Jim Click season opener.

Tucson has come and gone. I (Pat) arrived in Arizona healthy and confident, ready to open up in my favorite state once more. I had learned from my mistakes competing in the desert last year, I felt well prepared and excited to step up on the Wildcats sun cooked track. As day 1 approached I felt more and more ready. I could not wait to get things started. Day one seemed to fly by, all of a sudden we were in the blocks and the 100 was underway, as we got in the set I just thought to myself "ok, its about to start. Its finally here. Time to go!" From there I never looked back, tying my best 100 time of 11.55 I then set a new best in long jump of 7.01m and shot put at 15.32m. I had my second best high jump in a decathlon and my second best 400 time. I scored 3768 on day one, which eclipsed my previous best of 3586 set on the same track last year. Here is my winning long jump.

After day one I was in 4th, just under 300 points behind first. But even then, I was simply thinking of staying on the pb train and taking the day one event at a time, staying hydrated and excited to compete. I knew if I could stay calm that I would be able to get the FISU (world university games) standard of 7250pts. Things kept going my way on day two as a ran myself to a new best of 15.00 in the hurdles, .31 better then my previous fastest time. Discus was next, my first throw was a pb over 49m. In round two I set a new club record from 36 years ago with a throw of 50.82m. I finished the day with 3825 and a final score of 7593, which was also a new club record and 10th all time score set by a Canadian. 

Here is a nice group shot of the coaches and athletes, missing from the shot are my parents who made the trip and helped me prepare for the decathlon, thank you! I would also like to thank Bill from UofA for the massage and treatment on both Mark and I throughout the meet. Everyone, and everything really came together to create a perfect storm for me.

Chen entered the event feeling healthy and excited to compete. He has been suffering some injury problems and spent most of the last weeks doing what can essentially be considered base training. Chen described his day one as a character builder for day two, having left his long jump to a third attempt jump and struggling with a short approach high jump. Although he did not have any personal best performances on day one he remained consistent enough to stay on pace for the FISU standard we traveled south to achieve. Day one was not what he had hoped to score but had to let it all hang out on day two and try to come back strong, which he did. Again, hurdles were not a pb but proved to be a very solid opening time and would set the tone for a 40m+ throw. Battling a stubborn cross wind in the vault, and jumping on new poles Chen failed to make his opening height of 3.70m. He then made the decision to pull himself from the remaining events and begin healing and recovering for his next decathlon in Virginia in the next few weeks. Here is a nice action shot of Chen's hurdles.

Although this dec was not what Chen was looking for going into the meet, he will be able to use this as a stepping stone for future competitions. The hardest part of our event is finishing the 10 events in one piece and being able to take something away from every competition. Chen learned a tremendous amount, and he feels like this was the lowest he has felt after a competition. However, this is not all bad news. His attitude and maturity are showing why he has the ability to achieve his goals this summer. The work ethic to pick himself up from defeat and bounce back, taking the ups and downs from Tucson and building off of this unique experience. No two competitions are ever the same, and we are all very excited to see Chen shake off the cobwebs of his injury and build towards Virginia.

Here is a brief montage put together by coach Ryan Rowat, and some competition warm ups the wednesday before the gun. Go hard, and keep it between the lines.



Tucson Bound.

     This will be our final entry before leaving for our season openening meet in Tucson, Arizona. This is a meet that I (Pat) did last year and faired quite well, opening with an overall Decathlon personal best. This year I return with training partners, coaches, and family. Watchout Tuscon, HERE WE COME!!! The weather is showing to be suny days without a cloud in the sky.

Mark and I feel very prepared. Recently we have been getting James'ed quite a bit. This is the verb for having your coach (James Holder) try to make you experience as much physical discomfort as humanly possible. Here is a picture Chen snapped after a nice 400m workout #Jamesed. This is one of the three workouts we experienced lactic threshold.

Speaking of Chen. He has made quite the miraculous recovery and is in top form for this opener. He has taken care of himself and is now prepared to attack the FISU (World University Games) standard with me. For those of you who do not know, the standard we are looking to score is 7250pts to get us to Russia this July. More than reasonable for both of us. 

