It’s been a long time since I did the stroll

Training continues to come around, slowly but surely. I had a decent session a few days ago, nothing great by any means but a step up from the previous ones.

Whenever I have an early season race I seem to be able to train better afterwards. With that in mind I’m going to run the CRIM 10 miler in Flint, MI this Saturday. I’m not expecting anything other than a solid effort, basically a glorified tempo.

Canada did a great job at the World Championships and came away with 5 medals, the most ever in a WC. Other than the five medals I was excited to see Alex Genest and Matt Hughes in the steeple final and Matt breaking the Canadian record running 8:11.  It was good to see Nate Brannen in the 1500m final and Mo Ahmed finish 9th in the 10,000m backed up with a 14th place from Cam Levins.  Kate Van Buskirk had a breakthrough season making the semi in the 1500m and running a PB narrowly missing the final. I have to admit I was wrong about Kate. Early in the season she ran 15:29 for the 5000m and I thought she should stick with the 5000m because the way I saw it she was the fourth ranked 1500m runner in Canada. But she just kept dropping her PB until she was in the mix with the other three girls, and of course ended up with a spot on the WC team.

Rob Watson ran a smart race and finished 20th in the marathon.  2:12 marathoner Jeff Eggleston from the US also ran a conservative race and finished 13th. The Canadian women had a tough go in the marathon, which is a shame because they both have made big strides since they ran 2:31/2:32 last year in Rotterdam.  It was brutally hot for the women’s marathon in Moscow and there were only 46 finishers (23 DNF’s). There weren’t many more finishers in the men’s race, 51 (18 DNF’s). That is par for the course because lots of guys go out for glory and save themselves for a fall marathon when ‘glory’ isn’t in the cards anymore.  There were only 51 finishers in 2011 as well, and 21 DNF’S in 2009 when I ran.

Anthony Romaniw had a dream season taking more than 2 seconds off his 800m PB from last year.  He ran 1:45:60 and qualified for his first World Championships, all at the young age of 21. Anthony is an exciting guy racer. It’s also fun watching him before the gun goes off because he can’t stop talking and he just bounces from one competitor to the other blabbing away.