For those that are not aware the West Coast Trail is a rugged former-rescue trail along the west coast of Vancouver Island. The trail is 75 kilometers long and typically takes hikers 7 days to hike. However the trail has seen a number of trail runners attempt to set speed records over the last few decades, with the most recent record standing at 10 hours, 14 minutes.  Following is Gary’s account of his attempt to break this record.

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Written by Gary Robbins

The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.”
Don Williams, Jr. (American Novelist and Poet, b.1968)

Just organizing this one proved to be a bit of a nightmare that somehow turned into a dream come true. I come from a big extended family in Newfoundland and though the years have passed the bond still remains tight. My Mother is the only remaining sibling, of eighteen born (yes you read that right) that still resides in Nfld. For years when I went on BC road trips and relayed the stories to my parents it would be followed up by, you missed aunt and uncle a-b-c-d and cousins e-f-g-h-i-j-k-l-m-n-o-p, in towns q-r-s-t.

A few years back a wedding reunited me with this long lost side of my family tree and it has been an absolute pleasure getting to know them all over again. In the end, I could not have pulled this one off without their direct assistance and it would simply be unfair of me not to start by specifically thanking everyone who made this possible for me.

Dean Neville, Nanaimo ferry terminal to Port Alberni, and morning drop off at Frances Barkley boat ride from Port Alberni to Bamfield

Aunt Karen, Uncle Bob, place to crash and great conversation on Monday night

Sarah Logan, friend of this side of family. Place to crash in Bamfield on Tuesday night and drive to trailhead at 5:20am Wednesday

Randy and Roxanne Neville. Pick up in Victoria, dinner, change of clothes for journey home, drive to ferry in Tsawassen.

Ryne Melcher (Montrail family) and his GF Kristin Ohm-Pedersen, drop off at ferry on Monday evening and pick up from ferry on Wednesday night.

As mentioned, just getting to the trail head was a journey in and of itself. Thankfully the scenery upon BC Ferries is second to none, and by the time I arrived in Bamfield itself, on Tuesday afternoon, I felt like I’d been off of work for days, even though it was but 18hrs since I had clocked out.

On the running side of things the weather could not have been better, and given that it rained just 36hr after I came off the trail I’d wager to say that I had the best day of the year for my speed attempt. In hindsight I’m fully relieved I was not able to attempt the trail in May, as was originally planned, because it would have been a complete waste of my time, money, and energy, with a definitive do-over necessary. In the end it most certainly all worked out for the best!

After a relaxing afternoon in the tiny hamlet of Bamfield I’d felt like I’d stepped back in time, though not having phone reception for a day was actually kinda nice. After packing my gear I headed out for a quick test run, as I’d never actually run with this new pack before (”do as I say, not as I do!”) Ahem, don’t try anything new in a race! Speed attempts are different don’t ya know!

At 9:30pm I downed a couple of melatonin, as I would never be able to sleep otherwise, and I was out within minutes.

4:30am is early, no matter how you slice it and no matter what time you may have crawled into bed the night before.

5:15am Sarah and I depart for the trail. It’s a ten minute drive and for the first five minutes I find myself making jokes and trying to wake us both up. As we approach our destination though, I go noticeably silent. It’s almost go time. The gravity of the situation is starting to sink in.

It’s still completely dark outside, and there won’t be anyone else around when I arrive at my starting point. There will not be any other runners to share this experience with, or to create that wonderful nervous excitement that inevitably precludes daunting tasks such as these. I won’t have a Race Director there to send me off, and there won’t be any well stocked aid stations along the way. I’m completely on my own, and competing against nothing but a clock and thirteen years of history. I can’t help but notice that I’m more nervous than I was while lining up for the Western States 100 miler back in June. This attempt is so black and white it’s scary.

10h12m or better, success…10h14m or longer, failure.

I have no one to pace off of, no idea of what my ‘splits’ along the trail should be, no way of knowing at any point in time if I’m genuinely going fast enough to pull this thing off. Due to this fact there will not be a single mental break for the entire duration of the run. I have to get my mind locked in, for as much as some of this might prove to be enjoyable, it’s about time to get down to business.

I didn’t pack a headlamp so as to save on weight and we had to wait a few extra minutes until I could sufficiently make out the obstacles of the trail. At 5:34am, I asked Sarah to give me a ten second countdown…

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-GO!!

To continue reading the rest of this story visit Gary’s blog here….

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Written by Hayley Mick from Saturday’s Globe and Mail

WHITE RIVER. HOUR 52.

Ingrid Wilcox peers past the nose of her yellow kayak at a miraculous sight: someone waving from the shore of the sun-speckled Yukon River. After three days and two nights of continuous paddling through rugged wilderness, she is finally closing in on Dawson City.

At 62, Wilcox is an unlikely veteran of the world’s longest annual canoe and kayak race. The Yukon River Quest runs from Whitehorse to Dawson City. Its infamy within international endurance-racing circles stems from a gut-wrenching two-punch: paddlers must cover a massive distance – 746 kilometres, basically the same as racing from Toronto to Quebec City – on hardly any sleep.

Some competitors have Olympic credentials and arms like Popeye’s, but Wilcox is a petit, grey-haired gardening expert with a titanium rod in her hip and a stent in her heart. Yet she has just endured torrential rain storms, and crossed a wind-lashed lake that’s 50 kilometres wide.

Ten years ago, she entered the Yukon Quest determined to beat the clock. But a year after setting a course record for solo female kayakers, she felt a strange sensation in her chest during a training session, which led to heart surgery.

Now the race is her annual rebellion against health problems that have dogged her for her entire life. The life jacket that rubs the skin around her waist until its raw reminds her she is still alive. Simply finishing will stave off the question that whispers louder now with age: How much longer do I have?

Wilcox dips her carbon-fibre paddle into the water and pulls herself toward the waving figure – a tree stump. The hallucinations have begun.

WHITEHORSE. HOUR ZERO.

A steam boat’s whistle – the Yukon version of a starter’s pistol – echoes through Rotary Park on the east side of Whitehorse. Men and women stampede across a soggy field and leap into canoes and kayaks laden with Advil and Red Bull, fanning out on the rain-spattered river as spectators shout encouragement. It’s noon. The Yukon River Quest has begun.

Over the next 80 hours, extraordinary dramas will unfold along the route north to Dawson. All 180 paddlers comprising 78 teams in solo, two-member tandem and voyageur vessels – which carry six to nine – will attempt to cover a course that normally takes two weeks. They will have just two chances to rest: a seven-hour break at the halfway mark; then, about 200 kilometres from the finish, a three-hour nap in a field.

By the third and final day, sleep-deprived paddlers will report seeing giant cans of tomato soup on shore and Renoir paintings in the trees. One in four typically quits early, forced out by hypothermia, exhaustion, blisters the size of grapes.

The River Quest began 12 years ago as a local fundraiser for the even more gruelling 1,000-mile Yukon Quest sled dog race between Whitehorse and Fairbanks, Alaska. The first year, 16 two-member teams made the running start, leaping into canoes to follow the historic route used by prospectors and those who followed them during the Klondike gold rush.

As word spread, the race earned a special place among the growing list of ultra-endurance paddling events. This year’s crop of competitors hails from seven countries as well as Canada, and range in age from 20 to 71.

Many top paddlers gravitate to shorter races with bigger purses, but among this year’s competitors are a handful of sponsored athletes, a couple former Olympians and six Texans defending their title as voyageur champions. This year they have showed up with a sleek, black, carbon-fibre canoe custom-built for the race. (More narrow on top, it allows them to flip their oars from side to side every 20 strokes, easing muscle fatigue without forcing them to shift their weight.)

The vast majority, however, are doctors and carpenters, university students, British soldiers and cancer survivors – recreational athletes on a mission: to have the race of a lifetime. Whether out to set a record or simply to finish, they have a common thread: Against the unforgiving backdrop of the Canadian sub-Arctic, they are drawn by a desire to face a mental and physical challenge unlike anything they must confront in daily life. “After you do something like this, and you go back to work, and some manager is like, ‘Where are your TPS reports?’ It just doesn’t matter,” says Carter Johnson, a lanky 32-year-old Californian and the heavy favourite among solo men kayakers.

Like the gold-crazed dreamers of the Klondike over a century ago, these modern adventurers are after treasure, but something more valuable than the cash prizes of up to $2,100. Forced to dig deeper than ever before, they wonder: What will I unearth?

Carter Johnson“After you do something like this, and you go back to work, and some manager is like, ‘Where are your TPS reports?’ It just doesn’t matter.”

LAKE LABARGE: HOUR 8.

Dawn Krog pops to the surface and gasps. Waves pound her against rocks. She spots her bobbing husband, also bug-eyed from frigid water of Lake Labarge.

