Habari Gani
The journey to Kenya went as smoothly as one could hope for considering the length of the journey. We had three flights, Toronto to London 6hrs, London to Nairobi 8.5hrs and finally Nairobi to Eldoret, 1hr on Saturday morning. The drive from Eldoret to Iten (where I’m staying) took about 45 minutes and was easily one of the most interesting rides I’ve ever witnessed. There were many little shops, cattle, sheep, billboards and even a camel, which our driver, Kibet, told us was very rare to see. There were tons of people on and along the side of the road. Some were working, selling all kinds of goods, going to school, riding bikes(some with massive loads), driving motorcycles, crammed into matatus (vans), on carts pulled by donkeys and, of course, running.
Lornah’s High Altitude Training Camp (HATC) has a pool which is deep enough for pool running, some stationary bikes and mountain bikes so I can get in some decent x-training while I’m here. Pool running here is quite different than what I’m used to. First off, water running at close to 8000ft is taxing. Also, I have to layer on the sunscreen and wear sunglasses which I didn’t fetch from my room until after 30 minutes of squinting.
The food and hospitality are great here at HATC and I can say that this is a place dedicated to high performance running. Upon arrival we were offered tea, toast and jam, fruit and told that this is the place to “train hard, sleep hard and eat hard”. There are 26 rooms here and they are currently operating at capacity with the vast majority of the athletes coming from Europe. The gym has a ton of equipment and a sauna. Three meals are served daily in the dining room. I’m writing this blog from the lounge which has very spotty internet connection, you get many more “timed-out” messages than web pages that actually load.
…After not being able to do much of anything on the internet I bought a modem stick (seems very cheap compared to Canada for the actual USB stick) for my computer to get back on the grid.
The room Larry and I are staying in until February 10th.
Holiday in the sun
In just a few short days I will be commencing my journey to Iten, Kenya in the Rift Valley. We fly out Thursday and land in London on Friday morning and then fly to Nairobi, stay one night in the city and then fly out Saturday morning to Eldoret and get a quick car ride to Iten. Who is “we” you ask? My travel companion is none other than Larry Abbott.
Larry racing a Cross Country race. I’m not sure if he really gets into the “hurt zone”.
Leisure Suit Larry hails from Sarnia, ON and has just graduated from McMaster University. In ’09 he missed being an All-Canadian by one place in XC and somehow he messed up this past XC season and didn’t get into the coveted top 14 at the CIS championships. He wanted to do some sort of travelling after University and when I told him I was going to Kenya he was all over it. I’m not sure he really knows what training full-time is really going to entail but he’ll get a crash course very quickly at 7000+ feet. I think he’ll come out of this trip pretty damn fit and ready to roll some PB’s this Spring. Larry is also in a band called Chemical Valley which may sound like he is into recreational drugs however, the name is just paying homage to their hometown of Sarnia.
We’re staying 28 days in Kenya and then racing a Cross Country race in Hannut, Belgium on February 13th on the way home. Because of my recent injury I’ll still be easing into running and renting a bike when I get there. It’s obviously not going to be ideal for training but this is a trip that I’ve wanted to do for many years. I will be able to determine if Iten is a training venue that I’ll want to incorporate into my 2012 season. I’m still relatively new to the marathon (3 marathons) and now is a good time to experiment with different training so that I’m confident I know what works for me when I prepare for the big races.
Stay tuned for photos and updates from Iten.
Pretzel Logic
The Speed River North Carolina training camp was a good opportunity to get out of the cold (relatively speaking) and get some training in with the group. Of course I was cooped up on the elliptical, bike and pool for my training so I could have been anywhere however it was good to be hanging out with the River.
I was rooming with Kyle Boorsma, Andrew Nixon and Allan Brett in an apartment style hotel room. While taking a shower I thought it would be funny to take the label off the hair conditioner bottle and switch it with the hand lotion label, and vice versa. The labels came of and stuck surprisingly well and no one was the wiser with all the hotel bottles being the same size.
Allan Brett took the first shower and his hair looked ever so moisturized afterwards and I had to tell the girls in the next room what was happening. After Kyle showered the girls started to comment on how good his and Allan’s hair looked. Nixon doesn’t wash. The next morning the girls asked me if I used conditioner after my post-workout shower and I thought they were hoping I had forgotten my devious switch.
Later in the day Kyle’s face was a little dry so he went to the bathroom and applied what he thought was lotion onto his face. Thankfully Mitch Hedberg was playing on Nixon’s computer and I had a reason to laugh uncontrollably hard at Kyle lathering hair conditioner all over his face. We were about to leave for the mall and I thought the conditioner might make his face really dry once it dried so I let the guys in on the switcheroo. Kyle then washed his face and took the bottle that said “conditioner” out of the shower and applied that.
