Blog Archives: Sport
Men’s Aerials
Me at the aerials venue at Cypress Mountain Yesterday I attended the finals for men’s aerials freestyle skiing at Cypress Mountain just north of Vancouver. It was the second of my flying events — after ski jumping a few days ago in Whistler — and it was great!
Canadian aerialist in a training jump Twelve athletes had qualified from the earlier rounds — 3 Canadians, 2 Americans, 3 Chinese, 3 Belorussians, and a Swiss athlete. When I arrived two hours before the event started, they were doing their training runs. During training, they start with easy jumps and work up to the harder jumps. In fact, in training they must achieve the same difficulty level as their hardest jump in the competition or they cannot do that jump in the actual event. The attention of the crowd was split during training, however, as the video screens showed the women’s gold medal hockey match while the aerialists trained.
Preparing the jump for training It was interesting to see the ongoing maintenance of the hill during the evening. After every other jump, the Smurf Shovel Brigade (the venue maintenance volunteers in blue jackets) fixed up the landing area, filling in where jumpers landed hard, corrugating the landing area by walking down the hill sideways with their skis, and tossing out pine boughs to give jumpers depth perception.
Aerialists fly up to 60 feet in the air In the finals, each athlete gets two jumps. Canadian Kyle Nissen had a fantastic jump with a really solid landing in the first round, taking the lead by 7 points. Unfortunately, the other two Canadians both had slapbacks, “a poor landing in which the skier hits the snow on his/her skis and back”.
Chinese aerialist in the air With a Canadian in the lead, the crowd was really excited going into the second round of jumps. Because the best athletes go last in the second round, we had to wait until the very end to see whether Nissen would hold on to first. He had a good jump but not as good a landing, and a lower degree of difficulty, which pushed him back in to 5th place. The gold went to Alexei Grishin of Belarus.
Flower ceremony for the men's aerials This was my first event in Vancouver and a bit different from the events in Whistler. Getting to the event took a while, just because getting around Vancouver takes a long time — but I never had to wait longer than 5 minutes. Leaving the event, there were really long lineups for the buses down Cypress Mountain; they had to fit some 9,000 people onto buses back to Vancouver, so that took a while. All in all, though, it was a well-run event, made even better by fantastic weather the whole time.
Take a look at the rest of my pictures from the event.
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Biathlon
Cecilia and I at biathlon Yesterday I attended the women’s 4x6km biathlon relay at the Whistler Olympic Park with the Cotton family.
Canadian skiier practice shooting In the biathlon relay, there are 19 teams, each composed of four people. Each person does a 6km relay leg: 2km skiing, a shooting round lying prone on the ground, 2km skiing, a shooting round standing up, another 2km skiing, and then a transition to the next skier. In the shooting round, they have 5 bullets and have to hit 5 targets. 
The carnage in the transition area They also have an additional 3 bullets in case they miss some of the targets, but they have to reload those bullets manually. Finally, if they still haven’t hit all the targets, they have to do a penalty loop.
Russian fans cheering on their winning team As with the ski jumping event I attended the day before, the Canadians and Americans were the lowest ranked teams heading into the competition. At the top of the field were the Russians, Germans, and French. The German and Russian fans were out in full force, wildly waving their flags. Our team did decently, considering we’re not a northern European powerhouse: the Canadian women improved from their rank, finishing in 15, three spots above their rank, and two spots ahead of the Americans.
Canadian and American skiiers embracing after a tough ski The Russians won the race (and their fans were happy about that, let me tell you!). The French had been in the lead but then had a bad shooting round and had to take two penalty laps. Remarkably, the French fought their way back from ninth place back up to second in an amazing recovery from their penalty laps.
Today I leave Whistler and head down to Vancouver to enjoy a few more events and the closing ceremonies.
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Ski jumping
Me representing Canada at the ski jumping hill This week’s updates are coming from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. When I had first found out 7 years ago that the games were coming to Vancouver, I intended to attend, but I only won a single ticket in the ticket lottery. I decided that wasn’t enough to merit coming across the Pacific and sold the ticket. But last week as I was watching the Olympics on TV, it looked like a lot of fun; I had the spontaneous thought that “hey, I could just go” to the Olympics, and, a few hours later, I had impulsively booked a flight and bought event tickets.
Me with the Cotton women at the Olympic rings in Whistler I arrived on Sunday and came up to Whistler. Fortunately for me, my friend Cecilia and her family were also coming to Whistler for the games this week and graciously are letting me spend a few days in their condo.