I will be leaving Canada's cold spring this Saturday and waiting for my better half to arrive on Monday to hammer out some warm weather workouts in the sun before the competition.  All that being said, stay tuned to the Ottawa Lions twitter account for results (@OttawaLionsTFC ), they will be more live and up to date with stories on the Ottawa combined eventers then the actual results. See you on the other side folks.

Signed, your two favourite Decathletes. 

So long indoor season

February has come to an end, and so has the indoor season.  With the last indoor meet for Pat this past weekend, this years indoor competitions have concluded.  This indoor season was exceptional for Mr. Arbour as to date he has set new pb's in pole vault (which he pb'd again in this weekend with a 4.51m clearance), shot put, tied his high jump pb and had a big pb in the hurdles and overall pent personal best!  He even had a second best effort in the long jump.  Not a bad indoor start I must say.  Big shout out to our PV coach Jeff who after this indoor season had 26 pb's from his athletes.  Insane!

Nice little picture of Pat doing what he says was "dialling in his warm-up"

While it was quite a short lived season for myself due to injury (only competing once, and barely at that), I can finally say that I'm virtually back to 100% training!  After months of waiting, I can now enjoy most workouts pain free.  Now that indoors is over and I'm finally healthy and Patrick is riding a pb train, what could make things better?  Knowing that we have only one month until our decathlon opener in Tucson!

We are both incredibly excited for Tucson this year because not only will it hopefully be a great competition with great competitors, but it will most likely be warm and sunny.  None of this cold, white stuff anymore.  This is also our one chance to get the FISU (world university games) standard, that both of us are hunting for. This would give us the opportunity to go to Russia in July and compete in the biggest international meet either of us would have been too.  It is considered the 2nd largest multi-sport games after the Olympics!

So until Tucson we'll be putting in the hours at the track to make sure we give ourselves the best possible chance to get on that team.  Just to keep things visual, here's a little compilation of some of our recent training indoors.  Lookout for our amazing videography.  We even dubbed in some slow mo and music...wild!  A little shaky on the robot running style and not too sure about the transitioning but we'll get it eventually ha ha.

McGill Pentathlon

Last weekend Mark and I traveled to the beautiful city of Montreal to contest the largest pentathlon event of the year at the McGill team challenge. Universities from both sides of the country came together to create another great event and charged up atmosphere. Mark has been battling his lower abdominal injury but thought he would give the pent a try, hes a competitor! The pent started at 8:45am with the hurdles. The Ottawa combined events group came to the track ready. Mark went on to run a rather impressive time of 8.39, given the fact his last race would have been when we were in the Netherlands. In my 2nd race of the season I went on to run a new pb of 8.38, shaving .10 off my previous best and opener. Check out the race for yourselves. I am heat one, our other roomate is heat two, and Chen wraps up the sweep in heat three.

 

We followed hurdles up with some long jump. It was at long jump when Chen would start to feel the nuisance of his ab and after two jumps decided to wait until shot put to gather some more points. I on the other hand jumped my second best jump ever, 6.74m. Thanks to the lovely folks at McGill the entire meet was filmed and this jump is at 1:30min into this stream...

 



 

 

At this point I had quite the pent going, having won the first of two it was on to shot put. Chen took one throw and with that his indoor season as a GeeGee came to an end. It was an easy decision to make when looking at the bigger picture of making FISU this summer and focusing on the outdoor goals. I did not throw my best here but it was consistent enough to keep the lead and win my third event of the day with 14.41m. Our fourth event was high jump. This event has come to be quite the thorn in my...However, I finally feel like I am understanding my abilities as an athlete and with that my head space while competing. If I would be disappointed jumping sub 1.80m then the solution is to not make that an option. Simply enter the competition when the bar is higher and go over! That being said I went on to tie my best jump of 1.90 for the third time as an athlete. I will join the 2m club, one day. Chen speaks very highly of it (so punny!!!). I placed 2nd in the high jump and held my lead going into the 5th and final event, dumdumdummmmm the 1000m. Won't lie, that wasnt my shining moment. In typical Arbour fashion I managed to squander a 160point lead to Calgary's Craig Thomas who would nudge me off the gold medal by 17 points. Eventually I will be a force in the 1000/1500m, I almost kept a strait face there. I finished with a nice 108point pb though, 3710. Congrats Craig, see you in Arizona for the real thing in April. Here is a little montage from the weekend's events.

