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Posted by Kevin, on December 8th, 2011
It’s nearly time to head back to Fredericton and participate in Curl for Cancer at the Fredericton Curling Club and that means fundraising time again. This is my 4th Curl for Cancer event since the death of my mom (from cancer) in October of 2007, and I’m hoping that once again my team, Stones of Stone, will bring home the top fundraising award like we have the past 2 years. It looks like we might actually have some competition this year so your help is definitely needed!
This year the Stones of Stone will take it up a notch by wearing *matching* kilts and tams! Once again, Dave will be joining us as our official team photographer / social media relations person / alternate curler, and he will even be wearing a kilt like the rest of the team this year. Dave created and updated the @StonesOfStone twitter account for us last year so who knows what he has in store for us this year. Be sure to follow along on event day.
For those who are interested, the summary from last year’s event can be found here.
My personal fundraising page, can be found ***** here *****.
The Stones of Stone fundraising page can be found ***** here *****.
I’m hoping I can count on those of you who have previously sponsored me and those who I have sponsored for other events. The event takes place on Jan 21st, 2012, so no time to waste – sponsor me now!
If you’re reading this in December, consider this one of your last chances to get a tax receipt for the 2011 tax year, and if you’re reading this in January, think of this as getting a head start on your donations for 2012. :)
UPDATE: Dec 31st, 2011 – I’ve made it to halfway to my goal! Thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far!
Continue reading 2012 Curl for Cancer Fundraising
Posted by Kevin, on February 4th, 2011
A couple weekends ago, JK, Grant, Dave and myself piled into my old Mazda and drove 1000+ kms (overnight Thursday thanks to an impending storm) to meet up with Trev to participate in Curl for Cancer at the Fredericton Curling Club.
Huge thanks to Dave who agreed to come along this year as our team photographer / videographer. We have him to thank for all the photos and videos that can be found on Flickr. On top of taking photos, he also handled all the social media for the team. The Stones of Stone twitter account was born on the trip down – feel free to check it out for a blow by blow of the weekend. By next year we’re hoping that Dave will add bagpiper to his resume. :)
As I alluded to in my plea for donations post, I had set a goal of winning the top individual fundraiser award again this year, and as a team we hoped to take home the top team fundraiser award. I started out with a personal goal of raising $1600, which was slightly more than what I brought in last year, and a team goal of $4K. Thanks to an overwhelming response to my pleas this year, I’m very happy to report that I was able to bump up my goal to $2K and still blow it out of the water! As a result, it was mission accomplished with respect to winning the top individual fundraiser award by bringing in a total of $2388.75. (That’s 3 in a row for me – every year I’ve participated.) As for the team – I couldn’t be prouder of the boys’ efforts – we raised a whopping $5777 and secured the top team fundraiser award again this year! Thank you so much to each and every person who sponsored me / us this year – I can’t thank everyone enough for that! (By the way, I’ve heard that the total amount raised by the event was $19K and based on the information I have, our team – one of 16 – actually had the top four individual fundraisers for the event and we brought in nearly 30% of the grand total for the whole event! I’m pretty damn happy about that – well done boys!)
So that covers the fundraising part of the event, but what about the curling? You may or may not recall that last year the Stones, in their debut as a team, somehow managed to win 3rd place. I’ll be the first to admit that was largely due to a lot of luck on our side. This year was not much different – we still seemed to have luck on our side in the end. The way points were awarded this year changed significantly from last year in an effort to minimize the effect of very lopsided games I guess. Believe it or not, this may have actually helped us. The way it went is that the winner of the game got 10 points (5 each for a tie) plus a point for each end they won, plus the point differential, up to a maximum of 5, which means the best you could do was 19 points for a game (10+4+5). After the first draw (for both groups), the Stones of Stone were tied for first after scoring the maximum 19 points. After the second draw (for both groups) we sat in 4th or 5th since we only managed a single point for winning one end of our second game. But as luck would have it, for the third and final draw of the day, the two teams that were ahead of us in our group ended up playing each other, and the two teams that were ahead of us in the other group also played each other! Long story short – since we scored the maximum 19 points for our last game, we actually managed to finish 3rd overall again this year! Awesome!
