Winter Wonderland: Looking for Traction

We’re so lucky – spoiled – to have a great indoor training venue here because without it, winter would be so much more of a struggle as far as training goes. During the first two years I spent in Ottawa I ran outside throughout the winters and it was just never that great for me, as I never felt confident going fast. We would run intervals along the Canal and the footing would be very sketchy at times and you would be slipping around… or on the really cold days I’d break down and wear a touque which I hardly ever do because of the way it muffles the sounds around you which for me are so important. Of course even having the luxury of a great indoor track here, I still run a fair bit outside in addition to treadmill running. It isn’t necesarily a bad thing to have to slow down sometimes – my coach Ian has been talking lately about the value of treating the days in between workouts as truly easy days and allowing your body to properly recover so as to be able to really hit the hard days hard. With having such a great indoor facility here, we have been able to do some good workouts lately. Last Thursday Ian had us do 4 * 1000m where we would hit 800m in about 2:27 and close hard over the final 200m running in the mid to high 2:50′s. Then on Saturday we ran 10 x 400 averaging 64 on 2:10 recovery… that was a tough workout but it did a world of good for my confidence. We did a couple of lighter workouts on the track this week and considerably less volume on the other days, and tomorrow Josh and I are racing a 1500m at a meet taking place at the Dome – originally we were going to run a 3k but they added a 1500 and Ian suggested we try racing another one to see if we can build on our race from before Christmas.

Highs, Lows and Letting Things Come

Happy New Year everybody… here’s hoping that you had a fabulous Christmas and wishing you the very best in 2012. Its crazy to think that 2012 is here. Time has a way of slipping by and the inevitability of that really dawned on me this holiday in particular.

2011 felt very much like a transitional year with some highs and lows. I think the high point came early on when Greg and I captured the T11 800m at the IPC Athletics World Championships in late January, in a tactical race where we came from behind. My brother and his guide Sean were in the race also and finished fourth. Its fair to say Greg and I felt like underdogs going into that race, so it was incredibly exhilarating and emotionally charged for us to win in the way we were able to. Earlier in the competition we had competed in the 1500m, finishing a distant fourth. It was following that race that I started to realize that I’d really like to have a coach again, after having been self-coached for the previous 18 months. I talked with a few people about this, including Hugh Conlan who is a former Ottawa Lions coach now working with Athletics Canada. We came back from New Zealand at the end of January. I got the flu and after missing about ten days of training, started back into running a bit too hard and strained my left achilles. I tried to train through it, taking a few days easy or completely off and then trying to start back up again, and I couldn’t shake it. This was probably one of the low points last year. Meantime, Hugh introduced me to distance coach Ian Clark, who had coached previously with the Lions and the Ottawa Elite Running Team. I met with Ian in mid April. He was not coaching at the time but was willing to take me on. Right away, he got me to cut way back on running in place of pool running, and emphasized aggressive rehab through eccentric stretching, ice, and cross friction massage, which I did. It took time to get over it but I was able to finally put it behind me. I missed most of the competitive outdoor season, including Nationals, although I travelled down to New York City in June with six of our Achilles Ottawa athletes to compete in the Achilles Hope and Possibility Run. I met and was helped by some phenomenal local runners who assisted me as guides – these were phenomenal guys too. It was truly a great weekend and first visit to NYC. In July I raced on the track for the first time in a low key twilight race here in Ottawa with Greg, running a 4:22 1500m. It would be our final race together although this had not been determined at the time, and the end of a terrific partnership of thirteen years. I have not written about this in detail and plan to do so in an upcoming post. It had become very difficult to find guides who could be there when I needed the help with training. I had an opportunity to begin working consistently with Josh Karanja, who returned to Ottawa over the summer after completing a track scholarship at Eastern Michigan University. Although being able to train with Josh has opened many doors for me and brought a crucial element of consistency since July, the way things ended with Greg and the misunderstanding it led to was in itself a low point. In August, Josh and I raced for the first time together, essentially a timetrial in a 5000m race at the Ontario ParaSport Summer Games in Sarnia where we ran 16:43. Two weeks later I had the chance to race against ODair Santos and Carlos Barto Silva, two of our main competition over 1500m who are from Brazil, at a meet in Sao Paulo. Kyle and I finished second behind ODair and his guide, running 2:04 for 800m. Josh and I continued with track workouts in September and October in preparation for Para PanAms. In October Josh and I participated in an Athletics Canada site visit over to London, where we got a flavour of what athletes might expect later this year. Then three weeks later we were headed to Guadalajara. We were among the older athletes on a young, energetic team of mostly sprinters; it was a fun group to be around. Unfortunately Josh injured his quad in a workout four days before we were scheduled to compete. I was very fortunate that Cody Boast and Simon Hodge, two guides who were in Guadalajara with their own athletes, were able and willing to help me. Cody pushed himself to the limit in guiding me to second over 1500m, once again behind ODair Santos, and the next day, he tag teamed with Simon enabling me to come away with third in the 5000m, behind Odair Santos and a Mexican pair who we saw in Guadalajara for the first time. In Guadalajara guides received medals for the first time, something that has been very long overdue. Fortunately, Joshès injury responded quickly to treatment and we were able to resume training together shortly after returning from Mexico. We capped off the year with an indoor 1500m where we ran 4:11.42, the fastest since 2009 for me, in a race at the Dome the week before Christmas. All and all it really was a weird sort of a year, so I was genuinely surprised when I heard I’d won the Athletics Canada Para ambulatory athlete of the year just before the holidays… it certainly wasn’t expected (see the Ottawa Citizen article at www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Ottawa+athlete+wins+national+award/5896251/story.html).

