Let's Blog About ... Burpees!

Mixed in with the CKC Excellence 2012 challenge, it seems quite a few members of the paddling community have joined in with the 115 Royal Burpee Challenge, launched by CrossFit to honour Royal Huddleston Burpee and the exercise he made famous.

What? You've never heard of Royal Huddleston Burpee?? Well, neither had I. In fact, I find it delightful that the burpee is named after a person — who knew?

The challenge, in a nutshell, is to execute an arithmetic progression of burpees, to be precise, {1, 2, 3, ..., 114, 115} burpees; with the suggested optimal timing to execute one element in the sequence per calendar day.

In somewhat less mathematical terms …

Athletes from around the world are joining CrossFit Advanced in the 115 Royal Burpee Challenge to honor of the man who made the burpee a household name: Royal Huddleston Burpee. Those who join us in the challenge will start with a single burpee on Feb. 11. On Feb. 12, the second day, we will do two burpees. On Feb. 13, the third day, we will do three burpees. We will continue adding a burpee to our daily workout until June 4, when we will do 115 burpees in honor of what would be Royal H. Burpee’s 115th birthday. Over the course of the challenge, athletes will do a total of 6,670 burpees.

Now, if you don't know what a burpee is … well, then I am not sure how you happened to wander onto this blog! But burpees are a very common dryland training exercise in the canoe-kayak community.

A burpee, which is similar to a squat thrust, is an intense exercise that combines a squat, a push-up and jump.

Here's what that looks like at my house:

OK, seriously, here's a pro from CrossFit showing how it's supposed to be done:

If you want to join the 115 Royal Burpee Challenge, you can sign up for the event on Facebook. It's not too late … the rules of the challenge state that make-up days are allowed:

The burpees can be spread out over the day, but each day’s required burpees must be completed before moving on to the next day. So if an athlete fails to do 10 burpees on Day 10, they must do 10 burpees the following day, plus the 11 burpees owed for that new day.

Since today is day 38, that means you would need to make up … 703 burpees. And then do today's. But on the plus side, the vast majority of the burpees in the challenge are still ahead of you!

Here's the rest of the story on the challenge and the origin of the burpee:

In the 1930s, Royal H. Burpee created a test that used burpees to measure agility and coordination for the U.S. military. The test was included in his book, “Seven Quickly Administered Tests of Physical Activity.”

Burpee (1898-1987), a World War I veteran, served as the overseas program director for the United Service Organization (USO) during World War II. Between the wars, he earned a doctorate in physiology from Columbia University.

A lifelong advocate of physical fitness, Burpee was also the executive director of Bronx-Union Branch of the New York City Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) from 1946 to 1964. He continued to be involved with the Greater New York YMCA until his death in 1987 in Easton, Pa., home of CrossFit Advanced.

While it’s not clear whether Burpee invented the exercise, or just made it famous with his test, the move is still being done today. This June 4 marks Royal H. Burpee’s 115th birthday, and CrossFit Advanced, led by owner Greg Tymon, thought it would be fun to celebrate the day in a unique way.

“The burpee is the king of all exercises,” Tymon said. “It takes coordination. It takes strength. Do more than a handful, and it takes endurance.”

Yet the burpee is also an exercise that does not require special equipment, or even a lot of space, he said. It’s a staple of CrossFit workouts, and is one of the best conditioning exercises around, Tymon said. In addition to CrossFit, burpees are still favorites of football coaches and military trainers everywhere.

…“I like to think if Royal Burpee were alive today, he’d be a fan of CrossFit,” Tymon said. “We certainly are a big fan of his.”

Burpee’s grandson, Royal H. Burpee III, who lives in Easton, will be invited to attend the grand finale of the Royal Burpee Challenge on June 4th.

P90X and Hip Replacement Recovery: a Highly Unscientific Study

We just got back from a week's ski vacation in Sunday River, Maine. I took a week's hiatus from P09X, meaning I suspended the program for a week after Sunday's X-Stretch. I counted the day's skiing as a workout from Monday-Friday, did an extra Yoga-X on Saturday after our drive home, and then completed the AMW run tonight before supper. Tomorrow morning I'll start Week 7 of the program, picking up where I left off. I'm looking forward to it!

The week of family skiing was marred by a fairly serious accident, as my mother was injured on the slopes during a lesson on Monday morning. She ended up being evacuated by the ski patrol and taken by ambulance to the hospital in Norway, Maine. She was diagnosed with a broken hip, and on Tuesday morning she had a full hip replacement.

By Tuesday afternoon she was already feeling infinitely better. Thursday she was discharged from the hospital and had dinner with us in our condominium. Friday and Saturday my dad drove her and her newly installed hardware back to Nova Scotia, where she is now recovering at home.

This is somewhat faster than a normal recovery time from a hip replacement. My mother will be 64 in July, and has suffered from aggressive rheumatoid arthritis since she was in her 30s. There is no doubt that both of those factors contributed to the severity of the break. But the doctors agree that what facilitated her recovery was her exceptional fitness. She has remained very active througout her life, in spite of her arthritis, and has spent the last few months doing P90X with my dad in their basement gym. She has much stronger muscles than the average hip replacement patient, and that's allowed her to get back on her feet in record time.

So if you are collecting reasons for keeping up this challenge — and for continuing the committment way beyond these 224 days — you can add that to the list.

Here's hoping that metal joint doesn't slow you down too much, mom!

Week Five Recap

The home gym can get a little steamed up on a cold morning.

The CKC New Years Fitness Challenge continues, and we're still going strong. It's not too late to join in! From my perspective, there was a lot to feel good about this week.

