November, 2001

2001 Pan American Champion

What an amazing experience! We had a large Canadian team competing in the championships and a good turnout by Pan Amercian competitors. I competed in the individual event on October 26 and the team relay on October 29. I started the day off with a winning shoot score of 175, followed by a decent fence and swim.

My two favourite events: the running and the riding were the last and the best. I had a great horse which I rode really well for perfect score and just under the time allowed. I started the run in 5th place behind 3 Mexicans and a Guatemalan athlete. The course was on thick grass which was quite slow. I gradually caught the women in front of me, passing the the last three in the last 300m and the last one with 100m to go. It was a very exciting finish.

Obviously all my hard training with the UNB cross country team paid off as i had the winning run time by 30 seconds over the Mexican athletes that trained at altitude. The whole competition took place at 7700ft so needless to say fter trianing at sea level. I was very pleased to have such a great performance.

Our relay team came third behind Mexico and Guatemala. We had 8 comeptitors and 4 suport staff (coach, president of association, 2 parents) from Canada. Our younger and less experienced athletes also competed well which is very encouraging. This team is by far the largest we`ve sent anywhere in a long time and which bodes well for Canada`s future in modern pentathlon.

July 20, 2001

I competed in the women's semi-final yesterday. It was a day full of good and not so good results for me. I started the day with a decent shoot 176 for 1048 points which put me in 15 place by a very narrow margine from those above me. Unfortunatly the fencing turned out very poorly. For some reason I couldn't get into it and I had very few victories in the first half of the fnce. I managed to pick things up for the second half but it wasn't enough and my score after the fence was 636 which added to my shoot score put me in 24th place.

I had a best time in the swim of 2:40 whcih was pleasing as I had been working very hard on my swimming for the last couple of years. Although this isn't on of the better swims it's not that far off the average so with my run which is quite good, it is enough as long as I have average performances in everything else.

I started the run in 29th place and ran up to 24th place, only 27 seconds or 108 points out of 16th place, which is what I needed to proceed to the Women's final on Saturday (top 16 that is). I had one of the best run times of the day and am very pleased with my run performance. Despite a dissapointing finish I am please with parts of my performance, especially when I conside rthe fact that this was a training year for me in which I focusd on improving my swim and shoot in particular. Next year will be a new phase and although i will continue to train all events, the fencing will definitly have a priority in the year to come.

Although the World championships are now over for me, there still remains several events in my comeptition schedule this year. Canadian Nationals will take place Augusdt 14-17 in cAnmore, Alberta, follwed by the Canada Games in London ontario where I will compete in the women's 5000m track event. finally at a time and location to be announced shortly I will compete in the Pan American Championships which take place every 2 years. Having won gold in 1997, and bronze in 1999 at the Pan American Games, I will be looking to capture the gold once again.