“Never again,” she vowed last year, when volunteers hauled her, too weak to stand, out of a tandem canoe in Dawson. The couple’s impressive ninth-place overall result included a terrifying night when they narrowly avoided hypothermia – only because she forced her dazed husband to pause and put on warmer clothes.

Once back in Maine, the couple realized their 10-year marriage had been altered. Their trust in each other’s instincts was now absolute. In his wife, a tiny 46-year-old bank employee, Brad Krog, an engineer, saw a level-headed lioness. They wrote down the story of their journey, then wept as they read it.

Not long after the Krogs drag their kayak to shore and peel off their wet clothes, they are met by Jeff Brady, a burly, bearded newspaper editor from Alaska who is on board one of a half-dozen safety boats crisscrossing the lake, searching for distress signals.

This is some of the worst racing weather Brady has seen since he helped to launch the River Quest. Lake Labarge is the most dangerous part of the race because the wind is so unpredictable. Today, it’s reaching 25 knots and generating metre-high waves in the middle of the lake. Brady has spent two hours herding paddlers into a safety zone within 200 metres of shore. He watched a seasick carpenter from Victoria pull into a sheltered bay and throw up.

Seated in the red motorboat, Krog tucks his arm around his shivering wife, who wears three layers of fleece and is dwarfed by an oversized men’s jacket. Oddly, they are beaming, even though they invested $12,000 to make the trip. It’s not every day you can flirt with disaster, and be reminded of the importance of basic things like safety, warmth, and each other, Krog explains. “What happened out there is as exciting as it gets for me.”

They plan to catch a ride to Carmacks, the first rest stop. Their heroics are over, but they can still be inspired by others.

“How about that Ingrid,” Dawn Krog says of Wilcox. “Isn’t she amazing?”

Ingrid Wilcox, 62“This is my 10th Yukon River Quest. … I can be stubborn and determined and I don’t give up.”

THE THIRTY MILE. HOUR 12.

Linda Rapp drops a pink carnation into the water and watches the current sweep it away. Seven women seated ahead of her in the voyageur canoe stop paddling.

Nine years ago, they had Edith in their boat. She was bookish, in her 50s, a mother of two, not your typical athlete. Rapp, a physical-education expert, had convinced her to join Paddlers Abreast, a crew of breast-cancer survivors from the Yukon. They huddled under a tarp during a downpour, sang songs to stay awake, shared celebratory beers in a hotel kitted out with an old saloon, forging a bond that went beyond a killer disease.

Two years later, Edith’s husband sped down to Rotary Park in Whitehorse, catching Paddler’s Abreast just as the race was about to begin. He handed them the ashes. They knew exactly where Edith would go.

This spot, where the river narrows and water flows quickly, is always peaceful. Spruce line the banks. Rapp can smell wolf willow wafting across the river.

The timing also makes it special. It’s midnight when they arrive, having conquered Lake Labarge and mercifully gained the advantage of river current. The midnight sun has painted everything a dusky grey. In wool hats and fleece coats, the team is ready to paddle through their first cold night at a steady pace: 65 strokes a minute.

But Rapp asks them to pause. For the teammates who never met her, she tells Edith’s story, and how she paddled even though quite ill.

Rapp is the only member of Paddlers Abreast who has done the race 10 years straight. She returns because she has watched the boat transform the women in it, teaching them that their bodies are capable of more than they ever imagined.

She has also watched it transform family members, and even strangers. Some, like a group of Australian breast-cancer survivors racing this year, have been inspired by the River of Life, a documentary about Paddlers Abreast produced by Werner Walcher for the National Film Board. Others are simply curious about their distinctive nine-metre canoe, with its blue and red moons painted by a first nations artist to symbolize women.

Rapp believes the canoe is a symbol of hope. She calls it “the spirit of the boat.”

Linda RappTeam captain for Paddlers Abreast sees the canoe as a symbol of hope.

CARMACKS. HOUR 19

Justin Hearn races along a dock, smearing sunscreen on the chiselled chins of six beefy men. Gripping paddles, the members of Breaking Wind, who are from Jersey, one of Britain’s Channel Islands, have 30 seconds before they can chase down the formidable Texans, who blasted off in first place six minutes ago. “Anyone missing a pee bottle?” Hearn shouts.

The riverside campground at Carmacks is the midway point of the race. Paddlers have seven hours to grab a coin-operated shower, a chocolate milkshake at the canteen and some sleep in a nearby hotel or tent – if they can, given the melee of racers arriving and taking off again.

Carmacks is also where most people “scratch,” or quit.

Support people like Hearn try to make sure that doesn’t happen. They are mothers, husbands, buddies and even grandkids of the paddlers. After carrying the boats on shore, they get on their knees and sponge out the urine of hard-core paddlers who refuse to stop when nature calls. They tote pills of every sort: Tums for indigestion, salt for energy, ibuprofen for muscle pain. They pack peanut-butter sandwiches and tuck people into bed. They offer back rubs and shoulders to lean on.

Most important, they deliver pep talks.

“Maybe I should scratch,” Ingrid Wilcox says to her sister, Tina Torbick, sitting in her hotel room. She is weary. Her shoulders ache. She has sores around her waist. At her age, despite all her experience, this suddenly feels reckless.

People are always commenting on how miraculous it is that someone as frail as Wilcox can finish a race. Most don’t realize that she trains year-round, swimming laps in winter and paddling the Yukon River all spring. Through experience, she also knows the tricks: what slow-flowing channels to avoid, and how pushing herself through a headwind is, in the long run, a waste of energy

But her greatest weapon, as Torbick well knows, is an iron will.

Growing up in Germany, Wilcox walked with braces, despite the polio diagnosis and doctors who said she’d spend her life in a wheelchair. As a young woman in the seventies, she travelled alone to the Yukon and fell in love with the territory. Later, with her husband, Frank, she set up a gardening and greenhouse business which she sold after he died in 2004.

Now she has one more thing to prove: If she finishes the River Quest this year, she will be the first solo kayaker to do so 1o times.

If you don’t finish, Torbick reminds her, think about how you’ll feel tomorrow.

Several hours later, she helps her sister ease back into the yellow kayak. Wilcox offers a cheery farewell to her fans, but the sight of her setting off all alone makes Torbick feel sad as well as proud.

“It does seem like this is the last time,” she says.

FORT SELKIRK. Hour 37.

Allan Thomas is certain: This the stupidest thing he has ever done.

It all began on a lark. He and five buddies, all British soldiers and mostly in their 20s, had hopped a cheap flight from London looking for adventure. The Steelbacks wore water wings to the pre-race orientation meeting and packed Skittles for food.

“Let’s pray, shall we?” Thomas had said as he sponged rainwater off the duct-taped seat of their rented old canoe. He was kidding. What’s a little rain when you’re British? Sleep deprivation is child’s play when you’ve trained in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But it wasn’t long before they realized some heavenly intervention could have helped. The Steelbacks lost their water supply shortly after Lake Labarge (a mystery culprit forgot to screw on the cap). Even before they crashed on the bare and dirty floor of the canteen in Carmacks (they didn’t have a support crew and were too tired to put up the tent), one of the guys, in his dehydrated delirium, swore he’d seen a giant hampster in the woods.

Now, even as the morning sun warmed their bones after a second night on the river, and even though they had made it to the Fort Selkirk checkpoint at kilometre 455 – one of the most beautiful sections of the route with its soaring cliffs and historic buildings along the shore – morale had hit an all-time low.

A seemingly endless stream of boats had recently passed them – even a tiny grey-haired woman, paddling slow and steady all alone in her yellow kayak. She could have been his grandmother.

Alan Thomas“I feel if I have been torn in half, by a lion …”

DAWSON CITY. Hour 61.

The noon sun bakes a small crowd gathered on a grassy hill over the river as it flows along Front Street, on the north side of Dawson City. Robyn Benincasa, a world-class adventure racer from California and the ninth person to finish, peers through binoculars.

Definitely a yellow kayak, she reports. A female.

All night, a circulating crowd of paddlers and support crew members has dawdled here, hollering and clapping as each racer finishes. The first to arrive was the voyageur crew from Texas, shadowed – as they had been throughout the race – by Carter Johnson, who blew away the men’s solo kayak record with his time of 42 hours and 49 minutes – 95 minutes faster than the old mark and almost eight hours ahead of the next solo finisher. When he came out of the boat, the soles of his feet were pasty white – the most extreme case of bathtub skin anyone had seen.

And so it went through the night. The Jersey Boys came six hours later, raising their paddles in unison as Hearn, their support guy, dashed along the shore slinging Budweiser and Gatorade. Paddlers Abreast wiped away tears. The Steelbacks cracked the Stella tall boy they had carried 740 kilometres for that very moment. “I feel like I’ve been torn apart by a lion,” Thomas says, grinning. Summoning a burst of steam, they passed a half-dozen teams after Fort Selkirk, finishing 27th.