Week 5 of P90X brings the return of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, a result of what the creators call "muscle confusion." In essence, the program introduces a whole collection of unfamiliar exercises in week 5. It's not nearly as painful as week one, but it hurts ... "in a good way," as Tony Horton likes to say. Monday was one-arm pushup day. Wednesday was corn-cob pull up day (also known as "pterodactyl day" for those who haven't put Tony on mute just yet). It was the first week I did all the workouts in my home "gym" instead of a hotel, the first week I could more or less match Tony's crew on Ab Ripper X, and the first week I did more than 100 pull ups during the Legs & Back routine. I see from the CKC challenge page that Kim Crumpton is looking for a chin-up challenge … not sure that is a fair fight Kim, but I'll put that marker out there for now :-)

This week also felt like the first week of "real winter" in Nova Scotia. Saturdays are running days for me (I always skip the P90X Kenpo routine) and this weekend we were all in the New Glasgow area for a hockey tournament. I did get out at 7 a.m. for a slow 10k in bitter, snow-covered conditions. I've put the route on the map. By the way, I want to encourage challengers to use the map — especially those of you who don't live in the Halifax area, or those of you who are working out and travelling. Let's represent the geography of CKC's fitness more accurately! If you want to do it but don't know how, leave a comment!

Tip of the Day: Engage!

Four weeks into this fitness challenge, I have to agree with Julia: this is starting to feel great!

Like Julia, I haven't found it easy. I've been on 15 airplanes this month. I've done 9 of my 29 workouts while on the road, in two different US states and three different Canadian provinces. I'll add to all of those totals in February, no doubt. But I feel good about the fact that a daily workout is my new default mode: early in the morning, late at night, adapting to the location and the equipment available.

Benefit number one is that I'm starting to feel fit again, and I love that. I'm already measurably stronger than I was on January 1. And even though I'm not running very much, today I ran a strong time on one of my standard courses — still a few minutes off my personal best, but significantly faster than anything I've been able to do so far in 2012.

Benefit number two is a more positive attitude in general. That's probably not entirely attributable to the exercise, but I firmly believe that it helps. I'm definitely more motivated and more engaged at work today than I was when the year ended. I've also seen a difference at the rink, where I've got more energy to keep up with my kids and a more enthusiastic and positive approach to coaching.

But maybe the most surprising benefit of the challenge has been the conversation. For me, working out is at heart an antisocial activity. Although I enjoy playing hockey and I enjoy socializing at the canoe club, I don't really like fitness classes or the gym, and I don't seek out running partners on a regular basis. I've done 29 workouts so far this year, and I've done 28 of them either alone or with Kate.

But in the meantime, I've realized that the CKC Fitness Challenge has created a small network of people to share my progress with — and there are many, many more out there. Kate has joined in. My parents (who are both over 60) are three weeks into P90X. By talking about the challenge with others, I've found two more colleagues at work who are also doing P90X, another who has qualified for the 2012 Boston marathon, another who was a spare for the Canadian taekwondo team at the 1996 Olympics, and still another who has a personal objective to work out every day, to improve his fitness and his running times.

So let's keep that conversation going!

January 20 Fail

I have a confession to make.

No, that is not me on the rowing machine. My confession is that on January 20 (last Friday) I had my first miss in this New Year's Challenge. I spent a very long day travelling from Maryland to Halifax, including two separate flights that departed from Montréal, and didn't make it home until midnight. I will confess that I snoozed through my 6 a.m. alarm that morning, thinking that I'd be able to work out at home, and thereby missing my opportunity.

I did make up my P90X workout for Friday, but that doesn't change the fact that I missed a day.

Speaking of P90X, this is Week 4 — Recovery Week — which means a change in routine. On the travel schedule, it's been more of the same, I'm afraid; a two-day offsite in Wakefield, and another two-day visit to headquarters in Ottawa. I've added the latest location to the map.

Tip of the Day: Pace Yourself

I started the day in a fairly miserable state. After a terrible night's sleep, I ignored my 5:50 alarm and snoozed through my designated exercise time. On the plus side, that meant I could do my workout (after the kids were in bed) with my favourite training partner. (And no ... I don't mean Tony Horton. He's very reliable and all, but frankly we're not entirely compatible). And today was (finally) the day when I started to feel like the workouts were paying off. At the start of week 3, I am getting measurably fitter. Onward and upward!

View CKC Excellence 2012 Fitness Challenge in a larger map

Also, I've created a Google Map for the CKC Excellence 2012 challenge, so that my fellow challengers and I can capture all the different places we are working out. Since the group includes people from all across Eastern Canada (nobody publicly declared from the West ... are you out there?), I thought a map might be a neat way to capture some of the challenge geographically. Julia has already joined in! If you want to be added to the list of collaborators so that you can add your own favourite workout locations, drop me a comment to this post and I will add you.

On the Road

Day 10 complete and I still haven't missed a day. Hooray!

I suspect that when I eventually do miss a day of working out, I will have my busy travel schedule to blame. Some travel days make a real workout impossible. However, I am in D.C this week for some meetings, and I've been able to adapt my routine for this trip. The best way to do that is to stay in a hotel that has a great gym. I can report that the Courtyard Crystal City has an excellent gym, especially for a middle-tier hotel. (Unfortunately the WiFi is not as excellent, but that's another story.)

In this fitness challenge I've made extensive use of the iPod Touch Kate gave me for Christmas. I'm quite enjoying the P90X App, which schedules the workouts for the "Classic" program, and includes a tracking feature for all the strength workouts so that I can record the weight and reps and view the history (so far) right on my iPod. You can also separately purchase "guided workouts" for each routine that include mini-videos for each exercise.

Yesterday before supper I did the P90X "Plyometrics" routine, which is driven by a set of timed intervals. For that one I used the Seconds Pro app, which I higly recommend if you need to do any kind of complicated interval training. The "Pro" version allows you to create and save completely customized interval timers that you can use to guide your favourite workout. I have a Timex Ironman watch with a variable interval timer that is almost as flexible … but wristwatches are just so 20^th century, aren't they?

Hard interval training, by the way, was always my favourite kind of workout when I was a real athlete. I am reminded that coach K_____ used to name his favourite interval workouts a la "Piece of Cake" … always one of our favourites. When I trained alone on a regular basis after I moved to California, that Timex Ironman interval timer came in really handy for this one.

Piece of Cake

120 seconds ON, 20 seconds OFF
60 seconds ON, 15 seconds OFF
30 seconds ON, 10 seconds OFF
20 seconds ON, 5 seconds OFF
10 seconds ON, take a few minutes. Repeat.
All done at faster-than-1000 metre race pace.