Of course the upcoming year in particular is a big one for any athlete with Paralympic aspirations. I remember after the Beijing Paralympics, thinking that 2012 seemed like for-ever in the future. Then all of a sudden it seemed, we were getting ready to compete at the IPC Athletics Worlds and it was January 2011, and the Paralympics lay about 18 months ahead. At that time it still felt like there was lots of breathing room. Then it was summer 2011 and I was just coming back from being injured. Ian was telling me that we had all the time in the world to prepare with London in mind, and in my head I was thinking, there’s just a year to go. Now, the year is here… or to be more accurate, we’re about eight months away from the Games, with the process of qualification still to navigate, never a formality. I have the 1500m elite standard and hope to get the 5000m one, but injuries or illness or a drop in performance level are unknown roadblocks which can derail the very best laid plans. Its true that in running as in life, nothing can be taken for granted.

But that said, the holiday was a good period of training for me. Basically Josh and I were hitting two workouts each week, and in between I was running steady mileage, in the low to mid 70 per week range. Right up until Christmas we had great weather although winter has finally caught up to us and now the footing is not great, + we’ve had temperatures around minus 20 the last two days. Aside from feeling a little flat when doing strides, the only real side effect I’ve noticed from the increased mileage is an increase in hunger, but then, the holidays are a great time for eating so this wasn’t a problem. My parents made the road trip up from Hamilton for a few days over Christmas and we spent the time along with them, Colleen’s dad and Jon, as well as visiting with Colleen’s brother, wife and two daughters. On Christmas Day as we sat around, my dad, Jon and I broke out the various musical instruments we have here for an impromptu jam session which was pretty cool… this happens most years and usually culminates in gails of laughter as one of us will try to play an instrument we have no idea how to play. The didgery-doo I bought last year in Australia has yet to be figured out by any of us, and efforts to get even a noise out of it inevitably lead to quasi-rude sounds, dizziness, and laughter.

I’m excited for 2012 and for all the possibilities which lie ahead. Josh and I are aiming for a couple of 3000m indoor races in January and February and I’m hoping to make some big improvements over that distance. In early April we’re planning to hit a couple of outdoor 5000m races with hopes of getting well under the London elite standard of 16:27. From there the outdoor track season will begin in earnest as Nationals, which are in Calgary in June are once again earlier than in most years. The team will be announced right after Nationals and then it will be about eight weeks to the big show.

I want to thank everyone who has followed my blog over the past year, and to wish you happiness, health and love in the year to come. I really didn’t make any concrete new year resolutions as I never keep them, although I do have a few general thoughts about life and how I hope to live it in 2012. I hope to do things now; to try to meet up with friends each weekend; to play more guitar, perhaps to learn a song each week if I can; to think less about running; to place no limits on what is possible; and to let things come.

