Always one foot on the ground

TC Harriman - looking towards the site of US team trials, May 15/16

The spring is moving along at full speed with training and lots of work keeping me busy. After two weekends on the road for racing and training camps, the upcoming weekend is shaping up nicely for some Hammer time.

On Saturday, the trail running season kicks off with 5 Peaks in the Dundas Valley. As of right now, I'm not sure if I'll race as I'm trying to cure my foot, but I will be there hanging out in the Salomon tent. Come try some new shoes from our demo fleet if you're racing! The Sport and Enduro courses are full, but the kids race is open to on the day registrations.

On Sunday, I'm looking forward to hearing our friend Mark Tamminga as the first Adventure Speaker for ARK. Then on Monday, I get to start my own spring speaking season with a talk for Guy Brown elementary in Waterdown!

Flying start to the spring

My domestic spring racing season started in Ohio last weekend with the Flying Pig. It's been a while since the last race, so I was eager to put my winter training to the test. I pulled off a win at each of the 3 races, so am happy with that...though results were only secondary goals! It was a good weekend and I'm fairly satisfied with where I'm at right now. The nav side was really solid, but my physical training is a bit behind. That will come with time. Most importantly, it is a good benchmark and gives us lots of things to work on over the next while.

This weekend, I'm back state-side for a training camp with the CSU crew. The legendary Harriman State Park will be our playground for the next 4 days!

On Saturday's long distance race, there was a pretty good leg about 75 minutes into the race to checkpoint 14. Which way would you go? Bear in mind - almost the end of the race, the hills are slippery, trails are only so-so with all the horse traffic, and the green wasn't too bad!

Around the Bay

After a big week with the official launch of ARK, today was day one of Around the Bay's Health and Fitness Expo. ATB is North America's oldest road race, and in a town with such great running history, we were looking forward to sharing our programs at the event this year. We looked pretty slick with our new banners thanks to Allegra's great work. Who wouldn't stop at such a good looking booth with rock star Kate MacNamara (2x ATB winner) there?

The other big project for the week was getting our new 365 program going. AdventureRunning365.ca is now up and runing. Official launch is May 2010 and we're currently looking for test pilots!

CSI DV

We had a great training camp last weekend in the valley. The Ottawa crew came down for a character-building weekend of hard training in the wind, rain and cold. I spent most of the weekend on the mountain bike to give my foot a rest and had a fairly solid wipeout on Sunday morning. Downhill, sharp turn, foggy glasses and greased brakes ended up in an endo into this large craggy hole! I got lucky on that one. And now spring is here and the training is ramping up - only a few weeks to go before the first test of the year!

ARK is picking up!

We had our first night of ARK last week and had some happy, tired kids by the end. The evening featured some running games, silly walks, some bounding-by-headlamp and a fun night-nav vs core race. The kids loved it!

Media is picking up the story! Read the McMaster Daily News featuring an interview with Mike and Mark.

Tomorrow morning, we'll be doing interviews on two Hamilton radio stations: 6:45AM EST on 900AM CHML and ~9AM 94.7 WaveFM. You should be able to tune in online as well.

Adventure Running Kids in the Hammer

A lot has changed! The New Year brought with it a new job, new training buddies and a new home. I've moved off to Hamilton for an exciting job opportunity as Program Director for the Golden Horseshoe Orienteering Club. Thanks to the Ontario Trillium Foundation, we'll be starting up a series of awesome programs in the next little while.

As a current elite athlete, it is important to make decisions for my own training, but I also think it's important to give back to the community which has allowed me to succeed. Adam has a lot of great things to say about this. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, do it! Working with GHO will be a great compliment to my own training, but also great chance to make a big impact on the local community and the Adventure Running scene in general.

The first main project on the radar is to kick off Adventure Running Kids. Check it out! We'll be starting a pilot project in the next few weeks and the official program start date is March 24. Stay tuned to the website for more details!

Daily Goals and Precious Medals

Thinking about medals doesn't help before a big race. Results-based goals don't mean anything when you're on the brink of a big competition. Those are the ones that get you out the door on cold, dark days in the winter. Brent and I talked about this a fair bit this summer leading into the Worlds - focus on what you can control and make goals accordingly. It worked well and at the end of the season, I could say that I met some big goals, even if my results-based goals weren't quite as good as I had aimed for.

At the AthletesCan conference last month, Deirdra told a good story about coming back from a crippling injury halfway through her career. She made goals, big and small, every day. She wrote them down and checked them off, every day. After weeks and months of little steps, she was able to compete again in Turin.

Make a goal, write it down! Then, as Jeff says, Dare, Dream and Do!

But...since it is the beginning of the season, I can dream about medals! And what better place for some inspiration than at the Hockey Hall of Fame - Olympic medals from 46 different games! Only until January 15, 2010. I hope I have a chance to check it out.