When we all met in the lobby to carpool I told the girls about Kyle putting the conditioner on his face, washing it off and then putting lotion on. They started laughing because after I told them the day before about the swap they switched the labels back thinking I would tell them eventually and then we would have resorted back to the ‘original’ bottles, which would have then, in turn, be the wrong ones again and we would all be putting moisturizing lotion into our hair. Follow that? good. So it turns out Kyle did put lotion on his face, wash it off and then apply hair conditioner to his face afterall. BTW, the conditioner never dried up and he was fine.
The next day our room put a section of a BIG pretzel in the girls toilet when they weren’t there. Kyle, Allan and I couldn’t not laugh at the site of this log floating in their toilet. We wondered if one of the four girls would inquire at the site of this. I think if a guy found said log he would call it out. But we didn’t hear anything and even as I’m writing this I don’t know if the girl who found the pretzel log mentioned anything.
It snowed on Christmas night in Chapel Hill, the first time since the 1940’s. There was still snow by the time we got there on the 28th but it was getting pretty warm. On the bike I mimicked the mile repeats the guys did on the track.
Here is an article that came out a few weeks ago:
Despite Struggles, Canadian Marathoner Keeps His Cool
One week until Kenya.
The circumstances put soul in me
2010 in review.
Eleven races this year. 9 podium finishes (5 of those were wins), 1 DNF and 1 Olympic standard. The DNF in Boston was the first of my career. My one finish outside of the top 3 was actually my best race of the year. It’s also the first year since 2003 in which I vied for a National title and didn’t get one, although I did win team titles at National XC and National Track Champs. SPEED RIVER!!
The big lesson that I learned this year is that even though an injury doesn’t really hurt it can lead to a long lay-off. Both of my injuries this year didn’t scare me much because I knew they were soft tissue (not stress fractures) and they started off pretty mild (I was able to train for a while with slight discomfort). I’d like to say lesson learned but I did manage to make a similar mistake twice. Only a fool makes the same mistake twice.
However, that first injury steered me away from my Commonwealth Games 5000m goal and led me back to the marathon, which turned out OK in the end. For the second injury I just really wanted to run National XC in Guelph as it was the last of four years that we hosted and I missed the last two. Injuries are part of the game, I just need to manage them better.
Men’s marathon running in Canada ended up being a good one with three performances under 2:13. Since 1995 Canada has had 4 guys under 2:13, three were this year.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
I can see the world and it ain’t so big at all
It was officially announced last Thursday that Eric and I will be running the Virgin London Marathon on April 17th. London should be a very good opportunity for me to improve on my personal best with its flat course, plenty of elites and good crowd. It’s planned that we will have pacers and hopefully I will be running with a few other guys aiming for the same pace. The pace that Eric and I chose to run will be determined once we get into training, hopefully we’ll be focusing on the same pace but it’s too hard to tell right now what exactly that will be. I hope that pace to be 2-3 seconds/km faster than what I ran in Toronto this fall, that would put me around the 2:10 mark.
I got a new phone the other week and I just downloaded a bunch of random photos that I took over the past year.
I chipped and shovelled out lane one last March for a workout.
About a month later I had my shin injury. Getting treatment.
So I spent some time on the bike. Here’s a turtle on the side of the road.
If Elvis is still alive he pumps gas in Hamilton.
Does this guy make it 800M???
When someone great is gone
There are many things you can do in 2 hours and 20 minutes. You may or may not want to occupy that time by running in a pool. Today I hit a PB, 2:20 in the pool and I know it’s gonna toughen me up mentally for the marathon.
The other bi-products from extended periods in the pool are that my fingers look like prunes, improved aerobic fitness and not being able to shake the scent of chlorine from my skin. X-training will be my focus for the next week as I let my foot heal. I had an MRI last week to make sure it wasn’t anything more than soft-tissue injury. Results: no stress fracture, no ligament or tendon tears. What I have is bursitis and tenosynovitis with a little edema thrown in there for good measure. Conservative treatment is the way to go for this particular injury. I’ll take some anti-inflammatory pills, get physio, massage, epsom salt and keep with the Ignite and Xccelerate for topical therapy.
If you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift for a runner you should get them Ignite and/or Xccelerate in the new size format (smaller container). This offer is not advertised but you can order it by emailing me at rcoolsaet@speedrivertfc.com with your name and phone number. Zanagen can process any type of credit card for payment. If you get the order in by Friday(Dec 17) it will be shipped ASAP and you should get it early next week. If you order next week then it might be tight.
