About 50 Guelph Victors members gathered on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in November to celebrate a great year of running with the club. We had a fun run together, highlighted some outstanding individual accomplishments, and enjoyed some social time at The Wooly. Thanks again to all those who nominated, and CONGRATS to all the fabulous award winners. We appreciated everyone coming out to enjoy this day together! You can read the full recap here.
About 40 club members gathered on a beautiful Saturday in November to celebrate another great season of running with the Guelph Victors at our Awards Run.
Thanks to each of our members for supporting the Guelph Victors and contributing to a club environment that both challenges and encourages everyone. Thank you to the leadership committee members, coaches, and volunteers who kept our workouts, time trials, and events running smoothly all year!
Congrats to our 2022 Victors Award recipients
To reveal the awards, we held a fun 5 km run along the Eramosa River, stopping at various bridges to highlight the outstanding achievements of some of our runners, nominated by fellow members. Check out the full list of recipients from the Awards Run 2022.
We had over 70 people attending the Victors year-end party and awards celebration at the Albion Hotel on Oct. 22. We celebrated a great year of running, some outstanding race performances, lots of workouts together. We also honoured long-time Victors leader and member David Brooks, who moved away earlier this year.
We honoured and thanked long-time Victor David Brooks for his contributions to the club for many years. Several people recounted stories and memories of David, and some of his Bootcamp stalwarts even led a song in his honour.
David goes back to the very early days (1980s) as part of the training group led by Vic Matthews and Usher Posluszny, before it was called “Victors”
David organized our time trial timing for many years, at first with a chip time system he borrowed from Sportstats, where he was working part-time, and last year, with a hand timing system
David led the 6:45 outdoor track workouts for several years, building it into a popular session that sometimes rivalled the 6 pm session in size
David organized and led the Runner’s Bootcamp fitness classes for many year, which many Victors attended and benefited from
Throughout all of this activity, David has been humble and quiet — never blowing his own horn or announcing his successes, or even talking about his own running and health difficulties. He’s just been David — the guy who gets things done and motivates runners to be their best.
He also has an awesome capacity for learning and remembering names!
— thanks to Natalie Intven for party photos!
THE GUELPH EDITION of the worldwide parkrun phenomenon launches this coming Saturday, June 22, 9 am at the Eramosa River Trail, just east of the Covered Bridge (arrive at least 15 min early for the pre-run briefing).
There are six things to grasp about parkrun that make the event different from a regular road race:
parkrun is low-key and do-it-yourself (the lowercase “p” in the name is deliberate). Our event, like all parkruns, is organized by volunteers, with no swag, no bibs, no medals, no t-shirt, no awards, no water (bring your own), and no podium. You do get an email with your result after the run, usually within a couple of hours of finishing. Amazing!
The Victors have spearheaded the local parkrun organizing group over the past six months, and our club is one of five major financial supporters. We encourage all our members to take part — if and when they feel like it!
Go here to register for parkrun, select Eramosa River Trail as your Home Run, and select the running club you want to affiliate with (Guelph Victors, Up and Running, Bar Toads, or Running Works Run Crew). Easy-peasy. Soon you’ll be the proud owner of your very own parkrun barcode, good for life!
We’d like to invite you to an organizing meeting to launch an exciting new running event in Guelph: parkrun.
parkrun is not a race, although it is a timed 5K run, so you can run it as a race, but you don’t have to. And it’s not a one-time run either. Rather, it’s a permanent, weekly, free event that is very broad-based and inclusive, occurring every Saturday at 9 am. Ambitious, eh?
The idea was invented in the UK, where there are over 600 events weekly. You can learn more about the parkrun phenomenon here. The concept has now spread to several continents, with about 25 parkruns now up and running in Canada (mostly within the last two years), and a national website.
We want to put Guelph on the parkrun map. We think the broadest possible definition of the “Guelph running community” could easily support a parkrunhere, both in terms of participants, and volunteers to run the event without saddling any individual or group with the whole burden.
The key thing about parkrun from an organizer’s point of view is that there’s very little of the regular “race” infrastructure, which makes it possible to hold a weekly event with almost no cost and just a handful of volunteers. For the participants, parkrun is free, with one-time self-registration online, and it includes runners, walkers, strollers, even dogs (obedient ones, on leash). Within an hour or two of the event, all participants receive their results by email. Pretty incredible!
We’ve run in several parkrun events in the UK, one as large as 600 runners, and also the newly established parkrun in Kitchener, which had about 50 participants. They are very inspiring, for all levels of runners.You probably have other questions: we’ll answer them at the meeting!
Finally, although this initiative is being floated by the Guelph Victors, we want it to be bigger than us, and ultimately, a separate organization, one that draws from the entire local running community. We have initial approval from the city for parkrun (they were very receptive), but we want all the big decisions (route, launch date, fundraising, volunteer positions, etc.) to be made by the organizing committee — i.e. we want your participation and input.
Please come on Tuesday, Feb. 26, and even if you can’t, let us know if you’re interested so we can stay in touch. Help make parkrun Guelph a reality!
— Brad Morley, Art Kilgour, Tim Uuksulainen
What a great turnout we had for last Tuesday’s Christmas run – look at all those smiling faces, over 50 strong! (Photo by Brad Morley.) Here is our schedule for the next few weeks, with both Christmas and New Year’s falling on Tuesdays this year:
The Victors wound up another outdoor season on Nov. 27 with a party at the Albion Hotel, and a series of awards presentations for 2018 achievements. We also heard reports on the club’s activities this year, plans for the new year, and a financial report from our treasurer. We honoured the following members.
