Gary Reed and Training

Training has been going well, although today I was a bit tired. Yesterday, I threw all of the implements fairly well which was probably the result of nice sleep and a very motivational night with Gary Reed.

His speech was extremely good. He talked about how he literally had nothing when he was younger and all the way through grade 12 he would go to school with no food...he literally had no food in his fridge. Dylan has told me this is true because he went to his home at one point and found out he had absolutely no food in the house because his mother was struggling to pay the bills. This created a great foundation for a relationship between Dylan, his mother and Gary. Anyway, Gary's mother eventually got her feet under her once he moved to Victoria and at this point she went to see how he was training in Victoria. Apparently, she began to cry when visiting him because he only had tomato paste and beans in his refrigerator. He soon got his feet under him and his training went very well over the next two to three years. Now he is number two in the world. His World Champs video was awesome and just by watching it motivated me to go out and train so hard. It was a very emotional video and he seemed ecstatic after placing second place at World's. Now everything is falling into place with his training and hopefully he can better his place in Beijing in 2008.

It was a fun night and very worthwhile. It was also cool because they introduced all of the new athletes to the room of about 200 people and we got to intermingle and talk with them after the dinner was over. The night was fun and I am so happy to be training here, now I just need to continue to stay focused on the goals at hand. I have some photos from the night and some pictures of the place where I train. Included in the photos is a picture of what I see from the backyard of where I live.


The last image is a squash court that I put on so Alec Wagner could be amazed at the beast. Supposedly, it is one of two of a kind in the entire North America. The video is of one of the other hammer throwers that is pretty good. He is from BC and is a really good guy. It also shows the throwing room and its set up.