…I got my hands on the coveted Leffe Blonde this weekend when a shipment came in to the Liquor store. I was about to ask the boys to bring some back from Belgium… but by then it will be back to living like a monk and not drinking the monks’ product.
After watching the recent videos of Leuven on both Flotrack.org and guelphrunning.ca I’m really missing not being over there this year. I’ve spent parts of every summer since ‘04 in Belgium and racing all over Europe. On top of that, this year there are six runners and two coaches from Speed River in Belgium. A lot different from my first European track adventure
… Prior to my first European track race in 2004 I had been to Europe on a few Cross-Country teams, but going over with team Canada is very different than going on my own. Right after Olympic Trials in 2004 I went over by myself and I didn’t even have a place to stay. I got off my flight in Amsterdam and took a random train and ended up in Louvain-La-Neuve, a place I thought was Leuven. Luckily I found a student dorm to stay in Louvain-La-Neuve for a week before I went to Leuven where Ryan McKenzie and I had apartment rooms for two weeks. It was a good learning experience to travel alone and get into meets etc. The last couple of years it’s been way better in Leuven with so many North American athletes and this year with the Speed River Crew over there it would of been awesome.
On top of watching the Belgian meets on Flotrack I’ve been filling my void of Belgium (and Europe) this summer by doing things around Hamilton that bring me back there (unfortunately running isn’t quite one of them yet)… and other things that I never did there but seem like things I could do in Europe
1) Drink a Stella Artois - not only is it a Belgian beer, but its brewed right in Leuven (check out the label)
2) Walk to the grocery store with a genuine Belgian shopping bag. DelHaize grocery stores have the most stylish bag.
3) When it’s really hot I drink a cold Kriek (Cherry flavoured beer) - It’s european so it’s good
4) Put on a stupid face and eat chocolate
5) Drink a Duvel - yep, I’m on downtime
6) Call up meet directors in Europe on Skype as I’m the Speed River meet manager for this trip
7) Drive a European car on a track - why not?
walk into the village and get gelato - ok, so I’ve been getting frozen yogurt from TCBY, close enough
9) eat a waffle
10) Drink a Leffe Blonde, or two… did I mention I’m on downtime? (Unfortunately I’ve only got my hands on a Leffe Brune but the Blondes are coming to the liquor store soon, hopefully before I go back to my monastic lifestyle)
Man, I really need to start running again.. and I mean 170km/week, none of this 15 minute build-up nonsense that I’m going to have to do for a while. Patience is a virtue.
I just downloaded some pics I’ve taken throughout the year on my cell phone.
Rob Watson has one massive right foot.
I came across this specimen on our drive from Phoenix to Flagstaff.
The place is called Camp Verde and this is their Queen.
Lizard on an overpass in Flagstaff.
Bear riding in the back of a pick-up, Teen Wolf Style.
I had to follow this for a while to get another pic of it.
Welcome to 7000ft. I would stare at this poster as I pool ran in Flagstaff. One day I stared at it for 1hr 15 min… and you only see it when pool running in one direction.
Scott Arnald
There is a rainbow in this pic. It ends in Hamilton. The city is made of gold.
NAU track with Mt. Humphrey in the background. This is where dreams are made and broken.
In my (and most others) opinion our athletes should get until July 23rd (the IAAF deadline) to achieve Olympic qualifying standards. Now that I’m done trying to race this summer I can complain without looking like I’m whining about my own situation. I know it can be pointed out that the July 6th deadline was published months ago and now is not the time to complain. As an athlete I know that you plan on getting the standard well in advance but, unfortunately stuff happens and things don’t always work out as planned. You never want to think that you’ll be scraping for standards late in the season. For me I’ve run my fastest 5000m times in July and often at Heusden, which falls this year on July 20th. There are a handful of athletes who will be able to achieve Olympic standards in the next two and half weeks although they may not get them this weekend in a championship race.
Here is a little excerpt from this article. I really like this quote because Gary has already satisfied AC’s time standards for Beijing but he still is willing to let everyone know that the early deadline is not good for our athletes…
While Athletics Canada names its team Monday, other countries wait until the July 23 International Olympic Committee deadline.
Reed’s opinion is: why not wait?
“The whole thing is, when you set forth the criteria, my opinion is the criteria should allow for the maximum allowable time to make the team, but they chose not to and that is their decision,” Reed said. “But I think the more people we can get there, the better shot we have at medals.”