Strangely, even after their ordeal, most of the top finishers are too wired to sleep. A few wander the wooden sidewalks of Dawson City, passing the old saloons and popping in for a drink at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s casino. But they always seem to wind up back on the river, cheering the other paddlers as they trickle in.

With about half of the finishers still on the course (22 teams quit along the way), Wilcox comes in with a time – 61 hours and 34 minutes – that puts her in 35th place over all, and fourth among the six solo female kayakers. She’s the oldest by two decades.

A herd of people rush to a lower bank. Dawn Krog breathes “incredible” as an exhausted but giddy Wilcox allows her proud sister and a race marshal to hoist her out of her kayak. “How’s my hair?” she asks.

This is the last time, she announces. She has new adventures on her bucket list. Ten is a good number. Nothing more to prove.

But then, as she teeters up the bank, she adds: Maybe I will be back. In something easier, like a tandem kayak.

What is the Vancouver Island Spine?

The Vancouver Island Spine is a proposed 700 kilometer trail that will stretch along the entire north/south length of Vancouver Island between Cape Scott and Victoria. The proposed hiking trail will be made up of a combination of established hiking trails through provincial parks, urban mixed-use trails, old railway right-of-ways and logging roads. The eventual goal of the Vancouver Island Spine Trail Association, which is spear-heading this initiative, is to create a trail which rivals other great trails such as the Great Divide Trail in the Canadian Rockies and the Appalachian Trail in the eastern United States.

VI Spine Relay

The VI Spine Relay is an event being held this month involving groups of individuals running, hiking, cycling, mountain biking and horseback riding along parts of the Vancouver Island Spine Trail from Cape Scott to Victoria.  The purpose of the Relay is to increase community support for the development of the Trail.

Participant can sign-up for any combination of relay legs, the first beings this Saturday, June 5th, and includes a 15 kilometer hike between the Cape Scott Provincial Park parking lot and Nissen Bight. The relay will conclude on Saturday, June 27th with a cycle between Colwood and Victoria on the Galloping Goose Trail. A full listing of relay legs along with dates and times and information on how to register is available here.

VI Spine Relay Community Days

In conjunction with the relay a total of six two hour events in six different communities along the proposed trail will take place.  The events are as follows:

• June 8th – Port Hardy
• June 11th – Campbell River
• June 15th – Cumberland
• June 20th – Port Alberni
• June 24th – Lake Cowichan
• June 27th – Victoria

The view the times and exact location for each event click here.

Additional Information

For additional information on this initiative listen to this CBC podcast interview between a CBC host and Gilbert M Parker, President of the Vancouver Island Spine Trail Association (fast forward to 13:25).

Vancouver Island Spine Website – http://vispine.ca/

It used to be their guilty little secret. Who knew it was good for them?

After a hard workout, Olympic champion Simon Whitfield and other top Canadian triathletes would sit around and pour back a few cartons of chocolate milk.

“We have been doing it for years, thinking we were rebels,” Whitfield said with a chuckle during a recent telephone interview from Victoria. “Being the endurance geeks that we are.”

Turns out studies have shown drinking chocolate milk actually benefits an athlete’s recovery. That’s important while training for a gruelling sport that combines swimming, cycling and running.

“It has ended up being just the right composition,” said Whitfield.

“Replenishing your carbohydrates stores and supplementing with protein after a workout is the best way you can recover for the next workout. We basically have just justified something we have done for a long time.”

That’s why a few glasses were raised in celebration when Triathlon Canada recently signed a sponsorship deal with the B.C. Dairy Foundation. Part of the agreement will see the refrigerator at the Victoria-based national training centre stocked with chocolate milk.

Kurt Innes, high-performance director for Triathlon Canada, said drinking chocolate milk helps the body rehydrate and rebuild muscle that has been sapped of energy during rigorous exercise.

“It has the right blend of carbohydrates and protein in a very cost effective package,” Innes said in an interview. “It makes it a no-brainer for us. There are a lot of other after-market products that are fabricated to meet this purpose.

“Chocolate milk is, in our opinion, one of the better, if not the best, most effective and cost-effective products.”

During the 2004 Athens Olympics, American swimmer Michael Phelps used to consume an instant breakfast drink between races.

Some of the studies purporting the benefits of chocolate milk have been partially funded by the diary industry. The results have been published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

A recent study at McMaster University in Hamilton found women who drink two large glasses of milk a day after their weightlifting routine gained more muscle and lost more fat compared to women who drink sugar-based energy drinks.

That study appears in the June issue of Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise.

There’s also a social side to the milk-drinking thing. Gathering for a couple of chocolate cool ones has become a Wednesday afternoon tradition.

“You have to like the people you are training with,” said Whitfield. “We train hard. Having a fun element to it, that you look forward to and enjoy the company, is an important part of it.”

Of course, put any group of athletes together and competition happens. With a couple of cartons under their belts, the senior triathletes often challenge the juniors in drinking contests.

“I’m sure the rugby team watches someone chug beer,” said Whitfield. “We sit around and try and egg on juniors to drink litres of chocolate milk.

The following interview by Christopher Kelsall was originally published on Flotrack and re-produced here with permission.

© Copyright – 2010 – Christopher Kelsall

Simon Bairu of Regina, Saskatchewan is the greatest distance runner in Canadian history.

Amongst the vast wealth of athletics prognosticators, it appears that it is a foregone conclusion that he will take down the long-standing and slightly soft by today’s standards…

, Canadian marathon record time of 2:10:08 set by Jerome Drayton at the 1975 Fukuoka Marathon.

Bairu does own the Canadian 10, 000m record, which he recently accomplished at the Stanford University track during the annual Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational. He ran the race in 27:23’63, finishing behind his Kimbia Athletics training partner Chris Solinsky who took the American 10, 000m record with his 26:59.3.

Bairu caused as much of a stir amongst the sleepy Canadian running community accomplishing his newly-minted Canadian record as he did a few years ago when he pronounced that the record of 6 Canadian Cross-Country Championships won by the legendary Paul McCloy is as good as gone. He was good on his word, as he surpassed the 6 national titles. His streak ended in 2007 at 5, just like McCloy, which includes 1 junior title (stopped due to injury) before reigniting the streak a year later, which includes two more wins in 2008 and 2009, for a total of 7 Canadian Cross-Country Championship titles.

Does his dominance suggest something about the state of Canadian distance running? No it doesn’t. He is just that good. For example, he accomplished a 13th place finish at perhaps the most competitive foot race on the planet, the IAAF World Cross-Country Championships; Bairu was 44 seconds from gold.

Bairu, coached by Jerry Schumacher is on a hot streak. He also won the Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon in Arizona with his finish time of 62:47. Some suggest that this would be a good time for Bairu to attempt to take all Canadian records from 5000m to the half marathon and perhaps even the marathon however, he has bigger fish to fry. Perhaps that fish will come garnished with a big apple.

The Interview

Christopher Kelsall: What was the sports scene like growing up in Regina? In your youth, I assume hockey and curling’s Sandra Schmirler dominated the local news.

Simon Bairu: Yup, that’s pretty much it; curling and hockey with some love for the Saskatchewan Roughriders (Canadian Football League) during the summer and fall. I on the other hand couldn’t skate ‘till maybe 7th grade and even then I would just fall over every time I wanted to stop because I didn’t know how to slow down and stop; I got banged up pretty quickly. I played baseball from the age of 8 to about 14.

CK: What positions did you play?

SB: Shortstop and pitcher mostly. The coach would throw me in the game as a closer and I would strike everyone out because my pitch was slower than the usual pitcher and they couldn’t get the timing right and would swing early. Plus half the time the ball would land right on home plate so I’d like to think I had a mean sinker pitch!

CK: Ever had the mound charged, by an angry batter?

SB: No one ever did, which really surprises me thinking back, even though I was one of the smallest guys on the team, I used to heckle the opposing team a lot. I believe it’s called “Little Man Syndrome”.

CK: How old were you when you discovered running?

SB: I was probably 9 or 10 when I discovered running. Every year in early spring we would have a school meet and I would do everything from shotput to the 800. But back then you would drink a root beer and eat a bag of chips 15-20min before you competed, it was awesome! The summer going into 9th grade was probably when I really started to be involved more with running. It all started because I got into a fight the spring of my 8th grade year. I punched a kid in the face and my 8th grade teacher pulled me aside and gave me a choice: either I get suspended for a week or I join a track club for two weeks. For a second I actually thought about taking the suspension because in my mind getting the belt would have been a lot less painful! However, I decided to try the track thing and so I decided to go out and buy a pair of shoes to run in and I knew if I was going to be the best I needed the best shoes out there and that’s why I got my dad to buy me a pair of Air Jordans to run in! One minor injury and $150 later I bought a pair of running shoes.

