the winter gets cold in ways you always forget

One year ago…. January 26th, 2008 was my last track race.  It was an indoor 3000m in Boston in which I ran 7:53 in a controlled manner.  At the time I thought it was just an early season race before a big summer campaign, it never occurred to me that it would be the last track race I would run in over a year. 

In other news.

Maybe I should of had a poll at the beginning of the year in which people could of wagered which would come first, the unveiling of the 2009 Berlin Mascot or the unveiling of the qualification standards set out by Athletics Canada in which to get to the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.  I’ll give you a hint which one came out first.

“This mascot will make people look forward to the World Championships even more. I am sure that athletics fans will like the mascot,” added Clemens Prokop, President of the German Athletics Federation DLV.

I really don’t complain about Athletics Canada too much but, year in and year out I’m always complaining about why they don’t publish standards on a timely manner.  They calculate the standards off of past Olympics and World Championships so you would think they could get the calculator out soon after the summer season and let the athletes know.

My biggest complaint came in 2005 when I ran a 10 000m in 28:39 and a month later they published the standards for Commonwealths which was also 28:39.  The AC standard just happened to be .20 quicker than what I ran.  Information I could of used going into the race as my goal was 28:40.  It turned out that running the 5000m at the Commonwealth games with bronchitis was quite enough for me.