Hello, and welcome to my blog!
I've been contemplating trying this whole blog thing for a couple of years now and I'm not too sure where this blog will go. I'm hoping this blog will be a place where I can document anything interesting happening in my life with my training, school work and other shenanigans. So let's begin!
First off, I suppose an introduction and a bit of background is necessary. My name is Daniel Fournier and I am a third year Kinesiology student at the University of Waterloo as well as a competitive long distance runner. I have always been a runner (starting in the 4th grade when everybody ran cross-country) but I didn't start training seriously until I got into high school. For five years, I competed for École secondaire catholique Thériault and managed to come away with two OFSAA silver medals and one OFSAA gold medal/team championship, which to this day is still one of my most memorable seasons as a runner. When I began training in the 9th grade, I remember running my first 5K race and finishing in about 22:30. It wasn't a very fast time compared to what my teammates were running (at least sub 20min.) but it was a good starting point. As that season progressed, I started noticing improvements at every race and at my first OFSAA cross-country race, I ran 18:46 for 5K and could not believe the improvements after just one season. I'm fairly certain that is where I got hooked on running. I am lucky to have been a part of a team with such a rich history for the sport of cross-country running and cannot imagine where I would be today without everything that the sport has done for me since the beginning.
Skipping ahead a couple of years, I now compete for the University of Waterloo Warriors on their varsity cross-country running and track & field teams. My university career started off great with lots of personal bests over a variety of distances from the 1500m to 10K cross-country. However, injuries started to take their toll on my body after my first year and I have been in a slump since. It's very frustrating for an athlete to not be able to do the sport they love because their body won't let them. There would be times after a couple of weeks off that things would start looking better and I could resume training but either the same injury or a new one would force me into another period of time off.
This spring, I finally got a hold on the whole injury thing and I have been able to do some consistent training during the warm summer months. So as of right now, I am injury free and back on the grind. I am currently back home for the summer on a work term at Rehab Plus Rehabilitation and Fitness Centre here in Timmins, ON, and things are going pretty well on the work side. I'm learning lots and applying a lot of things I have learned from my previous school term. My work schedule makes it hard to train consistently with my work hours being all over the place but I think I'm making it work. Lately, I have been training for the Heart of Gold Triathlon that takes place in one week (July 12th) here in Timmins. I did this triathlon a couple of years ago and did not perform to my best as I was not running due to injury. I managed a pretty slow 5K at the end of the race and I know I could easily take a couple of minutes off of the run. This time around, I have done equal training for all three disciplines and have been practicing running off of the bike. I think it is safe to say that this year should be an improvement from my first attempt at a triathlon. When I completed the triathlon in 2013, I managed to beat my long-time friend and old teammate Matt Mahaffy. I was not expecting to come out on top since he had been doing triathlons for a couple of years before I decided to try my first one. This year, we will both be competing again and I am looking forward to this rematch. His latest results show that he is in shape and that I'll have to bring my "A" game next weekend.
Well I think this is sufficient enough for a first post. I will most likely have a nice little race recap next weekend after the triathlon.
Thanks for reading,
Dan
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