Jeux FADOQ - Finales provinciales 2019
Jeux FADOQ Provincial Finals
This year the finals of the Jeux FADOQ happened in Trois-Rivières. My two events (10K race and 3K racewalking) happened on a September 19th, a Thursday. When I finished work on the day before I took a bus from downtown Montreal to go to Trois-Rivières.
The trip was excruciating, the bus took almost one hour just to get out of Montreal. There was traffic and construction, so the pace of the bus was maddeningly slow.
And the bus stopped at the Laval terminal before getting on the road. And then it stopped at some halfway point for at least fifteen minutes to handle cargo. What a waste of time!
The whole trip took almost three hours! Three hours to travel 140 Km!! Not funny...
Anyway, I got to my hotel, took a shower, ate my dinner in the room and went to sleep around 10:30 pm.
I woke up before 3 am, tried to sleep a bit more and by 5:30 am I was on. I got ready, went down to the restaurant and ate a delicious breakfast:
Then I checked out of the hotel and went to do my accreditation.
This year, unfortunately, the accreditation booth was not in one of the participating hotels, but in the Circuit Trois-Rivières, which is located two kilometers away from the hotel.
And they no longer provide shuttle buses for the competitors, so I had to walk there. And, of course, I got lost... But finally I found this:
I got my stuff from the accreditation booth and then I had to walk another 2.5 Km to go to the Pie XII Park, where the games would happen. So in total, I walked around 5 Km, even before getting to the start line...
The park had a bicycle path that would serve for the events of the day. The organizers told us that the path was a bit over 700m long, so the 5K people would do seven laps, while the 10K people would do fourteen.
I got the bib 1117 and this year they had microchips to count the laps. At around 9h15 we were at our start lines and soon we heard the gun go off.
In my group there were three faster runners, from the beginning I could not compete with them, so I just let them go and tried to do my best.
For the first seven laps the situation was a bit confusing, because the 5K people, who had started a hundred meters behind the 10K people, were passing me left and right, it was hard to know in which position I was.
After the 5K people finished their race, then things became clearer. But by then I was already getting tired, there was not much I could do and at least two people passed me in this second half of the event.
In the end I finished fourth among the four runners in the 50+ group. The guy who beat me for third place was less than half a minute in front of me. If I knew, I could have tried harder. Oh well... I guess the competition is too strong for me now.
Here are the final results of the 10K race:
I checked the times of the 5K people and was shocked! In 2016 I won that race with a time of 24m35s. Today there were ten people with a faster time than that!! The competition has become too tough, I don't have much chance of medals anymore.
One annoying thing was that the race course was not properly measured. When I finished my 10K event I looked down at my Garmin and it indicated only 9.5Km, so our race was at least 500m shorter than it should have been. This messes up my record keeping.
Anyway, before the medal ceremony started I went to take a picture of the medals being distributed. this was the closest that I would get to a medal today:
Immediately after the medal ceremony we had lunch. The arena where we were supposed to sit down to eat was already crowded, so I preferred to go outside and eat in the park, looking at the lake, the birds and the squirrels:
After lunch we got back to the tent area for the prediction march, team event. There was some kind of problem and they started it fifty minutes late, which would mean that my event, the racewalk would also be quite late.
During the day I had seen Mr. Marcel Jobin walking around. I knew he was the world champion of racewalking in the 75year category, I had read about his victory in Torun, Poland earlier this year. So I knew the competition would be tougher than normal.
Usually I only have to worry about Mr. Marchand and his wife, Nicole Begin, but today the three of us would have a world champion to contend with.
I knew that his time in Torun had been around 19 minutes and something, so I knew that I had a chance to at least tail him for a while.
We were called to the starting point at 2:52 pm, only 22 minutes late, so not that bad. As usual I was in the second row of competitors, I let Mr. Marchand, his wife and Mr. Jobin go in front.
As soon as we started the three of us (Mr. Jobin, Mme. Begin and myself) formed a block that went together. Mr. Marchand was right behind us, followed by everybody else.
Mr. Jobin and Mme Begin formed a wall in front of me for the first 400m or so, so I didn't try to overtake them, I just stayed close behind them. By 500m or so Mr. Jobin let Mme Being go, so I went after her and left him behind as well. I followed her for a lap (we were supposed to do three full laps), but after that I could not keep up with her, so I just made sure that I could maintain Mr. Jobin at bay.
In the end he started attacking a little bit and gained some terrain, but my advantage proved enough for the win, I finished five seconds in front of him:
Only much later I found out that he was hors-concours! If I knew that from the beginning I wouldn't have tried so hard to stay in front, I could have talked to him during the race, for instance.
Less than half a minute later came Mr. Marchand, who congratulated me on the win. And we cheered on our colleague from Montreal, Mr. McCann who had a phenomenal finish against a friend of Mr. Jobin, who we learned later on, was also hors-concours. They came practically together on the finish line. Wow!
The trip back to Montreal was much better than the one in the previous day, it took us less than 1h40m to get to the Montreal bus station. I took the metro home, took a shower and hung my winner banner in my home office:
What a day!
This year the finals of the Jeux FADOQ happened in Trois-Rivières. My two events (10K race and 3K racewalking) happened on a September 19th, a Thursday. When I finished work on the day before I took a bus from downtown Montreal to go to Trois-Rivières.