 

 

Now that the track talk is done. Let's take a minute to wish Chen a very happy birthday! He turned 25 yesterday and we celebrated with a super bowl gathering. Happy Birthday Mr.Chenery, we love you!!! Look how pretty he is, awwwwww.

Go home, GoPro

Welcome everyone to the new year.  2013 should be an exciting one, as we have high hopes for it.  As the new year roles in we have new goals we are looking to achieve.  This season is filled with great opportunities for us to compete, and can be seen in the freshly updated 'upcoming meets' and 'countdown' sections on the page.  

As for training right now Pat is moving right along in fine form keeping the strength and intensity up, and showcased quite a performance this past weekend here in Ottawa.  He contested the pole vault where he improved his PB to 4.46m, after throwing another PB in the shot put finally getting over the huge 15m barrier.  Finally Pat entered the high jump and concluded it with a 1.86m jump. For full results check out:

http://ottawalions.com/results/

Or for a small video recap of the entire meet check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5bXvwVA7mwo#!

As for myself, I am slowly coming along with my injury (and I mean very slowly).  So this past weekend I was left to help out with running the pole vault competition and cheer on the rest of the group.  Not being able to train fully is quite difficult.   All I want to do is jump in workouts with the rest of the group and continue 'proper' training.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks I'll be able to slowly add more and more into my workouts.

As for the holidays, they were fantastic!  Pat enjoyed some quality family time at the Arbour household, and has been enjoying some quality ODR (outdoor rink) time, which I have yet to experience this year.  I cannot wait.  All the while I took in the fresh Victoria air.  After being away from home for so long it's always nice to go back.  Here's a little bit of a taste of what I was missing...

Courtesy to my sister Leanne for snapping this elegant photo of my buddy Tommy and myself, and me for taking the photo of my family's dog Kinley...lookin' good!

With xmas came lots of goodies.  Pat and a couple others in our group, solidified their plans and booked flights to Tucson, AZ to compete at the Jim Click Shootout April 4-5th for their season openers.  As for myself, I gained a little friend called GoPro, and together we are going to create awesome videos of training and whatever else we can think of to share with everyone!

Hope everyone is starting the new year healthy and happy (or somewhat at least), and can't wait for things to start rolling once again.  Dec duo out!

New year, new goals.

This entry will mark our final post of the 2012 season;

It has been quite the year Mark and I have had. We both experienced ups and downs. However, for the most part our season saw more ups than anything. We saw some national medals both indoors and outdoors, we were both graced with the opportunity of representing our country in our very own city, we traveled Europe...and we had a few personal best's along the way. As we sit back and reflect upon our past 2012 season we begin plotting our assault on the 2013 season. Chen's short term goals remain on getting healthy and back into full training mode. He has had some good news of late, and all things are pointing to a speedier recovery than originally estimated. See, it pays to have a 3rd, 4th, and 5th opinion sometimes! Here is a picture of Chens reward for all his hard work into getting expert opinions and monotonous rehabbing. Enjoy Vic!

The 2013 indoor season is already upon us. I (Pat) just recently competed in my first meet of the season. I don’t expect much from indoors, as it is never a focus. My indoors serves more as a test of fitness and a reminder of what competition feels like. That being said, I had a solid competition at the Louis-Riel super Saturday series. I set a new dome record in the shot put with a throw of 14.67m (Seen below, video analysis!)

I also set a new personal best on my way to winning the hurdles with a time of 8.48 which eclipsed my oldest outstanding personal best of 8.51. Here is a blurry and a cut off video of the race this past weekend >

http://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=5274&do=videos&video_id=78177.

