Inc.  
 
“The Ressurection”

Edition # 6
 October 15, 2007

Featured Design 

 
 "No Off Season" Performance T $29.97 (email me to order!)

  
The 2007 Ironman Canada Crew!

Group Shot of The Gang!

Iron-Fans Cat and Kathy!

Iron-Fans w/ Iron HEADS

 
 Just Chillin…

 
 Oh Mannnn, it’s early!

Bike Shots Of The Gang! 

Grab a Coffee (or a Cytomax), and have a read…

In This Issue

1. The "Ressurection and RE-Launch"
2. GymSkinZ basePRO Technical Wear
3. New Shtuff!
4. GymSkinZ Community Forum & Blog BETA
5. Just for Fun!
6. Quality Control AGAIN
7. Ironman Race Report
8. In The Next Issue... 

1. The “Resurrection and RE-Launch”

With the Ironman World Championships over in Kona yesterday, that pretty much inspired me to get off my butt and finally release a newsletter after a VERY LOOONG absence!  (Big shout out to Aaron B, Mark S. and Shannon B. who all competed yesterday!)   Anyway, Yes!  GymSkinZ and I are actually STILL ALIVE and ticking!   *sigh*… Needless to say, 2007 didn’t go anywhere near as planned in regards to “stupid-t-shirt total world domination”… dammit…   but I assure you that from now on – like RIGHT NOW – things will be a lot different.   Where the heck did I go the last 6 months?  What caused the huge derailment of 2007?   Suffice to say there were many things causing me an unbelievable amount of undue stress and grief, including but not limited to:

- Ironman Canada For The Second Year In a Row
- 3^rd Party Quality Control & My Inability To Work the Measuring Tape
- Sleep Deprived Psychosis
- Attention Deficit Disorder
- “REAL JOB” responsibilities.

Due to the aforementioned line-items, newsletters, podcasts, design releases, all around general updates to gymskinz.com basically went completely out the window but now that I have wimped out and haven’t committed to Ironman 2008, I will be focusing exclusively on GymSkinZ now!  (more or less)  I didn’t even get to do anything special in regards to the 1 year birthday of GymSkinZ which was technically back in May – so I guess this would be the Happy 1.5 Year Birthday to me newsletter.   Anyway, expect a lot of things to be coming down the pipe, training tips, triathlon and fitness related articles, product announcements, a few ebook publications by yours truly and a few of my buds, etc etc.  Exciting stuff to say the least.  In the meantime, please help me spread the word to your friends about gymskinz via the invite link below!  If you have pics of you racing or chilling out in GymSkinZ gear – send it over and I’ll see if I can wrangle up some freebies for ya!

Contrary to popular belief, I operate GymSkinZ out of my living-room for fun “on the side” so it is not my real job.  Having said that, I thank you for your unbelievable patience, support and understanding over the last year and a half as I coped with my growing pains and circus act schedule.  I assure you 2008 will be filled with many suprises a la GymSkinZ style ;)

Tavis

Link: http://www.gymskinz.com/invite

2. GymSkinZ basePRO Technical Wear 

It’s been a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time in the making, but I’m proud to announce that I’ve finally got things more or less sorted out with my technical gear.  The feedback from you folks who have picked up my performance wear has been absolutely fantastic!   A few selected designs will be released on a monthly basis as opposed to offering every single one of my designs – which would have been economically impossible, so be sure to pick them up as they will be a limited quantity and exclusive item.  I have also had the honour of providing custom designs and apparel for various clubs and groups – ranging from tri-clubs, hash-house harrier relay teams, beer-league baseball teams, and a magician (!).   If you need any custom t-shirts (cotton or technical fabric) for your race support crew, your tri-club, sports team, school association or club, or whatever – please drop me an email!    

   Gearwest Tri Club / SCS Multisports crew                         Our Iron-Fan Spectator Shirts
        at Ironman Zurich Switzerland!                   I can create custom versions for your Race Support Crew!