That first week had me regretting my choice, but I made it through the two weeks and by the end of the second week there was an 800m race in which I finished second. I was excited with my finish I thought I was hot stuff for getting second but my dad just said to me “Bairu’s don’t finish second!” and so I promised myself I would stay with it ‘till I beat that guy. Eventually I beat him and then my dad and club coach told me the goal was to win provincials and the rest is history. Come to think of it there’s probably a good chance I wouldn’t be in the sport right now if I had won my first race.

CK: Why did you punch the other kid in the face and did he go down?

SB: Long story short we were on the two-hand touch football team and he wouldn’t pass me the ball, so I decided the next logical step was too punch him in the face. It would be fair to say I wasn’t a well-behaved child. He didn’t fall, but I made him cry! I still remember kids in the neighborhood telling me they can’t hang out with me because their parents don’t want them mixing with the wrong crowd. Funny related story, while I was at Wisconsin my parents would get random calls from parents from the “old neighbourhood” asking if the Simon Bairu in the paper is the same Simon Bairu they use to know. My parents always got a kick out of that.

CK: To quote you from a Canada.com article, “I’m definitely a mud runner and that made it easier for me,” Bairu said. “You have to go through the same thing as everyone else but running in the mud is my strength. I just seem to have that extra gear at the end of a race.”

Is your strength in mud, born from the sheer joy of running in mud – something as organic as that or do you train specifically for challenging conditions?

SB: I’m from Regina, Saskatchewan; 9 out of 12 months consists of running in “challenging conditions”. I think my childhood just made me tough, I still remember doing workouts in Madison in mid-October and the entire team would be all dressed up in full tights and a couple of long sleeve shirts, while I would be running in just shorts and gloves. But a part of it is definitely me just enjoying running on grass and mud.

CK: You are on quite a roll over the previous 12 months, with your 13th placing at IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Canadian 10, 000m record with your 27:23 and a 62:47 half marathon win – a personal best. Which of these are you most proud of?

SB: I would say I am most proud of the record for two reasons; The first reason is the fact that 3 or 4 years from now nobody is going to remember who won the Rock & Roll Half Marathon or who got 13th at World XC. The second reason is that it was the hardest of the three for me. Running on the track has always been my weakness compared to XC and road racing. I hope this doesn’t come off as arrogant but Jerry and I knew going into the two other races I would do what I did or come close to it. Whereas with the record, even though I knew I was fit enough to get it I knew there was a good chance I would start off over my head and blow up. Last year I thought the record was in the bag but not only did I not get the record but I didn’t even qualify for Worlds.

CK: In your Flotrack video interview with Ryan Fenton, directly after your Canadian record performance at the Payton Jordon Cardinal Invitational 10, 000m, you said that the result came from consistency in training and getting the mileage in. Did the consistency come from being injury free or was it more about working with Jerry Schumacher and getting all the right direction?

SB: The turning Point for me was the Payton Jordan race of last year when I ran 27:50 and missed going to worlds where as my training partner Tim Nelson ran great winning by 15 seconds. I was the only guy in our group not to qualify for worlds and I was pretty down about it for a few days. A few days after the race Jerry called me out and challenged me to train harder. He basically told me that all season I had been getting completely out-trained by the rest of my teammates and I needed to change that if I wanted to accomplish great things in this sport. One of the things that make Jerry a great coach is he knows exactly how to push certain buttons to get us to where he thinks we should be in our training. He has six different ways for six different athletes and for me he said and did exactly what I needed to hear. Jerry made me realize that if I wanted to be one of the best I had to start training like it. Being the best at something isn’t supposed to be easy and it isn’t.

Jerry use to joke (at least I think he was joking) that I was semi-pro because I wasn’t doing all the little things. I wasn’t doing everything I could to get the best out of my training. I was going out a bit too much, had an okay but not a great diet, and I wasn’t getting enough sleep. My training has been absolutely amazing and consistent ever since that conversation, and yeah I was definitely able to avoid injuries for the first time in three years. Last year’s 10k race was definitely a big turning point for me.

CK: Sounds like between not winning your first race as a child and missing the Canadian team with your 27:50 and being ‘told’ sort of speak by Jerry – it seems you respond well to adversity.

SB: I’ve always responded well to adversity, I love a challenge; it feeds my hunger to want to be the best.

CK: Canadian Cross Country Championships will be shortly after NY. Any chance we will see you there, taking another national title?

SB: I really want to do World XC next year, so I’ll discuss things with Athletics Canada and see what my options are, so yeah there’s a chance I’ll be doing it.

CK: Have you had a chance to meet Paul McCloy?

SB: To be honest, I don’t think I have met him, if I had it would have been really early in my career before I would have known who he was or how great his accomplishments were.

CK: Was your father an athlete in his day?

SB: My Dad was a body builder. As a kid I remember my dad taking me to 3 or 4 different doctors trying to figure out why I was so skinny. The doctors kept telling him nothing was wrong with me but he refused to listen and he just decided to take matters into his own hands and bought me a weight set and made me drink muscle milk and other protein shakes after dinner so that I could gain weight. Lucky for me, none of that worked, I maintained my skinny frame. My brother on the other hand is a 21-year-old, 205lbs, 6′1 Linebacker, so my dad ended up getting his wish!

CK: Is your brother getting a sniff from the pros?

SB: My brother plays in the Canadian Junior Football League (Regina Thunder). It’s a bit like the transition league from high school to university football. He definitely has a good chance of going pro; look for him in the CFL in a few years.

CK: Has Jerry (Schumacher) given you and indication of what the major changes in your training will look like, preparing for the marathon?

SB: We haven’t really discussed that yet, but I think I’ll be doing a lot of what I’ve already been doing this past year, but with a bit more volume and on an even more consistent basis.

CK: What have you been doing this past year?

SB: We don’t really like to go into details on specific workouts and training cycles. It’s not because we’re arrogant or think we have some sort of secret to success. Truth is on a fundamental level all we do is run hard and run a lot, but as far as details go it would be like asking Bill Belichick to reveal his playbook. We would rather not give the competition that kind of information.

CK: Ok what have you been up to this past year outside of running?

SB: This past year I’ve been involved with the Big Brother program mentoring a 10-year-old kid. It’s been a lot of fun and some of the guys on the team really like hanging out with him. It gives me an excuse to hang out at the arcades and go watch animated movies in the theaters, besides that, I’m training-sleeping-eating. When I actually get some downtime I like to just hang out with some of my friends I’ve made out here in Portland. Sometimes it’s nice to hang out with people who don’t know anything about running.

CK: You PWN at which video game?

SB: NBA street; I’ll make grown men cry!

CK: Your all-time favourite movie is?

SB: Training Day.

CK: Ok. Eastwood or Schwarzenegger?

SB: Eastwood is just a bad ass.

CK: What music are you listening to – especially on runs?

SB: I’m listening to Kanye West (my favourite for runs), the Beatles, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings as well as some Michael Jackson and Kid Cudi right now.

CK: Ok nice choices – I just downloaded Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings song, ‘I Learned the Hard Way’. It comes across as very Stax and Motown sounding, lots of soul. Is it Kanye for steady-longer runs, Sharon Jones for recoveries?

SB: I don’t really listen to music on recovery runs. I only listen when I’m running hard and I don’t have anyone to run with.

CK: NHL or NBA?

SB: Sorry Canada, but I’m going with the NBA, I love watching team Canada compete in international hockey tournaments, but not a fan of the NHL.

CK: Nash or Bryant?

SB: Nash is a warrior and Kobe is the best in the league, but I’ll go with Dwayne Wade.

Back to running

CK: Your favourite training run is?

SB: Long tempo runs that are so painful that it makes you hate running.

CK: How many West Hills 22-mile loop workouts did you put in, in advance of last season?

SB: Those loops are killer, but we do them to get strong and it works.

CK: Can you take me through the loop?

SB: Like most teams we don’t like to reveal details on what we do on specific workouts. Sorry.

CK: Root beer and chips it is then. So the word on the street is that you are running the New York City Marathon. I am guessing that you chose NY because; being a strength runner a rolling course may suit you more?

SB: The truth is I’m planning on doing NYC but it could change, we don’t really know yet. I love the course because you just grind it out for 26.2 miles. I’ve always been a strength runner so I feel a course like this would suit me more and plus I don’t think it’s a big secret that I want to break the Canadian national record in the marathon before it’s all said and done. The last thing I want to be doing in my debut marathon is looking at the clock chasing a time. That doesn’t mean I don’t think I can’t get the record in NY, but it just means I wont be focusing on it as much. If I accomplish my very lofty goal for NY, the record will fall in conjunction. It doesn’t get any loftier than aiming for the win in your debut marathon on one of the biggest stages in the world! I love the challenge, in fact I thrive on it; it’s what is going to get me through the next 6 months of training.