Maybe I'll work my way up to that one in time for racing season this year!

KingDOMS

Well, that hurt.

Still hurts, actually, when I climb the stairs. Or sit down. But the worst part of the start-up suffering should be over, so maybe now is the right time to share a few perspectives on my new fitness challenge.

For 2012 I am joining Julia Rivard and 19 other members of the CanoeKayak Canada family in making a New Year's Fitness Resolution. My resolution is to work out every day from 1 January until the day of the 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony. That's a total of 224 Workouts, as Julia has noted in her new blog about the experience.

Why are we doing this? I suspect that each of those 21 people had their own reasons for joining in. Julia's launch introduction is an eloquent statement about finding a way to reconnect with and pay tribute to the athletes on our Canadian team, and to join them in their quest for excellence. I also think that being an Olympian should come with a lifelong committment to physical fitness. And although I have not been entirely consistent in my own committment on that front, I'm looking forward to getting fit again. I did something like this once before, sticking to a once-a-day committment for 2008 and the first half of 2009. Perhaps not coincidentally, that was a great year and a half of my middle-aged life.

For days 2 through 91 of the challenge, I'll be doing the P90X "Classic" Program, with some minor customizations that I will probably mention at some point over the coming 13 weeks. This will be my fourth time through the drill with Tony Horton and friends, but the third time was quite a while ago. I start the program at 201.5 pounds, and (according to the black magic hidden in my wife's bathroom scale) a disheartening 20.5% body fat.

I am now safely through Week 1 without dropping the ball, although the week was not without its challenges. On January 4^th, I departed for Ottawa at 7:15 a.m., worked until 5, worked out in the company gym, raced to the airport without showering, and arrived home just before midnight. Fortunately, I was upgraded to business class, so my neighbours didn't have to get too close. Jan 5^th and 6^th I started my workouts after 11 pm, for various reasons; that's not my favourite way to get this done, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

In case you are wondering what I did on Day 1, I executed my Alternative Minimum Workout (AMW), which is my own personal benchmark for whether I give myself a check in the workout box for any given day. Yes, I admit it: I find Julia's hour-a-day standard too strict. I am simply going to admit up front that I am not going to get that done every day. My personal AMW benchmark is a 4.5 km run that starts and ends at my house. On New Year's Day, in something less than peak physical condition, I ran that course in 21:30. By summer I will be doing it in under 19 (strenuous) minutes. I'm not going to shrink my daily exercise to that level, but I do think that counts as a workout.

The map for the AMW run can be seen here, courtesy of MapMyRun and my Garmin Forerunner 305. Since I tend to travel more than a little bit these days, I get to run in some interesting locations. I'll post some of my more unusual routes on this blog as I go. I'll also post here about the P90X program, my progress on the challenge, and some of the fitness technology I like. I know that this fitness venture is a bit of a change of direction for this blog, but then again it's been dormant for almost two years. I hope I can come up with a few interesting things to say. Who knows … maybe with my new fitness I'll find the energy to write a few things about Olympic and amateur sport again!

P.S. It turns out that today marks 200 days remaining in the countdown to the Opening of the 2012 Olympic Games. And a CanoeKayak Canada Olympian, Kristi Gauthier, was at the British Consulate in Ottawa to help the High Commissioner mark the occasion. Go Kristi Go!

Believe

The teachers and students at my son's elementary school are having a two-week celebration of the 2010 Winter Olympics this month. Each classroom has been "assigned" a Winter Olympic nation to follow, cheer for, and learn about. Last Thursday I was in to visit with one of the primary classes. I had a great time talking to the kids about the Olympics.

The inuksuk pictured at right is installed in the school's foyer.

In some ways, I have never been much of a Believer. I am trained to be something of a skeptic. I have, for example, at different times over the past five years, expressed various levels of disBelief that Canada could Own the Podium in 2010.

After nine days of competition, it's even more difficult for me to Believe that the Canadian team is going to win more medals than any other nation at these Games (despite the reassurances of people I respect at the COC). I Believe in numbers, and frankly, the numbers aren't looking too good. If you are in the business of counting Canadian medals at these Games, things are looking pretty grim.

In spite of all that, I still choose to Believe — and to hell with CTV The Canadian Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and their official "broadcast theme song."

What I Believe — and what I love about the Olympic Games — is that every time I sit down to watch an Olympic competition, I am going to see the athletes performing in a way they have never performed before. I Believe, in particular, that Canadian athletes are going to show that they are among the very best in the world.

Sometimes, that Belief hurts. It is never easy to see an athlete's day end in misfortune or missed execution. Over the past three days, there has been enough Canadian misfortune and missed execution to fill a newspaper. It might be enough to make some people abandon their Belief.

But not me. Tonight, when I sit down on the couch to watch the Olympics again, I will choose to continue to Believe. And my reward will be to experience those moments when my favourite athletes achieve something I never expected — but Believed in anyway. If I ever lose that Belief, then I will have lost the best part of a sports fan's Olympic experience.

The truth is, there is no reason to think that an athletic misfortune yesterday will lead to another disappointment today. There are hundreds of athletes at the 2010 Olympic Games who have not yet had their last chance to compete. Those athletes, their coaches, and their families and friends still Believe. They Believe in themselves and the moment still in front of them. I'm going to be Believing right along with them.

Svein Tuft of the Day - Day 1

I've decided, inspired by my friends who are with the Canadian team in Vancouver and Whistler, to take a daily detour from obsessing about math and medal counts. Welcome to the first installment of the Team Canada Svein Tuft of the Day.

I know that some of you are thinking, "What the hell is a Svein Tuft?" Well, if you're a Canadian sports fan, you should already know that, but you probably don't. I can only change that situation for the few of you who read this blog, but I'm going to do my best.

Let me go back in time to day 5 of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. For 2008, the Canadian team had set a goal of finishing in the Top 16 countries as measured by total number of medals won. By Day 5, no Canadian had won a medal, and the Canadian media had started to mention that fact prominently in almost every team story.