The final thing I need to mention is the outcome of the second annual Haggerty grudge match. This year it was Ed (Dad), Marie, Kate and Mike representing the Haggertys. Once again the game took place at the end of the day. They drew first blood and picked up a point in the first end, but we countered with five (yes 5!) in the 2nd end to take a commanding lead. I’m happy to report it was all downhill from there for the Haggertys as we picked up another point in the 3rd and then another 4 in the 4th and final end. I’m hoping they come back with a better effort next year. ;)
Posted by Kevin, on January 3rd, 2011
Fundraising Goal
Goal: $2,000.00
Achieved: $2,418.75
Happy New Year!
It’s coming up on that time of year again – time to head back to Fredericton and participate in Curl for Cancer at the Fredericton Curling Club. This is an event I’ve participated in twice since the death of my mom (from cancer) in October of 2007. I missed the first year that my brothers and sister and dad put a team in, but have been involved in the two events since then and plan to attend all future events.
This is pretty much the only fundraiser that I participate in every year, and as such I try to do my best in terms of raising money. This isn’t a huge event where you get free stuff just for participating – it’s a fairly small event that normally brings in around 20K or so total. I’m pretty happy to say that last year my team was responsible for bringing in about a quarter of the total amount raised, and the top 2 or 3 fundraisers were all on my team! Once again I’ll be shooting for top individual fundraiser, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. If you can help me out, it would certainly be appreciated.
The summary from last year’s event can be found here and the one from 2009 can be found here.
My personal fundraising page, where you can sponsor me, can be found ***** here *****.
I’m hoping I can count on those of you who have previously sponsored me and those who I have sponsored for other events. The event takes place on Jan 22nd, 2011, so no time to waste – sponsor me now! :)
UPDATE (Jan 20th): I’ve met my STRETCH goal of $2K! Huge thanks to everyone who has donated/sponsored me and my team!
Posted by Kevin, on November 29th, 2010 October 23rd was the date of the first annual 9 Run Run event. The race took place here in Stittsville, so I really had no excuse NOT to run – although I did leave it until a few weeks before the race to actually sign up. They offered a 3km family run and a half marathon distance race. I opted for the longer distance while Amy took the kids on the family run. Due to the fact that the half marathon started before the family run, I wasn’t able to do both unfortunately.
Race day was a bit chilly, but pretty much ideal running weather. As usual, I was fighting off a bit of a cold for a couple days before the race, and when I got up race day morning, I was feeling less than 100%. In the end though, I’m happy to report, that didn’t seem to make much difference.
In the interests of keeping this post short, I’ll try to sum up the race pretty quick. I managed a personal best at the half marathon distance with a time of 1:38:07, which is an improvement of over 6 minutes on my previous PB from back in May. I’m ecstatic about that result!
| Place |
Name |
City |
Bib# |
Time |
Chip |
Pace |
Category |
Category
Place |
Gender
Place |
| 45 |
KEVIN HAGGERTY |
STITTSVILLE |
|
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2608 |
1:38:13.5 |
1:38:07.5 |
4:40 |
Men 30 – 39 |
8/54 |
37/211 |
As for the race itself, there wasn’t much to speak of – it just sort of happened. I had set up RK on my iPhone to a target pace of 4:44 / km, which would have gotten me a time of around 1:40:00, which was my goal time. As expected, I started out a bit fast. At around km 3, I met Eric, who was also looking for a time between 1:40:00 and 1:42:00. I mentioned to him that we were a bit fast on our pace, but Eric said that he was feeling good so I eventually let him go ahead while I decided to keep it a bit more conservative. I kept my eye on him though, and he never got more than 50 to 100 feet ahead of me.
The final 8km or so of the race were on the TransCanada Trail that I run on way too much, so it felt familiar. Just as I turned onto the trail, there was an aid station. One young volunteer was holding out an energy gel, which I went to grab, but at the last second she pulled it away from me. I looked at her as if to say, “Huh?!” and she immediately said, “Sorry! I’ll run it up to you!” I told her not to worry about it. Thinking about it later, I figure this is what happened: I turned onto the trail and saw the aid station. I must have been expecting water and so when I saw the gel, I hesitated a bit and must have pulled my arm back just a tad before realizing it was a gel and that I did in fact want it. I figure that slight hesitation must have been interpreted as me not wanting the gel so she pulled it away. Anyway, it didn’t really matter, and I had a good chuckle about it. What really made me smile was the fact that one of the volunteers DID run a gel up to me! He indicated that he had wanted to do the run himself, so he was happy to get some running in. I was really grateful and chatted with him for a few minutes while I ran.