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There’s a lot more energy in opera singer Marilyn Arsenault’s voice this spring. There’s also a lot more spring in her step.

A former varsity runner for the University of Victoria, Arsenault is in a year of transition after a sixth place finish at the Canadian cross-country championships in Guelph last summer. Since then there were the trips to Italy, Spain and Florida. There was the studying, working, and singing performances in Pacific Opera Victoria’s The Magic Flute and the December production of Handel’s Messiah.

For the most part, she said, the chaotic pace is manageable. However, in April last year, an exhausted Arsenault took the stage at the Royal Theatre for rehearsal. Preparing for her role as Papagena in The Magic Flue, the Saanich resident was, “jet-lagged and completely fried out.”

She had just returned on a transatlantic flight home from Africa. But Arsenault wasn’t just wiped from the flight.

She was in Amman, Jordan, that week running with the Canadian team at the 2009 International Association of Athletics Federations World Cross Country Championships. Her results?

“Not so hot. Too many competitions, too much training and travelling,” said the 42-year-old who’s singing her way to a masters degree at the University of Victoria while working part time in the school’s political science department.

“By that point I’d exhausted my stores.”

Not that she’s slowing down this year. In fact, Arsenault’s main focus these days is to speed things up.

“At 42, I’m getting to the end of my window for speed improvement. My ultimate goal is to maximize my speed to help my performance once I move to longer distances.”

Her plan includes graduating from middle distance running to longer distances (half and full marathons) after one more summer spent trimming her race times. To do so, she’ll be one of many local competitors signed up for the 5,000 m events in the brand new Victoria Track Series, set to run Saturday nights at Oak Bay High.

“Eventually I will run a marathon but I wanted to get a little faster in the shorter distances. As you age, it’s harder to nail faster times so I’m trying to get those out of the way — particularly at the 5 and 10 km levels.”

Arsenault’s second life as an elite runner picked up pace when she and husband Giuseppe (Joey) Pietraroia relocated to Saanich six years ago. Holding down a career as a professional singer, Arsenault and Pietraroia uprooted from Montreal when he earned the conductor in residence position with the Pacific Opera Company (Pietraroia’s currently working on this summer’s mega-chorus production of Carmina Burana). When they got here, Arsenault joined a running club to meet people and regularize her workouts. That led to races, which led to more training and, in 2008, she made a major commitment to her running career by joining coach Jon Brown’s training regimen.

“She was already competing well at the provincial level and made the jump to the national and international levels quickly,” said Brown, a two-time Olympic marathon runner. He also added that while Arsenault has those physiological requirements of a good distance runner it’s her determination and strong self-belief that sets her apart.

She is also extremely robust and is able to train hard without risk of injury, adds Brown.

He said the qualities that made Arsenault a successful singer cross over to distance running: patience and long hours of training.

“I guess my breathing muscles are developed from singing, and using core muscles from singing, my awareness of my core and breathing might be a lot higher than someone who doesn’t think about that.”

Of course, it helps having a pair of cavernous lung chambers, whether its using them to fill an 800 seat auditorium with a high C or replenishing your body’s oxygen supply while treading along the trails of Gowlland Tod Provincial Park.

For more on the Victoria Track Series visit www.trackseries.ca.

sports@vicnews.com

Arsenault explained

n Originally from North Bay and Timmins, Ont. running was on the back burner for the opera singer until she arrived in Victoria.

n Her first performance as a teenager was the lead in Bye Bye Birdie.

n Following her undergrad in soprano vocals at McGill University, Arsenault worked full time as a professional singer for two years in Montreal.

Singing, breathing, running:

“I’m not sure if a runner develops the breathing anyways, but my breathing from singing certainly benefits my running,” Arseanault said.

One key is keeping a certain order for running and singing. “I can perform and run after, but not the other way around. I certainly don’t do any hard workout sessions before a performance.

“It’s the same adrenal resources and that’s too exhausting.”

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I might be a little premature, but I hazard to proclaim that spring is here (despite the weather yesterday). April is fast approaching, and with the sun setting well after 7:00 it looks as though we can leave our vampiric, sunless winter behind us.

As the sun rises on a new season, thoughts turn to long days of tearing up the local singletrack, or for those of us longing for more epic challenges, thoughts may turn to stage racing.

Unfortunately, when preparing for your first stage race, I’m not sure you ever feel 100% ready – you just try to prepare yourself as best you can. In an effort to ease some of your trepidation and potentially avoid some painful lessons being learned in-race, I will impart some sage words of wisdom based off the extensive experience I have (ie. 1 race .

With that said, I’ll apologize ahead of time for the somewhat monumental nature of this post, but I feel (or at least hope) that most of this advice may prove helpful. So grit your teeth and bear it, with strength and determination you can make it to the end

I’ve pooled my deep reservoir of knowledge into eleven provocative sections:

Continue reading…

His post can be read here.

By now you know I have a biased point of view that rigorous endurance training is antithetical to health. Yes, I competed and loved it for 20 years, so I get the appeal it has for so many, but these days my personal focus is on maintaining the highest level of fitness and health on the least amount of work and sacrifice. I want to play and have fun.

Still, I get asked a lot by endurance athletes whether there’s any chance they can continue to compete at a high level while eating andtraining Primally. I used to think it probably wasn’t feasible if you wanted to be world class, assuming as I did (erroneously) that you just couldn’t overcome the need for copious amounts of carbs on a daily basis without crashing and burning. However, recent research into the concept of “train low-race high” (vis a vis glycogen) and modified approaches to low level aerobic training that focus largely on reprogramming genes to more preferentially burn fat AS WELL AS the use of techniques like HIIT and barefoot training now all seem to show that training and eating Primalcould not only maximize performance, but extend your career.

If that’s your choice and if you approach it carefully (like Gold and Silver Olympic medalist Simon Whitfield). Since the bookcame out last June, I have heard from several elite athletes who have not only adopted Primal styles but have improved their performances (and reduced injury, and decreased body fat). Today I thought you might be interested in this “testimonial” from my good friend Jonas Colting (of last week’s Cocoa and Coconut Snacks), a long-time professional triathlete who has gradually incorporated Primal techniques into his training style.

Continue reading on Mark’s blog…

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We’ve all read John L. Parker Junior’s contribution to running culture, the quasi-fictional parable, Once a Runner – or inevitably you will. As far as running novels go, Parker set the benchmark with this story, so-much-so that the very long-awaited sequel, Again to Carthage, as good as it is, will forever exist in the shadow of the former Parker touchstone. Think in terms of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatle career, much longer and arguably more successful artistically-speaking than his career as one of the fab four, but the giant shadow looms and will forever cast its influence. Once a Runner is as significant to running culture as Sgt. Pepper is to popular music culture.

I just finished reading Hal Higdon’s novel, Marathon, not to be confused with his top selling how to book of the same name. Hal has published some 35 books on running; Marathon is his first attempt at a novel. I asked him if the story has been rattling around in his mind for long: “Maybe not this particular story, but I had wanted to write a novel on running for maybe a quarter century, and have several false starts to prove it. The story line for Marathon probably dates back 5-6 years. I had another false start there too”.

On his website, Hal Higdon refers to himself as ‘Extreme Senior’, at first I entertained visions of Higdon chillaxin’ while riding his snowboard backcountry, carving to the sounds of Jayzee – toe-edge, heel-edge, toe-edge back and forth to the beat. Hal, likely in self-deprecating fashion, just means to say he has been around the running community for a long time and has experienced much to do with running. He proves so by writing a very entertaining novel, which also happens to provide insight into the goings on of putting together a major running event – the 50, 000-strong Lake City Marathon, which the story is centered around.

During the first few chapters, I grappled with the notion that Hal, perhaps being an extreme senior of how to, could not fully morph into an author of novels – not able to leave the instructor within him behind. This stayed with me for sometime however, as the story unfolded and the closer Higdon brought me to race day, the more anxiety I began to feel in my own expectations of the end. I began to feel similar anxiousness to that of my own marathon tapers.

Hal weaves an intricate labyrinthine tale, which culminates towards a peak that happens during the actual marathon and shortly afterwards, while equipment is being boxed up and the final few runners are straggling their way in. There is a budding romance between race director, Peter McDonald and a new-in-town television reporter, Christine Ferrera. How Higdon manages to get an extremely busy race director and a reporter together in the final hours before the marathon is interesting. It is worth noting that Hal’s intimate knowledge of race organization helps to set the stage in a very realistic manner.

