I have the neon yellow ones in the closet along with some DH Scott bars. Those bad boys are BIG!
Interesting about the field sizes. I think one reason why the older AG tends to be bigger is that IM went from something most viewed as almost super human to something that can be completed by most.
I suspect A lot of the current older guys in IM were saying “those guys are nuts” 20 years ago.
Styrrell
I read that Dave Scott used figs…so I used figs, granola bars and waaaaaay too much Gatorade off the course. If you see the finisher picture, I’m pretty “puffy” compared to on the bike climbing Richter. No doubt I became hyponatremic (hypervolemic) but not in a dangerous way. I only really learned about my personal sweat rate in 2003. Before that I was on the stupid “you can’t drink too much/drink before you are thirsty” plan.
In 2006, I did my PB race in Kona off 4 bottles of Gatorade on the bike and whatever I scooped up off the run course. I started the race at 140, finished at 138. My weigh in at registration was 138, so basically I just lost the liquid that was stored with glycogen on my body race morning…basically a “neutral hydration plan”…no clue how much I gained at IMC 1991, but I did drink way too much.
What month was your race?
Aug 25th, 1991. It’s always been the last Sunday of Aug for IMC.
nice RR!! gives me goosebumps… hoping to claim a spot for 2012 on monday. hopefully it works out, I have anxiety for monday .
Very cool Dev…thanks for sharing
Having visions/fantasies of being on Fernanda Keller’s wheel…probably won’t be very productive at work today 
.
Aparently she is on the start list at IMC this year in the pro field. You could catch a flight to Penticton and ask Graham Fraser to let you in to get the “live” experience going with Fernanda to Richter. I passed her on the bike in St. Croix in 2008 and the image was very similar to 1991. She’s holding her own pretty darn good for a 48 year old in the pro field!!!
Here are the splits out of the results book (manually transcribed)
Fernanda Keller F25-29 58:46 5:40:37 3:11 9:50:52
For those of you who know Doug Marocco, she passed him on the run (I think going down Main Street) and chicked him by 14 seconds. Doug went 9:51.06. We also had a competition between the US Navy, US Air Force, US Army, US Marine Corps and Canadian Armed Force. There were even 3 Kona slots for that…it actually rolled down through me and I was too trashed to consider another IM. I believe Doug was second in the Armed Forces competition. Canuck Pilot Gerard Charlton took the Armed Forces competiton in 9:41, also out of the 25-29 group.
This might be another case of the story getting better with age, but if I recall, Gerry sent his bike up with a buddy and flew his CT-144 Tudor from Moosejaw to Penticton as he literally air dropped himself into Penticton for a commando style appearance (and victory) in between an exercise (or perhaps this was at the Armed Forces championships a few years later, but I know he did it once)
Dev
Fernanda did a 11:07:02 in Frankfurt recently at age 47 (European Champs)
1:02:145:57:063:58:24
.
Pretty impressive considering it was like 10C and raining and she has like 5% body fat and probably weighs around 110 lbs!!!
Very neat, Dev. Thanks for sharing!
Dev,
You are going way back. Gerard “Spanky” Charlton (he looked like Spanky out of the Little Rascals tv show - now I am dating myself). In 1991, I showed up in Moose Jaw (small, small town in the middle of the Canadian prairies) as a young Air Force Lt. I had done one triathlon to that point in 1990 in Ottawa where Rick Hellard won as he is still doing. Rick was amazing back then and still is. It was October in 1991 and there was a huge Base party and this short fireplug walks up to me with a beer in each hand and another couple in his pocket and says “I hear you do triathlons and you might as well sign up for IMC in 1992.” I looked at him with a blank look over my beer and said “say what?” He replied: “you are the only other triathlete (one race makes me a triathlete?) on the Base so you are going to be my whipping boy so you might as well sign up.” That was the start of a journey with a guy with an amazing talent who trained 4 months of the year like crazy, partied hard, flew jet aircraft and still raced at the top of the game. So much raw talent. We did so many great races.Comox snow to surf, Jasper Relays, Kananaskis 100, Provincials, nationals, Ironman. I remember the Saskatchewan provincials where all of us in the top 5 were camping in a provincial park drinking beer until late in the evening but still racing hard the next day - I caught Fiona Cribb with 500 m to go (she was on the Cdn world team) and we all went water sliding after the race. The good old days.