I will be releasing a PDF downloadable catalog of all my technical gear soon so please stay tuned for that as well as details about the "shirt / design of the month" discounts.   In the meantime, here’s a sample of some of the performance T’s and you can pre-order selected styles now!

Link: http://www.gymskinz.com/tech

3. New Shtuff!

I’m slowly getting through the entire catalog and making sure that each and every design is available on the widest range or products available to me at CafePress.  Please remember to register at http://www.gymskinz.com/cafepress if you’ve purchased something from my online CafePress store (see item #6 under Quality Control).   I’ve just put together a GymSkinZ year wall calendar featuring various designs for each month – a great way to keep track of what’s going on, and it’ll make ya’ laugh too.   I have little shirts for your doggie,  larger sizes for the Clydesdales and Athenas, and various other bits and pieces for each design.  If there’s anything in the catalog that is "screwy", or you notice a product is available with one design, but not another, just email me and I’ll get it added / fixed ASAP!  All of these items make a great gifts!

4. GymSkinZ Community Forum & Blog BETA

If you have't already noticed, me and my friends (who are the catalyst behind starting GymSkinZ in the first place) are all about having fun - and nothing is more fun than sharing the laughter and stories of our adventures - oh, and we might share some training tips too.  Drop by and rub shoulders with my crew and hopefully many other weekend warrior multisporters from around the world (you know who you are!)  Join the GymSkinZ community forum and mingle with others who share your interest of fitness AND all around fun.   We want to hear about your race experiences, training faux-pas, tips, tricks, pictures, and generally anything else you want to share.  Who knows, you might make a few new friends and/or training partners!   We hope to plan some fun “race trips” in the future so this will be the forum where you’ll get to hear about all our up-coming escapades.  The forum is in BETA format right now, so feel free to register, and pass on any comments or suggestions on what you’d like to see in there.  Hope to see you in the forum, or if you’re a current myspace user you can find me at myspace.com/gymskinz, and at facebook look me up at tav@gymskinz.com – more pics posted soon!

Link: http://www.gymskinz.com/forum, http://www.gymskinz.com/blog, http://www.myspace.com/gymskinz,  facebook – tav@gymskinz.com

5. Just For Fun! 

Every now and then, you come across things on the web that are just too good not to share.  Here’s a couple vids that you should be able to appreciate ;) 

      

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wME5NTriTco                       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auHO-PnhyS4

6. Quality Control! 

I am still using the services of Cafepress to produce most of my designs so most of you are receiving your items direct from them. I don't actually get to see or touch the product before you get it, so please let me know if you have any shipping or sizing issues or anything else about your purchasing experience. All purchases are backed by a 30day 100% money-back guarantee so if you need a different size or you'd like to exchange it for another style, I (and cafepress) will be glad to resolve the problem! TECHNICAL FIBER products as well as a few select cotton items are being produced here as we speak, so make sure you stay subscribed to this newsletter to stay informed.   You’ll also find “blowout” stuff on my eBay store which I’ll let you know about in a future email.

Link: http://www.gymskinz.com/cafepress

7. Ironman Race Report – the long race report… to coincide with my LONG day…

** I'd like to think I have a pretty firm command of the English language, but since I released this at about 3am, please pardon the grammatical wreckage that you'll see scattered throughout this report! **

First of all, big shout out and congrats to everyone who competed back in August! (or anytime this year at any other race for that matter!)  I won’t bother going through all the names, but needless to say, it was great to see all the familiar faces as well as meet some new peeps (Kogan, Aaron, etc etc etc)

Aside from all the photographic evidence (which I will post in either facebook or myspace or my own online gallery soon) to remind me of that day back in August, I have tried to block my sub-par performance at Ironman Canada 2007 out of memory.  

