Remember that coffee is back at the store after the run. For those of you not running, but would like to meet us at the store, I would estimate that we would be back by around 9:15 ish.

Stewart Mountain 10mile XC Race

The first annual Stewart Mountain 10 mile cross country race was hosted this past Saturday by the Prarie Inn Harriers at Thetis Lake Park. A great preview to the first of the Gut Buster Series in March, which will utilize the same course, the day brought with it sunny skies, lots of water crossings, muddy conditions and one darn big hill called Stewart Moutain! Congratulations to Bobbie, John, Dave, Russell and the two Tom's for conquering what can only be described as an epic run!

Full results can be found at www.pih.bc.ca including photo's and some video coverage of one of the MANY stream crossings.

A big thanks to PIH and the race organizers. It truly was a great cross country race and one that I'm sure all of the participants hope stays on the race calendar.

See you back in March,
Stefan

December 11th ROC Run

Thanks to the ROC trail group for a great run today at Westwood. Marty and I enjoyed it! Being out of town so often on weekends I do not get that many chances to run with the local groups so it was great to drag myself out of bed this morning to get all wet and dirty in the local trails. I will try to get up there again over Christmas to do a little trimming to make ROC's 2005 westwood return even more smooth.

Normon

R.I.P.

Winnifred Espitalier was killed while trying to cross East Wellington Road on Monday, December 6th at 4:45pm. Friends of Winnifred ("Winnie") would like us to pass on reminders to all runners, cyclists and pedestrians to PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE wear lots of reflective clothing, bands and lights during the dark hours of our Island winter. Tragic accidents like this can be prevented.

Take care.

Notes from Dan the Trail Guy

Great turn out (25 +/-) for last Saturday’s run in the snow and rain on the trails of the Humility Abyss. I think everyone went home very impressed by the great trails we ran and by the pace that they were run at….Thanks to Kari for leading and thanks to Allan Richardson for bringing the Nanaimo Bars for after the run….I left in a big hurry and took them with me…sorry!……Starbucks must have loved it when you all showed up, covered in mud and soaking wet. It must have smelt really nice for the other customers coming in for coffee..…what’s with the Baby Wipes?

This weeks run will be a run starting out of Westwood Lake….7:30 am. Brad and Kathleen will be leading.

I would like to pre-book (or pre-warn, depending on how you look at it) that next Saturday will be a run along the top of the Westwood Ridges – GutBuster Route. I will make sure we have two leaders, so that we can break the group up into different tempo runs. Last run before Christmas…

Tidbits and News Bits of the Week


Training Clinics – As most of you already know there are two training clinics being offered for the North Olympic Discovery Trail Marathon, which is June 12th in Port Angeles, Washington. I have dropped off registration forms for the North Olympic Discovery Trail Marathon at the store. The Half and Full Marathons are both run on a paved trail way that starts in Sequim and ends in Port Angeles. According to the list of people that I have on the rooming list for Port Angeles, there are 30 of us confirmed as going down so far. I wouldn’t wait too long to register for either clinic as space is limited in both. www.northolympicdiscoverymarathon.com

Kim and Sherri are offering a 16 week early morning (6:00am) Port Angeles Half & Full Marathon Clinic starting in mid February….forms at Frontrunners
Stefan, John and Kari are offering a 16 week evening clinic for the Port Angeles Half & Full Marathon starting in mid February…..forms at Frontrunners.

Thursday Morning Road Run – For those of you looking for an early morning run, there is a group that goes out Thursday mornings, rain or shine from the New Starbucks at Country Club at 6:00am sharp

Waiver Form and Email confirmation: This will be last Trail Running Email that I will be sending out those of you that haven’t emailed me back the confirmation that they want to receive the weekly email. There are some fairly regular Saturday morning runners who are conspicuous by there lack of response.

Trail Run Rotation: I am going to try and keep a rotation of the following trails for our Saturday morning runs. Westwood/Morell, Westwood Ridge Valley Trail, Humility Abyss, Dumont Rd, Linley Valley and Lantzville Foothills. This will allow us to maintain some variety. The location will depend each week on the availability of leaders, weather and the level of Friday night wine consumption.

Gunner Shaw Video – If you ran the Gunners Shaw or if you want to see what the puddle and the finish were really like, go to the Prairie Inn Harriers Homepage and scroll down until you see the video link for the Puddle & Finish. Click on it and watch the fun.