50ml – Ignite – $24.99 (topically delivered cellular performance)
50ml – Xccelerate – $29.99 (topically delivered cellular recovery)
Both – $49.99 (save $5)
On Monday morning I went to Gary Reed’s retirement announcement in Toronto. I decided to take the 8:44 GO train but the traffic was super slow because of snow and I missed that one. In fact I barely made the 9:10 train (and anything later I would have missed the press conference entirely) but I was lucky it left the station late. I only had enough time to jet out of my car and jump on the train without buying a ticket. I went to the conductor to say I didn’t have a ticket but she said she couldn’t help me and that I was at the mercy of the transit officers. Luckily they never got me.
Anyways, Gary’s retirement announcement was really good and I’m really happy I went. He talked quite a bit about his career, his decision and the future. Wynn also spoke quite a bit and there were a few videos from people who couldn’t attend (former coaches, Perdita and Priscilla). CBC also made a cool video of his career but unfortunately they cued it to a certain Green Day song that is way overplayed during graduations. The other unfortunate part is that on the screen throughout the press conference they had his Bio with a PB of “1:44.33”. You can see from my last post that 1:44.33 was his 2005 PB and he ran faster each year for the next 4 years with a 1:43.68 PB.
One thing that really had an impact on me throughout Gary’s career is that he accomplished everything living and training in Canada (ya, he had training camps down south and particularly extended ones in the past two years). Speaking of training camps… when Gary and I were staying in the same hotel in Flagstaff he requested a hotel room on he first floor so he could set a BBQ outside his window for cooking. When I asked him if he was serious he made fun of me for cooking all my meat in a frying pan, too funny.
Check out this video from the press conference http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Sports/Olympic_Sports/1328549609/ID=1694609983 (:56 into the vid I get the NB logo plastered in there, haha!)
And check out this great video of Gary:
That’s like… the Bulls without Mike… or hockey games without fights
First off, a big congratulations to Dylan Wykes for not only running 2:12:39 at Cali Int Marathon but also for winning the race. It sounds like the other elite runners let Dylan get an early lead thinking they would reel him in later on however, that never happened and he came home victorious leading wire to wire. In 2008 Dylan ran 2:15:16 and was the talk of the town for Canadian marathoning. In 2009 Dylan and I ran 2:18 and 2:16, respectively, at the World Champs and we were not pleased with those times but knew we had to run in hot conditions. Dylan, admittedly, was a little more shell shocked about his time than myself but in the end we both knew we would hit better weather and run something more indicative of our fitness. After Gillis and I ran well this fall in Toronto and Simon Bairu was slated to do big things in New York Dylan was all but forgotten outside small running cirlces. And then Dylan goes and wins a big marathon with a 3 minute PB! He just went about his business, trained hard and executed and now people are noticing once again.
Myself, Dylan and Trent running in a forest in Germany before 2009 World Champs.
So now Canada has a 2:11, 2 X 2:12, and two other talented athletes (Simon Bairu and Rob Watson) looking for big performances in 2011. This motivates me quite a bit because although I’m the only one with the Olympic qualifying time I don’t, for one second, think that it’s safe that 2:11:23 will remain in the top 3.
Another example of Canada moving in the right direction with distance running: This week I was up for the Athletics Canada award for outstanding off-track performance (Fred Begley award), an award I won last year for my 25th placing at Worlds. This year I felt I had a better marathon than last year and I knew I was not going to win the award. 10th place at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon simply does not hold up to Simon Bairu’s 13th place at the World Cross Country Championships (not to mention Josh Cassidy’s win at the London Marathon in the wheelchair division). 13th place at World Cross is absolutely outstanding. Simon’s 27:23 is also outstanding but is not counted in the ‘off-track’ category. However, it is counted in the main awards category where Simon shared one of the major awards with Priscilla Lopes-Schliep.
The other big news in Canadian distance running (or mid-distance to be specific) is the retirement of Gary Reed. Gary has been one of the best 800m runners in the world since 2004 and boasts a PB of 1:43.68 (Canadian record). The 800m is a very, very competitive event, just about every country produces good ‘long-sprinters’ or ‘fast distance runners’. Gary reached the final in three major championships in a row (2005 Worlds, 2007 Worlds, 2008 Olympics) and came out with a 2nd and a 4th in the later two. You can bet there are very few 800m runners who have ever made three major finals in a row. Obviously Gary was very inspiring to watch, a Canadian (who lived and trained in Canada) who was mixing it up with the best of the best in the world. I got to know Gary fairly well over the years and he taught me a lot about attitude, competition and living as an elite athlete. Also made me laugh my ass off with his Dave Chappelle impersonations (playa hata’s ball was amazing). It was a weird feeling not having Kevin Sullivan at Worlds last year and it will be a weird feeling this year at Worlds in Daegu (although I’m likely going to skip Daegu for a fall marathon).
