Ucluelet/Tofino.

Alright, I now have more places than a tent somewhere in Kananaskis that I want to live. I was just up in Ucluelet, or Ukee as the locals say, and Tofino for a few days visiting my good friend T.J. and loved every minute of it, even the 6 hours spent being sick on a boat in the ocean.

My journey started after work at 2pm. I zipped home to pack really quick and head on my way. However, while I was packing I got a nice surprise text from a good friend, Jocelyn Arnason, from Calgary that I hadn't seen in a long time. So I went and met her and her boyfriend on the patio of Canoe Club for a chatski and a quick bite to eat. I had never really spent any time with her boyfriend, so it was really nice to get to know him a bit and to spend time with her. Not to mention that it was an absolutely gorgeous day outside. It was just a little preview of how epic this trip was going to be.

I left Canoe Club around 5:30 and hit the road. I had talked to a few different people before leaving and had heard mixed reviews, some said the drive was almost 6 hours, some said 4 hours. It ended up taking me just under 4 with stopping for A&W and getting pulled-over once. Luckily I got a really nice RCMP guy and he only gave me a warning. If you have never done it before, the drive is a lot of fun, and beautiful. The road is pretty easy going until you get up passed Nanaimo and get off Highway 1 and turn into the 14. Once you get there it starts to get a bit windy, but this is also where it starts to get really pretty. The forest becomes a lot more dense and you drive passed some really pretty lakes and coves. I got to see an amazing sunset. I turned around a corner and all of a sudden there was this gorgeous little bay. I debated pulling over for a minute to watch, but it was getting late and I was unsure of how much father I had. I kept driving and just took as many peaks over as I could, which wasn't many because I was going down a pretty steep windy hill. As the sun went down, the fog rolled in which also made for some pretty cool views. Finally around 9:30 I arrived at the Canadian Princess Resort, which is where T.J. works. He still had awhile until he was off so I just sat and chatted with people and had a couple beers. Once T.J. got off we just headed to his house and sat for awhile catching up and having a couple more beers then went to bed.

In hindsight staying up that late and having that many beers was probably a bad choice. We had to get up around 05:00 because we headed out fishing at 06:00. We got up, had a quick cup'o'marnin' (aka coffee) and headed to the boats to start our adventure out on the old salt chuck. We were going for a pretty long run out into open water. The capt'n said there was some good fishing about 2hrs out. So T.J. and I poured ourselves a cup of tea and prepared ourselves for a long boat ride. I made it about an hour until I started to feel kind of queasy and about another 30mins until I start ralphing. As soon as we stopped I stumbled my way into the wheel house, laid down on a bench and that was game over. That bench became my little resting spot for the rest of the trip. Anytime I tried to open my eyes I immediately felt sick, so I just kept them close and tried to sleep as much as possible. At one point when I was awake and could hear people talking about whales, apparently there were two swimming right beside the boat, and one father out that totally breached the surface. I was pretty upset about that, I mean I was upset about the whole thing, but especially missing the whales. Luckily the fishing trip only cost me $20 instead of the regular $140 because Teej works for them.

Once we got off the boat I felt almost normal. We stopped on the Princess and had a big lunch to replenish everything I left out there on the chuck. After lunch we headed back to T.J.'s and had a 30min nap that turned into a 2 hour nap, clearly we needed it. Once we got up we had a delicious dinner of fresh Halibut that Teej had caught that morning with potatoes and salad, so good! After we finished the scrumptious dinner we headed out to do some rock climbing. We made a pretty sweet little boulder problem which neither of us could fully solve. We then enjoyed a nice cleansing ale on the rocks while watching the sun set, headed home chatted and then headed to bed.

We woke up with the plans to have a quick breakfast and hike out to a WWII Canso bomber plane that crashed in 1945 with a few of T.J.'s friends. T.J.'s brother-in-law had other plans however. He made us a huge fantastic omlette and bacon breakfast. Instead of heading out around 11:00 like planned we started the trip around 13:30. Other than taking a few tries to find the trailhead, the hike was flawless and a lot of fun. The bomber was amazing and we had a lot of fun climbing on and exploring the plane. After the hike we headed into Tofino so that Phil, one of Teej's friends, could buy some new fins for his surfboard. I wanted to stay and bum around Tofino a little more, but we just headed back to Ukee to have a BBQ and Phil and Dave's. Which pretty much brings an end to that night, we just hung out, had a BBQ and a few drinks and then called it a night.

