A Taste Of English…

I saved the most comedic one for last,  Andrew Dacanay, the TriNS boss (long live the king!).  This is definately worth a minute of your time.  Lots of good information and great laughs!   Enjoy! 

Your Name:  Andrew Dacanay

Place of Residence :  Halifax NS, for now, although that may have changed by publication!

What type of athlete are you:  Started as a roadie nearly twenty years ago, became more of a runner three years ago when I trained for the ‘04 Bluenose to keep going over the winter and never stopped!  Haven’t actually done a triathlon for two years!  If my riding was any better you could call me a du-specialist, but for now just call me a “not quite skinny enough pie-eating specialist”.

Favorite Discipline: Discipline?  Hello darlin’.  Surely “my favorite discipline” should belong in the “Something That Someone Wouldn’t Expect To Hear About You” section.  Oh, I get it.     Athletically, it’s always going to be the bike.

Years Doing These Disciplines: If you take changing from “recreational cyclist” to “racing cyclist” when I first pinned on a number, 18 yrs; the Longmarkers 25 (ITT), November 1989.  If you take it from my first set of cleats (with toe-straps, it’s been that long) then it’s been about twenty.  First tri was back in 1991, started tris as a sport in ’96, which was when I started to run properly. 

Favorite Meal:  Curry.

Favorite Band:  Elvis is the King.  Also depressing jangly guitar-based British music; Coldplay, The Smiths, Morrissey, Athlete, Placebo - that sort of “throwing myself off a high ledge/sticking my head in the gas-oven” music.  Got a soft-spot for now-defunct British indie rockers Campag Velocet (think about it)

Biggest Accomplishment:  My kids.   I don’t want to push then into any sport, although it’s a secret dream to see them represent England (at anything!).  So instead of being a hockey dad signing them up for everything under the sun I’ve tried to be more of a role model; ever since they can remember I’ve been going out running or riding, in our house, that’s what people do.  And now they’ve started doing some KOS, no pressure from me, just for fun.  If they carry on they carry on, of they don’t, they don’t, but at least they have (I hope) a positive lifestyle image and it’s activity-based, not based around a sedentary-beer-and-chips-on-the-couch lifestyle.   

Most Memorable Event:  After the birth of my kids….. winning the ’06 Valley Marathon.  My first win for two years (and twenty-some starts, including seven second places).  Very unexpected victory which made it all the sweeter. 

Best Workout:  I train on feel a lot so I don’t have a strict regimen of “if it’s Tuesday, it must be intervals”, so I don’t have a specific session, interval, time, loop or whatever that tells me I’m “on track”.  So for me a “best workout” usually comes by surprise!  I suppose a 20 mile run at a 4:30-ish km pace that doesn’t completely kill me would be an “on track” indicator, as would some fast mile-repeats (short five minute range perhaps).  I find it hard to replicate race-intensity in training so sometimes it’s the racing itself that tells me I’m on track, the old "racing yourself into fitness" chestnut.  Maybe that’s why I tend to race in blocks rather than spreading it out more evenly over the season.

Best Vacation Site:  Home.  Not was weird as it sounds.  I mean, what do you like to do in your spare time?  Run a bit, bike a bit, sleep in maybe, read a bit, perhaps catch up on some movies on DVD?  What’s a holiday other than getting in some serious time doing what you do in your spare time; running, riding, sleeping, reading and watching?   And where’s all of that?  At home.  Sure we just had a nice two weeks in the UK, museums, monuments, history, but after a few days I wanted to go for a ride and I couldn’t.  So what’s the point in going bungee jumping in a New Zealand fjord or teaching macramé to orphans in a South African village or spending two weeks in a villa in Tenerife and clubbing in Ibiza when all you want is right here at home?

Something That Someone Wouldn’t Expect To Hear About You:  Is this where we do the Discipline thing Mistress Kinky?  No?  OK.  I’m afraid of large herbivors; cows and horses, that sort of thing.  I guess it’s the primarily city upbringing.  On a serious note, I have battled with an eating disorder in the past, possibly linked to the fact I was a fat child.

Dream Job:  Working P/T in a bike-shop fiddling with bikes, drinking coffee and chatting with the customers and P/T for TNS writing TurnArounds, working races and the like (Are you listening Paul and Dan?).