Here are Gary’s best times each year over a six year period.
| 2009 | 1:43.95 | Athína (Olympic Stadium) | 13/07/2009 | ||
| 2008 | 1:43.68 | Monaco | 29/07/2008 | ||
| 2007 | 1:44.03 | Heusden-Zolder | 28/07/2007 | ||
| 2006 | 1:43.93 | Rieti | 27/08/2006 | ||
| 2005 | 1:44.33 | Helsinki | 12/08/2005 | ||
| 2004 | 1:44.92 | Heusden-Zolder | 31/07/2004 | ||
| 2003 | 1:45.34 | Luzern | 25/06/2003 |
***
My last two days in the Barbados were sweet. I took a catamaran trip up the island where we stopped twice to snorkle, once over a couple of shipwrecks and schools of fish and once with turtles. On my last morning I rented a jet-ski. In the beginning I felt like I was going pretty fast and I looked down at the speedometer and saw 40km/hr. A little later, as I got more comfortable, I got it over 50km/hr. And then over 60km/hr. Finally I hit 71km/hr on that thing and it felt incredibly fast with the waves and all.
The beach by my hotel.
Catamaran with beach in background.
Diving off Catamaran.
I need a dollar, dollar, a dollar is what I need, hey hey
Run Barbados Race update.
A mere 5 minutes into the race I felt like complete crap. I’m going to blame that on the heat, my 5.5 hour flight yesterday and the fact that I haven’t run for a week. At that point I was fading quickly from the two Kenyan leaders and had a couple of other Kenyans on my heels. A couple of km later I was clear of 4th and gaining fast on 2nd place. The dude out front was just hammering!
By 7km (21:00) I thought I had 2nd place wrapped up and started to go in cruise mode however, the guy who had been in 4th was pacing himself pretty well and it looked like he was gaining. Around 8km the crowd erupted with cheer as a guy blew right by me. I was completely shocked but I quickly realized this guy was wearing cargo shorts, no shirt and a big beard. He was just some local who was screwing around. He lasted about 50 meters and as he was slowing I tried to give him a high-five but he stopped pretty quickly. Then I sped up for a few minutes to make sure I had second place wrapped up in 30:10. The guy who won (Robert Letting 28:53) was on a whole other level today. Even if I had been training this past month and had been here for a few days I’m pretty confident I would have still finished second, I just would have challenged him for a bit.
My foot wasn’t too bad during the race but after a quick cool-down it started to feel quite sore. No more running for two weeks. When I signed up for this race weekend I initially thought I was going to double back in the 1/2 marathon for some extra cash. With this foot injury I didn’t even bother picking up my race number. After finishing the race and being completely spent from the heat I would NOT have raced the 1/2 anyways. The 1/2 starts 12 hours after the 10km and with this heat it would not be a smart idea to double up. In general I would recommend people coming down here for a destination race however, stick with the 10km or the 1/2 marathon, not both and not the full marathon unless you love the heat or just like completing marathons in exotic places.
Well after the whole flight debacle (see previous blog) I still came out on top this weekend. With a sweet trophy to boot!
I’ve got two tickets to paradise
It’s Friday morning and I’m on a flight to Barbados for the Run Barbados Race Weekend http://www.runbarbados.org/. The funny thing is that I should have been on a flight Wednesday for Barbados. Why am I flying out two days later? Because I royally messed up…
A couple of months ago when I confirmed doing this 10km I thought my trip was going to be from Thursday until Tuesday and I marked those days off in my calendar. On Monday I realized that I still didn’t know my flight itinerary and emailed the race director for my flight information. In the email he sent back it said; “Toronto on West Jet flight ws2512 on December 1st at 9:40 a.m”. When I got the email I was really only looking for the departure time and airline as I thought I was flying out Thursday.
I went to the Toronto airport on Thursday morning. At the airport my flight info was not popping up on the check-in computer kiosk, “that’s weird?” I thought. At the counter I told the guy I was flying to Barbados today in which he replied “there aren’t any flights to Barbados today”. He then informed me that I was supposed to have flown out Wednesday December 1st. The attendant was really helpful and gave me a number to call and figure out how to get on Friday’s flight.
