Decathlon: A gruelling two day competition of strength, skill, power and pride. The Olympic Champion of this event rightly claims the title "World's Greatest Athlete". We are two Ottawa athletes training together to master the event and run, jump and throw our way to success. We have complementary talents giving us ample opportunity to learn from each other. This blog will follow us on our journey as we train together and compete against each other for the coveted position on top.
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This week brought Chen and mines recovery week to an end with the athletic Ontatio championships. Well, lets just get into the results then eh! I (Pat) competed in 7 events. First up on saturday was shot put where I threw myself to 7th place, followed by discus where I placed 4th, and then hurdled a new pb of 15.30 qualifying for the finals in 6th and apparently false starting out of the final. I am claiming this to have happen..."I DID NOT MOVE!!!"
I took it like a champ and went and pouted by myself like a big boy? I then ran my first ever relay against the Canadian A team and B team, that was humbling to run as an anchor and only pass the 3rd leg runner Jarrod 15m before the line...sweet deal.
Day 2 of the champs had Chen competing in his first 200m in a long time, he held his own against a few Olympians and beat Coach James 200m pb, congrats on the 22.54. While he ran I threw some Javelin, two season bests over 61m and won the event. We both then went to pole vault. Chen vaulted 3.80, I predict 4m in Woerden in August. I went 4.20 which ties my second best vault ever. So that was suppose to be our last event, but being decathletes comes with its perks! Like getting put on a sprint medley relay for club points. Chen and I ran the 200m legs of the race and guess what, we actually won the race!!!! Go combined events!
Now its training as usual for another few weeks until we leave.
PS. Its been real hot in Ottawa for all you West Coasters #bigshoutout!
After a well deserved and much welcomed visit home, both Pat and I are finally back in Ottawa. It was a short visit but we had to return and get back into the routine of training and preparing ourselves for the next meet. We compete this weekend in Ottawa in our provincial championships.
Bringing Pat back to the west coast to meet my family and friends was awesome. He had never been that far west before and I think he enjoyed it. Our first outing was to show him the Pacific Ocean, where we dug to find Geoducks or "Gooey Ducks" on the sand bar. They are actually quite challenging to catch..crafty clams!
They feel kind of gross eh Pat?
Then over the week we enjoyed a few scenic tours as Victoria graced us with rather untypical summer weather, being anywhere from 20-25°C and Sunny. We also hiked up Mt. Doug, which is full of fun activities and I'm pretty sure I took what has become Pat's favourite picture of himself..
That's my dog Cambie trying to sneak into the background..
On the last day we enjoyed a walk around downtown and checked out Chinatown and the narrowest street in Canada! Then we had a great final dinner with the family and relaxed with a few of Mamma Chen's (or more like Laura's) famous Sangria. Make that Sh*t!
Fantan Alley in Chinatown (Thanks for taking the pic Ali!)
Other than that it was great seeing friends and being back with the family, even though I'm sure Mamma Chen and my sisters are glad to have us gone! I wish we could have stayed longer I really miss the coastal living... until next time Vic!
Where to begin, where to begin...This was by far the biggest meet of the year for every athlete in Canada thus far. Athletes congregated in Calgary this past week for 4 days of gruelling competition, hoping to punch their tickets to the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Lets just get into it then shall we! Chen and I met the new WR holder on Tuesday while we performed our competition warm up. I (Pat) initiated the hand shake with "Man, I gotta shake your hand, I just love you!" He wished us luck, talked to us for a bit (no big deal) and I have yet to wash that hand after soaking up some of his points from his 9039pt performance.
Reid entered these Trials knowing he would be competing in his final Decathlon ever. He has been fighting hamstring injuries and wanted to take the days event by event. Check this awseome story though. Reid opened his long jump with a SB attempt, and says "well im not jumping like an idiot so im starting a clap!" and then the event music they were playing came on and Reid says "man I wish that played when I jumped!!" *all sad and frowny. Next jump, starts the clap and lone behold what comes on?
(skip to 1minute in for the magic) and then Reid takes off and jumped his furthest distance in over 2 years of 6.86m! Reid held it together for his Dec and scored 6599.
Chen, feeling good and ripe to perform came out hard and fought for points all day. He seemed less than pleased with his day one performance yet sat in 3rd through 5 events. He placed 3rd in a fast heat of 100's and 2nd in the 400m. With the late start on day two, the three of us took to the pool for some aquarobic warmup fun time. Hurdles proved a struggle running into a 2.4 headwind, not ideal for a rhythmic event. He threw himself to a SB disc and the ground at the same time, literally fell on his bum in the circle, class act. His vault work this year paid off again with a consistent 3.80m. Chenery then gutted out a 4:48 1500m to finish up with 7001points and a 4th place performance. This marks his 3rd time over 7000 this year and qualfied him for the Woerden invitational in Holland and PanAms next year. Two teams in one year.
I on the other hand, went about scoring 7000 points in a quite different way, deciding to come out with a below average day one score which placed me in 7th place after 5 events. I ran a pb 100m (11.55) and my second faster 400 ever to keep me within striking distance for day 2. Feeling good the next afternoon I ran a pb hurdles race by 0.01 seconds into what felt like a hurricane head wind. I kept rolling on the steam from that race all day with a pb vault by 10cm of 4.30m. By the time the 1500m came around I had clawed my way from 7th back into a medal position. I had to hold Chenery off for roughly 30 seconds. I now have my second national medal and a 2 point better decathlon pb of 7088, woop! This marks my 3rd time over 7000 this year also. The program is working James! I will be joining Chen in Holland come August as well, back to the motherland! Can not wait!!!!!
Three cowboys being all cowboy like ^
(Dipping for the line, Chen far right, me far left.)
The Decathlon was over, but I still had to throw the next morning in the open discus. It went ok, and I came 9th with 47.19m. After the competing it was time for us to call it a week, get some sleep and read bedtime stories to one another and be good little angels. While everyone else partied we played scrabble and solved world hunger.
Reid is back in Ottawa now and Chen and I have gone back to his home in Victoria. I am overly exited to check out the sites and he is overly exited to see his puppies and spend time around the Ocean he misses oh so much. Theres alot of pictures being taken as I have never ventured this far out before, its all so new and pretty to me!
Huge shout outs to new Olympians and good friends going to London later this year. Can not wait to watch you all in those new sexy uniforms being all Olympian like!!! HIGH FIVE!
Check this super sweet article out also about Chen and I from before the trials. Getting some #geegeeslove. http://geegees.ca/node/374&sid=36&nid=2082
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'!
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.
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!
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?
