This Saturday a fun local triathlon race will take place in Kilrush, Ireland.

Gavin will race it.

Great opportunity to cheer for Gavin and other athletes:

Step 1 – Download the A4 PDF cheering poster.

Step 2 – Print the poster.

Step 3 – Write the names of people you wish to cheer for. One name per poster. Make sure to include Gavin as well.

Step 4 – Tell your friends to do the same.

Step 5 – As athletes you cheer for pass take out the poster with their name and scream: V for Victory. Go! Go! Go!

Step 6 – Let us know on Facebook if it worked. Maybe send us some action photos of your cheering.

Have fun in Kilrush.

Gavin was injured for a large part of this season.

As much as I enjoyed looking at an MRI of his ass already in March, I did not enjoy knowing he is not accomplished.

To see someone so dedicated to performing, not being able to perform, is not good.

What would happen if I would not be able to do my work for 6 months? I would explode!

Gavin never said it but he was thinking it: “I will be back!”

And he is back.

Today he won Dublin City Triathlon and became the Irish National Champ.

This is only a step – he needs and wants to be back in the ITU World Champ Series.

He had a great result in Yokohama 2009 which showed his quality.

But then the injury came…

Fraser also had problems with injuries and overcame them to have the best season of his career in 2010.

Dan and Conrad had their share of injuries.

Lisa had a back problem which did not allow her to perform well earlier this season only to come back with a World Champion title.

Step by step.

We are with you Gavin!

Never never give up.

Now that dust settled here is a nice overview.

Aleksandar was an overweight scuba diving instructor and teacher.

He decided to do triathlon to loose weight and stay in shape.

He liked it and somehow managed to do 8h 31min in Challenge Copenhagen in spite of a flat.

Aleksandar was never an elite athlete but – I guess – he is one now.

He really is just a guy who took up the sport few years ago as he had nothing else to do.

Also Aleksandar has an audience of some 300 people a day on his site.

These are not big numbers.

If you put up funny videos or celebrity gossip you should get much more attention.

But for a small country triathlete’s non-English personal blog it is quite good.

He cares to share what he learned and people appreciate that.

It is great to be part of Aleksandar’s journey.

Thanks!

Please spell his name with KS, not X.

Nice to remember this race.

Go Dan! Go!

Dutch artist Rafael Rozendaal made a super cool race kit for Dan Hugo.

Dutch band Aux Raus made a song for Triathlon Team but we have not don much with it yet – we need more post-production.

Triathlon Team is the only triathlon team which had a song dedicated to them? I guess. Does it matter?

South African band Die Antwoord has not done anything officially for us but I know Aleksandar and Conrad are HUGE fans.

In an amazing set of circumstances Rafael Rozendaal, Aux Raus and Die Antwoord will perform together in Amsterdam on 23rd August at Trouw. Rafael is VJing his art to Aux Raus music who supports Die Antwoord.

If you can you must see this amazing mix.

Lisa Nordén happy.

Igor Nastic running.

Fraser Cartmell posing.

I was in cinema.

When I got back I checked email.

I got only one email, it was from Lisa. It was only the url of the new post she just wrot.

Url was interesting: world-champion-in-lausanne-today

Lisa is the first ever female ITU World Sprint Champion!

Bravo Lisa!

I wonder if she changed her mind about the new ITU World titles.

Opened Twitter and read this:

Theclarke
NEWS FLASH. Just been in a big crash…going to hospital now. VEry cut up.Gonna faint…goodbye

Theclarke
season over

Huh…

I heard it was a bike accident but nothing was broken and no serious damage but enough to keep him off training for a bit.

Get well, Will!

Red is a Danish man (or probably any man).

Black is a man who gets cancer.

Green is someone who tests early and prevents or cures cancer.

Green is NUMBER ONE.

After a week of spontaneous unplanned promotion here are some results:

817 views on youtube.

457 euros raised through forlife.dk.

726 visits on whoisnumberone.dk.

Only 26 fans on facebook.

Here are the comments:

Youtube views are nice but could be more.

Considering more than 100.000 euros were spent last weekend on compression socks and tires I think a bit more money could have been raised.

whoisnumberone.dk visits are ok but not great. They are still within 50-100 a day and since there is no new content I think its ok that interest is still on.

Facebook page is super deserted – we could use more fans for sure. We hoped to have 100 so far.

What we learned:

No time to prepare and we did not get a chance to activate everybody we wanted.

One thing is to do a fundraising / health awareness campaign with a trained team, another one is to do it with an athlete who had the most important race of his life on that weekend.

Overall, Aleksandar did a great job and we also got a lot of support from Challenge Copenhagen and people like Torbjørn. Thanks!

What is most important is that everybody enjoyed it and sees its as a positive element in the race environment.

And we did something. Anything. Little hours we managed to put in I think had a positive effect.

This project will go on and grow.

What you can do:

You can still forward the video and please consider donating some cash.

It is not over, we just started.

Thanks.

But…

Aleksandar, like most long distance triathletes, races seldom, so I will dedicate today’s post to him.

Race in short:

Yesterday Aleksandar fixed his bike, baked bread for pre-race breakfast, made me thai, we watched 90210 and we went to bed.

Today we woke up at 3am.

I had an urge for jam and kept thinking of Gavin. Walked down the streets of Copenhagen to buy it at 3:30am.

Gavin loves jam. Also he convinces me all Irish love jam.

Once breakfast was done we were off to Challenge Copenhagen race start.

Aleksandar had a great swim and in spite of a cramp started the bike well.

The bike started very humid and the course is very technical. As day progressed more sun showed up making the race even ore humid.

A lot of riders had flats, some even three flats including local Jimmy Jonsen and race favorite, Martin Jensen.

Aleksandar had only one flat with some technical problems and managed a good solo ride.

Of course while he was pushing pedals me and his coach, Ole, were enjoying a buffet breakfast in a hotel.

Then he started a crazy fast run.

I think he passed the half point at around 1h 20min.

I sneaked into the press area and counted seconds.

I knew he was less than 2mins behind Jimmy.

Once Jimmy cross the line at around 8h 27min my heart rate hit 200bpm.

I counted seconds.

Aleksandar’s goals were 8h 30min and top 10.

He succeeded in both in a less than perfect race: 9th with 8h 31min.

Lots of emotions at the finish.

Awesome 24h!

Bread baked by Aleksandar and jam inspired by Gavin were just perfect.

Nice photostory on Facebook.