Side story: As I left the counter some lady chirped “huh, finally!” So I went over and asked politely “oh, pardon me?” She was caught off-guard and mumbled something about taking a long time. In which I replied very calmly, and with a smile, “oh, that’s good because I was trying to take a long time, I like standing at the counter”. I could tell she now realized that she had been obnoxious and I continued on my way back to my car. The lady at Park-N-Fly was really nice and didn’t charge me the $16 for one hour of parking.
Back home I called Westjet and explained that I completely messed up but I need to get on Friday’s flight to Barbados. The lady re-instated my return flight as I guess that usually gets scrapped if you miss the outbound flight. Run Barbados has already paid for hotel, flights, food so I couldn’t miss the race because of my own stupidity. I bit the bullet and bought the Toronto-Barbados ticket. How much does it cost to buy a ticket to Barbados less than 24 hours before take-off? Let’s just say that I now have to finish in the top 4 to come out ahead, fifth would get me pretty close to breaking even.
Prize money:
1st 2000
2nd 1500
3rd 1000
4th 750
5th 500
This prize money situation is not as good as I originally planned. For the past week I haven’t run at all in order to rest my bruised foot. I’ve been in the pool everyday this week to maintain fitness (a silver lining because I’m sure pool workouts are much better in an Olympic size pool than a pool with a swim-up bar). My foot is feeling considerably better with the recent time-off running. One reason why I’m seeing big gains in my foot this week is because now I’m taking time-off after three weeks of less than 50% mileage. As opposed to when I first started taking days off right after three weeks around 180 km/week.
Lesson learned.
Oh, and I actually heard the song “Two Tickets to Paradise” by Eddie Money on the radio this morning. I thought that was pretty fitting since I ended up getting two tickets to Barbados, I just didn’t use the first one.
Update: I’m here in Barbados now. I went to pick up my race number and ran into the race director. He asked me what happened yesterday and I told him I thought I was flying Thursday, he thought the same thing too. It doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t pay attention to the date but at least I’m not going completely nuts.
Once it got dark and the pool was empty I did a 20 minute shake-out pool run. The pool’s deep end is actually pretty big and it took 2.5 minutes to do the contour. As it turns out there is volleyball net in the pool, not a swim-up bar.
Here’s a pic of the pool from my room.
This time tomorrow what will we know
In general I wouldn’t be too pleased with third place at a National Championships. However, given my time-frame from the marathon, my running as of late (or lack thereof) and mainly due to the fact that Cam Levins and Rob Watson ran incredibly tough I’m fine with the bronze.
Destroyer told me he was going to push the pace after one km and that is exactly what he did. At that point Derek Snider looked over at me and asked if I was going to give chase and I replied that I was just going to chill. I didn’t have the confidence to cover that move and I probably didn’t have enough solid training to do cover it and not blow-up. Rob covered the first 5km in under 14:30 yesterday which, truthfully, is a little out of my range right now for a halfway split in snowy conditions. Cam Levins ended up with the big win and looked good doing it even after following Destroyer and his mad pace.
After a few km I found myself in a solid 4th position and started to make inroads on Kip Kangogo who was sitting in third. After 5km I got myself into third place and by then 1st and 2nd were wayyy ahead and in my head I settled on third place by 6km. Kelly Weibe came with a couple of seconds of me a few times in the back-end of the race and each time I injected just enough pace to keep him at bay. Were it not for Kelly I would of run quite a bit sower. My foot got a little beat up but it’s not too bad today. Only cross-training for the next week.
Once again Speed River won the Men’s Senior title. Speed River’s senior women’s squad also won a national title as did my masters buddies over at Harbour Track. Chris Moulton and his crew put on another great event and the spectators once again were out in full force.
1 Cameron Levins 29:25.7
2 Robin Watson 29:49.0
3 Reid Coolsaet 30:04.7
4 Kelly Wiebe 30:10.0
5 Kip *Kangogo 30:22.7
6 Alex Genest 30:35.4
7 Barry Britt 30:44.5
8 Yves Sikubwabo 30:44.8
9 Derek Snider 30:50.0
10 Matthew Hughes 31:10.7
11 Matthew Pieterson 31:14.1
12 Matthew Clout 31:17.1
13 Mathew Walters 31:20.2
14 Dagim *Yeshitela 31:25.4
15 Joseph Campanelli 31:25.7
16 Matthew Brunsting 31:27.6
17 Adam Hortian 31:32.9
18 Joël Bourgeois 31:40.0
19 Iain Fyfe 31:40.1
20 James G. Finlayson 31:43.9
Coming up the hill for the second or third time. photo courtesy of Kevin “Turtle”
A few meters before the finish. photo courtesy of Scott Cameron.
FLOAT ON 