1500 Indoor Opener

This past Saturday Josh and I lined up with a field which included several top local high school runners in a 1500 metre race at the first indoor meet of the year here at our 400m Dome in Ottawa. With a couple of guys shooting for a sub 4:00 race, we thought it best to hang back and if we could, to move up through the field as the race went along. The other reason in being cautious at the start was that we were trying to run with a looser tether. We had tried this in a workout of kilometre repeats the previous Tuesday and it seemed to work well. The starts can be tricky though particularly in a 1500m, where everybody cuts to the inside right away, so we wanted to be careful.

We were able to get a smooth start though and positioned ourselves on the outside. Predictably a couple of runners boltet right away and Josh and I found ourselves in last place through the first 200m. We hit about 51 seconds through 300m, definitely on the slow side. With a little more room to move as things opened up in front of us though, we were able to begin moving up through the field and got into a nice running rhythm. There were no official lap split times but I’ve heard we hit about 68 seconds for 400m and 2:13 at 800m. With a lap to go, Josh looked up at the clock and thought he saw 3:01 or 3:02. This meant that running a final 400m of 65 seconds would have put us right around my personal best of 4:07.05 which I ran with Greg back in 2007. Even though I didn’t know our split at the time, I knew we had a good one going. The main field was right ahead of us and we were in the race. And Josh was getting excited too, and was yelling at me with 300m to go. Unfortunately at that point the wheels started coming off a bit… or actually its probably more accurate to say that I just didn’t have the extra gear I needed. We had a bunch of runners cuing up behind us and we got eaten by about four of them over the last 200m. We finished tenth in 4:11.42. I probably mentally gave up a bit in the final few metres. It was a bit disappointing to fall apart a bit and miss out on running a really good time. On the positive side though, I haven’t run 4:11 in a couple of years. We are really just doing strength related work right now with hardly anything fast.

Update

Time is flying as I realized its been nearly two weeks since last posting. Training is continuing to roll along. We did back off a little after getting home but Ian is keen to gear up for some indoor races in hopes of building on where we are at following Para PanAms. We’re based out at the Dome now, the 400m indoor track here in Ottawa. On Saturday mornings, the workouts have started to involve a 400m approx road hill right outside the Dome. Its not a very steep hill, which means we can run them fast. Ian is convinced that running these hills fast is the best type of strength training we could do. This past Saturday we ran five of them. It was taking us 82 to 83 seconds, and we jogged down for recovery which took about 2:30. After that we went inside for some 400′s at 1500m pace and some 300′s a little faster. On the first of the 400′s, my legs were cooked from the hills and it was all I could do to run a 67. After that though we were hitting 65′s and 66′s and I started to feel better. I was able to finish the workout with a couple of 45 second 300′s guided by Cody. That ended up being a good workout. Yesterday I did a long run with Josh and Mike Woods and they killed me for 96 minutes, much of it around 6 minute mile pace. For mid December the weather is still great here at least from a running point of view, right around zero through the day and no snow on the ground.

This Saturday there is a meet here and Josh and I are going to race a 1500m. It’ll be good to see where we’re at before Christmas and to hopefully get pushed by the U of Ottawa GG athletes who will be in the race too.

There is a PhD student named Andrea Bundon who is based out in Vancouver and who competed as a guide skier in the 2010 Winter Paralympics. Recently Andrea launched a blog, www.athletesfirst.ca, to assist with her research. The purpose is to create a forum to get people talking about various issues and topics related to the Paralympics. Andrea has asked a few athletes including me to contribute posts from time to time. I’ve written one post so far and have included it here… its about the relationship between guide runners and blind athletes. www.athletesfirst.ca is just a few weeks old but there has already been some interesting discussion, worth checking out if you have a few minutes.
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From ‘Non-Competing Participant’ to a Place on the Podium: Running is a True Team Sport

I recently got back from the Para PanAmerican Games in Guadalajara. Living for two weeks among coaches, support staff and athletes with a variety of disabilities in a multicultural athlete village, you quickly become sensitive to the terminology used to classify people. One ironic example of this is the ‘Non-Competing Participant’ designation given to guide runners on the accreditation which functions virtually as a passport at a major Games. The International Paralympic Committee’s intension with using this terminology is no doubt to draw a distinction between guide runners and the athletes they guide. In the past, usually over beers after competing, it is something we have laughed about. The truth is that along with athletes who are blind, today’s guides are committed to and invested in high level training and racing more than at any other time. The performance level among blind athletes is at an all-time high across the spectrum of running events from the 100 metres up to the marathon. This means that guides must work harder to stay a step ahead and that ultimately, teams must do more training together if they are serious about pursuing success. There was a time when blind athletes might show up at a competition and have a local guide assigned to them by the organizers but those days are years in the past. So all this said, is it really fair to consider today’s guide runners as ‘Non-Competing Participants’?