Ski jumping at Whistler Olympic Park Today I attended my first event of the games: men’s team ski jumping. I wanted to see them fly, and I wasn’t disappointed. As with many sports, seeing it live is very different from seeing it on TV. On TV, you have the sensation that ski jumping involves, well, jumping. In the real world, looking up the hill, it’s much more evident that ski jumping is really controlled falling down a hill.
Thomas Morgenstern jumping In team ski jump, there are two rounds. In each round, each of 4 members of the team jumps once, and their scores are added together. The top 8 teams jump again. The Canadian men were ranked 12th going into the event, and came out in 12th, so they didn’t make it to the final. The Austrian team dominated the event and were amazing to watch. 
Austria wins gold! Their final jumper, Gregor Schlierenzauer, had the longest jump of the entire 2010 games, 146.5m. I had a blast and am looking forward to the rest of my events this week.
Take a look at the rest of the pictures from today in Whistler.
Stefan Read, Canadian ski jumper Update 2010/02/23 22:00 PST: I learned after the event that there was a bit of a competition going on between the North American teams. The Canadians and Americans were ranked second last and last respectively, and they had a friendly wager riding on the result: each member of the losing team had to drink a bottle of maple syrup. Those poor Canadian guys…
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Celebrating gold!
Celebrating Canada's first Olympic gold medal on home soil!
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Toronto Marathon 2009
Toronto Marathon 2009 After completing the Brisbane Half Marathon in August, I spent the rest of August, September, and October training for the Toronto Marathon. It was my first marathon, and took place on Sunday, October 18, 2009. Although I trained solo in Brisbane, I had partners in training back in Waterloo: Dan, with whom I ran the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon last year, and Cecilia.
After spending the week before the race in Windsor, I went up to Toronto on Friday afternoon. On Friday and Saturday night, I stayed at my regular hotel in Toronto (Chez Laura, which has excellent crépes!). Cecilia came in from Waterloo on Friday night as well. We had a relatively relaxing Friday evening and Saturday, with a few errands but nothing too taxing. Saturday night came around and I was starting to get nervous.
Nervous, after all, because this was my first marathon. A half marathon, that’s a bit of work, but nothing too ridiculous. For both of the half marathon races I’d run, I’d made sure that I hit that distance in the training schedule a few weeks before the race. Just to know that I could do it. That gave me a lot of confidence going into the race: it wasn’t a question of whether I’d finish, but how fast my time would be.
A marathon is a different story. Marathons aren’t something you do on a whim. Ten, twenty kilometres, that’s doable, and 30, well, that’s pushing it, but something you can do on a weekend run if you try. But 42.2 kilometres is an awful long way.
Cecilia and I ready for the Toronto Marathon I was reasonably well prepared physically, I think. But talking to Cecilia and Laura’s friend Donna (who was also running Sunday morning), I discovered I wasn’t really prepared mentally. I didn’t have a plan, and in a marathon, you need to have a plan. I hadn’t really come up with any time goals (besides finishing!). Cecilia and I talked about a plan a little bit, but it was completely gone from my brain Sunday morning.
The first decision to make on Sunday morning was what to wear. Fortunately, because I was travelling around the world, I didn’t bring extra clothes, so I didn’t have any options. It was about 2ºC when we got up on Sunday morning. I had committed to wearing shorts, but it was a might bit colder than when I wore shorts running in Brisbane. Nonetheless, it was definitely the right decision. I went with a short sleeve running shirt with a long sleeve running shirt on top, and then cheap throwaway gloves.
The half marathon started at 8am but our marathon didn’t start until 9am. I didn’t want to arrive too early at the start because it meant waiting around in the cold, but others wanted to arrive to get rid of their bags (which didn’t make much sense to me — Laura was coming down to the finish and could bring our bags, and basically as soon as we arrived they had do get rid of their bags anyway, but oh well).
The start was up in North York near the civic centre (Mel Lastman Square). Fortunately, the civic centre was unlocked, so we waiting inside in the warmth until about 15 minutes before the start.
It was cold. Standing around waiting for the start I was very chilly, and the nervousness returned when I remembered I didn’t have much of a plan. Mostly just run. For the next four and a bit hours. With some water and food (gels) every 45 minutes or so.
As always, the race start was slow as we waited for the people in front of us to cross the start line. Since it was only the marathoners, not the half marathoners too, it wasn’t too long a wait, and we crossed the line less than a minute after the start.