The only other funny thing I saw was again, just after I turned onto the trail. As I mentioned, I had been keeping my eyes on Eric, and had been slowly reeling him back in as the race went on. When we got to the trail, he was maybe 30 feet ahead of me. I saw him move to the right of the trail and then take a tumble. I wondered what that was all about… Due to the tumble, I caught up with him sooner rather than later and told him as I was running by that we were still ahead of pace for a 1:40:00. He tucked in behind him and then eventually came back up beside me. We finished the last 5 km of the race side by side, pushing each other. I asked him after the race what happened, why the tumble? He told me that he had stashed a gel flask on the side of the trail the night before, and that in his mind the pick-up went a lot smoother. :)
All in all a fantastic race – can’t wait to see how much quicker I can run the half in May.
RK track can be found here.
Full race results here.
Oh and good luck to Eric who is running Boston next year! I’ll get there eventually…
Posted by Kevin, on November 29th, 2010
I’m sure the suspense has been killing you, waiting to hear how the Perth Kilt Run went, and more importantly…did I manage to beat Grant? Well wait no longer (5 months is long enough I think). Who am I kidding – I’m sure anyone who actually cares already knows what happened, but I’ll write it out here for posterity anyway. :)
The race was the evening of June 26th, a Saturday. It started at 1800, the latest race start I’ve experienced. This was be the shorted distance race I’ve ever run (not counting the sprinting I did in elementary school of course) and I was trying to psyche myself up to push as hard as I could…sort of. My plan, as usual when I race with Grant, was to simply stay beside him for the whole race and then beat him at the end. Traditionally that strategy has NEVER worked for me, but I was hoping things would be different this time. A guy’s gotta have a dream right?
Long story short: I beat him! (Just barely) The somewhat longer story follows. We lined up near the front of the pack for the race start. The start of the race was a bit of a surprise to most, if I recall correctly, with a rather loud bang (gun? cannon? can’t recall really) starting things off before anyone expected it. I was fiddling with my iPhone, trying to get RK to track me, but eventually gave up. I later manually added the track. Right from the start I was a bit uncomfortable – this certainly wasn’t a leisurely training run. Grant and I were running at around a 4:30/km pace pretty consistently for the first few kms but when we got to the golf course, it felt like we really slowed down. It didn’t help that the km markers were off by quite a bit (as evidenced by the fact that one km was timed at over 5:30 and another at under 3:30). There was at least once when I felt like I was struggling a bit to keep pace with Lawson, but there were also times when I held back so as not to drop him. Not sure what he’d say about that. :)
The last stretch of the race (I’d say the last 250-300m) was a straight shot just after taking a 90 degree corner. The last race I raced with Grant he put in a finishing kick at around 500m to go – I was expecting the same this time. I was watching him as we rounded the last corner and then I decided that instead of waiting for him to go and trying to stay with him, I’d see what I could do. I picked up the pace and didn’t look back. With a few meters to go, I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, coming up beside me. I turned on the jets for the last 3 or 4 steps to make sure I’d finish ahead of him. I’d done it! I was pretty happy. :)
After all was said and done, I’d beaten him by a measly 1.2 seconds – basically nothing, but it didn’t matter to me, I was on top of the world. I’ve told him that was the TSN turning point of my life, and from now on, I’m not losing another race to him. Who knows – he’s still beaten me A LOT more than I’ve ever beaten him. It’s all just good fun (for me anyway).
Relevant (to this post) Results:
| Place |
Name |
City |
Bib# |
Time |
Chip |
Pace |
Category |
Category
Place |
Gender
Place |
| 44 |
KEVIN HAGGERTY |
STITTSVILLE |
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439 |
36:17.0 |
36:08.1 |
7:16 |
Men 35 – 39 |
4/48 |
39/492 |
| 45 |
GRANT LAWSON |
OTTAWA |
|
|
591 |
36:17.5 |
36:09.2 |
7:16 |
Men 35 – 39 |
5/48 |
40/492 |
Full results can be found here.