The trip was excruciating, the bus took almost one hour just to get out of Montreal. There was traffic and construction, so the pace of the bus was maddeningly slow.
And the bus stopped at the Laval terminal before getting on the road. And then it stopped at some halfway point for at least fifteen minutes to handle cargo. What a waste of time!
The whole trip took almost three hours! Three hours to travel 140 Km!! Not funny...
Anyway, I got to my hotel, took a shower, ate my dinner in the room and went to sleep around 10:30 pm.
I woke up before 3 am, tried to sleep a bit more and by 5:30 am I was on. I got ready, went down to the restaurant and ate a delicious breakfast:
Then I checked out of the hotel and went to do my accreditation.
This year, unfortunately, the accreditation booth was not in one of the participating hotels, but in the Circuit Trois-Rivières, which is located two kilometers away from the hotel.
And they no longer provide shuttle buses for the competitors, so I had to walk there. And, of course, I got lost... But finally I found this:
I got my stuff from the accreditation booth and then I had to walk another 2.5 Km to go to the Pie XII Park, where the games would happen. So in total, I walked around 5 Km, even before getting to the start line...
The park had a bicycle path that would serve for the events of the day. The organizers told us that the path was a bit over 700m long, so the 5K people would do seven laps, while the 10K people would do fourteen.
I got the bib 1117 and this year they had microchips to count the laps. At around 9h15 we were at our start lines and soon we heard the gun go off.
In my group there were three faster runners, from the beginning I could not compete with them, so I just let them go and tried to do my best.
For the first seven laps the situation was a bit confusing, because the 5K people, who had started a hundred meters behind the 10K people, were passing me left and right, it was hard to know in which position I was.
After the 5K people finished their race, then things became clearer. But by then I was already getting tired, there was not much I could do and at least two people passed me in this second half of the event.
In the end I finished fourth among the four runners in the 50+ group. The guy who beat me for third place was less than half a minute in front of me. If I knew, I could have tried harder. Oh well... I guess the competition is too strong for me now.
Here are the final results of the 10K race:
I checked the times of the 5K people and was shocked! In 2016 I won that race with a time of 24m35s. Today there were ten people with a faster time than that!! The competition has become too tough, I don't have much chance of medals anymore.
One annoying thing was that the race course was not properly measured. When I finished my 10K event I looked down at my Garmin and it indicated only 9.5Km, so our race was at least 500m shorter than it should have been. This messes up my record keeping.
Anyway, before the medal ceremony started I went to take a picture of the medals being distributed. this was the closest that I would get to a medal today:
Immediately after the medal ceremony we had lunch. The arena where we were supposed to sit down to eat was already crowded, so I preferred to go outside and eat in the park, looking at the lake, the birds and the squirrels:
After lunch we got back to the tent area for the prediction march, team event. There was some kind of problem and they started it fifty minutes late, which would mean that my event, the racewalk would also be quite late.
During the day I had seen Mr. Marcel Jobin walking around. I knew he was the world champion of racewalking in the 75year category, I had read about his victory in Torun, Poland earlier this year. So I knew the competition would be tougher than normal.
Usually I only have to worry about Mr. Marchand and his wife, Nicole Begin, but today the three of us would have a world champion to contend with.
I knew that his time in Torun had been around 19 minutes and something, so I knew that I had a chance to at least tail him for a while.
We were called to the starting point at 2:52 pm, only 22 minutes late, so not that bad. As usual I was in the second row of competitors, I let Mr. Marchand, his wife and Mr. Jobin go in front.
As soon as we started the three of us (Mr. Jobin, Mme. Begin and myself) formed a block that went together. Mr. Marchand was right behind us, followed by everybody else.
Mr. Jobin and Mme Begin formed a wall in front of me for the first 400m or so, so I didn't try to overtake them, I just stayed close behind them. By 500m or so Mr. Jobin let Mme Being go, so I went after her and left him behind as well. I followed her for a lap (we were supposed to do three full laps), but after that I could not keep up with her, so I just made sure that I could maintain Mr. Jobin at bay.
In the end he started attacking a little bit and gained some terrain, but my advantage proved enough for the win, I finished five seconds in front of him:
Only much later I found out that he was hors-concours! If I knew that from the beginning I wouldn't have tried so hard to stay in front, I could have talked to him during the race, for instance.
Less than half a minute later came Mr. Marchand, who congratulated me on the win. And we cheered on our colleague from Montreal, Mr. McCann who had a phenomenal finish against a friend of Mr. Jobin, who we learned later on, was also hors-concours. They came practically together on the finish line. Wow!
It was only during the medal ceremony that I found out that Mr. Jobin was not in the race for the title. They first announced the bronze medal and gave it to Mr. McCann. As he came in fourth, I thought, oh no, they disqualified me and didn't tell me. But then when they announced the gold medal they called me. Yay!
So that was the end of the day's competitions, I left the park and walked back to the bus station. As my bus would only leave in over an hour, I went to the restaurant of the Delta hotel (which was nearby) and celebrated with a beer:
So that was the end of the day's competitions, I left the park and walked back to the bus station. As my bus would only leave in over an hour, I went to the restaurant of the Delta hotel (which was nearby) and celebrated with a beer:
The trip back to Montreal was much better than the one in the previous day, it took us less than 1h40m to get to the Montreal bus station. I took the metro home, took a shower and hung my winner banner in my home office:
What a day!
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