Olympic Geek

Lauren and I had a chance to watch some events last week, we went to the nordic sprints and luge events. Vancouver & Whistler have an incredible carnival attitude at the moment, if you get a chance to experience, do it, the Olympics, as commercial as they are, really are a powerful and impactful force.

Here are some pics from the week:

(when hockey starts, everyone stops)

Video and training

I came across this video this am over at Matt Hart's blog, it definitely got me extra excited to dip my toe into the ultra world and to keep exploring new trails:



Running has been going well the past few weeks, I have been consistent with my runs. I am getting in a long run, a medium long run, a shorter speed set, or a hill set and a tempo workout weekly. The consistency definitely pays off in the long run.

I have also been reminded how important it is to keep learning about your sport. One thing that always strikes me about really top level athletes is just how curious they can be. They are always asking questions in the hope of finding some nugget that will help them perform.

I very much agree with the motto that I would rather look stupid for asking, than be ignorant for not knowing-now back to Olympic viewing!

National Pride

Although I was raised abroad (Lagos, Nigeria), both my parents are Canadian and I have always been VERY proud to call myself Canadian. Since moving out to Victoria, BC in 2002, I have found a place that I very much consider home. I love travel and exploring the rest of the world, but there is no better place to fly home to. I am reminded of this every time I run the trails and smell the Ocean.

My pride was at an all time high last night. What other Country would you have aboriginal dancers, a gay singer (KD Lang blew me away with her rendition of Hallelujah), a slam poet (transcript of Shane Koyczan's "We are more") and punk fiddlers representing them artistically?

As I write this pro-Canada "puff piece", the Canadian women's hockey team juts scored their first goal of the tournament. Lauren and I saw them arrive at YVR last Sunday when we were in transit on our way home from Nelson (wow, goal 2 was just scored 3:06 into period 1). What a classy group of athletes!

Back to my original thought, I am glad to be able to show off this beautiful province to the world, rain and all...The sense of pride and excitement that has been swelling throughout the province and country over the past few weeks is tangible.
I think that the (generally) positive effects of national pride and happiness that Canadians are feeling is seriously undervalued. I realize that host nations don't often make a financial profit from the Games, but Vancouver/Whistler has gained some long-overdue infrastructure upgrades, but more importantly, Canadians are proud to be Canadian (goal 3), "painting the town red". We don't often wave the Maple Leaf high,focusing instead on sewing them on our backpacks, but Canadians seem to have committed to making a party of this, so yes, let's celebrate our Canadian'ness.

To be honest, I am also glad that it was the impetus of an "Own the Podium" mentality. I think that there is absolutely nothing incompatible with being nice friendly and insanely competitive.......... (goal 5-you couldn't script the timing of these goals any better).


Here are some amazing images from the opening ceremonies from the Boston Globe:






















Finally, if anyone knows who this athlete is, well, he certainly has the voyageur/mountain man look down and looks appropriately stoked to be standing in that infield:

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

This is how you start a movement (or a cult). "You need a "first follower" to turn a lone nut into a leader"-by Derek Sivers.


I love presentations when people take seemingly inane instances, or simple life observations and make generalized rules from them. These sorts of presentations always seen WAY more effective to me. We can all relate to what happens in this video, so we respect the message much more. A lot of academics, CEOs, marketing people and politicians could learn from this video, it also says a lot about how things go "viral".

My new project

If you live in Victoria, please come out and join us as we discuss Rainwater Management in the CRD

Letting you in on a little secret

I really didn't want to run today, I was tired, cranky, not feeling great and the weather was crappy, but my first coach instilled a little motto in me, "When you feel crappy, go out for 5 min and re-assess, if you still don't feel like running, then head home." This works because by the time you have changed and headed out the door, you have won the battle and (often) have a decent run, even surprising yourself at how good you'll feel.
I played this little trick on myself today and, while it got me out the door and I got my 90 min. done, I think I looked at my watch every 5 minutes or so. It was not effortless and I felt flat, which also sometimes happens.
I got the run done by committing to getting out to a spot, a "destination" run. I did some exploring around Esquimalt, literally just running around looking for new spots and killing time. The run got done though and I found some neat little pockets of the city that I'll likely never go back to, but at least I can say "I was there".

The other positive is that I think that I am starting to run enough. While the run wasn't all that enjoyable, it is good to know that I have been working hard enough recently to get my legs to feel that way. I quoted Jens Voigt a few times: "Shut up legs!"