Svein Tuft was a member of Canada's Olympic road cycling team, competing on Day 5 in the Men's Road Time Trial. The Canadian men's cycling team is a relatively unheralded group, especially in the road discipline, which includes many of Europe's highest-profile athletes. Tuft had an early start number in Beijing. He posted the fastest time and was the leader of the race for most of the event, as he watched the best in the world fail to beat him. He eventually finished seventh, just ahead of three-time world champion Michael Rogers. (Tuft later won a silver medal in the same event at the 2008 World Championships.)

Tuft's achievement, in a time where Canadians were searching for positive Olympic stories, deserved a celebration. Unfortunately, he didn't get it. A couple of hours after the road time trial finished, Sherraine Schalm was eliminated in the first round of an event where she was expected to contend for a medal. Even better for the media, the elimination came with more than a little spectacle. Tuft, who was on his way to a CBC television interview when the Schalm story broke, never had a chance.

Canada went two more days without a medal, and our team spirit survived the negative press; eventually Canada won 18 medals, our best Summer Games total since 1996, and good enough (so far) for thirteenth place. In case you think I'm exaggerating about the media coverage from Beijing, note the following quote from that CanWest News story about Schalm's result:

The latest Canadian to fail to live up to expectations in Beijing, Schalm indicated she'd be able to tune out the criticism about to coming the way of her and other athletes who've come up short here.

I think we're in danger of entering a similar time period in the 2010 Olympic games. Last night, Jennifer Heil won Canada's first medal, but we all know that Jennifer Heil was hoping for gold. And Canada has very high expectations this year, at home, so every setback is going to be examined with even more angst than usual. When we're all concentrating on the podium, it's easy for each day's small successes to get lost. For what it's worth, I'm going to do my small part to make sure that doesn't happen.

I want to finish this introduction by making a couple of things clear. First of all, I'm a big supporter of the Own the Podium program. I think it's important to say, out loud, what you want to achieve. I don't believe it is somehow un-Canadian to want to win.

Second, the Svein Tuft of the Day is not going to be about celebrating mediocrity. I don't believe that the Olympic spirit is best exemplified by the overmatched or the underprepared. Svein Tuft was a great Canadian athlete who had a great day on the world's biggest stage. That day didn't include a medal, but it should have been noticed. Maybe Randy Starkman put it best, when he challenged us all:

Are you really behind this unique group of athletes about to lay it on the line? Or are you only behind them gold, silver or bronze?

This year, I'm getting behind the team from the comfort of my couch, and I'll be cheering loudly for all the medallists; but I'm also going to do my best to notice the unnoticed victories each day.

February 13: Chloe Dufour-Laplante

The women's moguls competition at Cypress last night — held in atrociously bad weather conditions — was full of successes for Canada. Jennifer Heil skied well and was narrowly beaten by a great performance. Kristi Richards reached for the medal that was within her grasp, and just crossed over the edge.

If you're Canadian and you've been reading about the 2010 Olympics this morning, you've heard all about Heil. But my Svein Tuft for Saturday is Canada's third qualifier for the women's moguls final, Chloe Dufour-Laplante. Dufour-Laplante entered the Olympics ranked eleventh in the 2010 World Cup and third on her own team. She placed ninth in qualification.

In the final, she was dazzling. She finished fifth.

I just can't realize it right now, I'm so full of emotion. I did amazing and I'm so happy. It was really a good long way to come here.

Dufour-Lapointe, who lists Jennifer Heil as one of her heros, has earned one World Cup medal in her career, and none this season. She will turn 19 in December.

Last Words

What I would have said to the distinguished guests, last Saturday Night, if anybody had asked me:

There are a lot of former chefs de mission and chefs de mission adjoints here in the room tonight. If I attempted to name them all, I am sure I would miss some, so I will not try. But you all know that the list includes some very illustrious names, and it is humbling to be here tonight as one of them. In that way, tonight reminds me of my very first experience as the Assistant Chef de Mission for the Beijing Olympic team.

Almost exactly two years ago, Sylvie and I attended the 2006 Beijing Olympic Excellence Series together. At the opening session, Sylvie planned to introduce me to the athletes in attendance. She carefully collected and wrote down my credentials so that she could tell the audience all about me. And while Caroline was driving us both up to Collingwood, Sylvie helpfully reminded me that this would be my first chance to make a good impression on the team. I think she may have been a bit nervous, since we did not really know each other very well at the time.

So that evening, I had my chance to say a few words … and make a good first impression. In the lineup of speakers that night, however, I am fairly certain that I was completely invisible. Of course I had to follow Olympic champion Sylvie Bernier, who gave me a very nice introduction. When I was finished making my carefully crafted remarks, I passed the microphone to three-time Olympic champion Marnie McBean, who then introduced the keynote speaker for the night … Olympic champion Mark Tewksbury. And after Mark finished, the session wrap-up was done by Olympic champion Anne Ottenbrite. I am pretty sure that I did not succeed in making much of an impression at all!

In the two years since then, Sylvie, I have learned a lot from you. And I have also learned a lot about you. People who have worked with Sylvie probably know that there are a few rules that you have to follow. Sylvie’s husband Gilles is here tonight, and I suspect he would say that there are a lot of rules you have to follow! But there is one rule that I would like to share with all of you, for future reference, and I call it The First Rule of Working With Sylvie. The First Rule of Working With Sylvie is: do not speak after Sylvie! She is a very, very tough act to follow, as I have found out on a number of occasions. If, in the future, any of you have to share a stage with her, you should try very hard to arrange it so that you speak before her, as I have done tonight.

I am sure that tonight Sylvie is going to tell you, when she comes up here, about our experience in Beijing, the incredible Mission Team assembled by the COC, and the athletes who make all of the hard work worthwhile. Undoubtedly she will express my own thoughts and feelings better than I can do it myself, and by the time she is finished with you, you will not remember anything I had to say anyway. It would not be the first time!