I did a few races with Gerard where we did some “training” missions with the jets to do some races. Being instructors there was not much “stick time” so we got to “borrow” the jets for weekends as long as we looked after our own places to stay and meals - this allowed Gerry to keep up the required flying hours. But in hindsight, it was what it was supposed to be about. Guys like Tony O’Keeffe, Dev, Gerard and I walked the walk. As an old senior officer it is still nice when when a new Royal Military College cadet knows it is a rare scalp when they can catch us in a a running or Tri race. Walk the walk.
20 years is a long time. Not as many Ironmans as Dev but I have done my share and also raced in many countries while on missions or posted abroad. Thanks Dev and Fleck. I got the old scrap book out and some memories from some old times. Gerard, you were always a freak of nature.
Dalton
Gerard is in Penticton visiting for Ironman and was chatting with us here at Peach City Runners about two hours ago…He is a great guy,class act and I forgive him for smacking me down into second place when he won Ultraman Canada in 2005…
Dev, what place was I over all? Pretty sure it was BOP.
Dalton…thanks for sharing some of the “inside” story with Gerard…we just saw the jet flying jock that would literally air drop into races, kick ass, party hard and leave! The guy was/is a legend. Yeah, we really were kind of breaking new ground in Armed Forces triathlon back then. I’m just glad I was able to be part of it. I remember watching Sharon Donnelly swim as a recruit in my squadron and urged her to join the running team and tri a few triathlons…9 years later she won an ITU world cup, pan am games, and went on to be an Olympian at Sydney. We really had a good group of “kids” who drank the tri Kool Aid and the cool part is that most of us are still involved today. So while going “back in the day” is fun, still being able to compete is even more fun.
I bet if we had an Armed Forces reunion tri, and threw all the guys from “back in the day” in the mix, it would be equally competitive and the times would not be that much slower (some guys like O’Keeffe are way faster).
Nick, if you see Gerard Charleton in Penticton can you get him to pop into this thread.
Konaexpress, I took the results book to the office in case anyone had any questions through the day and left it there, so we’ll have to wait till Monday to get your answer.
Sitting here on Sunday before IMC 2011, I guess I’m kind of regretting not signing up to do IMC rather than IM Switzerland…at least there are no houses 1 foot from the side of the road at IMC to crash into…oh well, hindsight is 20/20. I really did not give “20 years since IMC1991” much thought when my old Air Force buddy Ed Rechnitzer urged me to sign up, but I suppose now I’m feeling the nostalgia, looking at the names on the results sheet and remembering the fun times with all these guys. Eddy had a bit of a disaster race at IMC 1991, but because most of the US Armed Forces guys had pre qualified at a us domestic half or olympic tri Kona qualifier, and some of the Canuck had done it and were too fried (or had no money…remember a Lieutenant made $28K, a captain $38K), Eddy was able to take the last Armed Forces slot for Kona. It was him who brought back all the stories and gave me the motivation to try to qualify…it then took me till 2006 (I must be an idiot to bang my head against that brick wall 15 years in row before finally qualifying for Kona)!!!
Dev
Very cool. I’m 25, fairly newly married, and going into my first IM in June (CdA). It was great reading about your experience and how it impacted your life.
So after 20 years and 20,000+ posts on ST you are still the same speed. Congratz.
Keep it up and break 10 hours before you retire
Thanks, I wish you good luck at IMCda and hope you are doing sport in 20 years. It does not need to be Ironman, just any sport. And if you’re newly married, I hope your ride is as nice as mine. I’ve had the opportunity to influence a who generation of kids through running, XC skiing and even triathlon. My son and his buddies are training for their second sprint tri of the summer as “off season” training for the winter XC ski season!!!
Ha!
Not only that, he still continues on about his 3 favorite subjects: his race times, his weight, and all things Dev. You can also count on a “good old days” post every month or so (himself as the center of conversation of course).
Stay gold Dev, you keep on rockin in the free world and I’ll keep making asinine comments.
Great race report! I was there too in '91 and had a blast. There was about a dozen (plus SOs) of us from the Hermosa /Manhattan /Redondo Beach area all racing, and today have fond memories of the event and the time spent there. I remember it as great weather /race conditions - light wind, mild temps, and even sprinkled a bit on the run.
Dev - don’t bring up anymore the fact(?) that the run may have been short. I still look back on that run as my best marathon time. It doesn’t matter that it was 25.2 miles.
Good luck to all in IMC '11
Bob