Go Time!

Well here we are, it's finally the Canadian Olympic Trials and National Championships.  All the work we've put in this season is about to pay off.  The majority of our group including Coach James, Pat and our heptathlon girls Krech and Jojo have already arrived in Calgary and are staying in style at James' place in Canmore, AB.  Reid and myself are set to fly out tomorrow morning to reunite with the group and prepare for Wednesdays showdown.  We are all extremely excited and cannot wait to witness the results coming out of the trials.

The decathlon is set to start Wednesday afternoon and for live results check out: www.2012trials.ca or follow @Trials2012 on Twitter for updates.  I also believe CBC will be doing a 2hr summary of the entire meet on the Saturday to recap.  Maybe you'll get to see some of our pretty faces on TV!

In other news (and BIG news), the USA is currently having their Olympic Trials right now and yesterday was the conclusion of the men's decathlon where world superstar Ashton Eaton just broke the  World Record with a massive score of 9,039pts (surpassing the legendary Roman Sebrle's 11year record of 9,026pts).  In doing so he broke 2 individual decathlon WR's with a 10.21s 100m and an 8.23m long jump all in the pouring rain...insane!  This is incredible as he is only the second person to break the 9K barrier.  Plus it is rumoured he will make an appearance at our Trials to support fiancé Brianne Theisen in the heptathlon.  Keep calm Patty!  What a way to get amped up for our own championships!  

Here is a clip of the final event the 1500m.  If you just want to see the finish skip to 4mins and witness the magic! 

Well it's about time to get packing and figure out my life before we leave...here is a list of songs we'll be listening to pre and mid dec.  It's in 8tracks for those of you who have it.  (FYI majority of the songs are definitely not PG so earmuff''s youngsters!)   Keep things moving'!

Rip Sh*t Up from mchenery on 8tracks.

Dec Love 

Bye Bye Holland

This week we continued with our taper for Nationals with high intensity work and low volume. This included some over-speed early in the week, which is running while being propelled forward by a strong coach and pulley pairing. It gets your nervous system used to running faster than you ever have before and gets your body ready to handle the feeling of running a PB 100m. The rest of the week was filled with mostly technical work.

This light volume left us with some spare energy. With this energy we exploited the great weather we've been having and went cliff jumping in an old quarry. The water was really warm and I'm trying not to think of what chemicals were lingering in there to make it emerald green. We also met a friend in the water named Franklin who you can see at the end of our video.




In other news, Pat is upset with the qualifying round of UEFA EURO 2012 as his team got sent home after losing every game. It is unfortunate that Holland had to be in the group of death along with Portugal and Germany, but still, they lost to Denmark... Mark and I are happy as we're Germany fans and they've won all three of there games so far. Next they face off against Greece. I'm not too worried about that.

We also had the pleasure of having Marky's lovely lady friend in town for the weekend. She came to visit from Sault St. Marie and he is elated that she made the long drive down for the weekend.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, later days!

Gearing up for Trials

     This week marked the start of our final 4 weeks of preparation leading into nationals at the end of the month. The training is taking on a new form of intensity, with longer warmups, shorter and more event specific workouts, and long cool downs with muchos stretching. The three of us are really trying to be more proactive when it comes to recovery and stretching in this crucial cycle.
     I (pat) went to my nieces kindergarden end of year presentation at her school. Check her out getting really into showing off her art.

     Reid is feeling a bit of hamstring tightness, and is working on getting that healthy for Trials.  Furthermore, he is getting into the Euro2012 fever, we are equally dissapointed with the KNVB losing to Denmark (1-0).
     Chen is still the fastest kid in the world, shocking. Chen spent the weekend in westboro at work, home of westfest. He got asked out by a 10 year old girl and that really pumped his tires. He kindly informed the young -and bold- girl that he may be a touch too old for her and she should consider asking him again in a few years. Watch out Andrea!!
Other than this, there is not much going on. Just heads down and staying out of trouble for the Ottawa Decathletes who look to impress in Calgary.

Oh wait. Did I mention I bought some art, feast your eyes on this bad ass Native Eagle hybrid thing!

...its going to stare at people in the washroom.

Teach me how to Dougie..

This past week has consisted of getting back into the "routine", as it's back to workouts gearing up for the Olympic Trials June 27/28th in Calgary.  Still recovering from last weekends decathlon, this week was filled with rehab and R&R finished off with a small technical competition last Saturday where we contested Pole Vault and Javelin (Pat and I) and Reid took on Pole Vault and the 100m.  This meet according to James was to "not let you forget how tough these events can be".  Insisting that after a successful decathlon, competing in less than perfect conditions (painful ones!) is ideal for keeping us focused on things we need to work on and fine tune in the next 3 weeks. Pat hit a SB (Season best) javelin throw, breaking 60m for the first time this year.

This meet also brought one of our close friends and fellow vaulter Dougie from Toronto to compete.  Despite the cramped conditions, he crashed at our place and brought a few good laughs with him.  Unfortunately Dougie's competition didn't go quite as planned as he ended with a NH (No Height) after a freak and quite puzzling attempt where he landed safely on the mat but his pole was launched 30ft in the air flying ever so gracefully until finally crash landing in the long jump pit and nearly decapitating Reid!  Reid might have an alternative opinion to this event but I thought it was AWESOME!  It looked a little something like this...

We also found out that apparently Dougie is not a very productive packer, as on his way home he made it nearly an hour and a half away before he realized he left his poles at our house.  After a quick happy meal and a shameful drive, Dougie was back in Ottawa.  Once again he was ready to set off, and after a quick chirp to him about what we should do if we find any more of his things Dougie replies "burn it!"  Probably not a great idea as we then proceeded to find a T-shirt, competition singlet, track pants and a few random socks.  Dougie they are still safe, for now!

Finally, Reid came up with a very accurate and honestly pretty funny joke for me on account of my tendency to fault my first two attempts at long jump... and discus... and vault.  New profile pic?

Stay classy my friends...