The next morning T.J. and I went surfing, which was really fun. It was my 3rd time ever surfing. The waves weren't exactly the best, but I managed to catch one really good wave which made it worth it. Unfortunately Teej had to work at 15:00 so we didn't have too much time on the water, but after we were done we went to a nice little restaurant for lunch. We got a table with a good view of the beach and had a nice little man-date. After I dropped T.J. off at work and said goodbye, I brought my surfboard back and decided to head into Tofino to explore a little more than the day before. Coinsidently Laura Mitic, Julia Tschanz, and Adrienne Attorp had just arrived in Tofino from Victoria. I made plans to meet up with them and wandered around with them for awhile. And then finally it was time for me to head home. It was a sad realisation. I really enjoyed my time up there, it didn't even feel like I was in Canada. But within a mere 3hrs45mins later I was back at home and in the real world once again.

This trip is definitely on my top 3 favourite trip list. It was hard for me to leave. I had the urge to just pack-up everything and move out there and be a huge surf-bum and grow a big gnarly beard. Now I have a decision to make for once I'm done running, a tent in the mountains being a climbing-bum, or somewhere up in Ukee or Tofino being a surf-bum...

Epic 2 Week Break.

Every year the majestic animal known as the middle distance runner is set free by his/her coaches and allowed to do WHATEVER he/she wants. To see what happens in the absolute freedom, lets take Canadian middle distance runner, Peter Corrigan as an example.

I have to say, this 2 week break was like no other break I've ever had. I took this break more seriously than ever before. I'll have to go back to Toronto just after my less than stellar heat of the 1500m at nationals. Cliff Childs and I were both mildly disappointed after missing out on the final by a few spots and headed directly to the liquor store and picked up a few beers. We were staying in different places so we split ways with plans to meet up at the track in 30mins. I took the subway back up to the apartment I was staying in and freshened up. I decided I'd walk back to the track and enjoy the nice day. I also decided it would be a good idea to keep it classy and brown-bag a couple beers on my way. On my way to the track I ran into my newly engaged friends, Matt Norminton and Jen Kemp, so I sat and had another beer with Matt. So after about 75mins I finally made it to the track. Watched a few races, and then headed out to the pub to drink. I went to bed around 2:30am that night, got up around 11am did some mild detox and started drinking again around 4pm. This night was so much fun, I'm pretty sure I danced for like 4-5 hours straight. I stayed up and got on a bus at 6am to head to the airport and ended up stayin awake until about 8am when I crashed on a bench in the airport. woke up around 9am to get on my flight, lucked out with 3 seats to myself, sprawled out and fell asleep before take off. I slept on and off the entire flight and woke up in Victoria, my body ravaged, my voice gone, and unsure how much dignity I had left, haha. Karl Robertson picked us up from the airport, I was trying to tell stories but gave up after a few mins because my voice was so bad. On the ride Karl asked if I wanted to come camping with him and a few others later that afternoon. Without hesitation I said "NO". I was in no shape to go camping. When I got home I went straight to bed, slept for about 4 hours, woke up, called Karl and told him to come pick me up. Went to the liquor store, bought 16 Pilsners and got right back down to business. After some story telling, laughs, and a little skinny dipping it was 2am and time for bed. We woke up at 9 the next morning and I cracked my first beer at 9:30 and had hotdogs and cheese-smokies for breakfast. That afternoon we went and rafted down the Cowichan river and then I headed home to finally give my body a rest.

I took a few days down, put in some hours at work. I also did a ton of climbing and went to Thetis lake and did some cliff jumping and about 100x more swimming than I had done in recent memory.

I was just biding my time in these days off until August 11th. This was a date that was down in a lot of people's day planners for a few weeks. Not only was it Deirdre's (and all of the engineer's) last exam of summer school and one of her last days in Victoria, but also Kendra's Birthday and one of Logan's last days here as well. To celebrate Dee and I decided to have people over all day for BBQ and drinks. On my way home from work at 2 I stopped by the liquor store and picked up a cheap flat of beer to enforce the mandatory shotgun upon entry into the backyard. Long story short, the night was amazing, everyone had a blast, there was no drama, no crying, one guy puked, but at like 6 so he slept for a few hours and then rallied like a champ. The party really lived up to expecations, if not exceeded them.