Usher Posluszny Award (outstanding performance, named for an early club leader and coach): Elizabeth Waywell, for setting four NATIONAL age group awards this year in the Women’s 60-64 category (8K, 10K, half-marathon, and full marathon). Although she won this trophy two years ago, and we don’t normally do repeats, there was no way we couldn’t award this to Elizabeth this year. She raced and trained at a super high level, achieving things no Guelph Victor has ever accomplished (national records) and also racing the uber demanding Comrades Ultra Marathon in South Africa — she won her age group there, and at the Boston Marathon last spring. She’ll return to Boston this year with an elite entry they granted her.
Vic Matthews Award (service to the Guelph Victors, named for our founder): Kelly Rupoli, for helping establish the new Victors Leadership Committee, and for the perseverance to overcome her breast cancer diagnosis and return to running this past year.
Multisport Athlete of the Year: Matt Underwood, for an outstanding performance at Guelph Lake 1 sprint triathlon, where he RAN 5K with his bike, after having a flat tire mid-race, and for gradual improvement in tri distances up to 70.3 (half-ironman).
Grit and Determination Award: Chris Shaw (photo above), for finally running a sub-3 hour marathon this year, after three previous 3:04 finishes — he ran 2:56 in Mississauga last spring and looked fantastic as he crossed the finish line. Chris has been at the very front of many of our track workouts and time trials for several years. We’ll miss him as he bought a house and moved to Dundas recently.
Roger Bannister Award (for community service): Up and Running, the Guelph-based program, now two years old, that helps women overcome depression with a running and walking program led by a team of volunteers. The Award was accepted by Kelly Legge, an Up and Running leader.
The membership and activities of the Guelph Victors grew in 2018, in particular the attendance at winter indoor track, which nearly doubled from 2017. Here’s a statistical summary:
Here’s a summary of the club’s finances through to the end of November:
Carbs have long been a runner’s friend – but newer research and guidelines teach us how to best use carbs to our performance advantage:
Learn about practical strategies to optimize your diet for everyday health, and use it as one of your most important training tools.
Our speaker for this event is Cara Kasdorf, a dietician and sports nutritionist with Grand River Sports Medicine, and the Guelph Family Health Team. She has run with the Victors for over eight years, but during the day she’s a highly accomplished and specialized nutritionist.
Cara will present the latest research on the role of carbs in a healthy diet, as well as her perspective from working with all kinds of athletes on their diets in pursuit of better performance. It promises to be a fun and informative event.
Date: Tuesday, Jan. 23, 8 pm
Location: Trafalgar Building, 123 Woolwich Street, Suite 101
Parking: On the street, in the Baker Street public lot (two blocks west), or behind 123 Woolwich in parking spots next to the building marked “Blue North”.
Admission to this event is FREE. Bonus: healthy energy bar snacks, along with DIY recipes!
Our popular winter track workouts are back, in the comfort and warmth of the University of Guelph field house and its plush 200-metre track. Register here. We’ll do a brisk 45-minute workout every week from Jan. 11 to Mar. 15 (Thursday nights), starting at 7 pm. These are short intervals, generally from 200–400 metres, with very short periods of recovery in between. This training is for anyone who wants to improve (or even maintain) their short-distance speed over the winter. The workouts are set and supervised by former Olympian Taylor Milne, who manages to keep things fresh and new every week. The cost for the 10-week session is $50 / $35 students. More info about indoor track is here. Our first workout is Thursday, Jan. 11, 2018.
Something brand new: we’ve decided to tap the wealth of local expertise in running, psychology and nutrition, with a new speaker series this coming season. FIRST UP is an evening session with dietician (and Victors runner), Cara Kasdorf, RD, BSc.
Carbs have long been a runner’s friend but newer research and guidelines teaches us how to best use carbs to our performance advantage. Do low carb diets work for runners and do they actually have performance enhancing benefits? How should we periodize our carb intake during different training phases? And how do other nutrients fit into a daily training diet? Learn about practical strategies to optimize your diet for everyday health, and use it as one of your most important training tools.
Strava is like your own online training log, with a social media component. By sharing your workouts and running plans with others, you can get valuable feedback and training ideas. Another benefit is accountability (since your training log is public), which can help as a motivator when you’re heading out for a lonely, mid-week run in the dark and cold! All you need to use Strava is some sort of electronic device to measure your runs – anything from a GPS watch to a smart phone will do the trick. Once you get a Strava account, you can set things up so that your run data gets uploaded automatically. You can then check the status of your “friends” on your mobile device (using the Strava app) or computer. Once you’re signed up to the service, please join our club as well, either by searching for us, or going here. (Thanks to George Kara for getting us started with Strava.)
To help you get racing in 2018, we’ve arranged some discounts for Guelph Victors members:
I hope you’ve had a good break over the holidays. Now is a good starting point to begin the journey for 2018. You may already know what you would like to achieve in the coming season, or at least during the first 5–6 month cycle, culminating in a peak distance race in the spring.
If you haven’t quite determined your goals for 2018, that’s fine. But in any case, you should be starting to develop a solid foundation, so there is no reason to delay as it takes time to develop an endurance base. These initial weeks should focus on base-building and hill work, which will progress as your body adjusts.
Here is a list of things I feel are important for you to consider as you plan for 2018. (Read more on the Victors website, in a new Training Advice section, by Victors coach Tim Uuksulainen.)