Worst Job You Have Had:  Also the best; Bike Courier in London (UK).  The courier image is tearing around London in the sun with your bag on your back and your shades on, swigging Lucozade and getting chatted up by hot secretaries and foxy ladies in convertibles (“Hello darlin’, wots that?  Yeah I do shave my legs, wanna have a look?”), and some days it’s like that.  Other days its sitting in the rain under a shop awning in Knightsbridge with your feet in your bag and the Evening Standard stuffed up your jersey nursing a small coffee trying to keep warm.  Also you get paid piece-rate; I was once on all day and did ten jobs, at £2 a job that’s a pretty meager return for 12 hours hanging about the South Bank and the West End.  But at least it was sunny that day.   You run the risk of getting killed multiple times every day, and I was getting knocked off at least once a week, not "near miss" but "lying on my back starting at the sky hope my bike’s OK". I finished my stint as courier with a depressed tripod fracture of my left zygoma and I still have the screws in (yes they’re titanium and no they don’t go beep in airports)!  But hey, I was getting paid to ride my bike (and who else reading this can say that!) around a city I love, and seeing as I know central London like the back of my hand it wasn’t exactly intellectually demanding. Blimey, I should do the Knowledge!

Worst Day of Racing:  There are a lot of races where you go beyond where you thought your limits were and cross the line cramping, blowing, tasting blood, bonked and feeling slightly stunned and concussed or whatever, but if you get a result, then it’s worth it.  A PB (for example) would be a reasonable return for turning yourself inside out.  The Ottawa marathon this year was a bad experience that nearly qualifies as “worst ever”; I went out way too fast (39’ @ 10 km, 1:23 half) and barely hung on to the finish.  But at least I achieved my goals (sub-3, top 100), if not a PB, so there was a reasonable return.  To me a bad day of racing is where you do all that for nothing.
                Thus my worst day of racing would have to be a road-race in Ipswich in ’92.  I didn’t have any proper miles in my legs (unless you count the couriering which was 200m, stop at the lights, 200m, stop at the lights, 200 m stop at the lights, get off, wobble up the stairs in your cleats, ‘ello darlin’, wink-wink, wobble down the stairs in your cleats, jump on the bike, 200 m, stop at the lights…) and was just along for the ride.  I was so not into racing that year I didn’t even have a RR licence, I had to get a day license.  Race HQ was in a local school and the changing rooms were on the first floor; I slipped coming down the stairs and knocked a chunk out of one of my Look cleats, in hindsight clearly an omen.  Anyway, last lap, I was on the front chatting to my mate Darren when four guys slipped by down the outside so I just hopped on over and got into the break; Dazza said later it was quite the instinctive move on my part.  I was dead chuffed too, in the break?  I was already calculating how many points I’d get even for coming 5th in a five man sprint.  Anyway, a few miles later my lack of miles kicked in and I blew up (ka-boom!) and I stopped taking my turn.  The mood in the break changed rapidly and the other guys started to get quite, well, aggravated.  You see they thought I was sitting in for the win, when in reality I was hanging on for grim death; there’s a bit of a difference really.  It even got a bit physical before they dropped me like last weeks washing.  Soon the rest of the race caught me; whizzing down each side of me like German fighters in those B&W war films of Bomber Command; whiz, whiz, buzz, buzz.  Fokkers.  Dazza yelled “bad luck” and there was such difference in our speeds there was a distinct Doppler effect!  Break to Laterne Rouge in five minutes.  Story of my life.  Soon I was caught by another guy who’d been dropped before I had and we club-runned together to the finish.  As with many Essex races it was multiple flat loops with a left turn on the last lap to take you to an uphill finish.  When I finally heaved my carcass over the finish line I was totally and utterly spent; I rolled up to a car and leant on it, still clipped in.  I could only see clearly a small patch straight in front of me, my peripheral vision was all blurry and grey, there was a high-pitched whining in my ears, my mouth was drier than happy hour at Betty Ford, my hands and arms were numb & tingly and when I eventually unclipped I couldn’t even stand straight.  And all for nil points.  F#@k.  To cap it all on the way home the roof-rack started to peel off Rocket’s car and we did the last ten miles with our arms out of the windows to stop our bikes bouncing off down the A12.  Not a grand day out.

Any Advice For Future Athletes:  Enjoy it.  If you’re any good then sooner or later it will become your work and you have to remember why you’re there in the first place.  Chris Boardman once said he didn’t like riding the bike that much, it’s just that he was good at so it became his job.  Which is funny seeing as most of us would probably give our eye teeth to be in the European peleton for a day. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like a compelling reason to spend five years living out a suitcase, riding suicidal cobbled races in Belgium and being paranoid about your weight does it?   And if you become an age-grouper then you’ll be working 40hr a week at the day job then going out to train, and why do something that’s a drag in your time off, or else what you’re doing to take your mind off work becomes work itself which makes doing it a futile, pointless exercise.  Enjoy it.  Oh, and stay off drugs!

Thanks to everyone who did these surveys!  Stay tuned for some more Tech Talk next week!