Start List/Liste de Départ: No love.
A little town in Belgium produces some fast times, but not fast enough.
And in a related post,
Malindi Elmore blogs about why Canadians don’t race more in Europe.
It’s a tough time out there for Canadians. Brennan told what position he has to race in. Elmore can’t even get into a race due to restrictions on non-Europeans. There are complaints that Athletics Canada is not doing enough to help, but what can they do? Is a meet director in Belgium beholden to a foreign federation? No. Even if there were some diplomatic ties between AC and the Belgium federation, could there really be enough to trickle down to the meet level? Doubtful. What AC has done is created a national race series that has spots reserved for Canadians. The reason Canadians go to Europe is to get fast times. This year, for the first time in a while, there were some Europe-level performances here at home. So while it’s tough out there, maybe things are moving in the right direction. Patience is always a virtue in all things distance running. 😉
Steven Magness and the Science of Running blog is back with some high speed videos.
Sometimes a walk is nice, too.
Ryan Noel-Hodge is living the good life. Workin’, runnin’, cleanin’…
Triathlon provincials in Ontario.
Hamelin is showing us the numbers.
André Lefort is working through his eye issues.
Aug 05, 2011 @ 03:44:36
Hi ME,
Thanks for your blurb and thoughts on the situation of running standards, Europe and the NTL. I agree the NTL is a positive direction for track in Canada. I know that tons of athletes and coaches mentioned it to me while in Europe and are starting to take notice of what is going on North of hte 49th. I think that the strong performances along with the “branding” of the series is going to help draw international talent. There are races in Europe that are essentially American meets and it really doesn’t make sense for all of us to transplant to Europe every summer to race. It is great for the experience and opportunity to travel but it does get expensive and redundant after a while. It would be fantastic if the US would put together a similar concept – or maybe integrated with our so that the West Coast Canada meets had a few Washingon/Oregon meets around the same time and the same with the Toronto meets – ie. Maine, Massa, etc. There used to be a great Can-Am series back in the late 90s/early 2000s and it was great fun and great competitions. It would also be benefitial if the NTL had more open prize money to draw strong non-Canadian athletes. So the NTL is moving in the right direction although maybe a bit late for oldies like me…great for the next generation though!