We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the lonely long distance runner. As a sport, running is often characterized as an individual sport where athletes are out there on their own. But what if it is not possible for you to train or compete solo?

For a runner who is blind, working with a sighted guide runner is the simple modification that enables you to get out the door, gain improved physical fitness, experience the transformative benefits of an active lifestyle, and perhaps even aspire to compete at a Paralympic Games. As a guide runner, giving the gift of running to another person is noble, and selfless on many levels. Statistics around low physical activity participation among people with a disability are well documented. For a person with low or no vision, what opens the door to physical activity is very often the encouragement of a person in a position to facilitate the experience – namely a family member or friend, a recreation provider, teacher, coach, or in this instance a guide runner.

Yet for a runner who gets involved in guiding and who does it regularly, it may often be difficult to avoid foregoing or modifying the running which he or she would otherwise do on their own. This is even more the case for guides working with blind athletes who compete nationally or internationally on the track. In that scenario it may sometimes be necessary to look to the guidance of prospective or former ablebodied national team athletes. There are blind runners with sub 50 second 400 metre track speed so as you can imagine, a person guiding one of these athletes might need an individual 400 metre personal best of 47 seconds or better, a time which would rank them among the top five ablebodied athletes in Canada. The guide I raced with for thirteen years was a 3:48 1500 metre runner, a time equivalent to about a 4:05 mile. Athletes with this type of ability who commit to training and racing with blind runners inevitably make compromises with respect to their own competitive aspirations, or may even sacrifice their own goals altogether. And we are not even talking about the life logistics in coordinating training and races to work for not one but two people simultaneously. So as you might imagine, for a runner who is blind, particularly a competitive one, finding a guide is no easy task.

The blind runners and guides who do connect and run together for a sustained period of time develop a unique relationship characterized by deep trust, friendship and a sense of team. And it is as a team that they work together through the inevitable highs and lows of training and racing, encourage one another, challenge each other, buy into a vision for success, celebrate successes as they come, and evolve as one unit.

This is the nature of the team dynamic between the blind athlete-guide duo at the international level. To designate guide runners as ‘Non-Competing Participants’ is therefore very misleading. It makes it seem that guide runners really don’t do much when nothing could be further from the truth. Guides suffer through the same training and may often do extra so as to stay a step ahead. As mentioned earlier they may put their own competitive aspirations on hold or abandon them altogether. The commitment of guiding at an international level can impact a guide’s family and professional career too. And when it comes to racing, they must make split second decisions under extreme pressure and attempt to execute an agreed-upon race plan while running at or near their own top speed.

Since the late 1990′s, national team guide runners in our country have been treated in much the same way as blind athletes by Athletics Canada, the sport’s governing body. This means that guides receive medals at national championships and are eligible to receive carding through Sport Canada’s Athlete Assistance Program. In a sport in which blind athletes must look to the help of others and which demands so much of their guides, this progressive thinking and the incentives made available acknowledge the value which our Canadian athletics culture has placed on the contribution of guide runners. Additionally, for ablebodied athletes who just missed making a national team on their own, the chance to guide internationally is a chance to wear the Canadian uniform. And at an even deeper level, there is the human element of aspiring towards something in partnership with another person. The guide I trained and raced with for thirteen years has said that for him, our efforts together and what we accomplished in running were so much more meaningful than what he was able to accomplish on his own.

In Guadalajara we finally saw guide runners being awarded medals for the first time at a major international competition. This is in keeping with other sports such as tandem cycling and cross country skiing in which guides have for years been awarded medals alongside their athletes. Awarding medals to guide runners is a positive step in the right direction in terms of acknowledging the incredible contribution they make to our sport. It has been a very long time in coming. In an environment where nothing happens quickly, how much longer will it take for the International Paralympic Committee to come to realize the irony in the designation of guides as ‘Non-Competing Participants’?