The story reverberates palpable fear of pending disaster which manifests itself with the rumor of the possible loss of the title sponsor – a bank that had just undergone an ownership change to a new foreign company from Ireland and the new executive have not indicated one way or the other what their intentions are with their expensive sponsorship. In serendipitous irony, an Irish elite female is set to take centre stage as the favorite female discovers at the last minute her inability to compete. The race director hopes that the new Irish bank owners will be impressed.

Since Oprah Winfrey apparently ruined the marathon by running the Marine Corps Marathon, many celebrities have followed suit running Boston and New York, amongst others. Higdon’s Marathon entertains a few celebrities, one of whom is not revealed until well into the story, until then, he is referred to as Celebrity X (more famous than Oprah). Maintaining Celebrity X’s anonymity is an all-consuming effort for Peter McDonald.

And what successful story exists without the requisite good-guy – bad-guy tension? Somewhere in Storytelling 101, a good-guy cannot exist without a bad-guy lurking in a story’s shadows, in this case a journalist, Jonathan Von Runyon who’d prefer to cover golf from the golf course (perhaps with a 6-pack of brew in his golf bag), has been assigned to cover the marathon. The good-guy turns out to be race director, Peter McDonald. McDonald’s protection of the identity of Celebrity X carves a major plot line through the heart of the book. Angst develops between the golf reporter and race director as editorial about the possibility of losing the major sponsor and talk of disastrous weather are not healthy news for the event and of course Celebrity X’s identity must remain hidden.

There are a few top-end athletes sprinkled in, set to race the event on Sunday, their own preparation makes their way onto the pages and into the plot lines. Higdon provides the typical front-runners, including a few Kenyans and a Swede. The men and women’s finish order remains a mystery well past the 20-mile mark.

Similar to Once a Runner, Hal works a few characters into the story under partially veiled disguises,  “there is a sprinkling of real people in many, if not most of the characters. Don Geoffrey, of course, is me walking through my own book, although with a much different back-story and with a name that combines Don Kardong and Jeff Galloway. With many of the characters, I would actually have to think, who is that one based on?”

Race weekend is set to either completely unravel on Peter and crash around him like a house of cards caught in a tornado or to finish with a heroic finale. What finally happens is anybody’s guess up to the start of the race, so give up any prognosticating now, you won’t figure it out. Marathon is a story that in terms of entertainment value rises above most other running novels and reaches for that special place in our minds we have reserved for our own personal Once a Runners.

Worried that getting around the city could be the toughest event of the 2010 Winter Games?  Thousands of athletes and visitors, along with road and parking restrictions, will all contribute to increased congestion in Metro Vancouver.  A UBC research team is encouraging people to use their bikes to get around, and they’ve designed a special web-based tool to help cyclists plan hassle-free trips.

The route planner, located at www.cyclevancouver.ubc.ca, was first launched in spring 2008 and has become popular with local cyclists (and pedestrians, who find it useful for planning walking routes).  Now, it is being updated to reflect all known Olympics-related road restrictions, so that cyclists can find efficient ways to get to their destination.  The Olympics edition of the route planner launches this month, and will be available throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“Besides being able to plan a route that isn’t affected by road restrictions, users can also choose routes that avoid hills, stick to designated cycle paths, or connect with public transit,” says UBC researcher Meghan Winters, who helped develop the planner.  The web-based tool, which uses the familiar Google Maps interface, also shows the location of covered bike storage facilities near Olympic venues.

Funding for the Olympics version of the route planner comes from the City of Vancouver and TransLink.  Michael Brauer, professor at the UBC School of Environmental Health and leader of the route planner project, says that choosing to cycle during the Olympics contributes to both personal and environmental health: “Active transportation provides health benefits for individuals, and also cuts down on the amount of traffic-related air pollution in our region.”

Take-off on Thunderbird Boulevard is made from car parts by Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and youth from the Urban Native Youth Association.

Made in partnership with UBC’s Museum of Anthropology, it is one of seven pieces of Aboriginal artwork at UBC’s Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre, which will host Olympic hockey and Paralympic sledge hockey during the 2010 Winter Games.

The permanent installations are part of the Vancouver 2010 Venues’ Aboriginal Art Program, which features art from more than 90 Aboriginal artists. First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists involved in the program hail from every province and territory in Canada.

In fact, the latest science suggests that “extremely loose muscles and tendons are generally unnecessary (unless you aspire to join a gymnastics squad), may be undesirable and are, for the most part, unachievable, anyway.”

Do you agree or disagree? The full article can be read here.

November 1, 2009 – There is a stirring of athletes and involved personalities, gently rustling the jib of the Canadian cross-country scene. This is happening right now at a well-known Canadian running forum. The parties appear to be organizing, in their attempts to sway Athletics Canada (AC) brass to hand over management of the national cross-country team to them, at least for one year. The proposal? Well it is in the works as they say, swirling in virtual dialogue.

The athletes, coaches and interested parties appear to be developing their mission schematics in ad-hoc discussions; the ideology is mired in the early stages of development. This public discussion may cause AC to simply dig in their heels. They hold the purse strings and the policy to boot; it’s called being in the position of power.

It is the athlete’s place it seems to fight their organizing body of sport, they who decide to or decide not to send an athlete or a team to international competition. Canadian athletes have attempted in the past to approach AC with a protest of sorts; they were firmly rebuffed. Subsequently wars of words continue to simmer on about such items as qualification standards, budgets, mandatory training camps, wording of legalese, grassroots development and required attendance to specific events.

AC indicate on their website that their purpose is “the pursuit of leadership, development and competition that ensures world-level performance in athletics. The association believes in physical health and fitness, individual excellence and personal growth, individual development beyond sport, as well as inclusiveness and integrity”.

It appears that although performance levels have improved in Canada recently, there is not enough of that world level caliber coming to fruition just yet; otherwise AC would be sending more athletes to international competition. At least that is how the wording appears.

To quote one particular oldster from this discussion:

“I think AC’s sharpest critics (of which I am one, it’s no secret) acknowledged a few pages ago (in this thread) that no group that actually wants to remain relevant can actually hope to usurp AC’s control over any program covered by its administrative mandate. What some of us were envisioning at one point is that it might be convinced to concede some of this control over the X-C program, since it doesn’t appear all that interested in it, apart from setting stricter standards and exhorting Canadian athletes to “be faster” (when, as a supposedly expert body in the sport, it should know that quality is a function of over all depth, not the isolated efforts of a handful of individuals who are probably already training really hard; but that’s another story). Since it probably never will cede this kind of control, some of us began envisioning a way to help fund this team FOR AC, on the model of the WC marathon project.”

In reply, one well-respected international athlete who serves a volunteer position with AC countered the above and other slung arrows with the following:

“It’s really easy to sit on the message boards and cry that the taxpayer paid administrators simply have a “basic instinct for institutional survival.” Those are some pretty harsh words directed at many of the leaders in AC who, prior to being paid by the taxpayer, have done the same hundreds and thousands of hours of free volunteer work that coaches such as yourself do. On top of the paid staff such as Martin, Alex, and Scott, there are countless others who volunteer in the committee structure or on the board of directors who, in addition, continue to volunteer in our sport outside of the board/committee rooms. So you’ll have to excuse the “tone” of those who also have a passion and love for the sport take to your complaints, when you start accusing them of having narrow visions, technocratic arrogance, and disdain for democracy.”

On performance

Canada’s athletics future, in terms of performance, looks a little rosier today than it has in a decade or more. The athletes coming up now are no less or more talented than those in the past, the difference is in the commitment to training and volume – what is old, is new again.

Throughout the US there is an upswing in performance at regional and national cross-country and on the track and roads, including the marathon. The low-mileage and high anaerobic intensity of the 1990s is falling away to aerobic development first – again. For example a NCAA Division 1 athlete from California told me that the first two weeks of school was spent running 10 to 15 miles every morning in the desert, with a second run in the afternoon: “20 miles-per-day, everyday to develop the aerobic system first.” This may be a small indication of better training practice, and results are indeed coming around. Canada’s trends often follows suit on the heels of our southern neighbours.

Reid Coolsaet has run 10, 000m in 27:56’92, Simon Bairu’s streak of National cross-country titles are a good showing. Even marathon performances are a little deeper; there certainly is a larger and younger group at this near-international level, headed by Dylan Wykes’ 2:15’16 marathon result from Rotterdam.

The Canadian athletes who are debating AC’s engagement are looking for a world stage to perform on, in order to expose this rising performance level to higher competition – to raise the bar, as it were. According to AC they need to witness this higher level before sending athletes forth. We can all assume if the athletes become capable of mixing it up on the world stage, AC would be remiss in not sending them to the highest level of competition. Will it happen?

The proverbial chicken and egg question comes up yet again. What comes first the performance or the exposure to a higher level of competition?

