Hub City Track Classic

Well, tonight I ran at the Hub City Track Classic here in Moncton, NB. For a relatively small meet it was able to pull together really good fields for all the races.

I wasn't quite sure how I was going to approach my race, but once the gun went and I found myself shot right into the lead I decided pretty quick. It happened to be Adam Kellar's birthday and I knew he had been chasing the New Brunswick provincial record, so I decided to help try to give him a nice B-day pressy and run 1200 hard for the boys and then just see what happened from there. I made it to 1200 in about 3:00 and some of the guys had started moving on me. After leading 1200 and taking the wind I was pretty exhausted and didn't have much fight left. I figured I had done a good job of making the race fast for everyone so I decided to just cruise home easy. Maybe not my best performance of the year, but at least I made it a race.

The crowd here was amazing. It was a relatively small meet, yet the meet directors did a fantastic job of advertising to the public and getting the media to cover it. It's a shame the bigger cities can't do the same for significantly larger meets. There were more people in the stands here than there were at the Canadian National Championships in Calgary. As I said the people who put this meet on did a fantastic job and I really hope they get the wish of being added into the National Track League next year, they deserve!

Whirlwind Update.

First of all, I need to say sorry for the giant cliff hanger only to leave you hanging for such a long time. I'm not going to write as long of a story as originally intended, instead I will try to recap as much as I can of what has happened since my last post. I will try to be much better in the coming weeks and months to get back to more frequent updates.

So, I wrote a little about OXY, but nothing too detailed, let me do that now. OXY was absolutely amazing. The warm-up, the race, the atmosphere, every other race. In 13 years of running have never felt as good as did during that race. I felt stronger, smoother, and more relaxed than ever have before. I ended up running 3:43.76, which was a 3 second PB, but also only .11 seconds off my carding standard. So I had a little bitterness to go along with my joy. Most everyone who ran OXY from my group either PB'ed or had a fantastic race, so the high from that far outweighed the .11 seconds.

After OXY went back to Scottsdale and spent a few days with Amy before heading back up to Canada. Somehow during my stay at Amy's convinced her to book a flight out of Calgary and join me on my journey. Having her with me really made the trip a lot better. It's actually quite a beautiful drive, if you don't get caught in crazy rain/hail/snow storms. It's also a lot more enjoyable when you don't run out of gas somewhere in the middle of Montana and have to pay a guy $5 for a gallon out of the back of his truck just to get you to the next town.

After the long drive I had a few days at home and then went up to Edmonton to run the Northland Park 1 Mile Road Race. As always the event was a lot of fun and helped fill my bank account to get me through the summer. A few days later I flew to Abbotsford for a little 1500 that was mediocre. When returned home after that finally had a few weeks in one place to just chill and get some training in.

After a solid 2 week training block it was time for nationals. They went pretty well. Heats went pretty much exactly as predicted. I made it through on placement which is a huge step forward from not making it at all. Then in the final I kind of got a little anxious and made some rookie mistakes, but I did beat 1 guy! On a whole, for our group, nationals was a huge success. We had 5 of 8 guys in the Men's 800, and got all 3 medals. In the 1500 we had 5 of 12 finalists, and 3 of the top 4. Lemlem got 2nd by a boob in the Women's 8 and Leanna was close behind her for 3rd.

I had a few days to decompress after Nats and then headed back to Vancouver for Harry Jerome and the start of the National Track League (NTL). As always, Jerome treated me well with yet another PB of 3:41.57, well under my carding standard. Two days later I came back and ran the 3rd fastest time o my life in Victoria at NTL #2. I was pretty happy with the way the west coast treated me.

I am currently sitting in a dorm room in Moncton. I am running yet another 1500 here tomorrow. The facility is amazing, the field is good and I'm excited to race. After this I am headed to Halifax for the 3rd stop of the NTL, move on to Toronto after that for the NTL finale, take about 2 weeks recovery and training then run Alberta Provincials. Provincials will mark the end of my 2011 season.

I already have some post-season plans. On the 28th I'm heading down to Scottsdale to visit my beautiful girlfriend Amy. I'll be down there until the 4th of August when we will both board a plane ad she will join me back to Calgary and then on to Edmonton to witness Ms. Jenn Kemp and Mr. Matt Norminton's wedding with me. I then plan to work my little butt off to make some extra billz before hading back down to  Scottsdale to start the cycle all over again.