Weekend in Nelson

Lauren and I went and checked out the Kootenays this past weekend. Like much of the Province, Nelson was a tad short on snow in the town (fine by me), but the surrounding mountains were inspiring nonetheless. It really is a beautiful town and I can see why so many people are enamoured with it
Although the trails were a tad snowy and icy at higher elevations, I got in some great runs and the lack of snow around town made exploring easier. No matter where you go though, you are guaranteed a lot of ups and downs. I did one amazing run up into West Arm Provincial Park that I had trouble tearing myself away from.
In addition to running, Lauren and I really enjoyed the town and the region, we got to enjoy some "fine" Doukhobor cuisine and did some site seeing around the area, including a visit to the Ainswroth hotsprings and up to Trail/Rossland.
The trail running opportunities were definitely mind blowing and I can't wait to get back in the warmer months:

Multisport athletes hard at work

SQW productions brings you another video. After the talk of hard work yesterday, it is always a good reminder to celebrate your work too. These guys work their asses off and are a huge inspiration, they earned a day of play at the beach (and yes Benno, the music was a good choice). Triathletes showing off their athleticism, not quite Laird Hamilton, but they seemed stoked:

thanks to my "old"er brother GB for the music recommendation.
MGMT - time to pretend

Ultra debut

After talking about it for a few years now, I finally took the plunge and signed up for my first ultra. I will be racing the Chuckanut 50km in Bellingham WA om March 20th. I know that a 50km race is a "soft' ultra to a lot of hardcore distance guys, but you have to get your feet wet somewhere and the timing and location are good. It also has the added bonus of me not needing to change my training too much from what I was doing.
If I enjoy the race and feel like I want to tack on some miles to my other races, then I may review how I prepare, but having seen friends race and train for Ironmans, where I get a lot of my ideas, it seems like specificity is important, but doing the same sessions that shorter distance athletes do on harder days and training with faster people on those days is a critical part of being competitive. Fast running is fast running, no matter the event.

For those that are curious how I am planning on approaching it, here is my basic week structure:

Mon: double run totaling betweem 1:30 and 1:45 between both runs
Tues: am tempo type effort (30-50 minutes of "hard" work" with 40 min of warm up and cool-down); pm ez spin on the bike
Wed: long run on trails, trying to get in as many hills as possible
Thurs: day off or EZ run or spin
Friday: same as monday
Saturday: am hill workout; pm EZ run or bike
Sunday: Shorter long run on trails

I essentially repeat this pattern week in and week out. The focus is on aerobic strength, with a few harder sessions to keep up my running efficiency up. It is actually quite similar to what I would do for a standard marathon, with a bit more time on trails and making the longer runs a tad longer, but not by too much. I do find that really long runs wear me down a bit, so I have to build up to them. either that, or I need to run them quite a bit slower.

I am curious as to how much run volume I can manage while still doing my harder runs at a decent level. They are my barometers of fatigue. I want to run as much as possible going in to them, so as to not "save up" for the workout, but I also don't want to run so much that I can't do the faster runs or long runs properly. This requires a bit of fine tuning and is also somewhat dependent on what else I have going on in my life. To be honest though, I find that if you want to do well, you have to do some periods of "stupid" training, where you try to figure out your outer limits, this helps convince you that you are ready when you toe the line, it also has some physical adaptation, so long as you soak it up in the last few weeks going in to the race and you don't get injured.

I am hoping that one of my advantages, relative to a lot of trail runners/ultra guys, is that I still have some shorter distance speed in my legs. While I have done some longer races i.e. trans Rockies last year and few marathons, an ironman and some 1/2 ironmans, I have always stayed on top of my harder efforts. I feel like this will be a strength that I need to keep nurturing as I try the longer distances. There are other variables that I need to consider and train too i.e. nutrition, technical running ability, general strength, pacing etc... and I will practice these through training.

Another reason to stay on top of speedwork throughout the process is that I want to keep racing shorter races as well and it is never fun to get shelled at races.

Despite feeling like I have some aptitude at longer distances, I'll never know until I actually toe the line. So while I have a lot of respect for the distance and the other athletes racing, I am really looking forward to testing myself against them and seeing how I can handle the distance.

I am about 7 weeks out now and training has been going well this past month. I have been having some consistently good workouts and am keeping on top of the volume well too.

It's a good time of year with school at the moment, as I don't have too much writing to do, mostly just reading. I seem to be okay at reading while tired, but writing definitely takes a hit.

If you have any questions about training, nutrition, clothing etc... that I am planning on doing, then please feel free to ask and I'll answer as well as I can.