Steve Moneghetti, arguably Australia’s greatest marathon runner, was twice appointed to the Australian team to run the marathon. The first time he was selected was for the 1986 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games where he won a bronze medal. The second time was to run in the Seoul, Olympic Marathon. He had not even run a marathon before Edinburgh. Athletics Australia gave Moneghetti the green light based on his performance over shorter distances. The second time he was appointed he didn’t do so well having one of those inexplicable bad days we all run into eventually. Later that season he went on to break the world half-marathon record for the second time in Tokyo, Japan; so, he demonstrated he was capable regardless. Good decision by Athletics Australia.

A couple years ago I compared Switzerland’s Viktor Rothlin’s performances to Athletics Canada’s Osaka World Track and Field Championships selection criteria and although he went on to win bronze n Osaka, he would not have qualified for that marathon had he been Canadian. In fact, neither would Jon Brown, a man who had finished seconds from bronze in the previous two Olympic marathons and still holds the UK 10, 000m record today (27:18’14).

So is it the money?

Approximately sixty percent of participants in road races are over the age of 45. They are the boomer generation. Depending on whose boomer theory you subscribe to they are born in 1964 or 1966 and earlier. Canada’s David K. Foot, PhD and author of Boom Bust and Echo goes by the latter (Canada’s boom was slightly different than Europe’s and the US).

Although you will find 10, 000 people on the downtown streets of the cities of Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria or Toronto engaging in those city’s respective marathons and 50, 000 participating in the Vancouver Sun Run 10k, what is fascinating is not only how many people pay to run, but how much money the average destination marathon runner spends to toil in their hobby.

Jerry Agrusa, PhD. Professor of Travel Industry Management at Hawaii Pacific University conducted some math wizardry and found that 28,635 runners, walkers, and family and friends who came specifically for the 2006 Honolulu Marathon accounted for $101,590,000 in visitor spending and generated $4.6 million in state taxes, an increase in visitor spending as well as taxes generated for both the city of Honolulu and the state of Hawaii, this, from one marathon. There is no doubt that the boomer generation is also the consumer generation.

According to Ahotu Marathon dot com in any given year there are at least 46 marathons in Canada. There are many more road races of various distances. By smartly attracting the boomer hordes to register, the shoe companies, travel agencies and supplement suppliers have found a rich market to tap. Why hasn’t Athletics Canada?

The dubious effort of knocking on AC’s door with a proposal to alleviate them of the apparent albatross – in having to handle elite cross-country runners pining to go to international competition on the public’s dime – may just be a wasted effort, as while the performances are now coming up, athletes in theory will earn pass to the world stage, one would think.

Let’s do some arbitrary math:

Let’s sample a rough estimate of paid registrations from a handful of well-known Canadian road races. Vancouver Sun Run, Victoria Times Colonist 10k, the Toronto Marathons (there are two), Ottawa Marathon, Vancouver International Marathon, Marathon des Deux Rives, and the Royal Victoria Marathon together total approximately 130, 000 entrants. If AC asks for $1 from every sanctioned road race registration in the country, this would bolster the coffers enough, I assume, to send a full compliment of athletes to the IAAF World Cross-Country Championships plus a little may be left over for grassroots development.

Grassroots development is paramount to the continued success of any sport. In my opinion, it should be incumbent upon AC to make sure junior development is funded and qualified athletes are given every opportunity to perform at the best possible level. They are the future of running and better performances should yield greater opportunity.

I’d pay an extra $1 on each of my race entries to help send athletes to IAAF World Cross-Country Championships or any other international competition and to help fund junior development.

Maybe, just maybe, the vocal few who aim to organize collectively for the benefit of this country’s racing future will approach AC with a well thought out plan and to that, AC should listen.

Competitive distance runners, unlike hockey or rugby players, are better known as boy scouts than party boys, but some say that’s just a stereotype.

Jim Finlayson, one of Canada’s elite distance runners, gathered with 75 racers on the track, feeling confident after his normal pre-race routine: a nice sleep, oatmeal for breakfast, plenty of water.

When the start gun blasted, however, he did something he never would have attempted in international competition: He chugged a bottle of Granville Island Winter Ale. Then he bolted.

They call it the Beer Mile. Four laps of the track. One beer per lap. No puking, on pain of a penalty lap. Hundreds of people around the world have posted their times, and beer of choice, on www.beermile.com.

Three years after that race on a chilly winter day in Victoria, Mr. Finlayson remains the world record holder with a time of 5 minutes, 9 seconds.

More impressive, perhaps, is that the 37-year-old has represented Canada three times at the World Cross Country Championships, where beer played no part in the festivities. Competitive distance runners, unlike hockey or rugby players, are better known as boy scouts than party boys, but Mr. Finlayson says that’s just a stereotype.

He belongs to a generation of runners whose carefree attitudes have fuelled the popularity of running clubs that prove, according to Canadian Running magazine editor Michal Kapral, “we’re not a bunch of prudes.”

“ [Non-runners] usually assume that I live like a monk, shun alcohol, dine on tofu burgers and boiled yams and go to bed every night at 9 p.m. ” — Elite runner Michal Kapral

They include beer milers, who claim a fair number of frat boys but also serious runners. There are groups of friends, such as the Longboat Roadrunners in Toronto, who meet weekly for a training run before knocking back a pint and wings.

But the granddaddy of them all is the Hash House Harriers, which calls itself a “drinking club with a running problem.” The club originated with a group of expats living in Malaysia in 1938, and has since expanded all over the world, including to Canada.

Hashers usually meet once a week, and follow a mystery route laid out by a club member called the “hare.” Everyone else follows like hounds. Routes vary between five and eight kilometres, but the final destination is always a pub.

The groups have spread across the country since the first run in Calgary, in 1983, and have become a magnet for people like Mike Babulic. He resisted at first, considering himself a serious runner, but when he was dragged out to a hash almost two decades ago, he was hooked by the group’s carefree mantra.

He calls hashing the slo-pitch of running. “We have our silly little rituals, and rugby-type songs,” he says.

Competition is banned, and hashers are serious about that. Mention the “r” word (race) or the “m” word (marathon), and you have to chug a beer. “It’s non-competitive and we like to keep it that way,” Mr. Babulic says.

Sometimes that’s not easy. Over the years, a few newcomers have appeared at Calgary hashes only to quit once they learned what they were all about. There are those whose conversations are dominated by questions like “Did you PB? Did you BQ?” (Translation: “Did you run a personal best? Did you qualify for the Boston Marathon?”)

Others turn up their noses at those who’ve never run a marathon, says Douglas Gray of Barrie, Ont.

“Many runners have an air of self-righteousness about them,” he says.

Hence those old stereotypes, Mr. Kapral points out. When he mentions he’s a competitive marathoner, the reaction from non-runners is almost always the same.

“They usually assume that I live like a monk, shun alcohol, dine on tofu burgers and boiled yams and go to bed every night at 9 p.m.”

Mr. Kapral says runners who are the most rigid about their training tend to be the ones who are newest to the sport. Those folks are understandably nervous about doing things properly, he says. He was once pretty uptight himself.

“I followed a training program like a robot and calculated all of the paces and distances of my training runs like a scientific researcher,” he says.

The more he learned about running, however, the more relaxed he became. While he used to tease his wife for having a drink the night before a big run, now he will have a couple himself and not worry about it.

Ironically, Mr. Kapral says, the relaxed attitude has translated into better race times. He won the Toronto Marathon in 2002. And he holds the world record for “joggling” – running while juggling at the same time – for both the 10-kilometre distance and in the marathon, with a time of 2:50:12.

Mr. Finlayson in Victoria agrees. Drinking can benefit your running, he says, but “it’s not the alcohol content.”

“You have to be able to enjoy it,” he says. “If you let yourself get too wrapped up in the details, and tense up about all the particulars, then you’re not going to get the most out of your body.”

And while enduring a mile at top speed with all that fizzy, alcoholic liquid in his stomach wasn’t exactly a thrill, the beer mile certainly was fun at the end, he says. “It’s more of a giddy feeling.”

Party hard, run harder

While it would be a stretch to say alcohol improves athletic performance, a recent study in the American Journal of Health Promotion found that people who drink regularly seem to exercise more often than abstainers.

Compared with people who never drink, those considered heavy drinkers – at least 46 drinks a month for women, and 76 or more for men – got 10 extra minutes of exercise each week. Meanwhile, moderate drinkers –women who had 15 to 45 drinks a month, and men who had 30 to 75 – got 20 more minutes a week than abstainers.

Both moderate and heavy drinkers were also more likely to report vigorous exercise, such as jogging, than either light drinkers or abstainers.

The Miami researchers said heavier drinkers may be the types who tend toward more adventurous outdoor activities, such as snowboarding or rock climbing. Others may play team sports, where you wind up at the bar after a game.

