Track and Field Blogs - Reid Coolsaet

Many of you might unfamiliar with me, Reid Coolsaet, because IÂ’ve spent most of my life in the Great White North. So hereÂ’s the low down on who I am and what IÂ’ve done so far.

I was born, raised, went to school and continue to train in Canada. Normally people want to know PBÂ’s coming out of high school (we had a 13th grade in Ontario), 4:06 1500m, 6:05 2000ms/c, 8:52 3000m and 15:56 5000m. Throughout high school I didnÂ’t really run that much other than cross-country in the fall as I concentrated on downhill ski racing in the winter and skateboarding in the spring/summer. It wasnÂ’t until the 12th grade that I started competing in track and I was still ski racing during my first year in University.

Needless to say I wasnÂ’t highly recruited but, I knew I wanted to keep running in University so I chose to attend the University of Guelph where there was/is a great coach, Dave Scott-Thomas. The University of Guelph has a very strong distance program with numerous titles on both the womenÂ’s and menÂ’s team. In the past 9 years the menÂ’s team has won 5 CIS (Canadian University champs) XC titles and has finished no worse than second. At the end of my five years of University (2003) I got my PBÂ’s down to 3:46 1500m, 8:09 3000m, 13:53 5000m and 30:40 10000m. Since then I have dropped them to 3:40.38, 7:56.32, 13:21.53 and 27:56.92.

Once finishing University I had jobs working in a running store and at a bank but, since I became eligible for our national funding (called carding) in 2005 I was able to quit the bank and work very little at the running store. IÂ’ve been running for Reebok for two years now and theyÂ’ve helped me tons with equipment and getting me to meets over in Europe. The training group I train with in Guelph is a bunch of Canadian post-collegiate runners from Canadian and US schools and we are part of one of the National Endurance Centres in Canada.

Some of the highlights of my running so far have been: Winning 4 consecutive team XC titles and a 3000m title while at University; Winning the last 4 Canadian National championships over 5000m. Making the 2005 World Champs team in Helsinki; Finishing 2nd at the 2005 World University games in Turkey; and, competing at 4 World XC teams and finishing 52nd in 2005.