I have been working a lot on trying to fix my running technique as of late. Always more work ahead, but it is nice to see some results for the countless hours being put into the project. I also competed in some Pole Vault. I opened at 4.16m and this proved to be my only height, I will continue to jump from a short approach runway for the next month or so.

Indoors is heating up! But, we are already planning our spring time openers in Arizona. This time of year has provided Chen and I with a lot to think of in terms of goals and Decathlon opportunities. Just to be clear, there are 4 major competitions which we hope to each make. This list of international events include FISU (Russia), Francophone (South of France), Pan-Am Cup (being held in Ottawa again), and the AV Clytoneus meet (Holland).

Before we sign off, Chen and I would like to acknowledge the retirement of one of our greatest competitors in the sport of Decathlon. This week Jamie Adjetey-Nelson announced his retirement from the Decathlon (nice article about Jamie here>) http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2012/12/18/windsor-decathlete-adjetey-nelson-retires/. Jamie has one national titles, set one of the best scores in the history of Canada, and won Commonwealth just to name a few of his accomplishments. You never competed against Jamie as an athlete, you were always with him. It was an honour to have had the privaledge to compete with a man who was chearing you on the entire way. Chen and I both have memories of Jamie, one of which is his pre-1500m song he once oh so lovely serenaded us with at nationals. You cant ever help finding yourself wanting him to be the best he could at every run, jump and throw he attempted. Best of luck to a legend in the sport in his next chapter of life. If you live half as good as you competed your going to be just fine :)

We end our last blog of the 2012 season by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. Safe travels home for all, and to all a good night.

Yours truly, the Decathlon-Duo.

 

Santa! is quite small these days...

So these past few weeks have been fairly eventful.  To start we finished off Movember, well Pat did..because thanks to a good pal of mine, I've promised to keep it going until our reunion in another 2 weeks...so the teen stash stays! Pat decided to 'style' his mo, creating a very John Waters-esque look if you ask me.  Google him, it's worth it.  Here's the evidence of how our final days turned out (including a few of Pats Canadian Strength co-workers..great look guys!).

Then since it's getting closer to that majestic holiday we call Christmas we decided to go Christmas shopping, which turned into self shopping (and a holiday dinner at the Bay, see below).  But more more importantly we made the decision that this was a great time to go visit Santa for a family household picture!  Somehow I remember Santa being a bit larger when we were younger.  I think Santa needs more milk and cookies (well maybe not cookies).  Not a bad little house I'd say.

Last Saturday was also the Ottawa Lions awards banquet, where Pat and I both picked up awards from the past 2 seasons.  Pat grabbed the Field Athlete of the Year and I won the Combined Events Athlete of the Year.  We were awarded some lovely certificates and those delightful mugs you see in the bottom left corner of the picture above.  For the picture we were just supposed to pretend taking a sip because our tea was extremely hot, but my hand accidentally slipped hence the triangle face I'm making.  Oh well thanks for the mugs either way Lions!

Looking good receiving our awards!  

Last practice Pat and I decided to video some of the pole vault hanging drills we had.  Take a look, if you have any others you think are a good please let us know!

I have been a bit hampered by lower ab pain so my training has been minimized significantly; but Pat however, went into beast mode the other night and had a PB clean, lifting 315lbs.  Not too shabby eh?...here's another quick video showing the magic moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ugSLmY1XqWE

So while Pat lifts heavy weights, I'll be sticking to my rehab exercises like they were going to win me the lottery.  It gets tedious but it's something that needs to get done.  So what I started doing, and I highly recommend, is writing in a notebook.  In it I write down everything I do (exercise, drills, etc.), if it hurts or not, and how much it hurts.  Then the next day I go back and write whether I was still sore or not.  This has been SO helpful, as now coaches and therapists are able to see what you think rather than try to probe you for info.  And honestly when you have a memory as bad as mine, you can very easily forget the degrees of pain you feel day to day.  Give it a shot if you're battling injuries, or even if you're not it's a great way to keep track of your body.

I'll end this by leaving you with my wonderful drawing showing two of the exercises I've been doing.  Pretty good think..So long!

 (and yes the second one makes you look like a dog at a fire hydrant)