• Shop the perimeter. Don’t buy processed/branded food items.
• Don’t buy things just because they are cheap. If you don’t end up using it no matter how cheap it was it’s lost money.
• Don’t shop hungry.
• Shop alone.
• Do all your grocery shopping on one day of the week, and don’t spend money on food the rest of the week, no matter what.
• Prepare your own food. Clean and chop your own greens instead of buying pre-packaged. Grate your own cheese. Dice your own veggies. Make your own ice. Food manufacturers charge a premium for convenience.
• Avoid Starbucks at all costs.
• Eat the entire animal.
• Stock up on free condiments from fast food joints, truck stops, cafeterias, and yes, churches.
• Go to funerals. There’s always food at funerals.
• Want cheap eggs? Buy a chicken. You’ll be surprised at how many they can pop out.
• Make like Ghandi and fast for a cause.

And our favorite?

• 1 Beer at an L.A. Bar = 24 beers from the Liquormart = 48 generic cans of vegetables. Just stand around with a glass of water in your hand and pretend to be drunk.

For the full list click here…

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THE talk, at the Expo Center at the Boston Marathon this year, had an intriguing title: Using Biomechanics to Predict Running Injuries. And the lecturer, Dr. Thomas W. Vorderer, a podiatrist at the division of sports medicine at Children’s Hospital, one of the Harvard hospitals, spoke with great conviction.

You can prevent injuries, Dr. Vorderer said, or, if you get them, can make them heal if you learn the right way to stretch and if you stretch regularly. And you should also learn the right way to run; in general, he said, runners should strike the ground with their heels first. If they strike with their midfoot or forefoot, he said, they are just asking for injuries.

Dr. Vorderer speaks from experience: he was a competitive runner for years and said he trained with fantastic coaches. And he says he has helped countless runners rid themselves of chronic injuries by figuring out why they were getting injured and teaching them, for example, the right way to stretch. He has e-mail messages from grateful patients, thanking him for solving problems that threatened to end their running altogether.

But exercise physiologists say none of what he espouses has been established by rigorous studies. Stretching evidence is so inconclusive that two large studies are now under way that randomize people to stretch or not and ask whether it prevents injuries, does nothing or increases injury rates. No one knows what the answer will be.

As for running styles, a credible study in 2007 showed that running form often depended on running speed. The slower people run, the study found, the more likely they are to strike the ground with their heel first. The same runners, going more slowly, run differently from when they run fast.

There is no right or wrong way to run, said Peter R. Cavanagh, a professor in the department of orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington. And even if there is, he said, it is not clear that people can permanently change their natural stride.

Dr. Vorderer says that he knows experts often disagree but that the art of sports medicine is to understand individuals.

“It’s hard,” he said. “Anyone can put out a shingle and say, ‘I’m a sports medicine doctor.’ You basically want to go where you have to wait an hour in the office. Then you know it’s a busy office.” And, he adds, while it is easy to diagnose a problem like an Achilles tendon injury, what you really want to know is, “Why do I have this? What mechanical or structural or shoe problem gave it to me?”

So how are athletes supposed to know whom or what to believe? It’s a huge problem, researchers say. They have some tips, but their overall message is: Be wary and be careful. Look for credentials and rigorous science. And check the Web sites of reputable organizations, like the American College of Sports Medicine, which publishes position papers on exercise science. The papers are compiled by committees of experts and provide references and evidence to support their statements.

Yet bad advice is so ubiquitous that almost everyone, even experts themselves, has been foiled.

That happened, for example, to Dr. Paul Thompson of Hartford Hospital, a heart researcher and marathon runner. He warns that people should “be careful of advice that has a price tag.” The best example, he said, are orthotics, those shoe inserts that are supposed to prevent injuries.

“Podiatrists make money making them, and more power to them,” Dr. Thompson said. “But some podiatrists think they cure everything.”

“I once needed orthotics,” he continued. “The podiatrist wanted me to run with them. It completely changed my foot plant and produced lateral knee pain, which resolved when I used them only with my walking shoes.”

Something similar happened to me. After I got a stress fracture in a small bone in my foot last year, my orthopedist prescribed orthotics. For weeks I tried to run with them but felt slow, like I was running through sand. Then I pulled my hamstring. My coach watched me run with and without the orthotics and said he could see why I was having problems: the orthotics changed my foot plant so I was braking with every step. Now, like Dr. Thompson, I wear them only when I walk around.

Those of us who are not experts can be especially vulnerable to bad advice. After my stress fracture, I had a biomechanical analysis by an exercise physiologist at a commercial studio in New York. Among other things, I was told to change the way I run. My heels never hit the ground; I had to learn to run so my heels struck first.

I knew I couldn’t do that, so I ignored the advice and never returned to those experts. But my friend Birgit Unfried tried to listen to a sports medicine doctor in New Jersey who analyzed her running stride. She had a painful iliotibial band, which stabilizes the knee, and was plagued with shin splints. The reason, she was told, was that her stride was wrong. She was a heel striker; she needed to learn to strike first with her midfoot.

BIRGIT tried and did so well that her doctor put before and after videos of her running on his Web site. But she never felt comfortable running that new way. As for her injuries, the new gait was no panacea. At first, Birgit said, her problems seemed to go away. But soon she pulled her quadriceps muscle and, despite her changed gait, her shin splints came back worse than ever.

“I haven’t been running at all,” Birgit said. “At times I think I’m getting better but then I touch my shin in certain areas, like down near the ankle, and it hurts like a bruise.”

Orthotics and running styles are the easier cases. All too often, there are no studies or scientific evidence to guide anyone, even the experts. When studies are done, they tend to be inadequate.

“Good experiments need tight experimental design, and they need control groups,” Dr. Cavanagh said. Without them, results are pretty much useless. And many exercise studies lack one or both of those crucial elements.

That may not matter to many who dispense advice. Often, they rely on a hunch or personal experience or on what they think makes a great athlete great.

Take pedal speed in cycling, said Michael J. Berry, a serious road cyclist and chairman of the department of health and exercise science at Wake Forest University. The studies, such as they are, say the best pedal speed is 60 to 80 revolutions a minute. But that is based on experiments with untrained subjects riding stationary bikes in an exercise lab. Those results may have no relevance for experienced cyclists riding on roads.

So, ignoring those lab studies, many experts counsel cyclists to pedal much faster. Their evidence? It’s Lance Armstrong, who pedals extraordinarily fast — 95, 100, 110 r.p.m.’s.

In the 2003 Tour de France, Armstrong consistently beat his rival, Jan Ullrich, and commentators, Dr. Berry noted, said it was in part because he could pedal so fast. Ullrich pedals slower but uses bigger gears. “What if Lance had never been there and Jan had won?” Dr. Berry said. “Would people say that the reason he is so good is that he pushes a big gear?”

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Running events are myriad in this country and even in a period of recession they seem to be flourishing. The Vancouver Sun 10-kilometre race boasted 55,000 entrants in April. Early this month, 12,000 folks ran or shuffled in Sporting Life’s annual dash down one of the busiest streets in Canada’s largest city. From the Bridge City Boogie in Saskatoon, to the Blue Nose International Marathon in Halifax, people are still running, in literally thousands of races spanning the country and in record numbers.

Continue reading…

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IF anyone ever wondered whether it was talent or sustained systematic training that makes athletes so good, they need only look at Joshua Gordon, a professional mediator in Boston.

Mr. Gordon ran cross-country in college before stopping completely to take up baseball. Six years later, in 1999, he decided, almost as a lark, to run the Boston Marathon. He joined a program to learn how to run longer distances, a process that involved gradually increasing the length of his runs and focusing only on distance, not speed.

He finished the marathon in a little over four hours, not especially fast for a man of 24, but he did meet his goal. “I was thrilled,” he said.

And so he found himself edging back into running, entering shorter races, 5 and 10 kilometers. He tried to train on his own, but he never did particularly well until he decided to start serious, rigorous marathon training with the Boston Athletic Association. He received coached track workouts once a week, four to six coached runs of 18 to 23 miles along the marathon course, and he had a group of skilled and talented athletes to run with.

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Thanks to the several readers who have pointed out this recent article in SEED Magazine which once again dredges up the tired argument that humans evolved to be long-distance runners. Most of you know by now that I totally disagree with that theory. I say humans evolved to be excellent slow movers (walk, jog, migrate, forage, crawl, scramble, etc) burning mostly fat. We also developed into pretty decent short sprinters, but we did NOT evolve to run long distances. Sure, early humans were all-around fit enough and capable of the occasional long easy jaunt after an animal, but to think that natural selection redesigned our simian shapes to run the Boston Marathon is, in my opinion, ludicrous.

Continue reading on Mark’s blog…