Living One Moment at a Time: Para Pan Perspective

Its great to be back on home soil after two weeks living in the Athlete Village in Guadalajara. There was a huge emphasis on security during our time there – sometimes you feel that some of the warnings and the fact we had two RCMP officers on-site with our team might have been based on our North American paranoia – but obviously the precautions were well founded. Last week after our team returned to Canada there was the discovery of 23 bodies in an abandoned vehicle in the centre of Guadalajara. On the Saturday before coming home, Josh, Cody and I had walked around for a couple of hours in the city in search of the place where my coach Ian was staying, totally lost… two white guys and one black one who were clearly not local and who stuck out bigtime, judging from the stares we were getting. Exploring in that way probably wasn’t the smartest thing for us to have done. It sounds as though the discovery of these bodies may have been drug related – apparently Guadalajara is a gateway for meth anthetamin trafficking. Still it is a very sad and blatent reminder that not everywhere is safety something you can more or less take for granted. Take the barbed wire surrounding many of the houses that you just don’t see in Canada. And then contrasted with this, we saw cops hanging out by their police cars outside the stadium with music blaring out of car radios – not exactly keeping the peace. At times, you could stroll into the Para Pan athlete village without showing any accreditation, they simply waved those of us wearing Canadian gear through although they were not as blase with others, which raises a whole other interesting question. At the end of the trip, a couple of athletes came back to their rooms just in time to catch housekeeping staff trying to take their gear. And on a run with Josh early in our trip, we jogged past a guy in a Texas Longhorn truck sitting in the driver’s seat, totally naked. So many contradictions. At the closing ceremony, the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, made an impassioned speech where he talked about increased equality, inclusion and opportunity brought about through hosting the PanAm and Para PanAm Games in his country. You hope these things would remain as a lasting legacy of the Games… I like to think so, because there’s no question that sport can do so much to inspire positive change in those it touches. But it was obvious when in Mexico, even as a sheltered outsider who caught just a fleeting glimpse of life beyond the fence, that there are other big, systemic problems to confront in bringing about real equality, inclusion and opportunity.

The last couple of days of our time in Guadalajara involved some team meetings, a tour by our own Minister of State for Sport the Honourable Bal Gosal, a late night or two, a trip into the city to meet up for dinner with Ian in which we got hopelessly lost but which culminated in a great Mexican meal along with authentic live music, and the closing ceremonies complete with fireworks, lots of hype around the PanAm and Para PanAms coming to Toronto in 2015, and an artistic demonstration of some kind (this stuff always goes completely over my head). I think the organizers of major Para competitions should give some consideration to the visually impaired crowd and come up with something more original and accessible – just my take. Following the closing ceremonies, our team convened for a 2:30 am departure, and a brutal 19-hour travel day which landed me at home at about 10 pm last Monday. Suffice to say, it was great falling asleep in my own bed.

Para PanAms was an important wake-up call for me. The Paralympics are just nine months away and that time will get eaten up very quickly. I really appreciated the help of Cody and Simon, two guides who did not expect to get thrown into middle distance races in Guad – they each did an excellent job for me and I’m very grateful. For Josh, who was sidelined by a quad strain, and for Ian too, there were some important takeaways. One of the big things we all agreed on is that we paid too much respect to the altitude. We approached both races conservatively. In our 1500 metre final when the Brazilian, O’Dair Santos sprinted out in 27 seconds for the first 200, we let him and his guide go and they ran away with the race unchallenged. It might have been worth going with them, even if we blew up. Of course, hindsight is 2020. In championship races you always want to keep something in reserve and avoid being vulnourable, but we went too far in the other direction. Having raced O’Dair several times now, we know that he and his guide are front runners and we need to challenge them at this and not allow them to dictate these races. Ian felt that they looked vulnourable, beatable. By just being up there with them at the front, he feels that we could be in the right place for something good to happen. This is something we’ll keep in mind for the next time.

Another important takeaway is that I know I simply need to be fitter, work harder, be prepared to hurt more, and not back down. My friend Mikhail, who I go to see for massage treatments put it well when I was speaking with him last night. He said that this is the one year when you need to put absolutely everything you can into it. I think this is a mind set, as much as it is in doing the right things – training properly, eating and sleeping well, and the other things that support race performances. Racing is like going to war and I need to bring that kind of killer instinct into my racing. In our 5000m, the Mexican team moved past us just after we hit 3000m. Rather than latching right on their heels, I made a mistake in allowing a gap to open and from that point on it got much harder. I remember thinking about how much I was hurting with another 2 km to go, rather than committing to closing down the gap and making that the absolute priority. I should have been focussed on running a lap at a time and thinking about nothing else. The lesson for me? To live one moment at a time.