Actually, it wasn’t *that* bad – mainly because the “IronFan” crew that was up in Penticton supporting me and my fellow iron-peeps – needless to say, they were a force to be reckoned with!  For those of you that may have been up there either watching or competing, if you saw a bunch of people in yellow “iron fan” t-shirts carrying around a bunch of giant heads (pictures on the left) – that was our crew.  Hope they managed to make YOU smile as much as they made US smile during our day of discomfort.  I cannot tell you how much of a boost it was have some of our closest friends out on the course cheering us on that day – it was HUGE.  Hell, I should hire these guys out as consultants to coach your support crew on how to be an Ironfan of their caliber.  Perhaps “spectator training services” will be on the list of Team GymSkinZ services in the near future…  If you have pics of a your crew having as much fun as we did, show us =)

So anyway, this is basically the extended cliff notes version of my raceday back in August.  It's a long one, so bear with me...

Getting to body marking at 5:30am is always no fun, and this year was no exception.  Myself, Ron, Matthew, Harry, Tara and Lara did our farewell and good luck hugs with our amazing support crew and we funneled down the chute to drop off all our crap…err, special needs bags.  What was crazy this year compared to last year was, the body marking was basically a complete free-for-all circus act.  Rather than line up by race-number and get marked in some organized fashion, it was basically a bunch of random people standing around with a jiffy marker and lines of athletes going in circles.  Eventually, after 45 minutes of cursing, I ended up marking myself along with a few other folks who commandeered a felt from another athlete who was fed up with waiting.  Not a great way to settle the nerves before a big race.

With that FINALLY out of the way, I headed off to load up my bike – holy crap, it’s already 6:20am?!   I managed to find Ron who informed me that Matt’s pump didn’t work, so we had to scramble to ask other guys to borrow their pumps….  At this point, 6:30, I’m frantically trying to body-glide myself and get into my wetsuit and try to get some sort of warm-up swim before the 7am start.  Of course that wasn’t going to happen.  I found Ron, and then Tara who managed to forget her entire days worth of nutrition back at the house so needless to say there was a bit of a mad panic!  After many expletives and “it’ll be fine”, Ron and I handed over whatever we could and we all had a prayer that we wouldn’t all collectively bonk at the same time when we ran out of fuel…   6:45, egad, the pros are starting and we haven’t even hit the beach!   By now, Matthew and Harry and Lara were nowhere to be found (hadn’t seen them since body marking) and our traditional group hug before the start of the race was going to be a condensed version.   We made our way over to the far left side, and back of the pack of 2700+ competitors and managed to locate the ironfan crew up in the crowd (thank god Cat is tall!)  Anyway, a few dunks in the water, a couple high-fives and “see ya laters”, the countdown was on!   I don’t even remember the dang National Anthem this year cuz I was in such a mad dash…  So anyway, I do remember the helicopter flying overhead and the sound of the canon, and all I thought to myself was “here we go again”…

The swim basically sucked… well, I basically suck at swimming so that goes without saying.  With a whole lot more participants in the race this year, it seemed a little more crowded, and I spent a lot of time smashing into people for the first 15 minutes or so before I got a little bit of room – in my mind I was thinking everyone must have passed me so I’m now the LAST person in the damn pack, but actually I had veered waaaaaaaaaaaaay left off course and was basically swimming off on my own (mental note to self, spend some time refining my sighting skills).  As a matter of fact, I was SO far off course, the crew way back on shore later told me that they saw some idiot swimming off by himself and thought where the hell was he going – well that idiot was me…

So after some navigational corrections, I managed to gong myself into the first turn house-boat and wave at the divers who were monitoring that turn.  I didn’t bother looking at my watch to see what kind of time I was at cuz I figured I couldn’t spare the extra 2 seconds to do so.  I also noticed it started to get choppy on the way back – and I don’t like choppy!  Thankfully it was away from my breathing side so it didn’t affect me too much, but at this point I didn’t really care, I just wanted to make that second turn and head back on that 1600M stretch to the beach.  Long story short, I hit the timing mat at 1:38:05 – 4 minutes slower than I was last year, and last year I could barely swim… not so confidence inspiring but at least I was back on dry land.  I also found out afterwards that Sister Madonna Buder (at 76yrs old) kicked my ass this year!  At least in 2006, I came out of the water WITH her…  sheeez…