After less than a kilometre, we turned onto Yonge Street. Just the idea of running down Yonge Street is pretty cool to me, more so than running on the Lakeshore: Yonge Street is the main street in Toronto, and they close it down just for us! (It makes Torontonians cranky.)
I saw Cecilia in front of me the whole time, and as we turned onto Yonge Street I caught up to her and started running with her for a bit. We chatted, and agreed to run together until one of us wanted to go ahead or behind. This was the best decision I made in the whole race, and I’m so grateful for Cecilia for letting me run with her. We stayed together for almost the entire rest of the race, except for a few kilometres around kilometres 38 to 41, where I lead by a few metres. It was great to run with someone else. We were out there a long time — over four hours — and it was nice to have someone else with whom to pass the time.
Cecilia’s plan for the race was consistent pacing. We were aiming for four hours on the dot, and Cecilia wanted to do it with a “negative split”, which means running the second half faster than the first half. It’s a good idea, because most people tend to go out too hard in the first half and then are dying the second half. She had planned for an average of about 5:42 per kilometre in the first half and about 5:40 per kilometre in the second half.
Toronto Marathon map The first quarter of the race was very comfortable. We were going at a relaxing pace, had a nice bit of a chat, and warmed up quite quickly. I shed my gloves after a few kilometres, and rolled up the sleeves shortly thereafter. We spent a while running down Yonge Street (which had a few hills, but was overall a slight downhill), and then moved off of Yonge to run through some nice little neighbourhoods that I never even knew existed.
The second quarter of the course took us through Rosedale and past Casa Loma. It was like a nice Sunday morning run in a quite neighbourhood. We were a little less chatty this quarter, but we still talked every once in a while. The half way point came up somewhere down near Queen’s Quay, and we hit the halfway point at 2:00:55, which we were very happy with!
The third quarter of the course took us along Lakeshore Boulevard, past Ontario Place, out to the little white bridge over the Humber River as Toronto meets Etobicoke. My legs started getting a little heavier, but I was still feeling alright. We were taking gels every 45 minutes or so and had taken water about every half an hour, so my body was holding up well. Better, in fact, than on the long runs in Brisbane, where it was warmer and where I was less well nourished through the run. I was really excited to get out to the little white bridge; when I take the train or the bus into Toronto, it’s the part that says to me “you’ve arrived in Toronto”, so I was thrilled when I ran underneath it and started the run back towards downtown.
Apparently many people hit “the wall” around kilometre 30 to 32 during a marathon. I didn’t hit the wall at that point, and was feeling alright as we moved into the final quarter of the race. When we got back to around Ontario Place, I started pulling ahead of Cecilia. We had previously agreed to split up if that became necessary. I kept looking back for a while and still saw her 10 to 15 metres behind me, so she was still hanging in there. After a while though, I didn’t have the energy to look behind and worry about Cecilia: the race was taking its toll on me, and worrying about me became a challenge enough.
I was still doing well up until I passed the Royal York and hit University Avenue. With about 2 kilometres left until Queen’s Park, I hit my wall. I wanted to have a solid final two kilometres, but the legs just weren’t agreeing with me on that. Having slowed a bit, I tried to pick it up to at least stay on the target pace, but that lasted only for about 30 seconds and then I started walking for a little bit. Somewhere around kilometre 41, Cecilia caught up with me and told me that we were going to finish this thing.
The race course designers, in their infinite wisdom, decided that we had to run about three quarters of the way around Queen’s Park to make it to the finish line. Let me tell you, after 41.5 km, that last stretch around Queen’s Park seemed infinitely long. Cecilia pulled me around that last stretch. Laura noticed us about a quarter of the way around Queen’s Park and ran alongside the course with us towards the finish line.
After what seemed like forever, the finish line finally appeared. Cecilia and I crossed the finish line together, giving me a chip finish time of 4:02:20. Once the race was done, it was a good thing that (a) Cecilia was with me, and (b) there were fences keeping us in a corral to direct us where to go, because my brain wasn’t really functioning very well. Cecilia led me towards water and food, and somewhere along the way I got a Mylar cape to keep me warm.
I was very happy with my finish time! I had had an idle thought that I would be awesome to beat four hours, but this was an amazing result. Our second half was in 2:01:25, only 30 seconds slower than our first half, which is amazing. The race website told us later that in the second half of the race, we passed 203 people and were only passed by 6, so Cecilia’s plan of consistent pacing worked out very well for us.