Wearing the Canadian uniform has special meaning and I was extremely proud to have had the opportunity to do so once again. It was fun being part of such a young, energetic athletics team – a team which really embraced the chance to be there and which saw no limitations in its potential. The Athletics team came away with sixteen medals in all, one less than the medal tally earned by a more experienced Para PanAm team in 2007 against arguably softer competition. As a whole Canada earned 63 medals. Brazil, with 80 medals, is emerging as the Para Pan powerhouse ahead of the 2016 Paralympic Games which will take place in Rio.

So, what’s next for me? We have no plans to take down time right away. I’m fit following a good fall of training and we want to keep rolling and build on that. After missing a few days of running, Josh was able to get a lot of treatment for his strained quad in Guadalajara and is nearly back to 100 % now. Together, our plan is to pick up where we left off and gear our training around several indoor races here in Ottawa between December and February. These races usually offer great competition against ablebodied athletes and a chance to run fast with no pressure. I’m hoping these races will enable us to take important steps in our planning and preparation for next summer.

Race Update: Day Thirteen in Guadalajara

I came away with silver and bronze over 1500m and 5000m. Here are a few thoughts on each race.

1500m
In our 1500 metre race, run as a straight final on Thursday evening, our plan was to be conservative in the first 800m and let anyone going out hard go if need be. O’dair Santos, who holds the T11 1500m world record at 4:04.71, took out the first 200m in 27 secondss, which was flying. Cody and I hung back, hitting a 65 second first 400m and 2:17 at 800, with everyone lining up behind us. O’Dair had a big gap on the field and maintained that throughout the race. As we came around with a lap to go I asked Cody, who had been nervous about going the entire way beforehand if he was okay and he said he was good to go. Another of our guides here, Simon was ready to jump in with 300 to go if he had been needed but we were fine. With 300 to go, the Brazilians Carlos Barto Silva and his guide, who we’ve raced a lot over the years, were sitting right on us. We picked it up and they hung with us but never gained, and with 200 to go I knew we’d be fine and we finished hard. Our final time was 4:20, nine seconds back from O’Dair. Cody was absolutely exhausted but he helped me to get the job done and I’m very grateful to him for that. They are giving medals to guides here, so you can imagine what that meant to Cody whose first major international competition this is, especially the photo opp on the podium.
In retrospect, I wish I’d been a little more aggressive in the race. As it turned out we ended up running for second, not for the win. I’ve raced O’Dair three times now and each time he goes out very hard. The next time, I’ll try going with him. My coach, Ian Clark who made the trip down here to watch our races, said O’Dair looked vulnourable and was running almost the same pace we were although he had a huge lead. Here at altitude, once you cross the line you’re in big trouble so we were conscious of that and made the decision to hold back for that reason.

5000m
The 5000m was run at 10 am on Friday. Simon and Cody shared the guiding in this race, with Simon going just under 8 laps. They did a great job. O’Dair once again was the big dog in the race, and there was a new Mexican athlete-guide team with a personal best of 16:05 coming in. I had run 16:23 on the roads back in September. Our plan was to aim to run conservatively in the beginning, 80 seconds per lap pace and then after 3 km to try to pick it up and hopefully work on catching O’Dair, who we expected to go out hard again. Simon and I found ourselves leading in the first 200m which we hit in 37. We slowed it right down, no need to do any more work than necesary early in the race especially with the altitude. O’Dair didn’t bolt this time. He and his guide passed us about a lap in, and pulled away steadily and ran an even 3:13 per km virtually the whole way to finish in 16:06. Behind us, the team from Mexico were right there. We were hitting 80′s and I was feeling pretty good. The Mexicans moved past us maybe about a kilometre in and we sat right behind them. There was a very patriotic, pro-Mexican crowd in the stands so it was a great atmosphere for racing. The Mexicans weren’t pushing the pace and at one point I said to Simon, lets sit here a little longer and then we’ll pass them, and a half lap later we did. They responded and got right on the train. We hit 3 km in 10:02, still more or less on pace. On the back stretch Simon and I moved out to lane three and we did the “guide switcheroony” as Cody coined it in an interview we had afterwards and it went very smoothly with the Mexicans still just behind us. My coach Ian had yelled at Cody from the stands to pick things up once he took over and for us to go after O’Dair… having a new, fresh set of legs would have enabled us to do that but my own legs weren’t ready to pick it up. I never hit the wall hard but the fatigue just creeps up on you here. Shortly after that the Mexicans moved past us again. I was thinking, they can take it for a bit and then we’ll pass them back. The other athletes behind us were far back. I got a little too comfortable, and the Mexicans opened up a gap on us and once they got away it became a lot harder. We finished in 16:47, nine seconds back from the Mexicans and 41 seconds behind O’Dair and his guide. Afterwards Ian said that we should have jumped right on them and just hung on. If we’d hung with them I’m pretty sure we would have had better closing speed because in the 1500m the previous night, they had run just 4:31. When Cody told we were 20 metres back with a lap remaining, I knew I couldn’t make that up with how I was feeling. As I’m learning, racing this new distance of 5000m takes serious concentration and any lapse can cost you big time.