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Friday’s not really on my mind at all.
Enough writing about my injury and running for a bit, since I’m sick of my injury and I’m not running for a while.
Highlight of the day: It’s a toss up…
Tonight, after dinner, with my parents and Eric Kiauka I stopped at a red light and saw a familiar face. I said, “Mike Long” and the guy (confirmed as Mike Long) turns around and then I say, “love the vids man!” It’s not everyday I get to see a celebrity. I’m sure a few of you might not be familiar with Mike Long but this guy put out one video a day for one year straight! And this is crazy because it was just earlier in the day that I introduced Eric to Mike Long’s video’s via youtube (see a couple vids below).
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Because I’m on downtime and I’ve planned on putting on a few pounds. This morning I drove out to Highway 97 to Dee’s butter tarts for a half dozen tarts (Peanut butter chocolate chip, Skor, Maple, Raisin, Smores and Caramilk). They were having some sort of promotion going on where you pop a balloon and win a prize. Well, I ended up winning a 6 pack of butter tarts! As I exited Dee’s there was a camera and Dee herself explaining how they are making their 1,000,000th butter tart this week. So, I’m the happy customer walking out the door with the butter tarts in hand. By the way, the butter tarts are really good.
Lowpoint of the day: I read this excerpt from an article in the Guelph Mercury. “Coolsaet and Stellingwerff “chased the dragon” all year trying to qualify, but injury and health issues got in their way.” I didn’t get to chase shit! And, Hilary is still chasing, she’s not done yet! It’s not really a big deal, so if this is the lowpoint it’s a pretty good day, haha. Oh, and I guess I kinda just wrote about the injury, oops.
The US Olympic trials have been pretty exciting so far. I wasn’t able to watch Monday’s session because I don’t have the “USA Network” which sucks because the men’s 800m and 5000m were awesome races. It was great to see Ian Dobson make the Olympic team. I can’t help to think that I had a little part in helping him get his A standard last year in Heusden when we switched leads after 3000m. It also made me feel like I’d like to be running right now. It will come.
Flocast is doing a great job with interviews from Eugene and the guys from Less Than Our Best are also doing something cool with www.tothetrials.com
One week to go before Olympic trials. I was thinking of letting it go earlier this week but for some reason I just couldn’t quite pull the trigger and I had to try a running workout one more time. I ended up doing a 200m and 4 X 800m. I saw some improvement from the week before but, my calf is still not working properly, no surprise there. It’s been two days since the mini-workout and my calf is still quite sore. I was contemplating testing it again on Sunday but, at this point I have to be realistic and get healthy, for real this time.
All is good and I can’t wait to get back running healthy, and the quicker I take downtime, the sooner I’ll be back.
Anyone in the Guelph area should check out the Speed River Olympic Trial send-off that is happening from 5:30 to 8:00pm at the University of Guelph stadium this coming Wednesday. BBQ starts at 6:30pm. Should be fun times.
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There’s less than two weeks to go until the Olympic Trials (July 4th) and I have not been able to do one track workout that points to running a good 5000m. I had decent workouts when I started running again and I thought that they would get better, but the injury runs deeper than I anticipated. Having pinched my sciatic nerve over 10 weeks ago I still cannot recruit my left leg muscles properly. Specifically, my H reflex is quite slower on my left leg than my right leg and really affects my soleus. When I try to run fast I cannot turn-over quickly enough to run anything faster than 31 seconds for 200m. My calf also cramps up and fatigues quickly after 300m of faster running. I’m able to run 400m in 63 seconds but as I go longer my calf almost becomes useless. When I do a workout it takes about four days for my leg to be able to get back to that level again. This past week I tried going to the track two days after a workout and after a 20 minute warm-up I could not break 33.5 seconds for 200m (I even took two tries). Worst of all my calf still hurts when I run. After three days off I got in three minutes before it started to get sore, what a great three minutes those were!
The reality of this injury is quite evident, even if I was in my lifetime best shape, the way my calf is working (or not working) I could not run a fast 5000m. I’m not even sure what would happen to my leg after 1km of fast running on the track.
