Friday Spotlight: Kevin402can
I woke up this morning singing THIS pretending to be the high pitched guy so that means one thing and one thing only... it's FRIIII-DAAAAAAY!!!
Before we dig in, the rest of the world is going to rejoice that today's Spotlight Athlete is a metric user so my fellow Americans are going to need THIS opened up in another window to make their life a bit easier.
Today's featured runner is yet another person you'll see giving sage advice when the questions start coming in. He might be older but he'll smoke you on the course. Residing as our Neighbor of the North, ladies and gents, I bring to you.... u/kevin402can!
Let's roll!
###The Runner:
First Name?
Kevin
Age?
52
Where are you from?
Stratford Ontario, yes the home of Justin Beiber, please don't hold that against me.
Occupation?
I work in a family business, we own a CNC machine shop
###Running Q&A's:
What are your PR’s?
As a much younger version of myself the only time I remember is 800m in 1:56:00
As an adult:
30km 2:04:58, this is my best result, it age grades to an equivalent 16:24 5k in the open category.
Marathon 3:06:16
10k 40:50
8K 32:44
5k 19:25
The 30k race I did early April indicates I improved a lot over the winter and all my other times are soft. I need to do some serious racing this summer.
What is your distance PR?
Farthest I have run in a single run? That would be a marathon.
How long have you been running?
Thats a tough one to answer. I started in high school, kept it up in college. Started lifting weighs and running less after college, I was sort of done with competitive running. Started bike racing at the age of 24 but would run in the offseason a bit. Kids happened and I stopped running, but I tried to stay in shape. Started back up as an adult about 5 years ago.
Briefly explain why you began running?
It's such a cliche I am sort of embarrased to admit it but as a teenager I was inspired by the training montage in the original Rocky movie. As an adult it was my cousin running a marathon. As a high school runner I ran the 800m, never thought I could do a marathon but I thought if my cousin and I share the same genes why can't I?
Most memorable running moment?
The Around the Bay 30k race beat me the first two times I tried to run it. Tore a calf at 25k the first time and my legs just totally failed at 10k the second time. On my third try things went much better and with about 5k to go I passed the 2:10 pacer. At that point I knew I was going to make my A goal time.
Do you have a running mantra?
Pretty much every morning when I get out of bed I think "Gotta get up, those kilometers aren't going to run themselves"
What’s your highest recorded weekly mileage?
I don't really go for high weeks but it would be somewhere around 105kms. I prefer to look at bigger blocks, my best month was January of this year at 429kms.
What time of day do you prefer to run?
Mornings. Nothing else works for me and I like it.
Any big races coming up?
I have an 8k on Sunday. I am going on vacation to China in May and I would really like to find a race there but more just to say I did it than as a serious race.
What are your short-term running goals?
Sub 19 5k, sub 39 10k
What are your long-term running goals?
Sub 3 marathon
What’s one piece of running advice you’d give to the younger version of yourself?
Less intervals and more easy miles. And get your cadence up.
What is something you need to work on to become a better runner?
I'm really bad at anything other than running. I should do core work but other than sporadically doing the myrtle routine I don't do anything.
What is your current shoe choice?
Hoka Conquest is my current favorite and I race in Skechers Go Run Ultras. I am a maximal shoe kind of guy.
What’s your comfy pace?
4:50/km
Trail? Road? Track? Or Treadmill?
Roads. I like trails but in my small city there are not enough long trails. I burned out on track intervals as a teenager.
What is your ideal running weather?
Anything about -17 degrees celsius works for me. I see bad weather as just a change. Like lots of people, I have fantasies about being a pro runner and running in lousy weather is probably the closest I will ever get to being a pro.
Do you have any social media accounts you’d like to share? [Facebook, Strava, Twitter]
I'm socially inept. I have a strava account and garmin connect but I have no idea how to share. If somebody tells me how to do it I will gladly share.
###Just For Fun:
What’s your spirit animal?
A husky. I watched a documentary about some crazy Russian trappers and one fellow drove 150 kilometers on his snowmobile and his husky ran beside him, in the snow, all the way. The husky seemed to be having a blast the whole 150kms.
What hobbies and interests do you have besides running?
I love badminton. We have a great club in my town and I could play it every night of the week. I've really had to cut back though as running high mileage and hurting myself at a hard game of badminton seem to go together.
Do you have any hidden talents?
I can turn any stop light red just before I get there. Every time. It's not a really great talent. Actually it would be bike racing. I was much better as a bike racer than anything else I have done.
Biggest pet peeve?
That's a tough one, way too many things piss me off way too much. I separated about three years ago and my new girlfriend is so much more easy going than anybody I have ever met, she has a much healthier attititud about life than I do. Being around her is really helping me deal better with small frustrations so hopefully in a short while I will be able to say I have no real pet peeves but for now I'll say getting a stone in shoe before I get even a block into my run.
Favorite Quote or Poem?
This one has me stumped, I guess I don't have one.
What songs have you been listening to recently?
This is embarrasing. I have started to supplement my running with Arc Training and while I am on the trainer I have been listening to ABBA. I can't help it, I like them.
What are some of your favorite non-running subreddits?
I like worldnews and news. Advancedrunning and health would be a couple of my others that I check every day.
###One Last Question:
What is the origin of your username?
I tried to get an account at a different message board a long time ago and kevin was taken as well as kevin1,2,3, etc. I gave up trying to get a cool low number and went with my street address, 402. The can is for Canada. Don't know why I added that.
I really appreciate u/kevin402can taking the time to let us know a bit more about him. I'm a little disappointed that he's going to hog all of the Justin Bieber stories to himself but we'll let it slide this time As usual, please tag u/kevin402can 's username when personally asking him a question in this thread! Also, if I see that you've failed to tag him after asking him a question, I'll try my best to respond to your question by tagging him myself. So be aware. Tagging his username alerts him that his attention is needed. This way, he doesn't have to sift through all of the comments one by one, which can be a rather daunting task when there is a lot of traffic to the thread. Please don't forget that all of our Friday Spotlight athletes may need time to respond to your comments and questions so give them some time to reply.
####Thanks for reading everyone!!!
Previously Featured Spotlight Runners:
ATTENTION READERS!
I've been getting messages weekly from a lot of people asking to be featured in the Friday Spotlight Thread. My response to them is the same every time. I do not get to personally choose who is chosen for each thread. With exception to Palindrome27 (which I randomly chose to get this started), every runner thus far has been selected by the person before them. It's one of the perks of getting nominated. There is no list of names. No spreadsheet with columns and columns of usernames. Nothing. So for those confused, users like Philpips was chosen by Despoena. Despoena was chosen by Craigster38. So on and so on. You get the idea. Doing it this way eliminates the hassle of having to personally pick someone every week. This keeps me neutral. Some of you have expressed your opinion (via PM) on who's been featured this far claiming that I have only chosen runners who are fast, have been running for a while, or compete in longer distance races. This is simply luck of the draw. There is zero favoritism here. Each featured runner gets to personally pick someone they find interesting. I apply no pressure to the runners to pick a particular skill level of runner. This is the beauty of the process. If you want to be featured, you can up your chances of being chosen by being an active member of the subreddit. Comment as much as possible. Submit quality content. Provide as much as you can as a runner to help keep this community growing and I'm certain your efforts will not go unnoticed. Just keep tuning in and making friends and eventually it'll pay off if you want to be featured. Thank you.
Posted Apr 29, 2016, 11:52 AM UTC