The record attempt was successful, I think. I really hope they make this run an annual thing – I really enjoyed it. Great atmosphere and well…being surrounded by fit women in kilts is never a bad thing. :)
One of my favourite memories: Bonnie (Grant’s wife) telling me, immediately after the race, that she was really surprised to see me in front on the final stretch. :)
Grant will paint a different picture, including the fact that the sneakers he wore were too big, etc… It’s all just noise if you ask me.
Posted by Kevin, on May 30th, 2010 It’s been a long time since I posted anything on here, and since I just completed the Ottawa Half Marathon today (for the 3rd time), I figured I’d sum up the results of all the races I’ve participated in, just so I don’t lose them, and for easy comparison.
May 29th, 2005 – Ottawa Half Marathon – time 1:59:32
This was my first half marathon, and I went from not running, to running this. My original plan had been to run the marathon, but I managed to sprain my ankle pretty bad with about 3 weeks to go (thanks Ellie!) so I opted to drop down to the 1/2 distance. I think originally I picked a number out of my butt for a goal time (1:45:00 if I remember correctly) but was happy enough to come in under 2 hours. Grant kicked my butt on this one – don’t remember his time but I remember him beating me by a lot.
May 28th, 2006 – Ottawa Marathon – time 4:03:46
My first marathon. I remember being severely disappointed with this time. If I remember correctly, it was pretty hot that day.
July 1, 2006 – HBC Run for Canada (10 KM) – time 46:30
Yet another race I lost to Grant. :) It was after this race, in talking to Grant, that I figured out that maybe I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough. This was the shortest distance race I’ve ever done.
Jan 28th, 2007 – Ottawa Hypothermic Half Marathon – time 1:47:21
In my mind, this time is still under protest. The race wasn’t timed by chips and the woman listed as finishing 2 seconds ahead of me, never actually got by me before the finish so… This is also the race that I’ve come closest to beating Grant – his time was 1:47:14, so he beat me by 5-7 seconds… Despite all this, I was pretty damn happy with this race. I also remember getting violently ill (norwalk) about 10-12 hours after this race – lost about 11 pounds if I remember correctly.
May 27, 2007 – Ottawa Marathon – time 3:46:43
Certainly an improvement over my first marathon. I believe I had been hoping for around 3:40 so I was a bit disappointed with this one too.
May 24, 2009 – Ottawa Half Marathon – time 1:48:54
I didn’t train much for this one unfortunately, and for some reason I decided that I didn’t need to take on any liquids AT ALL during the race. In the end, my ‘strategy’ didn’t pay off and I wasn’t too happy with the result. This was the first race I had done where I didn’t see an improvement in my time from previous races of the same distance. I think that was the most disappointing part to me.
May 30, 2010 – Ottawa Half Marathon – time 1:44:20
Absolutely perfect running weather for this year’s race. I was once again disappointed with my time, although it IS a personal best so I’m not THAT disappointed. Leading up to this race I was continuously getting sick, which really hurt my training. 4 days before the race, just after a short easy run (the first run I had done in a week and a half) I was feeling a ‘weirdness’ in my chest. The feeling is difficult to explain, but it kind of feels like I can’t get a deep breath. Unfortunately that persisted right up until race day, and throughout the race – and continues right now. It didn’t help things I’m sure, but like I said, I can’t be too disappointed.
So that’s it – that’s all the races I’ve ever done. Looks like I’ve been disappointed with my results more than I’ve been happy with them. Perhaps I’m expecting too much of myself, or maybe I’m just not training/pushing hard enough. I’ll wait until I get healthy and actually complete a training program properly before I try to decide which. :)
The next race I’ve got scheduled is the Perth Kilt Run, which is a short 8 km race that is also to be a world record attempt – to get the most kilted people running a race together. As a bonus, we get a ‘free’ kilt for running the race. Should be fun, and yet another opportunity for me to try to beat Grant in a race. :)
Posted by Kevin, on February 26th, 2010 The city of Ottawa has been asking us to conserve water, or cut back on consumption as much as possible. I’m sure you’ve seen / heard the ads – especially the ones in the summer about watering your lawn. As it turns out, people were listening and actually did cut back on their water consumption. Fantastic right? Not so much – people cut back enough that Ottawa is now seeing a revenue shortfall and as a result has increased the price of water.