Every week I had been adjusting my mental outlook… “I’ve been cross-training for six weeks, if I can get six weeks of track workouts I can be ready…” …. “I’ve been cross-training for seven weeks now, if I can get five weeks of track workouts…” etc etc… I truly believed throughout this whole process that I was in a position to make it to Beijing. I had to have that 100% belief if I was to have a shot at running 13:19 for 5000m. Having that 100% belief also set me up for a greater disappointment, and that’s just the harsh reality of elite sport. So yeah, when I realized that the dream of going to Beijing was over it hit me hard.
Once I started realizing the reality of the situation my desire to get healthy again and run well down the road started to override my desire to keep on banging on the track and train through pain for trials. Right now I just want to be able to run pain free and enjoy running on the trails again and stop rushing things. I’m glad I wasn’t more aggressive with my comeback as it would of been easy to force things more than I did. My plan is to still cross-train and do elliptical workouts for the next 10 days in case my injury miraculously comes around but, I’m not holding my breath.
Not running Nationals this year will be my first year not running the 5000m since 2001 and I’ll be ending my winning streak of four in a row. I’ll still be going to Nationals to watch, unless of course my calf is good, then I’ll toe the line. I’m just grateful that I was able to run Nationals every year since 2000.
2000 - 6th (steeplechase)
2001 - 4th
2002 - 4th
2003 - 2nd
2004 - 1st
2005 - 1st
2006 - 1st
2007 - 1st
And Congrats to teammate Taylor Milne who ran 3:36.00 in the 1500m last night to get the Olympic A standard.
And check out the newest issue of Canadian Running on the magazine racks now. They asked us to bring our competition gear…
And here’s to my injury. This picture was taken within days of being injured.
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I’ve started doing running workouts since my last update. The first two workouts were both on grass in Churchill Park in Hamilton. I would of normally liked to ease into some fartlek off the bat but, I really don’t have that luxury with the time-line ahead of me so we got after some 400’s. The workout actually went well considering everything. The second workout of 600m and 200m intervals was also decent considering where I’m coming from.
Seeing that I wanted to race a 5000m on June 27th in France I had to get to the track sooner than later. I also needed to see how I was going to react to longer distances. Dave and I were playing the workout by feel and planned to adjust the length of the intervals and rests between intervals as I went on. I started with a km that didn’t feel too good at all. I was not getting much push-off from my left leg. And then the second km was even worse, I felt like I had a wooden leg. My left leg felt so weak and the time was so slow that I finished the interval and thought that was the end of the season. The fat lady was singing. I couldn’t fathom running a good 5000m at all. How could I? I couldn’t even get through one kilometer close to race pace. I literally walked off the track in tears. I was distraught because I thought that was it, I wasn’t even going to be able to attempt a race. I had focused on the 5000m Olympic trials to get me through every workout and now everything came to a sudden halt.
We then went to the cinder track at the University for a softer surface. But even after one easy lap around the track we knew that there wasn’t enough power from my left leg to continue running.
Dave could tell that my leg did not look like as good as it did the first workout back and convinced me it was just the day. Not that my leg was/is 100%, we know it’s not, but it shouldn’t of been that bad. So we decided to try something again in a couple of days if my leg recovered.
On Saturday we went to the cinder track and started with a couple of 400m’s and knew right away that my leg was better than a couple of days earlier. I then did a couple of 600m’s, a bunch of 400m’s and a couple of 200m’s to finish off the workout. I can really feel the lack of strength and quickness in my left leg with the 200m intervals as I cannot run fast, at all. In general it was not something I would normally call a good workout, but it was good that I got some work in and that I can see some light at the end of the tunnel again. It may not be much light, but it’s enough to keep pushing on.
It’s obvious that I need some (maybe a lot) of track work to get my legs going again. I’ll have to swallow some lackluster interval times in the meantime. I know it will come around if my calf can start recruiting normally, or at least close to normal.
On Friday I was able to see Dr. Tarnopolsky at McMaster who is an expert with nerve issues. Dr. Tarnopolsky is also a runner so it was great to get some insight from him. He conducted an EMG and it showed that I still have a slow H reflex in my left leg (involved in recruit, not surprising by the way I feel. The exciting part was that I finally felt a reflex in my ankle jerk/Achilles reflex. I’ve had it tested 6 times in the past 8 weeks and this past Friday was the first time I felt something. It’s very reassuring to know, for sure, that progress is being made with my neural recovery.
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Paul Gains wrote a good little article on my current situation of being injured and trying to qualify for Beijing. Enjoy.
http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/athletics/story/2008/06/11/f-olympics-athletics-reidcoolsaet.html
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