After gaining coherence and getting some food and drink, we made our way to our support team (Laura) and wandered over to the course to watch for Dan. He came through soon after at 4:19:28 (chip time), a great time! I went back into the finish area to help Dan through. Meeting up again with Cecilia and Laura, we headed back to Laura’s apartment, where hot showers and scrambled eggs were had by all.
I couldn’t be happier with my first marathon. I’m so glad to have run with Cecilia for the whole race, it made it much more fun and I know my result was better because of it. Although I think the half marathon is more my distance, I won’t rule out future marathons. Cecilia has informed me that Walt Disney World has a marathon each year, and that sounds like a lot of fun.
Toronto Marathon report Here’s the “achievement statistics” report generated by the race that shows some more information about my run.
You can also read Cecilia’s race report on her website.
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Marathon training: Month 1
One month down, one month to go! It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a month since my half marathon in August, and it’s even more surprising that there’s just a month left until the marathon in October!
It seems like the marathon training is a bit of a rush, although I think that’s more imagined than real. If I had started a longer training program — say a 12 or 16 week program — from scratch in preparation for the marathon, I would probably be at roughly the same point, except I’ve had a half marathon along the way. I’ll admit that the first week or two after the half marathon I did not feel like training, as it felt like I had accomplished my goal. But I now have my head all sorted out for the marathon!
The first couple of weeks of running went well. I started adding on the distance, getting to 23km in the second week (which was a new distance record for me). During the third week, the sole of my left foot started to hurt. I cut back on the running, and have got a new pair of shoes (the previous pair had about 675km on them when they were replaced), and this week’s long run, 26km, came and went without any foot pain. That’s not to say it was an unmitigated joy, however: the heat has started to return to Brisbane. Even though I got out just after 6:30am on Sunday morning, it was already 20°C, and by the time I got home at 9:30, it was up to 26°C. That made it pretty tough. I guess I will have to start getting up even earlier. This long run also helped me reach a couple of milestones: longest run ever (26km) and 700km of running since the start of the year (continuing to blow away last year’s record of 526km).
I’ll be running in the marathon with my friends Cecilia and Dan. Take a look at Cecilia’s biggest week ever as part of her marathon training.
| Aug 24 Mon | Rest day | |
| Aug 25 Tue | Rest day | |
| Aug 26 Wed | Rest day | |
| Aug 27 Thu | 8.1km | Tempo run |
| Aug 28 Fri | Rest day | |
| Aug 29 Sat | Rest day | |
| Aug 30 Sun | 20.0km | Long run |
| Weekly Total | 28.1km | Year to date: 615.0km |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 31 Mon | Rest day | |
| Sep 1 Tue | 3.7km | Easy run |
| Sep 2 Wed | Rest day | |
| Sep 3 Thu | 10.8km | Speedwork |
| Sep 4 Fri | Rest day | |
| Sep 5 Sat | Rest day | |
| Sep 6 Sun | 23.0km | Long run |
| Weekly Total | 37.5km | Year to date: 652.6km |
| Sep 7 Mon | Rest day | |
| Sep 8 Tue | 3.7km | Easy run |
| Sep 9 Wed | Rest day | |
| Sep 10 Thu | 8.0km | Tempo run |
| Sep 11 Fri | Rest day | |
| Sep 12 Sat | Rest day | |
| Sep 13 Sun | 9.1km | Easy run |
| Weekly Total | 20.8km | Year to date: 673.4km |
| Sep 14 Mon | Rest day | |
| Sep 15 Tue | Rest (sore foot) | |
| Sep 16 Wed | Rest day | |
| Sep 17 Thu | 3.7km | Easy run |
| Sep 18 Fri | Rest day | |
| Sep 19 Sat | Rest day | |
| Sep 20 Sun | 26.0km | Long run |
| Weekly Total | 29.7km | Year to date: 703.1km |
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Brisbane Half Marathon race report
Brisbane Marathon Festival logo On Sunday I ran in the 2009 Brisbane Half Marathon. As regular readers will know, I’ve been training for the half marathon since I arrived in Brisbane in March. (Actually, I started back in Waterloo before I left, but had not adopted a solid training plan until I arrived here.)
Brisbane Half Marathon starting line In Australia, people like to run early. I guess they are scared of the heat. The race started at 6am Sunday morning. That seemed a bit on the early side for me, but then I was only running the half marathon, and some of the marathoners would be out there for 4+ hours. The weather has been temperate the last few months, but we’ve got a bit of a heat wave going on at the moment, so it ended up being fortunate for the marathoners that we started so early: by 10am, it was 25°C.