Ok, so onto T1, and lo and behold – there was Harry strapping on his helmet and exiting the change tent.  Apparently we had both sucked at the swim this year, but at least my sucking wasn’t as bad as his (he was 1:16 last year I think).  I told him I’d see him out on the bike course and proceeded to get my gear together – very happy to see there were other people in the tent meaning I wasn’t last out of the water for once.   Despite the abysmal time, I felt great at this point – nowhere near the “dear god, I’ve just swam for almost 4km in a zig-zag sewing machine fashion with the ugliest swim form you’ve ever seen” feeling I had last year… wait a sec, I still swam with ugly form and in a zig-zag sewing machine fashion for at LEAST 4km, but I guess I had just become more proficient at it this time around.   I trotted out of the tent, had absolutely no problem locating my bike since it was the only one on the rack – AGAIN – (side note, I have NEVER done a triathlon where my bike wasn’t the last one on my rack coming out of the swim – how’s that for AWESOME with a capital A?!)   Anyway, hopped on my bike with a crowd of others and proceeded to head down Main Street and marvel at the thousands of cheering fans – and then realized I had forgot to put my voice recorder in my Bento Box so there would be no “in race commentary” this year on my podcast unlike last year… sorry folks! 

The ride was great.  No cramping issues 20 minutes into the ride like I had last year, and I did a much better job of settling into my zone 1 heart-rate a lot quicker without hammering like a bat outta hell.  I caught up to Harry just after the McLean Creek road climb which was the BIGGEST mess of people – it was packed solid going up that hill and basically impossible to not be 2 inches away from the next closest rider in any direction.  I couldn’t believe how many people were wheezing as if they were 4 hours into the ride!   I spun past this crowd (and Harry) and onto OK Falls I went.   This whole time, I figured Ron was way ahead of me as well as Tara and I knew Matthew would have been done his swim in an hour so there’s no way I’d see him – so I made a conscious effort to just CHILL.  I literally didn’t get above 150 beats the whole damn ride with the exception of any climbing.  It wasn’t until the stretch to Oliver where I caught up to Tara and got to exchange our customary “good jobs and see ya in a bits”.  I figured Ron would have been right around here too but again, I didn’t push the pace at all like I did last year and just remained a slave to my HRM (**article about HRM training coming to your inbox soon).   Got to Richter feeling pretty good and saw the ironcrew in full effect with our “giant heads” which was just awesome.  We had no idea Hoz made these up until we were actually on the course so it was a welcome sight during the climb.  (email me if you’re interested on getting these made for your next race ;)   Coming down the backside of Richter, I couldn’t believe how windy it was!  It was like gale-force headwinds and all of the wind resistance that could possibly occur was directed squarely against my carcass.   The rollers just sucked and in order for me to maintain the speed I had been averaging to this point, my heart rate and perceived effort was going through the roof!   So, I said screw it, I’m gonna back it off again, and not push too hard and stick to the race-plan which was be a slave to the HRM.  Despite a VERY sub-par cycling performance for me, I was still passing pretty much everything in sight and overall likely passed over a thousand people during the ride.  I really gotta work on my swimming… So yah, got to the Cawston out and back without too much difficulty (aside from the crazy head-wind), grabbed my special needs and sucked down a Boost and a cliff-bar, took a leak, and off to Yellow Lake I went.   Crowds here were awesome as usual, and it was time to experience something kinda like the Tour de France with people on either side of a fairly narrow channel as you rode up between them with the cowbells and cheering giving you energy to keep going.  Last climb of the day done and it was back to downtown Penticton to pound the pavement.  I ended up 6 minutes slower than last year with an absolute sh*tty 6:15  (Matthew was almost an hour quicker than me and this is someone I’d been training with for the last year for crying out loud).  However, when I got off my bike at transition, my legs didn’t feel that bad at all which was a welcome surprise.  I got into the change tent, just at the same time as Vince from Calgary came in (cops for cancer guy I’ve seen at a few races over the last couple years) and we chit-chatted for a bit.  Out onto the run course I went and cringed when I saw 8:03 total time on the clock when I crossed the timing matt, almost 20 minutes behind where I was last year at this very same point.   Oh well, shrugged my shoulders, and accepted the fact that 12 hours was pretty much out of the question (again) and headed down lakeshore to take on the bitch of a run. 