The following night Kendra had some friends from home over to Victoria and we went out for a night on the town. We decided to start classy and head to Monty's and then continuing the classy we went to Plan B. It was another awesome night of good times and dancing. After we got home from the bar a couple buddies and myself sat in my backyard watched the meteors.

Today I'm heading up-island to Uculuelet to visit my good friend TJ. We're going to go do some ocean fishing tomorrow morning, some bouldering and also hike up a mountain. Soon after I get back from TJ's I'm heading out to Calgary for a week to see friends and family. Also, Darren St. Clair, a good friend from the UK is coming to visit. I'm really excited to see him and spend some time out in to the REAL mountains.

As I said earlier, I've taken this break more serious than ever before. I partied harder, relaxed more, and did more epic things than any break I've ever had in the past. I'm going to do my first run today up in Uculuelet and I am really excited. I actually had to force myself to NOT run these past couple days. Luckily the scorching heat helped a bit. I'm stoked on getting out there this fall, healthy and injury free and pounding out MILES! I've started reading Once a Runner for the umpteenth time to get me even more pumped. I am totally refreshed and got some things out of my system now before the season starts.

WOO RUNNING!

The Not So Long Road.

Well, I'm happy to report that I've pretty well already achieved more this season than I really thought I would. I have to admit, quite on characteristically, I was fairly pessimistic about the season. The first couple months of training showed no sign of this season being very successful, nor did the first race. Flagstaff gave me the first glimmer of hope for the season where I put together a string of pretty good workouts. After continued success in workouts post-Flagstaff and a new personal best in the 800m here in one of the Q Victoria track series races my normal optimism started to come back.

It seems to have paid off. I went over to Vancouver for the Harry Jerome Track Classic. Originally I was put in the national level 1500 which pretty well would have been a time trial between Logan Burke and I. After some carefully worded e-mails to the meet director I was moved up into the Olympic Development race. On paper this section looked much better and promised a good time. In retrospect, either race probably would have been good. Logan ran really strong and if both of us had of been in that race we may have ran even faster than I eventually did in the OD section. On a positive note I took the win for the second year in a row in that section at Jerome running 3:50.22. There were tons of amazing results that day. There were 6 different sections of the 1500, national, olympic development, and international for both men's and women's. Our group won 5 out of 6 sections, only missing the international women's section. Even though we didn't get the win, all three of the girls from out group ran Personal bests, seasonal bests, or close to. The success from the group was continued in the 800s with wins and PB's and SB's and smart tatical races all over the place. It was really fun to be there and seeing everyone's success.

After coming off Jerome it was hard to believe we could be stronger as a group, but we did just that at our home meet here in Victoria. Logan, Cliff, Goeff, and myself all ran in the international section. Literally every one of us ran either a HUGE PB or a significant SB. Cliff went dropped from 3:50 all the way down to 3:46.50, it was nutty! Logan dopped 2 seconds off his PB from 3:49 to 3:47. Geoff took a second off his SB to run 3:40 and I ran within 0.2 second of my PB running 3:46.83. It was awesome, everyone was so stoked after we crossed the finish line. Hugs and highfives all around it was just a great atmosphere to be in. Along with our great performances was Kyle Irvine's second sub-4 in a row with James Barnes dipping under the barrier as well. Big Doug Oxland and Josh Cloutier both ran very well. There is just too many people to mention. Lemlem rocked out a personal best in the 800 with a2:03. Laura Mitic has been a machine all year. I don't know the numbers for sure, but she has dropped an outrageous amount of seconds off her PB. She ran 4:34 in the national section of the 1500m where 4 other girls from the group all ran very well. The women in the international section did really well, but I have to give best performance to Julia Tchanz, who continually blows my mind, running a big PB in 4:22. Andrew Ellerton snagged another win with Quin Ferguson running great for 3rd place.

Everyone is just buzzing right now. It's great to see fantastic results from the people you are out on the track and trails with shedding blood, sweat, and tears on the daily.

Feeling good is a good feeling.

P.S. I apologize if I missed anyone. There were just too many awesome performances.

Always Turn Right at the Seven Foot Midget.

So, Wednesday after weights Cliff and I were talking and decided that for the afternoon run we'd go somewhere we had never ran before. After some discussion we decided to head to Goldstream Provincial park. When I worked at the Langford Running Room, I would always hear people talk about how good the running is there so we thought it would be cool to check it out.

