Ubene to compete for Canada at World Cross-Nation Championships

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His eligibility to compete on the college stage now full, Tecumseh’s Mitchell Ubene nonetheless has working targets.

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The 2021 U Sports activities males’s cross-country champion, the 24-year-old Ubene arrived in Bathurst, Australia on Tuesday able to compete for Canada’s senior males’s workforce on Saturday on the 2023 World Athletics Cross-Nation Championships.

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“This can be a massive one to make this workforce and I’m glad the whole lot got here by way of,” Ubene stated.

The Vista Academy highschool product was a adorned athlete throughout his college profession with the Guelph Gryphons. Whereas he’s working to finish his Masters in mechanical engineering, he can not compete on the college stage.

“I’m not eligible to compete in college anymore, so I don’t actually compete within the college stuff,” Ubene stated. “It’s extra the membership or no matter novice or skilled stuff I can discover.”

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Ubene admits there may be an adjustment to coaching and competing exterior of the every day scheduled routine of college life.

“I nonetheless have my coach right here in Guelph I had final yr and I practice with the Royal Metropolis (Athletics Membership),” Ubene stated. “So there’s just a little of that, however post-collegiate working is just a little completely different.

“It makes it a bit tougher since you don’t have the fixed workforce construction. You must be dedicated your self and setting targets.”

And that’s how Ubene is approaching this chapter of his profession in a sport he needs to proceed to chase.

“Canadian nationwide groups are the primary targets for me now,” Ubene stated. 

This will likely be Ubene’s fourth look for Canada on the nationwide stage. He represented the nation twice as a junior and made the senior NACAAC. 

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“The world nationwide workforce is a extra thrilling one to make,” Ubene stated. “Junior was thrilling, however senior it’s virtually such as you actually need to earn it.”

Ubene earned the spot after a fifth-place end at November’s Canadian Cross-Nation Championships.

“Should you are available prime 4, you have been mechanically chosen and I used to be fifth,” Ubene stated. “I used to be on the brink, however they take six (runners), so I knew I had a superb probability.”

That is the primary time these championships will likely be staged since 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Canada has 28 athletes set to compete on the occasion with a senior males’s and girls’s workforce, junior males’s and girls’s workforce together with a blended workforce. Nonetheless, sizzling circumstances for a sport contested in late fall in Canada will make for a tricky competitors over the 10km course.

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“My most important objective is to compete properly throughout the nationwide workforce,” stated Ubene, who will run with Sarnia native and former Windsor Legion membership member Andrew Davies. “If I will be entrance finish of the six senior males, that will be massive.

“Actually good can be round a fiftieth inserting. That will be an A-plus objective. It’s going to be robust.”

Ubene hopes this occasion will springboard him into the summer season working season.

“After this, I might be on the lookout for a giant out of doors season,” Ubene stated. “I did some indoor races, a 3km in Michigan and one in Boston. I used to be third final yr at nationals open air over 5km and hopefully, this yr, I can get again on the rostrum once more.”

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