My sister the marathon runner
This past weekend I visited Ottawa to watch my sister, Sherri Schmidt Stutzman, run her first marathon. If you aren’t already aware, a marathon is 42 kilometres or 26 miles. Sherri finished it in 4 hours and 25 minutes, a good time and just around the Canadian average of 4 hours and 22 minutes. You can find more results on the race website – National Capital Race Weekend. The race atmosphere was something that I found incredible. Unlike other sports where you have a team you cheer for and a team you are cheer against, at the marathon everyone was cheering for every single racer. The crowd cheered on the young and the old, the faint and the strong, and it was a wonderful place to be while thousands accomplished their personal goal of simply crossing the finish line. The thing that I noticed was that the people that finished the race didn’t fall into your standard marathon runner body type. Many people that finished did so not because of a natural ability to run long distances, but simply because of determination and probably lots and lots of hours of training. I’m not saying that marathon running is easy or for everyone, but those that do accomplish it should be congratulated for their mental toughness, perserverance and determination as well as the amazing physical accomplishment. Congratulations Sherri on your big success and keep on running. You and all the other runners are an inspiration to the rest of us. So if you haven’t dusted off those running shoes from the winter, get outside, get moving and feel those spectators cheering you on. I’d better go grab my running shoes…see you on the trails!
Rattlesnake Point Hiking
Darlene and I went hiking at Rattlesnake Point in Halton on Friday. I’ve often heard about Rattlesnake Point but I’ve never been there, so it was neat to get a chance to trek around the conservation area. Rattlesnake Point is part of a series of great conservation areas managed by Conservation Halton. We enjoyed hiking along the Niagara Escarpment while watching hawks, birds and other critters. The weather was beautiful, sunny and clear skies. We could see for miles as we stood on the top of the escarpment and looked out over the land. Our hike was even complete with a picnic. Darlene packed up a nice picnic supper and we sat by a lookout to enjoy our meal. If you get a chance, sneak out of the office early and go enjoy God’s beautiful creation.
canoeing with my wife…
what more could I ask for. The other day Darlene and I made our first canoe trip with the bright yellow canoe given to us for our wedding. We portaged it down the street, yup that’s right, straight down a residential street in Kitchener and then right into the Grand River. We left Doon area around 7pm and ended up in Blair about 8:30pm. The sun was setting and Darlene and I were just floating down the river, past the ducks, geese, and golf courses. We both felt that canoeing under the 401 was particularly ironic, due to the dissonance between the high speed traffic above us and the gentle noise of the river. It was a splendid evening, and really what more is there to be happy about in life then to canoe down a river with my beautiful wife. ~ ~ happy paddling!
My first large speaking engagement
This past weekend I had the special opportunity to speak for 15 minutes at a sizeable conference in Edmonton. The conference was entitled Assessment and Remediation of Contaminated Sites in Arctic and Cold Climates (ARCSACC). I presented some findings from my undergraduate research in-front of approximately two hundred attendees, most of which had a background in either engineering, public service or Aboriginal issues. I’m definitely not a person who loves the public stage and not to overuse the phase, but it was a ‘learning experience’. I felt decent with my presentation, but there were some areas for improvement that I’ll work on for the next time. I found public speaking in-front of that many people difficult because you can’t sense the audiences personal responses to elements of the presentation. Someone once told me that you should choose one or two people in the audience and speak to them, which is wise advice from my experience. Public speaking is definitely an art and I’m glad that I had the privilege to gain some valuable experience presenting to a large audience. So just like many other things in life, either you’re born with it or you have to work at it – so I’ll keep learning and doing my best and who knows what’s possible! I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else has a story about speaking in public.
How accurate is theweathernetwork.ca?
Over the last week or so I’ve been comparing The Weather Network for Kitchener with the University of Waterloo weather station. The UW weather station records measurements every 15 minutes while the The Weather Network (TWN) repeats every hour or more. Today I was looking at TWN and the temperature was 3 degrees for Kitchener, but when I checked the UW weather station it was 7.5 degrees. The difference wasn’t extreme, but it was large enough to make me rethink the accuracy of the weather reports coming out of The Weather Network. The moral of the story for me is that the UW Weather Station tracks measurements much more frequently than the The Weather Network ever will. So if you’re looking for an accurate report about the weather outside, either open your door and step outside or go to http://weather.uwaterloo.ca/ Well, that is for those of you who live in the K-W area.
Official website of Jonathan R. Schmidt