Here is a copy of the Thank you note from Bill Jones of the Nanaimo Daily News. As you can read below, our support was appreciated.

Dan and Kelly,
Here is a note of thanks from all of us at the Daily News to the Runners of Compassion, Nanaimo Chapter, for coming out and helping us make Give and Go! Nanaimo such a success. We were impressed with the number of runners who came and gave us a hand. To our mind, this clearly demonstrates the partnership your organization has with our newspapers. Thanks again and we'll see you next year. Sincerely, Bill

Christmas Adventure Run

Last night we had our annual Christmas Adventure Run with proceeds and food all for the local food bank. Despite the weather the turn out was good.

At one of the stations teams had to write a poem using the following words: Frontrunners, Clinic, Christmas, Running, Presents and Kissing. The winning Poem was destroyed in Clinic aftermath but here are a couple of the other high scorers:

From Team Fairy Dust
There's lots of presents at Christmas
Pleanty of holly and snow.
The staff at Frontrunners are kissing under the missle toe.
Oh My.
They say its a run clinic.
But I think it is a lie.

From Team: One little lady and 3 old goats
Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the Frontrunners Store
There's so many presents but I still want one more
The noise from the running clinic made such a clatter
But is was all Marty's kissing so it just didn't matter.

At another Checkpoint Teams had to make a Christmas List for Kari.
Here are some of the best "edited" lists (and edited team names)

From Team: "BEEEP Jolly Elves"
1. Edited
2. Chocolate Fruit and Nut bars
3. Aveda Products
4. Jumbo Jiuce Hot Dogs
5. Mrs Vickies Chips
6. Red Wine
7. Seafood Chowder
8. Money
9. Shoes
10. Great Christmas "Edited"

From Team: "Rudy's Dumplings"
1. Gap Gift Certificate
2. Oder eater insoles
3. 5 karat platinum ring
4. life supply of gu
5. Trip to Hawaii
6. Hair care with Dee
7. Marathon with no hills
8. A downhill swim
9. New tights
10. New Car

And a last one from Team: "Tims"
1. High Fat Food
2. Lead Weights for ankles and wrists
3. Rubber Boots
4. long underwear
5. gift certificate to Mc Donalds
6. Buleys case (??)
7. Herbal Magic
8. Tim Bits case
9. Size 20 Running Clothes
10. Trip to Hawaii only after consuming all of the above

Thanks to everyone for coming out and have a great Christmas Season. See you back at the clinics on January 4th.

The great Eddy Merckx tries triathlon

This is just too cool: the greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx, rode the bike leg of a triathlon today. Check out the photo:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos.php?id=photos/2004/news/dec04/merckx/dscn4407
Eddy is 59 and recently started riding his bike again, and has lost a lot of weight over the last year. He did the 40km race in under 75 minutes (for perspective, he held the hour record in the early 1970s, and covered more than 49 kilometers on a track bike; that corresponds to doing a 40km time trial in under 49 minutes with no aero equipment). He retired from professional bike racing in 1977.

Frontrunners at National Cross Country Championships

Full results from the Canadian Cross Country Championships can be viewed at www.athleticscanada.com

We had three athletes from Nanaimo running cross nationals. In the Junior Mens 8k, Kevin Friesen placed 29th in a time of 26:40 and Graeme Hill, currently running for Uvic, placing 46th, only 19 sec back of Kevin in a time of 26:59. The winning time was run by Jean-Claude Nduwingoma in 24:13 but the top Canadian was Mike Woods from Ontario in a time of 25:05.

Steve Osaduik was 30th in the Senior Mens 10k in a time of 31:53. The race was won by current NCAA champ, running for Saskatchewan, in a time of 29:50.

San Fran.

Wendy and I hauled down the I5 yesterday to San. Fran to do a couple of UCI cross races. Wendy needs the points to help her start position at worlds. 13 hours in a car is not great pre-race activity but we both had OK races today with Wendy 4th 9 (in Elite Women) and me 9th (in Masters 35+ "A" group). We are having a great home stay in Half Moon Bay with a family that the race director set us up with. Lots of action today. Race tomorrow then hit the I5 back to Nanaimo right after the race.

Wondering how Kevin, Graeme and Steve did at Canadian Cross Country Nationals??