So let me, instead, say just a few words about Sylvie, because that is one thing I am sure she will not talk about. All of the chefs and the assistant chefs in the audience, and those who are not here tonight, set the standard and laid the foundation for our work in Beijing. At times I was struck by the thought that I was standing on the shoulders of so many great contributors to the Olympic movement in Canada. But I want to say tonight that Sylvie Bernier has again raised that standard, and strengthened that foundation. Future Canadian chefs, beginning in 2010 with Nathalie Lambert, will have a lot to live up to.

I am grateful for the opportunity, tonight, to give Sylvie a public thank you. Sylvie, I am very proud to have worked with you for the past two years. Thank you again for giving me the chance. I hope that I lived up to your expectations, and to your example.

Starts and Finishes

Today the COC announced that I have been appointed Assistant Chef de Mission for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Fortunately for our athletes, the job doesn't involve any cooking. The Chef de Mission is Sylvie Bernier, an Olympic champion and Assistant Chef for the 2006 winter Olympics. As spelled out in the Olympic Charter (PDF), Rule 38:

During the Olympic Games, the competitors, officials and other team personnel of each National Olympic Committee are placed under the responsibility of a chef de mission appointed by her National Olympic Committee and whose task, in addition to any other functions assigned to her by her NOC, is to liaise with the International Olympic Committee, the International Federations, and the Organizing Committee of the Games.

My job will be to, well, assist Ms. Bernier in this role. I am really, really excited and at the same time a little bit awed by the responsibility.

I will say, though, that I feel quite proud to have been selected. Sylvie did not name any of the other candidates that she considered for the position, but I am sure that there were a number of very worth candidates. I like to think that all of the volunteer work I have done and experience I have gained in the last six years counted in my favour. I think of this new job as the next level of my volunteer career in Canadian sport, and I am really looking forward to it.

On a sadder note, I've decided to go into blogging semi-retirement until after the Games.

Partly this is because of the increased time commitment that I will have to make as assistant chef. The job will require more time away from home and more hours of work, and those extra hours will be subtracted from the time I usually spend working on this blog.

More importantly, however, this change of status is also going to put new limits on what I can write about.

I want to make it perfectly clear that these limits are self-imposed. This is my own personal decision, and not something dictated to me by the COC. I have been very open about my blog with Sylvie Bernier, and I know that many people within the COC are aware of my identity. They have all been cautiously supportive of the idea that their new assistant chef is also a blogger, and I think that shows a remarkable degree of trust on their part.

There has always been a Do Not Write list on Now That's Amateur. There are things I Do Not Write about because I would be revealing information that has been entrusted to me, in confidence. There are things I Do Not Write about because I have to maintain an impartial stance on an issue. And there are things I Do Not Write about because to do so would undermine the consensus opinion of the groups that I serve as a volunteer.

In my new role I will be one of the leaders of the Canadian Olympic team. I will represent the team to the media, to the Canadian public, and to the rest of the world. Last week I came to the difficult realization that my Do Not Write list is about to get quite long. So long, in fact, that it excludes most of my favourite topics of discussion. I will still have plenty of opportunity to express my views, both publicly and privately, in places where it will have a concrete influence. The trade-off for that influence is that I cannot continue to make those expressions in this forum.

I also want to avoid the possibility that this blog, or my opinion, could become the centre of media attention because of my position. I think that would be regrettable. For the past two years I have tried to provide a different perspective on some of the stories of the day. I do not want my perspective to become the story of the day. Attention should be focused where it belongs, on the Olympic team itself.

As to what's going to happen in this space, I am not quite sure yet. At the very least, I will return when the Games are over, with new insight into the Olympic movement and the freedom to discuss it with you. In the meantime, I hope to turn this blog over to a team of guest contributors. Whether this comes to pass or not, I want to thank all of you who have been reading over the past two years. Blogging has broadened and deepened my understanding of amateur sport, what it means to me and what it means to others. Your blogs, your e-mails and your comments have been part of that journey. Hopefully we can pick up where we left off in September 2008.

Letting Go

A couple of weeks ago, national team rower and Olympic medallist Barney Williams wrote a piece for the Toronto Star about his recent decision to continue competing through the 2008 Olympic Games.

Williams and his wife Buffy (née Alexander) are both Olympic medallists in rowing. Buffy won a bronze medal in the eight in Sydney, to go with five world championship medals over her career. Barney won a silver in the four in Athens and a world championship gold in the same event in 2003.

They were married in the fall of 1999 and spent much of the next five years apart:

From the spring of 2002 until the 2004 Games, we spent less than eight months together as Buffy trained in London, Ont., and I with the men in Victoria. Much of this time together was on training camps or during competition and was therefore hardly quality time given that we were often living in separate hotel rooms and single-mindedly focused on competing.

That single-minded devotion paid off for both Williamses when they made the 2004 Olympic team. Barney describes their time in Athens as "one of the most amazing experiences to date in our marriage … truly a dream come true." The results of the racing were something less than a dream come true, however; Buffy's pair finished fourth, and Barney's four — defending world champions in the event — were nipped at the line for the gold.

After the Olympics the Williamses moved to Oxford to pursue post-graduate education and (in Barney's words) "begin the next chapter of [their] lives … positioning [themselves] for life in the real world." To most people this would imply a certain separation from competitive rowing, but Barney competed at the 2005 and 2006 world championships. He also became captain of the Oxford Crew and won two victories against Cambridge in the world's most famous rowing race. Buffy, in the meantime, has been out of competitive rowing entirely (as far as I can tell) but did win the Oxford-Cambridge Varsity triathlon in 2005. In early 2006 she gave birth to a baby boy (Tavin Alexander Hammersmith Williams).

Now Barney and Buffy have decided that they want to have one more kick at the Olympic can. They're both going back to full-time training with the goal of winning a gold medal or two in Beijing. That means another two years of living apart, delaying their "life in the real world," and relying on others to help share childcare duties.

I find this story both inspiring and unsettling; I feel envious and insulted at the same time.

At the end of my own competitive career — a career in which I reached the Olympic Games, but never matched the achievements of Barney or Buffy Williams — I was twenty-six years old. I got married, finished my Ph.D., and got my first real job at age 29. We now have two children with a third on the way, and all of the run-of-the-mill trappings; dog, debt, and station wagon.

