Special Olympics here I come
I wish I could say I was training for the Pan-Am Junior Games next month here in Windsor, but I'm a little older than that now and not much of an athlete, outside of soccer, baseball, and golf (average at best in those too.)
But because I care so much about physical fitness (isn't it obvious) I went to work out at the University's supposed new crown jewel, the athletic centre and stadium that we're spending all $25 million on to host the Games and 4 football games a year.
The only problem of course is that financing that was supposed to be in place at this point has not materialized. Yes, the stadium has been built, although the University had to borrow money from itself to finance the construction. The City is looking at the Province who in turn is looking to Ottawa to meet their funding obligations before they subsequently fall in line.
Meanwhile construction is pretty much completed, and quite frankly the end result is nowhere near what I'd envision for an investment of 25 mil. For 25 mil the university could've hired Alex Rodriguez for a year to help with recruitment for '05-'06 which is dropping considerably from the plum two years they've come to enjoy.
While all the major items are in place, I can't get over how crappy it looks. The seating is atrocious, with these plastic seat type devices built into the concrete. There's also a protruding screw at the back of the base of each seat which I guarantee is going to poke many in the ass and lead to many ripped pants/shorts/skirts (potential there).
Apparently the new colours of the school are blue and symbolically yellow, because on top of being uncomfortable to sit in they've already lost their original colour and don't even match the rest of the yellow paint around the stadium.
The sod everywhere hasn't taken, and combined with the number of already broken irrigation heads, already features large dead spots. Brilliant. The infield is nowhere close to being level and is more reminiscent to a WWII bunker than a place where football and soccer will one day be played, not that it matters much here since it's usually the fans who'll want to hide in the trenches.
While Windsor is known for its track team, it will never be known for its track- in fact I can't recall if I've ever seen an actual track made of pavement. It doesn't seem very conducive to running and in my limited experience find it very hard on the feet. Maybe I'm wrong but aren't most tracks made of some sort of clay composite?
The long jump pits have a concrete lip to them, which seems odd since I always thought they were supposed to be flush with the ground. I will say the steeplechase and hammer-toss areas look really good, but I mean come on, if that's what counts as a stadium's saving grace then are they ever in trouble.
With the Games scheduled to begin in less than a month, I would be a little worried at this point with little in the way of sponsorship commitments. Ticket sales will also be interesting to track, mainly because they keep talking as though they'll have no problem selling out a stadium with a 4000-5000 person capacity when they have trouble getting 1000 out to a football game.
As for yours truly, yes the beast is back. Known throughout the 905 for that wonderous Grade 6 track season where the legend of Stack qualified for the regional 400 metres finals and led coming down the homestretch only to fade instantly and finish last (some say just another disappointing Canadian track performance, I say I paved the way for Perdita Felicien.) Anyways, with little to no warmup I ran two laps, timing myself with a DKNY, an obvious stopwatch given the location I find myself in.
The first lap, also known as the pace lap, was consistent but I could tell I had more to give, and clocked in at around 1:25. After doing a few shot puts with a big hunk of asphalt (remember: Windsor) the final lap began. Of course this time the start/finish line would be parallel to the giant hole in the stadium fence that I could escape through when finished and hit the McDonald's for a breakfast, but that's just the common sense thinking any highly tuned athlete would employ.
As the long hand of the watch hit :00 I took off like Michael Jackson heading towards the ball pit of a McDonald's play place. And 200 metres in everything was looking great. At that point I thought I probably could qualify for one of those crappy Pan Am countries like St. Lucia and actually race in this. But of course that was only the halfway point which my brain took longer to realize than my heart and legs did (I have no heart. I also have a fondness for finishing sentences with the period within parentheses.)
The second half almost induced a stroke, and yet somehow I finished in around 1:12, not bad considering I don't think I'd ever been under 1:30 in high school. Of course even back then there were guys doing around 55 seconds, but I'm trying to make you fall in love with me here. Despite completely losing all energy, the trip to get a mcmuffin was probably faster than anything I tried to do.
All in all quite the trip to the gym, twice in the last three weeks is some sort of record I think. Maybe now I'll only die of congestive heart failure at 67 instead of 63. Perfs.
P.S. While it's probably better not to forget installing flagpoles for the medal ceremonies, it might be wise to install some sort of scoreboard for any fans interested in actually seeing 'results'. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the boys from Belize aren't coming simply for an exhibition then over to Faces once they're done. In fact here's hoping nobody goes there thinking it is a representation of Canadian food. With that said I bet the Cuban team dines there every night in the hopes it convinces none of their members that defecting would be a smart move.