I’m actually not sure how I feel about this. When I first heard about it, I thought it was a pretty craptacular move by city counsel – sitting pretty solidly in the fail category, but the more I think about it, I’m not so sure it’s a complete fail anymore – depending on how things shake out.
Yes, it sucks that you’ll be paying more for less, or perhaps I should say paying the same for less – but won’t that make you want to use even LESS water, thereby conserving even more? That’s a good thing right? Of course if Ottawa stays with the same strategy then that will mean another increase next year, and another one the year after that, etc – which means we’ll just keep paying more and more for less and less water, and that doesn’t sound like much of a reward for trying to do the right thing…
Posted by Kevin, on January 31st, 2010  Last weekend JK, and Grant, and myself jumped into the car and drove 1000+ kms to meet up with Trev to participate in Curl for Cancer at the Fredericton Curling Club. This is an event that I participated in last year with my brothers and sister, in memory of my mom. My main goal last year, since I’m not a curler, was to win the title of highest individual fundraiser. As it turned out, my biggest competitor in that race was my own brother, and teammate, Mike. Since there was no easy online donation page for participants last year, I had no idea how close or far I was from his total – and he wasn’t telling me anything. Of course, the reverse was true as well, and I didn’t tell him what my total was either so both of us were flying blind right up until the day of the event. If you haven’t read my post from last year, I’ll give you the short version – I managed to beat my brother and win the title by bringing in $1230. Since my brother was close to me in what he was able to bring in, we also secured the highest team fundraiser title as well. This year, I hoped to retain my title and also keep the team title as well.
I wasn’t really on the ball this year for this event – not sure why, but I didn’t start thinking about it until a couple of weeks before. After talking to my dad, it wasn’t clear what everyone’s plan was – he mentioned that my sister wasn’t planning to participate this year, and he said he hadn’t heard from my brother Sean on what his plans were so… As a result, I contacted the boys here to see if they’d be interested. They jumped at the opportunity and Grant quickly decided that if we were going to go – since we weren’t going to win at curling – that we should at least look the part. And by look the part, he thought we’d better wear kilts. Grant is also the one who came up with the team name – Stones of Stone – which he felt suited us well considering the kilts and the cool conditions at the curling club. :) Grant had some other great ideas which we didn’t end up using this year, but may put to good use in the future.
I’m happy to report that I did manage to retain my title as highest individual fundraiser, after bringing in $1533.33! (Special thanks to Darcy for making sure it wasn’t a nice round number) Another huge THANK YOU to everyone who sponsored me – you guys are the best, and I hope I can count on you again next year! I’m also happy to report that once again, my closest competition was a member of my own team – Trevor brought in $1015! In fact my entire team did a kick ass job and collectively we brought in over $4K in donations! That was definitely good enough to get us the top team fundraiser award and also good enough to account for 20-25% of the total amount raised by the entire event! We were one team out of 22 and we brought in nearly 25% of the total amount – if you ask me, that’s damn impressive and I couldn’t be more proud of my team!
As far as the actual curling part of the event, I think we ended up surprising a lot of people (ourselves included), by staying in the running for 1st place right up until the last draw of the day! After all was said and done, we took third place, which we were more than happy with considering our lack of experience with curling. The way placing was determined was strictly based on points scored so it didn’t necessarily mean the best would end up winning – it all depended on the strength of teams you ended up playing. If two really good teams played each other it might end with two low scores, whereas two teams that had never played before might end up scoring a bunch of points. I’m not saying that’s what happened with us, but I’m not saying that’s NOT what happened either. We won two games and lost our third. I was skip for all three games and take full responsibility for the loss of our third game – I think I cracked under the pressure. I don’t think the two Picaroon’s Winter Warmers before the third game helped though.