My life since retirement has been pretty similar to the one that Mr. and Mrs. Williams have embarked on and now decided to postpone. I'm not here to question their choices — but am I being too sensitive if I feel like Barney Williams is questioning mine?

I don't mean that personally, of course. Barney Williams doesn't know me and I am sure he did not intend to criticize my life. But he makes it pretty clear that it wouldn't be enough to satisfy him right now. He knows that this pursuit of an Olympic gold medal will be difficult for his young family and for their "life in the real world." He might not admit that the odds are against him, but he knows that many determining factors will be out of his direct control. And still, Barney Williams can't resist the desire to chase that Olympic gold one more time; anything else would be not quite good enough:

Our future appeared bright as we returned to Canada and began the search for a lifestyle that would continue to challenge and inspire us the way that our Olympic pursuit had. We talked about promising career options … and how through triathlons, marathons and even masters mixed rowing we could continue to experience the excitement of training and competing.

However, as the discussion progressed the reality set in that nothing would ever replace the rush of emotions that overcome you when sitting on the starting line for a race that you have focused all your time and energy towards. It is this singular focus that separates Olympians from weekend warriors and makes the transition so difficult for many full-time athletes.

Williams has hit on a great point here. Most adults do not live their lives like high-performance athletes. They cannot point to a moment in the near future and say, "Everything I do today is designed to get me there." Most people do not know the date and time that they will arrive at their moment of truth, and they are not even sure how they will be measured when they get there. That's what makes the transition to regular life so difficult for so many athletes; it's not that the goals are less worthwhile, it's that they are not so simple or so clear.

Since I retired from competition, my dreams and goals have changed to be, well, more like everybody else's. When I succeed, nobody puts me up on a podium and plays the national anthem. In most cases, the finish line is ill-defined and the final result is unmeasurable. But I don't think that ambiguity makes this life — my "life in the real world" — any less worthwhile. Maybe that's just a rationalization from a thirty-something obso-lete that never reached the top of the podium. Maybe the things that have replaced high-level sport in my life are actually much less than what I had before.

I don't really believe that, though. I don't begrudge the Williamses their last shot at their dream; I even envy them a little bit, and I'll definitely be rooting for them. But for my own part, I'm glad that I didn't postpone this life to pursue that one.

Has it Been Ten Years Already?

I happened to run across an interview with Donovan Bailey on the National last week, and as I was watching I realized that the whole point of the interview was the tenth anniversary of Bailey's Olympic championship in the 100m. That means that it has also been ten years since I stopped being a competitive athlete.

One of my most vivid memories of the 1996 Olympics is actually of Donovan Bailey winning a gold medal. His win in the 100 m came prior to my own competition, and although I recall watching it on television, the memory is somewhat muted. But his role as the anchor of the 4×100m relay lifted me out of my seat. That event was held on the evening of August 3, 1996, the same day as my own final race. I watched it with the rest of the team at the house we rented near Gainesville during the Olympics.

In a moment of reflection, I dug my old training diary out of the basement. Most of it is of interest only to me, so I'll spare you the details, but one thing struck me as I read through the entries for the last few months. After all the years of training and competition, I was still learning new things, and we were still learning new things as a crew. That continued right through the week of the Olympics — I had post-race notes from the heat that were about things to do differently in the semi-final.

Another thing that comes through in the entries from 1996 is that I was still having a lot of fun in the sport, and in particular I really felt good about that last few months.

So why did I quit when I did? I guess part of the answer is that there's just more to life. Of the sixteen athletes on the flatwater canoe-kayak team in 1996, nine of them retired at the end of the season or soon after. Of those I've kept in touch with even a little bit, one is an orthopedic surgeon, one a firefighter, one a chiropractor, and one an engineer. Of course, there are others who have found that their greatest rewards are still as paddlers; three of my 1996 teammates are still on the national team today.

Mainly, I retired because I wasn't enjoying the grind of training any more. Taking a leave of absence from school and spending four months in warm-weather training camp in Florida, that's fun. Touring around Europe on the World Cup circuit, that's fun too. And the lead-up to the Olympics, yeah, that's a lot of fun. But to get to the fun parts, you've got to put in a lot of slogging. Actually, it shouldn't feel like slogging, and when it does, I think that's a good sign that it's time to move on.

Another thing, which I'd forgotten until I started re-reading my training diary, is that being part of a team is hard work. It took a lot of effort, from all of us, to stay positive and pointed in the same direction. I do think that we had still more to learn, but we would have had to fight for every additional inch. And I know that I'd lost some of the will for that fight.

Gert Fredriksson, 1919-2006

I once had a Hungarian coach (who I have written about before) who used to teach us about kayaking in his own unique language. As part of that language there was a particular phrase that he used almost as a litany when discussing the historical stars of our sport. Whenever he mentioned the name of one of the greats — Helm, Parfenovich, Barton, Gyulai, Holmann — it was always followed by the responsorial psalm, "You know, he was many times World Champion."

A contemporary of Coach K—'s, Gert Fredriksson of Sweden, died Wednesday at the age of 86.

Fredriksson won six gold, a silver, and a bronze medal in flatwater kayaking over four Olympic games (1948-1960), which makes him the most decorated man in the history of Olympic canoeing. He also won seven World Championships outside of the Olympics. No other man has ever won more than his thirteen combined Olympic and World titles. He holds the unofficial records for the largest margin of victory in any Olympic canoe or kayak race, and for the largest margin of victory in any race that is still contested at the Olympics. When he won his final Olympic championship, he was nearly 41 years old.

Gert Fredriksson, 21 November 1919 - 5 July 2006.

You know, he was many times World Champion.

UltraAmateur Sport

A few months ago I agreed to become a member of the organizing committee for the Medavie Blue Cross Canoe Challenge. The Canoe Challenge is a charity event that has raised over a million dollars (Canadian) for the IWK Health Centre Foundation and Ronald McDonald House Atlantic.