Now if any of you read / heard my report from Ironman 2006, things started to go sideways around this point and very quickly!  Last year I had taken down SO much Gatorade during the ride, I was bloated like the Michelin Man when I started the run, and I sounded like a waterbed sloshing around with every step (which resulted in a 20 minute yakking session at mile 8).  THIS year, I didn’t touch one single drop of Gatorade and I actually felt pretty good, but I will admit I was SCARED.  I really didn’t want to have the shroud of death envelop me at mile 4, only to have its grips tighten more and more until I wanted to DIE at mile 8.  Having said that, I stuck to a very conservative pace and once again just stuck to my zone 1 heart rate zone for the run.   I saw mens winner, Kieran Doe, as he headed down the last 2km on my way out.  Also saw Ron and Harry as they rode back into town, which was funny because I figured Ron was ahead of me this whole damn time.  Of course Harry was delusional at this point and told me to wait up for him… I must have been near delusional too cuz I thought about it for a bout 5 milliseconds.   Anyway, was real nice to plod along at a steady pace and get to mile 8 without needing to pull over for a nice 20 minute vomit session like last year.  I did have a brief pitstop and spat on the same spot I parked myself at last year, saw Jeff on his way BACK into town (he finished in 10hrs:26mins) and continued on – slowly but surely.  This whole time, I was literally just waiting to implode.  I was sticking to my plan of walking through each aid station to have some water and to this point, I felt pretty damn good – but I had no idea if it was sheer luck and disaster was just around the corner or what was going to happen.  Saw Kogan heading back looking strong, and a bunch of other guys I knew – all making me feel very slow and inferior, but hey, at least my head wasn’t between my legs puking… I figured if I could make it to the half-way turn around, perhaps I’d pick it up just a little, or at least omit the aid station walks.  Nearing the turnaround at OK Falls, the last stretch has a bunch of hills both up and down… I HATE HILLS.  Made a huge effort to not blow up before the turn around and said to myself “ok, self, let’s get to the turnaround and past these damn hills on the way back and then see what happens”.   The turnaround at OK Falls was full of spectators and I ran into a ton of familiar faces which was awesome.  The Iron Crew at this point had parked themselves back at the house on Main street (which was on the course) awaiting our return so I knew I had to put on some sort of decent show and get back there before they all fell asleep.  I grabbed my special needs bag, sucked down an Enervit (tasted like crap) and a few pretzels, and I was now half way to finishing the run.   Surprisingly, I still felt ok but as a precaution, I sucked on a Tums just for the sake of doing so as well as took an Advil – again, just for the hell of it, and plodded onward.   When I got to about mile 14, I saw Harry and Ron as they were approaching OK Falls – hot on my heels! 