After a short NHL '10/guitar hero session we suited up and headed out the door. Once we arrived I went and paid for an hour worth of parking. The strangeness starts with the ticket that the machine printed out. As I said, I paid for one hour, the time I paid was roughly 5:00pm on June 23rd. The ticket that was printed expired around noon on like June 15 or something. I took this as having infinity parking because I could just fight that their machine was crazy. After having a confused laughed at the parking pass we went to look at the map to figure out our run. Once we had looked it over a few times over and memorised where we planned on going, we embarked. We set of down a really nice trail that ran right along a little creek that, despite our mapping, came to an abrupt dead end. "Oh man, are you serious? I thought we had this figured out." We doubled back and went under the highway through a little run-off tunnel. We got on another trail which we believed to be the one we had planned on taking. Again, this one came to an abrupt dead end, but at the foot of a gorgeous waterfall. Cliff and I took a few minutes and hopped around on the rocks around the waterfall and just took in the breath-taking scenery. "This is the textbook definition of awesome." It truly was beautiful, I felt like I should have been plugging the end of my long ponytail in to the plants (Avatar). After we finished playing at the waterfall we once again doubled back and found another map and re-plotted our run. We figured we had to cross the creek, which was luckily dry at the moment and climb a little bit to a platue that we could then run on. A little bit of a climb turned into a solid like 10-15mins of a run/walking up a crazy steap hill. Once we reached the top there was suppose to be a trail that kind of leveled out that we could run along for about 2km. In theme with the run, this was not the case. We could not figure out/find the trail we needed, so instead we decided to run along some train tracks. "At least they'll be flat." We followed the tracks for about 20mins and then realised that on either side of us was a pretty steap drop, and that we needed to somehow get back down to the car. We took the next trail we saw that headed roughly in the direction we needed to go... down. The trail was more of an illusion than anything, after about 10m it had disappeared and Cliff and I were in the middle of the forest. We figured that it could be too far until we found a trail so bush-wacking it was. 30mins of no trail, no sign of life, lots of dense bush, tree scaling, laughter, and a few false alarms we emerged on a real trail. Taking this as a good sign we cruised along it until we found another map. Surpringsly we were actually where we had planned to be, just didn't take the way he had planned. So once again, we looked at the map intently and took mental notes of the rest of the trails we needed to take.

I think I'll make a diagram of this, but for now I will explain it as best as possible.

Once we were done looking at the map, we'll call this map #1, and were sure we had figured it out we set off down the trail. We knew that we had to do a bit of a figure-eight type deal. We did the upper loop of the eight and conviniently there as another map, map #2, we rechecked ourselves, confirmed the trail we needed and went on our way. Can you guess what happened, somehow we took the wrong trail and looped all the way pack to map #1. So back to map #2. Once again we checked it and figured out what we had done wrong and set off, this time on the right trail. We arrived at another map, well, looked like a map from a distance. I am certain at one time it was a map, but when we arrived it read "Seven Foot Midget". We relied on our natural instincts and go left. WRONG, back to map #2. "This is ridiculous, worst mark trails ever". From there on in it was pretty smooth sailing. Had to do a bit of a sketchy river crossing and running along the highway. But about 75-80mins after departing and only MAYBE a total of 60mins running, we arrived back at the car. Luckily despite the crazy parking pass it was still there and ticketless. We did a bit of a stretch session and headed into Langford for a quick snack. The quick snack turned into the most delicious masher meal. We went to Nando's Chicken and ate a fully chicken, 3 cobs of corn, 3 baked potatoes, and 4 pieces of garlic toast. Nando's only serves corn on the cob for the summer and I suggest getting there ASAP and having it. Best corn ever, full stop. My mouth is watering just thinking about it...

Long story short, no matter what you do, ALWAYS turn right at the seven-foot midget.

Reading List.

After many years of not reading, I have really started to enjoy it over the last couple years. My library was slowly and steadily growing for a while but has now become stagnant. I have been on the look-out for one particular book ever since 2008 when I was out at Dalhousie. A friend of mine, Ross Jacobs, used to always read excerpts from a book called "The Average American Male" by Chad Kultgen, and they were always hilarious. Clearly it has been a bit of a fruitless, haphazard goose-chase searching for this book seeing as it has taken me over 2 years.