The Canoe Challenge is an interesting example of a very popular kind of event, the sport-based charity fund raiser. The basic structure of the sport-based charity fund raiser is as follows. Individuals or teams sign up for a sporting event in support of a good cause. They go out to their communities looking for sponsorship. They bring their sponsorship money to the sporting event. They "compete" against other individuals or teams. There are token prizes for winning the competition, and more substantial incentives for raising the most money.

If you're trying to raise money this way, it's good to round up as many participants as you can possibly squeeze in. As a rule, charity events are based on sports that are either very popular among adults, or relatively simple to master. No, scratch that. The sport doesn't need to be mastered; in fact, being an expert is really contrary to the basic spirit of the event. The sport does have to be simple to pick up, though. Ideally, most people can do it without any serious preparation. Slow-pitch softball, volleyball, dragon boat racing … these are all good candidates for a charity sporting event.

And that's what makes the Canoe Challenge an interesting example: paddling in a war canoe is actually quite difficult. Most adults trying it for the first time are extremely uncomfortable, and the chance of capsizing is fairly high. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a picture of war canoe done well (this was not taken at the Canoe Challenge).

There are fourteen paddlers, plus a coxswain, in a boat. The paddlers kneel on one knee and use large paddles to generate a great deal of power. When the boat is full, there isn't much room to move. The boats are not particularly streamlined, but much more so than a dragon boat or a typical recreational canoe. They are also relatively fragile. The event is raced almost exclusively in Canada, over 500 or 1000 m, which takes approximately two or four minutes. The boats themselves are loosely derived from the War Canoe of the North American First Nations.

The War Canoe is so difficult, in fact, that the Dartmouth event is (to my knowledge) the only charity war canoe race held anywhere in the world. Lake Banook is the logical host site for this unique event; the lake is home to three competitive flatwater canoe clubs, and the Halifax regional municipality contains five more. The relationship between the Canoe Challenge and these supporting sport organizations is another interesting aspect of the event. Due to the technical nature of the sport, the organizers lean heavily on the canoe clubs for equipment and expertise. The clubs derive a small financial benefit from their involvement, but on balance they feel that their contributions are not fully recognized. One symptom of the divide between the two groups is evident in the name of the event — Medavie Blue Cross has quietly rebranded the 2006 version as the Canoe Challenge, dropping the unfriendly-sounding "War" that identifies the type of boat.

This year's (War) Canoe Challenge was held on Saturday in miserable weather. Each team was entitled to two practices in the weeks leading up to the event. Only about two-thirds of the teams availed themselves of the opportunity, meaning that ten crews showed up on Saturday having never been in the boat. For the challenge, the crews were limited to twelve paddlers, and the coxswains — who need very specialized skills — were provided by the organizers. Each team races twice over 200 m, with the top teams by aggregate time advancing to a final.

As the organizer of the sporting competition central to the event, I would give it a "B" grade. After a slow start, the races ran roughly as scheduled. About half a dozen crews capsized, but nobody got hurt. About the same number of crews declined to participate in their second race, although that number would have been lower if the weather had been more pleasant. I think the competitors mostly enjoyed themselves, in spite of the conditions. The equipment made it through mostly unscathed.

I also introduced a few new ideas, which I think were quite successful. One of those involved Olympians Canada. Five representatives of the Most Exclusive Club in the Nation participated as honorary coaches for the five teams that raised the most money. I think that this really added something unique to the event. The Olympians threw themselves into their roles with great relish and became enthusiastic members of their assigned teams. Well, four of them did, anyway — I had too much on my plate to really do a good job in my coaching role.

The teams raised $116,000 for the two beneficiaries.

Kurva Jó!

Something significant — significant to me, personally — happened yesterday in the small world of Canadian amateur sports. It won't register on the national radar screen, but I think some of the readers of this blog will appreciate it as a sporting accomplishment.

On Sunday in Duisburg, Germany, Canada won the Men's K-4 1000m final at the Duisburg Internationale Kanu Regatta und World-Cup 2006.

During my days as an athlete paddling for Canada I was something of a specialist in that event. In fact, that's an understatement — during three World Championships and one Olympic Games, I never raced in anything but K-4, at one distance or another. Looked at in a positive light, I could say that I was a core member of the national team K-4 for about eight years.

But looked at in another way, that national team K-4 was often pretty bad. From 1989 through 1992, we weren't even good enough to qualify to represent Canada at the World Championships or Olympics.

One of the lowest points of my career came sometime in the early 1990s at the Duisburg International Regatta. Duisburg is a tough place to race if you are not competitive with the world's best. Because of the timing of the regatta and the quality of the course, the regatta is always very well-attended. And each competing country can have two entries per event — as opposed to the Worlds, where it's limited to one. In men's kayak, especially, that can make for a brutally strong field. I raced at Duisburg half a dozen times between 1989 and 1996.

In this particular year, I was stroking the K-4 1000m — an inexplicable choice, to be blunt, but one that probably reflected our limited options at the time. In an early heat, my steering led us so close to the 500m start platform that at least one of my teammates had to miss a stroke in the middle of the race. That was a humiliating mistake to make at that level, although our general lack of K-4 skill was really the cause of our last-place finish. The end result: we failed, yet again, to even reach the semi-finals at Duisburg.

So, I spent yet another year at Duisburg with my Saturday afternoon and Sunday free. (As one of my teammates used to point out, this didn't have to be a bad thing. He would quote some of our southern-hemisphere colleagues: "The bad news is, we're out of the regatta. The good news is, we're on the piss!") This time, though, I was questioning whether I was really learning anything at all. Were we, as a team, getting something out of these beatings? Was I, as an athlete, still getting better? This all sounds rather introspective and thoughtful, but it wasn't — I am certain that I was a complete asshole to be around that weekend. All I really wanted to do was go home.

I got over that experience, eventually, although I wasn't finished with my punishment at Duisburg. A few years later, I did eventually get to race in a final there, in K-4 500m — we finished ninth, but it was glorious to belong. And in 1995 Duisburg hosted the World Championships, where we finished ninth in the K-4 1000m final, and also finished fourth in the inaugural K-4 200m event. At the 1996 Olympics, my international K-4 career finished with a seventh-place finish.