But because I care so much about physical fitness (isn't it obvious) I went to work out at the University's supposed new crown jewel, the athletic centre and stadium that we're spending all $25 million on to host the Games and 4 football games a year.
The only problem of course is that financing that was supposed to be in place at this point has not materialized. Yes, the stadium has been built, although the University had to borrow money from itself to finance the construction. The City is looking at the Province who in turn is looking to Ottawa to meet their funding obligations before they subsequently fall in line.
Meanwhile construction is pretty much completed, and quite frankly the end result is nowhere near what I'd envision for an investment of 25 mil. For 25 mil the university could've hired Alex Rodriguez for a year to help with recruitment for '05-'06 which is dropping considerably from the plum two years they've come to enjoy.
While all the major items are in place, I can't get over how crappy it looks. The seating is atrocious, with these plastic seat type devices built into the concrete. There's also a protruding screw at the back of the base of each seat which I guarantee is going to poke many in the ass and lead to many ripped pants/shorts/skirts (potential there).
Apparently the new colours of the school are blue and symbolically yellow, because on top of being uncomfortable to sit in they've already lost their original colour and don't even match the rest of the yellow paint around the stadium.
The sod everywhere hasn't taken, and combined with the number of already broken irrigation heads, already features large dead spots. Brilliant. The infield is nowhere close to being level and is more reminiscent to a WWII bunker than a place where football and soccer will one day be played, not that it matters much here since it's usually the fans who'll want to hide in the trenches.
While Windsor is known for its track team, it will never be known for its track- in fact I can't recall if I've ever seen an actual track made of pavement. It doesn't seem very conducive to running and in my limited experience find it very hard on the feet. Maybe I'm wrong but aren't most tracks made of some sort of clay composite?
The long jump pits have a concrete lip to them, which seems odd since I always thought they were supposed to be flush with the ground. I will say the steeplechase and hammer-toss areas look really good, but I mean come on, if that's what counts as a stadium's saving grace then are they ever in trouble.
With the Games scheduled to begin in less than a month, I would be a little worried at this point with little in the way of sponsorship commitments. Ticket sales will also be interesting to track, mainly because they keep talking as though they'll have no problem selling out a stadium with a 4000-5000 person capacity when they have trouble getting 1000 out to a football game.
As for yours truly, yes the beast is back. Known throughout the 905 for that wonderous Grade 6 track season where the legend of Stack qualified for the regional 400 metres finals and led coming down the homestretch only to fade instantly and finish last (some say just another disappointing Canadian track performance, I say I paved the way for Perdita Felicien.) Anyways, with little to no warmup I ran two laps, timing myself with a DKNY, an obvious stopwatch given the location I find myself in.
The first lap, also known as the pace lap, was consistent but I could tell I had more to give, and clocked in at around 1:25. After doing a few shot puts with a big hunk of asphalt (remember: Windsor) the final lap began. Of course this time the start/finish line would be parallel to the giant hole in the stadium fence that I could escape through when finished and hit the McDonald's for a breakfast, but that's just the common sense thinking any highly tuned athlete would employ.
As the long hand of the watch hit :00 I took off like Michael Jackson heading towards the ball pit of a McDonald's play place. And 200 metres in everything was looking great. At that point I thought I probably could qualify for one of those crappy Pan Am countries like St. Lucia and actually race in this. But of course that was only the halfway point which my brain took longer to realize than my heart and legs did (I have no heart. I also have a fondness for finishing sentences with the period within parentheses.)
The second half almost induced a stroke, and yet somehow I finished in around 1:12, not bad considering I don't think I'd ever been under 1:30 in high school. Of course even back then there were guys doing around 55 seconds, but I'm trying to make you fall in love with me here. Despite completely losing all energy, the trip to get a mcmuffin was probably faster than anything I tried to do.
All in all quite the trip to the gym, twice in the last three weeks is some sort of record I think. Maybe now I'll only die of congestive heart failure at 67 instead of 63. Perfs.
P.S. While it's probably better not to forget installing flagpoles for the medal ceremonies, it might be wise to install some sort of scoreboard for any fans interested in actually seeing 'results'. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the boys from Belize aren't coming simply for an exhibition then over to Faces once they're done. In fact here's hoping nobody goes there thinking it is a representation of Canadian food. With that said I bet the Cuban team dines there every night in the hopes it convinces none of their members that defecting would be a smart move.
posted by David at 7:10 a.m.
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