Another NCC Comes to a Close

You know spring is around the corner when the National Challenge Competition wraps. 

For some teams spring might be around the corner, down the street and straight out of town a few miles (Alaska, Buffalo) while for others spring never left (San Diego, Guam, Florida).  But for calendar watchers, the end of the NCC means the end of winter can't be far off. 

Some quick and unofficial numbers while USAT compiles the Big Report:

Total Miles for Everyone, All Events: 769,398

That's around 482 miles average for each athlete. 

Swim: 27,745 miles = 11,560 Ironman swims

Bike: 555,289 miles = 3,084 Ironman bikes

Run: 186,365 = 7,113 Ironman runs

If you add it all up, that equals approximately 3,688 full Ironman distance triathlons by total distance.

Club and individual athlete awards will be announced officially by USAT soon. 

Great job, everyone. See you next year. 

Run Session Closing Date & Time

For all Club Reps entering mileage for their clubs, the cutoff date for getting the February mileage entered will be March 2 at midnight, your local time. This is to give these hard-working folks time to get all their miles entered without being under too much pressure. 

This doesn't mean that miles run in March can be counted - all miles entered for the Run Session must have been actually run in February.

Now that business has been taken care of, how about a round of applause for all the Club Reps who so diligently entered everyone's miles throughout the competition? Without them, where would this competition be? So be nice to your rep. Maybe slip them a couple of Hammergels the next time you see them at a race, or buy them a set of Zipp 808s. I'm sure they would be happy with either one of those options.

Bunnies Thwarted by Hammerheads

The Three-peat has been thwarted! Odds-on favourites to win their third straight session, the Alaska Tri Club Red Biting Bunnies have been sent packing by their opponents from the exact opposite end of the country, the Hammerhead Tri Club!

Hailing from sunny Florida, the HH crew were the first to cross the 3,000 mile mark on sunday February 15. The Hammers finished ahead of second place Tri Club of San Diego, with the bunnies currently sitting in 3rd spot. 

Congrats to the Hammerhead Tri Club!

Bike Numbers are In

The report for the Bike Session is now being compiled and will be released officially by USAT next week, but in the meantime you may be interested in a few stats.

Total Bike Mileage for the Bike Session: 235,774 miles.
Average Bike Mileage per Club: 4,065 miles
Average Bike Mileage per Athlete: 212 miles.
Highest average mileage: Tribe, San Jose CA: 330.78 miles per athlete

Very impressive.

The total mileage and average mileage per athlete includes both club and individual (no club affiliation) athletes.

Official standings and awards will be released next week.

Run Forrest, Run

Just a gentle reminder to everyone (but club reps in particular) that all run mileage for the February Run Session must have been run in February. No carrying over miles from January, or December, or last August. February. 2009.

The phone has been ringing off the hook here at Racetracker World Headquarters, deep in our blast-proof underground bunker in a secret location somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Some athletes have amassed incredible miles already, and it's only February 3. Keen-eyed competitors have been quick to spot these Forrest Gump-like totals, and quicker to let us know about it. Thanks so much for the emails, everyone :)

If you are a rep and you've made an entry error you can easily correct it by entering a negative number to balance it out. If this describes your situation it would be good if you could do that asap, please.

Thanks and to everyone else: don't panic.

Full Swim Session Report Now Available

Now that the official Swim Session results have been officially announced by USAT officials, you can get your very own official PDF version of the Complete Swim Session Results. It's official.

The report is available on the Swim Standings page.

A similar report will be available for the BIke Session as soon as the results have been tallied up, though of course you can still see the latest numbers on the Bike Standings page any time you like.

Bike Week Bell Lap

Heading into the final week of the bike session, the Top 10 club list is dominated by some familiar faces and some newcomers.

The battle for top spot continues, with the Alaska and San Diego teams trading places numerous times this month. As of this writing (blogging?) the Red Biting Bunnies are nearly at 16,000 miles and the San Diego crew are at just under 15,000. Don't these people have day jobs? Very impressive.

Rounding out the Top 10:

Alaska Tri Club White Wabid Wabbits
Hammerhead Tri Club
DC Tri Club
Buffalo Tri Club (right behind DC)
LA Tri Club
Tribe
Jet City Tri
FAST

A special shout-out to the Tribe team, who are holding onto 8th with only 26 athletes on their team! They have racked up the highest average per-athlete mileage of the bike session (259 per athlete so far). If they had a full team of 75 they would be well out in front right now.

The Bike Session officially ends this Saturday January 31 at one nanosecond past midnight, so keep spinning, pedalling, riding, hammering and logging those miles. Club reps will have extra time to record all the miles put in by their teams, but make sure you get your results in to your club rep as early as possible.

We Have a Winnner

Building on their success in the Swim Session, the Alaska Tri Club Red Biting Bunnies pulled off another win in January's Bike Session. Again besting arch-rivals the Tri Club of San Diego, the Bunnies broke the tape literally just ahead of their southern California opponents. 

Alaska TC RBB's hit the 10,000 mile mark on January 13 at 7:15 AM Alaska Time. 

Tri Club of San Diego were right behind, logging their 10,000 on the same day (!) at 10:38 Pacific Time. Close!

Congratulations to both clubs for putting in such a huge effort. 

The benchmarks for each session have gone up each year of the competition, since many clubs seemed to easily reach them in each past year. This year as of this writing only 2 clubs have surpassed the 10,000 mile mark, but one more (the other Alaska team, the White Wabid Wabbits) is poised to reach it any day now, and with half the month still to go there are three more teams (Hammerhead, DC Tri and Buffalo) who have a realistic shot at 10,000 miles. 

Comments about the competition so far? About the mileage benchmarks? We want to hear from you. Send your comments either via this blog, the NCC website contact form, or by posting to the NCC Athletes Facebook group.

Happy riding, everyone! Warm weather is on the way! 

A Facebook Group is Born

Hey sports fans, so there's this new thing called Facebook that all the kids are on now, apparently you can post photos and updates and - what? You've heard of it? Well have you heard about the newest Facebook group, NCC Athletes? No? That's probably because I just created it an hour ago.

Go, join, post, chat, trash-talk. See who you're competing against. Make new frenemies.

First discussion thread: "Northern athletes are more motivated than those in the South. Discuss"

Wow. Who picked that topic? Oh right, I did. Strongly agree? Agree? Disagree? Or maybe you Strongly Disagree. Let us know. 

Here's the link: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56723551807

Indoor Sports

Just to prove their Swim session triumph was no fluke, the Alaska Tri Club decided to hit the ground riding in January. Their massive warehouse-based indoor ride-a-thon got them off to a great start, and the warm weather clubs are still playing catch-up. 

Even though their plan to webcast the event was foiled by technology, they still captured a few photos to prove their all around hard-core-ness. 

Does your club have a similar event planned? Let us know so we can help you brag about it here or on the NCC website. There's a handy form on the site for sending email to the good folks at Racetracker, your online emcees for the National Challenge Competion.