These results represented, more or less, the pinnacle of Canada's achievement in men's K-4 up to that point. The current crew — Richard Dober Jr., Steven Jorens, Ryan Cuthbert, and Andrew Willows — smashed through those marks yesterday. I know that these young men, and the whole Canadian team, have travelled their own journey in K-4 over the past six years. That journey was not unlike my own; they too have come from nowhere to here, and not always in a continuous line of progress. But they have now broken through to a place that I can only imagine: what must it have felt like to stand on the top of the podium in Duisburg?

Here's to more breakthroughs on the journey to come: congratulations, guys.

Scene of the Crime

I'm away for the weekend, back at the scene of my former glory personal best in Gainesville, Georgia, the Poultry Capital of the World:

Georgia Poultry Park has a 25-foot tall Georgia marble monument topped by a 36-inch bronze rooster, featuring poultry industry information on six plaques at its base.

The Canadian National Team Trials are not being held at Poultry Park, but at Clarks Bridge Park, a much more scenic locale.

A Disclosure

I discovered this week that I am a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee.

Now, you might find it surprising that one can become a member of the COC and not know it. I am what is called an A Member of the COC, which means that I was appointed by a National Sport Federation. I assumed that appointment in December, when I took on a new volunteer position with my favourite NSF. You will not find my name on the COC's lists of members, yet, and I was not aware that COC Membership was one of the responsibilities that went with the job. Let's just call it a pleasant surprise.

Now: back in the comments here, I explicitly denied being a member of the COC. I hope we can avoid a federal commission to determine what I did and didn't know at the time, but that statement was false when I made it. I apologize.

Otherwise, in all posts going back to December 2005, please substitute "we" for "they" and "us" for "them" when I have referred to the COC. Going forward, this circumstance will probably not change much about this blog. I have been mostly supportive of the COC, anyway, and I am sure that there is room for informed debate.

The Deep Cut and the Free Stuff

I have known Sami Jo Small since my days at Stanford, where she was a scholarship athlete on the track and field team, and played goal for the (men's) hockey club team; and I was a graduate student. Since that time Sami Jo has graduated with a degree in chemical engineering, and has also become a mainstay of Canada's hockey team. She was an alternate in 1998, played as the second goalie in 2002 behind Kim St. Pierre, and has played in numerous world championships as well.

Sami Jo is also part of the 2006 team, and I sent her an e-mail congratulating her for that accomplishment. She replied graciously, informing me that she was going as the alternate again; she won't play, and she isn't even officially an athlete. In many ways, this is worse than not being on the team; if you read Sami Jo's blog posts from January 2 and January 20, you will see exactly how hard it has been for her to face that decision. In her e-mail, though, she shows that she is coping pretty well with the end of her Olympic dream:

It's been a tough pill to swallow, however, I have decided to travel with the team over to Italy. We leave in less than two weeks now and despite knowing that I won't get to play at least I get all the free stuff! Humour will help me get through this!

That reminded me of a story about my own athletic career that I thought was sort of relevant. At the risk of sullying my until-now-pristine image, I'd like to tell a little story about the summer of 1992.

After an early season full of frustration, I was nominated to the COC as an alternate to the 1992 Olympic team. The nomination was rejected, to nobody's surprise; I was in training camp in Ottawa when I found out. With more than a month until the end of my season, I had the choice of staying to train with my friends on the Olympic team, or going home to train alone. There were a number of reasons that I decided to stick around, but the fact was that I just couldn't face going home. You see, my little brother had made the Olympic team where I had failed. To say that I was somewhat ashamed of myself should not diminish the fact that I was very proud of him; I think that this contradiction is something that anybody with siblings can understand, and I won't say more about it.

At any rate, I stayed in Ottawa for a few weeks, and I think I was a valuable addition to the training group. (Well, I am sure that I was occasionally crabby or unpleasant or just plain depressing to be around; I am sure that Sami Jo's brave face has also slipped a few times over the past month.) Just before departing for Spain, the team was scheduled to take part in an Olympic warm-up regatta against the US team in Lake Placid. I was invited to participate, to help fill out the race card, and to keep me motivated. The only hitch was that the team was travelling to Lake Placid via Toronto, stopping to take care of their Olympic staging over the weekend.

Staging, for those of you who don't know, is basically an orientation session for the Olympic team. Canadian athletes, coaches, and staff all have to pass through the COC's staging process to be prepared for the Olympics — and to get a bag full of "free stuff," as Sami Jo puts it. In 1992, staging was set up at a nice hotel in Toronto. So if I was going to travel with the team to Lake Placid, I was going to have to find somewhere to stay for the weekend.

Fortunately, it so happened that my brother was not going to Lake Placid, or to staging, and so I engaged in a small deception. I went to staging, pretending to he him; I stayed in the nice hotel room that he was entitled to, and I ate the nice meals. I collected all of his free stuff, and learned everything that he needed to know about Barcelona. The highlight of the weekend was a trip to a Blue Jays game at the Skydome, where I was announced (as him) on the field with a large group of Olympic athletes. I got autographs from Jeff Kent and Juan Guzman, on a Blue Jays hat that my brother happily let me keep, and although the Blue Jays lost badly, I enjoyed myself immensely.

Of course the entire experience could have been extremely bitter, since I knew it was only a pretense. But my friends and teammates joined in the fun, and saw that I was taking the deep cut of failure with my sense of humour more or less intact; and I think I emerged from the experience healthier than I was when I entered. I raced in Lake Placid, and went home and gave my brother (most of) his free stuff; after that, I saw him off to Barcelona, and cheered heartily for him on TV. Over the years I had many more opportunities to cheer him on, including at the 1996 Olympics, which we went to together.

In some ways, Sami Jo's situation is more difficult, because she knows that this was her last opportunity. She has chosen to be positive about her role in spite of her disappointment, and her questions about the fairness of the decision. She has nothing to gain from this; she is already an Olympic gold medallist, and has been the hero for Canada many times. Although she jokes about her motivation, it is clear that it would have been easier for her to walk away. It is to her great credit that she did not.