I figured this was way too early to pick it up as I hadn’t gotten through the crazy hilly portion yet, so I tried to stay as steady as I could and not fall apart.  Now I started to curse at myself despite still feeling ok, why the hell did I bother walking through ALL the aid stations, why didn’t I just pick it up a *little* on the downhills?   All was kind of moot at this point but I did try and push it a little bit and hopefully widen the gap between myself and my buds that were trailing.   Right at this time, I ran into Tara – literally in the same spot I ran into her last year and we had our customary “in race hug” and high-five.  Egad, I started doing some math in my head and realized – holy shiznit, if I didn’t get my act together, I wouldn’t have even broken 13 hours for crying out loud – and I was expecting 12:30!!   Yikes!! The doubts started creeping in and the internal swearing increased exponentially.  In a way, it was good cuz all the f-bombs I was dropping in my head distracted me from the mileage that was ticking by at a pretty alarming rate now… 11 miles to go… 10 miles to go…. Single digit miles left!   The game was on – if anything was going to go sideways, now was the time.  I dragged my ass through that boring stretch along Skaha Lake and encouraged all the folks that were still coming out.  8… 7 miles to go….. Finally hit that last sub-division and couple hills and literally started checking over my shoulder for Ron and Harry.   6 miles… I made the bend to head back up South Main Street and realized I only had about 5 miles.   Out of nowhere, Hoz appeared on his bike like some sort of shepherd and all I remember telling him was “Ron is on my ass, I can feel him breathing down my neck!”.   He rode alongside of me for a little bit (to make sure I didn’t veer off course like I did in the swim) and I zipped past the house we were staying at with the ironcrew parked in front waving the giant heads. A few high-fives and good jobs and giddy-up and gos and see ya at the finish line, I was now on the home stretch.   Little under 5 miles to go and my watch was at 12:20… holy shiznit, looks like I’m not gonna make 12:30, so I better make it under 13 dammit!   There was no way in hell I was going to be slower on my second attempt at this ding-dang race!  So I literally closed my eyes and just started running my ass off. 

I managed to rip off the 4 remaining miles doing 8 minute miles and didn’t even think to slow down at any of the remaining aid stations.  I did grab water at each of them to throw in my face, but I didn’t want to waste any time or breaths drinking it for fear of choking or drowning on the spot – if there is anyone on this earth that could drown with a Dixie-Cup of water, that would be me.   I high fived every little kid I saw along the way, I hit the Staples “Easy Button” as I passed the last aid station, and was basically lovin life knowing that I was so damn close.  The crowd noise was getting louder, more people were on the side of the streets now that I was back in the heart of town, and I rounded that last corner before Lakeshore like I had just robbed a bank.   At this point last year, my dad jumped out of the crowd and ran with me down the block so that gave me a huge boost as I checked my watch and realized that unless I had a heart-attack and dropped dead right on that spot, I should be able to crack 13 hours (whoopy-freaking-doo).   That last out and back along Lakeshore seemed like an eternity and it felt like someone had laid Kryptonite alllllll along the way.  That last pylon seemed like it was getting farther with every step!   Thankfully, I didn’t trip and fall as I rounded the hair pin, and just prayed to God that I could just hold this pace for the last little stretch before the finish.  Ok Tav, if you got any hammers, start droppin’ em now!   I think I managed to produce a wood plane, a plum-bob, a level, and maybe a couple carpenter’s pencils, but I sure has hell didn’t have any hammers left.  Regardless, I could FINALLY see down the finishing chute and the beginning digits of 12:5 something something still on the clock (I didn’t want to open my eyes fully since that might sap ALL my remaining energy) – PHEW!  Onto the red carpet and the last few steps, and I finally got to hear those famous words “Tavis Yeung, you are an Ironman!”…. again ;) 

8. In The Next Issue

- The benefits of training with a Heart Rate Monitor
- Hi-Lights from my 2007 Ironman Training Program by the Peak Center (which shaved half an hour off my time with half as much training!)
- More Race Reports from a few other peeps that raced this year (lemme know if YOU want to be included!)
- Nutrition and Supplements for Endurance Sport - what are you on?
- Core Strength Training Tips
- Staying fit in the "off-season"

I will NEVER stop thanking YOU ALL for your tremendous support and your help in spreading the word about GymSkinZ (http://www.gymskinz.com/invite) during the last year and a bit!   It is very much appreciated!

Look forward to catching up with ya’ all soon. 

cheers!
Tav.
CEO – Chief Entertainment Officer
http://www.gymskinz.com