Brisbane Half Marathon along the river I awoke at 4:45am, which was not as painful as I expected as I had been shifting my sleeping schedule over the course of the past week. Even so, I don’t like getting up while it’s still dark. I had laid everything out nicely for the next morning in case of brain failure, but the brain was working fine. As I walked through the city, some people will still enjoying their Saturday evening; it was still hopping around the Casino. As I crossed the bridge to the South Bank, the sky started to lighten, and by the time I reached the other side morning was about to begin.
Brisbane Half Marathon and the Brisbane skyline The race started without incident and wasn’t too crowded. My chip time (i.e., when I crossed the start line) was only 11.7 seconds off the gun time (i.e., when the race actually started).
I hadn’t planned the race out very much in advance. I did have some goals: #1: finish; #2: beat last year’s race time (1:57:20); #3: beat this year’s best training run (1:51:37). To accomplish goal #3 I needed a pace of about 11.5km/hr, so my plan mostly consisted of going at least that fast the whole race. Beyond that, I was just going to run.
Running in the Brisbane Half Marathon And run I did. I started out a bit faster than I had planned; I guess that’s pretty common. Around the three or four kilometre mark, I realized that my watch distance was about 4% off of the course distance. To explain: my watch uses GPS signals to track distance. It’s fairly accurate, but in city areas where there are tall buildings, the signal reflects off the buildings, making the watch think it’s moving around more than it actually is. As a result, the watch thought I had gone 4.16km when I’d only gone 4.0km. This meant as well that my pcae was about 4% under as well, which worried me a bit. I decided to pick up the pace a bit, and turned in some really strong kilometres from 6km through to 14km (I ran kilometre 6 at 13.2km/hr!), then started to feel it a bit at 15km. I think kilometre 15 also involved running over a bridge, and by that time even the slightest uphill was annoying. I’d love to be able to say that the last kilometre was a sprint to the finish, but my legs just wouldn’t go any faster than they were gonna go, but they did the job and got me across the finish line.
Sprint to the finish of the Brisbane Half Marathon And to what a time! I’m happy to report that, according to the official results, my chip time was 1:43:38.0, a full 13 minutes and 39 seconds faster than last year’s time of 1:57:17. I’m very happy with this time and how the run went, I felt good through the whole run but was still pushing myself pretty hard.
Brisbane Half Marathon race number My running companion for the race was my trusty iPod shuffle. Some friends on Facebook provided some great suggestions and I filled the rest of the playlist with some inspirational classics (We are the Champions, by Queen) and some of the Canadian indie music I trained to from CBC Radio 3. The song that was playing as I crossed the finish line was my favourite song of 2008, Tessellate, by Tokyo Police Club. (It wasn’t entirely coincidental that that song was playing then, sometimes fate needs a little fast forwarding.)
My friend Dan and I had been talking about running a full marathon later this year, but I was putting off deciding until after the half to see how it went. With such a great race under my belt, the plan is now to keep training for the Toronto Marathon on Sunday, October 18, 2009. Scary, and exciting!
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Running – Week 19 – Graphs
Last week’s running can be best explained by two graphs.
Thursday’s run was speedwork. Normally I’m not a fan of speedwork, especially at 7:30 in the morning, but this one actually went fairly well. I managed to keep a good pace on the speedwork sections and ran hard the whole time. The graph below is my heart rate from the run — can you tell when I was running fast and when I was doing my recovery jogs?
20090806 - Speedwork - Heartrate
Sunday’s run was the long run. I’m supposed to be tapering now, bringing down the distance in preparation for the half marathon next Sunday. I decided to try something different for Sunday’s run: I took a bus out to Mt Coot-tha, where I previously went cycling, and started my run there. I ran along the road around the top of Mt Coot-tha, then started downhill to the river for the run home. It ended up being a little bit longer than I planned. It was pretty tough too: there was a 2.5km climb along the way, as you can see from the elevation graph below.
This week also marks my passing — blowing away! — the 500km mark for the year.
| Aug 3 Mon | Rest day | |
| Aug 4 Tue | 3.7km | Easy run |
| Aug 5 Wed | Rest day | |
| Aug 6 Thu | 13.3km | Speedwork 5×1600 with 800 jogs |
| Aug 7 Fri | 3.6km | Easy run |
| Aug 8 Sat | Rest day | |
| Aug 9 Sun | 18.8km | Long run |
| Total | 39.4km | Year to date: 530.0km |
|---|
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