Many of you took part in the Challenge Cairns "It's About Sessions" Challenge that ended on January 1. Participating were top age-group men, pro men, 330 participants in all, all of them hard chargers.

Who won? A couple of age group ladies. I talked to them, now that they had a little bit of distance between the end of the challenge and now.

Our winners were caf0 (Cathy), and MistressK (K).

Now, whenever I think of MistressK, I think of somebody who you'd pay money to, for the pleasure of having yourself disciplined harshly. Partly because of her screen name, and partly because, if you visit this lady's website, she does like to dress up in leathers and ride a big, V-twin, orange hog. So, I think it's fitting that MistressK whipped a few hundred men into submission.

K will apparently ride anything with two wheels, even if she supplies the V-twin horsepower herself. She's a Canadian who nordic skis, mountain bikes, circles the velodrome, road rides and competes in long course triathlons. Take a look at her blog. I love this gal's style (the pics embedded herein are of her). She's one of my favorite Slowtwitchers. As an athletes, she's all in, and she only just started any sort of endurance training and racing about three years ago. K completed 148 workouts in 60 days, or about 2.5 workouts every day, for 60 days.

If Jordan is Slowtwitch's resident propeller-head with a lot of endurance, Cathy is, as ladies go, cut from that cloth. She's extremely smart and accomplished. Her ego is Clark Kent-ish. Her alter ego is superwoman. She completed 163 workouts, or just over 2.7 workouts per day. And her volume was astounding. If we converted all her aerobic points to one sport, she would have run 125 miles a week, every week, for 9 weeks. Or, ridden 500 miles per week, without a break, for two months. Good going!

Like K, Cathy is also new to tri, having only been a triathlete for two and-a-half years.

Cathy has always been a bike commuter. She started taking her swim training seriously when, "... rescuers in my second race stopped me during my best freestyle to ask if I was okay; I find humiliation to be powerful motivation."

She picked up her running, "after reading BarryP to escape the injury cycle that had trapped me. My workout frequency during the Cairns Challenge was actually quite typical."

K made headway during the Challenge. "I learned to do both flip turns and butterfly during the Challenge, so the prospect of learning and improving something new worked against the ennui of pool swimming in the dark days of winter."

While Cathy's number of sessions was pretty typical for her, the volume was not. She called it, "insane and I burnt myself out at the end. I did more volume the month leading up to my first Ironman last year, but that was shorter duration and more balanced (or least consisted more of my preferred activities).

"Three factors converged to create temporary insanity: My run/bike volume grew to significance over the course of the challenge. I didn't want to stop my swim focus early, not without realizing significant performance gains [before the Challenge, Cathy "decided to go 'all in' on swimming in a desperate attempt to break out of the slow lane.].

"And the silliest: a person ahead of me in points—but not in sessions—in the Cairns Frequency Challenge began to falter, and I thought I had a chance at a pass if I inverted."

The Challenge also hit K at the right time: "Having just come off a 6-hour trail race on October 29th, this challenge was ideal to get me moving through my off season."

I asked each of our ladies about fitness gains during the Challenge. "My swim focus was a disappointment," Cathy said. "My swim endurance certainly improved, but my pace only slightly. I didn't have time to build my run or bike back to last year's level. I ended the challenge with back muscles for the first time in my life, which is the only part of the challenge my husband approves."

"The Cairns Challenge was a ton of fun," said Cathy, "and it motivated me to do much more than I otherwise would."

But it also uncovered a truism: "It also made me realize that I've never enjoyed riding my tri bike like my road bike."

Consequently, and because Slowman happens to be traveling to Cathy's town on business within the next month, there's going to be a F.I.S.T. bike fit session taking place, and we'll see if that can't be fixed.

Cathy will settle in to, "A long bike one day, a long run one day, and two workouts/day the remaining five. That'll be my target moving forward."

As for K, frequency suits her. "Because of my other life commitments, I do greatly prefer consistency and frequency over sheer duration. I won't stop putting in longer workouts on weekends, but my bread and butter training will remain 2 disciplines per evening in various combinations."

In the course of the interview, K confided that she's saddled with, "a very cheap car rack that I refuse to use unless I must." Accordingly, we've arranged to upgrade that a bit, to Saris' new Gran Fondo rack (pictured just above). With the old rack, K, "only let my 18 year old mountain bike ride on it!" Now you can stick that Cervelo tri bike of yours on your car rack, K.

Let us not forget about the namesake of the Challenge Cairns "Sessions" challenge. This full distance race takes place on June 3, in a location wild even by Aussie standards. Chris McCormack headlines.

Challenge Cairns is owned by USM Events, which also owns and produces big triathlon events like Noosa, Mooloolaba and Geelong. It also produces the Sydney WCS event, so owns a piece of the ITU World Championship title.

World Triathlon Corporation just purchased USM Events a couple of weeks ago. This has created speculation around the 2013 Challenge Cairns event. Will it remain part of the Challenge family, or will it convert to an Ironman? I've asked WTC that very question, they don't have an answer, and it is my sense that they honestly don't know.

This also gets WTC's CEO, Andrew Messick, back into the cycling business. His prior job was heading up the Amgen Tour of California for AEG. By adding USM's events to the WTC family, he now runs the Jayco Herald Sun Tour, a 60-year old stage race that is Australia's oldest.

Challenge Cairns is destined to become a signature event under WTC's ownership. The Aussie market has blossomed for WTC since Murphy Reinschreiber, Managing Director Asia Pacific, took a keen interest in the Australian sector.

Perhaps attendees at this year's Challenge Cairns will get first crack at registering for the 2013 event, which will be Something Cairns, but it's impossible to say what that something will be.

All that aside, Challenge Cairns the race provided Slowtwitchers with a convenient prop around which to construct a compelling intramural competition. Congratulations to newcomers to triathlon caf0 and MistressK for throwing down, and besting all the grizzled vets.