At work, I have recently gone from last in seniority to second and received my raise for making it to 6 months! This means a couple of things, a) I can pick and choose shifts a little more and work it around my training a lot better and b) I'm going to have a lot more money. With this increase of income I have decided to continue the now stale growth of my library. So yesterday in my boredom at work I decided to do a little research and create a book-wish-list. I went online and explored the "books" tab on Google. It was really neat, they have loads of books on there and you can even search to see if what you are looking for is in a library near you. When you do the library search, they also give you lots of books that other readers enjoyed. A lot of the books even have a "preview this item" option where you can read a good portion of the first chapter of the book. After a couple hours of getting paid $14.58 to look for books I comprised a list of 9 books that I thought looked interesting.

The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen
I Just Want my Pants Back by David J Rosen
Goodbye Lemon by Adam Davies
Not That you Asked: Rants, Exploits, Obsessions by Steve Almond
Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilman
The Fuck-up by Arthur Nersesian
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max
The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger

I seem to enjoy quasi-realistic fiction books. A lot of these books are kind of "a-in-the-life" style where there is one main character that is narrating or being documented. The stories are a bit out there sometimes, but are ones that could and do happen in real-life.

If anyone has read any of these books please let me know how they were. I'd also like any suggestions for good books you have read, send me anything and everything you've enjoyed.

Off to the Races.

Well, Flagstaff has come and gone and once again it was a fairly uneventful year. The training was great though. I went in fairly unfit and came out rocking workouts in similar splits as I was this time last year. That success from Flagstaff has continued now that I am back home in Victoria. Cliff Childs and myself had a really great workout on Tuesday. (2x800)(5x300), we went 2:01 and then 5mins later 1:59-2:00 and the 3's were 45,45,44,43,41.

I am surprised and happy to see that the fitness is coming back so quickly. I have a few races coming up in the next little while. I start with an 800 in Victoria on June 5th and then the weekend after I head to Edmonton and run in the Northland Park 1 Mile Road Race and the day after rock a 1500 at the Edmonton International. I'm using the mile/1500 back to back as a little preparation for racing back to back days at nationals.

I'm really excited to get back on the track and in some good races. As I said in my previous post, feeling good is a good feeling. That has become a bit of a mantra of mine lately. Hopefully this feeling and excitement will continue through to the end of the season and I can throw down some good races.

Feeling Good is a Good Feeling.

Well, I officially opened my season two weeks ago now. I went over to Vancouver for a 1500m. The result was an eye opening 4:02. Until then I hadn't ran over 4 minutes in a couple years. I wasn't really upset with the time, nor was I very pleased with it, obviously. I led a lot of the race, but when those boys starting picking up the pace near the end of the race, I just did not have the turn-over to keep up. When I crossed the line, I was hardly out of breath which just confirmed what I already new about where I was as far as fitness goes and made me feel good about the 3000m I had coming up a week later. The 3000m wasn't anything special, 8:34, but it was a much better result compared to the 1500m. Cliff Childs and myself were trying to help Dylan Haight along to the World Junior standard of 8:15. I think we may have been able to do it with slightly better pacing of the start, oh and if there hadn't been a 60km/h head wind on the home stretch.

After the 3000m a bunch of us went out to dinner and then headed to home. Most of us had to be up at 3am the next morning to leave for our training camp in Flagstaff, so it was an early night. However, racing at around 7:15pm and not eating until around 9:30pm really doesn't set you up for a great sleep. I don't think I fell asleep until around 1am, and even with my crappy sleeping pattern, 2hours is not enough. I felt golden until our lay-over in Seattle were I had a nice long nap in the terminal, which continued on the flight to Phoenix. We did arrive in Flagstaff until roughly 6:30pm... 15hours of travel time is lllooonngg.

I've known been in Flagstaff for just over a week, and have a week left. We've only had 2 track sessions so far, but it's been good. We did the same 2 workouts last year, and I was running roughly the same times. Considering I missed pretty well 3 months of training, I'll settle for running the same times as last year. I was a little sore after the first week, but I got a nice massage after the session on saturday and after some self treatment on sunday I feel great going into the second week. Feeling good is a good feeling because it is going to be a tough one. We're doing back to back workouts tuesday and wednesday and then another one saturday.

Anyway, not the most exciting post, but I was bored and just wanted to throw up a bit of an update.