There were awards for: (a) highest individual fundraiser, (b) highest team fundraiser, (c) most enthusiastic team, (d) 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in curling. We nabbed the awards for highest individual and team fundraiser, picked up 3rd place for curling and even got an honourable mention for most enthusiastic team – thanks in large part to our kilts I’m sure – so I’m calling this a huge success for Stones of Stone’s first outing as a team. Well done boys! (In case you’re wondering – the Special Olympics team got the award for most enthusiastic team)
The final thing I need to mention is the outcome of the first annual Haggerty grudge match. As it turned out, both my sister and brother did indeed end up playing – so there was once again a Haggerty team playing in Curl for Cancer. It was my two brothers, Mike and Sean, my sister, Katie, and my dad – who was naturally the skip of the team. We set up a game against them at the end of the day – which ended up being immediately after losing our first game of the day. They drew first blood and picked up a point in the first end, but we countered with a single in the 2nd end to tie it up. They then picked up another couple points in the 3rd end. We again managed to tie it up in the 4th and final end (short games). That meant it was a draw to the button contest between skips. It was my dad, a seasoned curling veteran, versus me. I really don’t think I need to tell you how this ended, you can likely guess, but I’ll spell it out for posterity. They beat us. We’ll get them next year!
I haven’t heard the official total for the amount of money raised, but as I alluded to above, it was somewhere between 16 and 17K I think – a bit lower than last year unfortunately.
That’s about it. For those interested, I’ve got some photos here, Trev’s got some photos here, and JK’s got some photos here.
Posted by Kevin, on January 11th, 2010 One of my last posts was about Fat Cyclist and his amazing fundraising efforts for both LIVESTRONG and World Bicycle Relief. While he had amazing prizes that I’m sure helped his cause enormously, he still made the task of raising over $100K seem easy peasy – I mean he accomplished it in only a few days!
I, on the other hand, am having a hell of a time even raising $1K. Granted, I have no prizes to offer, and I don’t have as many people who read this little blog, but this task is seeming harder than it was last year when I didn’t have the advantage of an online donation page, but still managed to bring in $1230!
This year I’ve got a page set up with the Canadian Cancer Society for online donations, but like I said, I’m having a bit of a hard time reaching my goal. So consider this my plea for donations – if I haven’t hit you up personally yet, I probably will, so why not save us both some time and just go donate right now. When it comes to raising money for charity, and specifically for cancer research, I really don’t mind pestering you! ;)
For easy reference, my donation page can be found at: http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/haggaret
And of course, HUGE THANKS to those who HAVE sponsored me already – you guys rock!
Posted by Kevin, on December 29th, 2009 It’s days like today that scare the hell out of me. I’m sure everyone (at least those that live in Ottawa) has heard about the Ottawa police officer that was murdered today. For me the scariest part is that this wasn’t an act of revenge or anything like that, but rather a random act against a random police officer. It could have easily been my wife, or one of our good friends. I’m kind of at a loss for words right now.
For those of you who take the police for granted, and sadly I think that is most people, have a read through the poem below by Adam E. Hutton and remember it next time you curse the ‘damn police’ for coming down on your for something stupid YOU did.
I can’t imagine what the family of Constable Eric Czapnik is going through right now, and I hope to God that I never have to find out. MY prayers are certainly with them.
“Pray for the Men in Blue”
It takes a very special person to wear the blue.
Most people do not understand what we do
We made a commitment to protect and serve.
We work hard to provide the safety you deserve.
No normal shifts, not nine to five.
We work 24/7 to keep you alive.
Holidays and weekends don’t mean a thing.
We work night and day, just give us a ring.
Our loved ones and children pray every night.
That we will return at the break of daylight.
We carry guns and wear vests to help us get through.
You couldn’t imagine some of the things we must do.
We see accidents and blood and small children crying.
We also see death and it’s not just old people dying.
Abusive spouses and parents that don’t seem to care.
These are just a few of the things, to make you aware.
Drug dealers and drunks are a regular sight.
We go to the bars for fight after fight.
Responding to calls day after day.
Not allowing our personal lives to get in the way.
You complain all the time when you see us on a break.
We just drive around in cars and oh, the money we make.
Stop for a second and try to assess
Who’s always there to clean up the mess.
We do all we can to help and provide.
To make you feel safe and secure inside.
Please remember all of the things that we must do.
And next time you pray, include the men in blue.
By
Adam E. Hutton
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