.

 A quick note about logins and welcome emails. 

The last day or so the welcome emails with new athletes' login info have not been going out. We are working with the site host to resolve the issue, but in the meantime club reps can provide this information to any athlete who did not get their login info via email. 

To do so, club reps should login, then go to Manage My Team, select an athlete from the team list and send the email address (username) and password to any athlete who still has not received their login via email. This is a new feature just enabled today, December 13.

Apologies to everyone, we'll have this sorted out as soon as possible.

Hey, we all make mistakes. If you've entered your mileage incorrectly you should be able to correct it quickly and easily, right? 

As of today, correcting mileage entry errors just got a lot easier. For small errors you can still just make an additional entry to correct your error, but we've seen some really BIG errors this year and those are the ones that are harder to correct. 

For those big errors (over 100 miles) it's easier to just zero out the incorrect entry and re-enter the correct amount. If you find yourself in this situation you can do just that by going to the Show My Results page and following the instructions there.

Right now this is for athletes only but Club Reps will have this capability very soon. 

UPDATE: club reps can now also delete mileage entries.

The path is Login > Summary > Select Athlete > Select the entry to delete (by clicking the date) > Click the big scary button that says Delete this Entry.

This will come in handy if someone enters a big negative number (we've had reports of this happening spontaneously, but I've been unable to replicate this behavior) and then goes away on vacation.

Today is March 2, which means this is the last day for entering results for the Run session, and for that matter the final day of the 2010-2011 version of the National Challenge Competition.

A big thank you to everyone who took part this year, and especially to everyone who took the time to contact either Racetracker or USA Triathlon. We depend on your feedback as we continue to try to improve this competition year after year. 

It will take a few more days to finalize all the results, but after midnight tonight the numbers posted on the site are the unofficial final standings. Once those have been made official by USAT they will send out an announcement to all club reps, and a final roundup of the Run session and Overall Competition results will be posted to the Racetracker NCC site (on the Results page).

Enjoy what's left of winter, everyone, and best of luck this year in achieving all your triathlon goals. 

Jeff McCartney

Race-Tracker.net

Most of you have no doubt been following the results of this year’s competition pretty closely, and have been checking out the results for individual athletes. If so you’ve probably also been wondering about some of the incredible mileage recorded by some of these elite athletes, in particular by David Bowne of Jet City Tri.

David, winner of the Bike Session, has as of February 15th amassed over 8,000 miles on his bike. That’s impressive. How can anyone log so many miles so quickly, you might ask. David has kindly agreed to share his story with everyone else competing in the National Challenge Competition.

The NCC has filled a hole in David's life. Seven years ago, David was diagnosed with an illness and had to have a spinal cord implant.  Doctors advised him not to compete in or train for marathons.

Last year, David's 20 year old son was killed in a car accident.  After the tragedy, he went to a therapist and was encouraged to start working out.  David's teammate on Jet City Tri, David Bianchi, encouraged him to use the bike trainer.  He started out slowly, riding only 5 miles at a time, but has increased his mileage to the point where he has now ridden 400 miles in one day.  

David wakes up at 4:00 a.m. and rides the trainer until 7:30 a.m.  He then puts in a full work day and comes home to train again.   Weekends are long as he has logged 100 miles on Saturday & Sunday, 200 miles on a Saturday and Sunday and 400 miles on a Saturday in one session.

This year, the NCC has deeper meaning to the Jet City Tri team. The team is putting together $50 donations into a ‘winner take all’ competition, with the money going to the charity of the winner's choice. David is doing the competition in the name of his son, and if he wins (which seems likely!) his funds will go towards his son’s scholarship fund.  

David's motivation comes from his son’s love for sport. He is aiming to reach 10,019 miles by the end of the competition. The final 19 miles has a significant meaning as it was his son’s favorite number.   In the future, David plans to compete in an Ironman race.

As athletes and friends, we should all be encouraging and supporting David in his final mileage in the competition.

An important note regarding the end dates of sessions:

For club reps (or athletes) entering mileage, you will have an additional 48 hours to enter miles for each session.

Each session will close at midnight on the 2nd day after the official end of the session, based on your local time.

• Swim: midnight January 2
• Bike: midnight February 2
• Run: midnight March 2 

This also means that you will not be able to add any miles for the bike or run sessions until after the 48 hour extensions are over. Please take care when entering your mileage!

Anyone checking the standings without being logged in will see each session finish at one second past midnight Alaska time, but club reps who login will see the session extended.