I learned some things in both races – some things I need to work on – and some positives also, not least the chance to train and race hard at altitude given that we’re gonna keep rolling once back home and aim for some fast races indoors. Josh has been able to do a little more running as the week has gone along, so we should be ready to jump right into training again once home.

Races and Changes: Day Nine in Guadalajara

I was set to race the 1500 metre semifinal later this afternoon, only to be told by Dave our Head Coach this morning at breakfast that the semis were cancelled and that we would be running a straight final tomorrow afternoon. Changes like this are not uncommon even in major Para competitions. I imagine the number of entrants in our T11 1500m is low enough that they decided just to go to a straight final, although of course we have not as of yet seen a start list… again, par for the course.

With being entered in the 5000 metres on Friday morning also, I’ll be more fresh for that race now than I would have been with running a semi today and then if we had qualified, a final tomorrow. And there is another reason why this change is beneficial for us. On Saturday during our workout, Josh strained his left quad. He had been feeling tightness in his quad, right at the top just below the hip flexer, earlier in the week and during one of our intervals on Saturday, it gave out on him. He has been getting daily therapy since Saturday with regular ultrasound as well as frequent icing, and they have given him the goahead to try an easy run today but he will be out for our race tomorrow and it is unlikely that he will be able to race on Friday. Obviously this is a big blow and something we did not count on happening. I’m very fortunate in that Cody Boast, who is down here guiding Brandon King (they finished fourth in the T12 400m yesterday), has agreed to step in tomorrow to guide me in the 1500m final. Cody has a personal best of 4:01 over 1500m which he accomplished this past summer (my best is 4:07), and although his training with Brandon has been more speed focussed of late, Cody and I have done a fair amount of running together in the past and I’m confident we’ll race strong.

Josh’s injury highlights the very critical role that guide runners play in the blind athlete-guide team dynamic. I think this relationship is often misrepresented and not well understood. On the Para PanAm accreditations given to each accredited participant, guides are referred to as “non-competing participants”. This designation has been used at past Para events also and the irony is not lost on us, because in truth, guides are very much active participants, invested as much as the athletes they guide in the competitive dog-fight and the thrills and spills of racing hard.

Josh and I have put in good, consistent hard work together in training over the fall and in that respect, he has contributed meaningfully to whatever comes out of these races tomorrow and Friday. But even more than that over these past few months, training with Josh has helped me to begin to understand my own true potential and to set my sites higher, and to expect more out of myself than I ever have. For himself, Josh is in phenomenal shape at the moment and was planning on competing in the Canadian National Cross Country Championships in Vancouver the weekend after we got back. Hopefully he’ll still get the chance to race, and to use xc Nationals as a steppingstone in his own competitive aspirations towards next year and the possibility of representing Canada in his own right.

It is fun being around this young team and seeing our athletes find their competitive feet in what is a new, first-time environment for many of them. Our Athletics team has won six medals over the first two days of competition with several Canadian record and personal best performances. I think our group is riding high at the moment and I hope I can feed on this positive energy and carry it into the 1500m tomorrow. I’ve been feeling good and after a shaky first few days here with acclimatizing to the altitude, training has gone very well. Before his injury flared up in our workout on Saturday, Josh and I clipped off a 27 second 200m and it felt easy. Its encouraging because all through the fall, speedwork was the thing I struggled with and now I feel that my speed is finally coming back, just at the right time.