Back to Reality

The past 7 days were amazing…. beautiful scenery, great track competition, awesome running conditions, and a lot of fun times with Mike, DJ, Jon, Lane, and Andy. At the present moment, this was by far the most enjoyable trip I've taken with the team. I can't imagine anything that could have been better.

After spending all day traveling on Monday to get back to Huntsville, I'm ready to get back to my normal routine. I haven't been able to get in cross training, strength training, or swimming in this past week; so I'm ready to start that again. I also haven't been eating very well that past 4-6 weeks and I defiantly can tell a different in my running and my overall energy levels. I have three weeks until I go to Colorado, so I'm going to go back to sticking to a stricter diet until then. It will probably all go to crap again once I get to Colorado (it always does if I travel for more than few days) but if I can eat well until then I should be okay.

I'm also entering the last phase of my current training plan. I have a time trial schedule once a week from now until I leave. I'll have a 5k race this Saturday in Houston, followed by a 1500m time trial next week, an 800m time trial the following week, and a 3k time trial the day before I leave for Colorado. I've been running pretty well for a while so I'm looking forward to see what I can run in these time trials.

Pre's Trail

I got to run on Pre's Trail the past two mornings and it's quite a nice trail. My only complaint is that it is flat (I like hills) and that it is pine chips and dirt. My lower legs were covered in dirt once I finished running and now both my training shoes and racing flats are extremely dirty. I guess this is the side effect of running on soft pine trails. I've also noticed that the softer trails around here make my patellar tendons sore. I run mostly on roads in Huntsville (which I prefer) and my patellar tendons are strong, but they are just not used to the stability required of them from running on soft trails. However, I think if I ran on these trails more often they would adjust. Other than that though, it's a great place to train. The weather was amazing and it's a 4.1 mile loop with various connectors throughout. It's a very peaceful and relatively quiet place to train.

Saturday morning, after a 4 mile warm up, I did a 4.1 mile tempo run on Pre's Trail. I ran 29:21.7 (7:09.7 per mile). It felt good (the weather was great) and I was pleased with it. I felt like I could have gone on to 6 miles at that pace. I'm hoping to run around 19:40 for 5k next weekend in Houston. However, if I were to run a 5k up here I think I could get pretty close to 19-flat. It's hard to describe how easy it is to run up here and how big of a negative effect the heat and humidity have (it was 50 degrees this morning when I ran.... in June!).

It’s also a pretty cool to be running on the same trails and at the same time as the elite runners. I’ve seen Bernard Lagat, Matt Tegenkamp, Evan Jagar and a host of others that blew by me in a blur and I was unable to recognize them.

I've gotten in 22.5 miles the past two days (I'm currently at 53 for the week). This is more than I wanted to run this week, but I've decided to just go with it and take advantage of the great training areas while I can. I'll try to keep tomorrow's run under 6 miles.... but no promises :)

Lots Going On

So a lot has been going on. I'm still here in Oregon at the USA National Championships. This is a bit of a working vacation. The weather here is unbelievable. Running in Texas you just grow accustomed to having to deal with hot and humid weather. You wake up early or wait until late to run, but you tend to forget that people in other parts of the country don't have to deal with this torture. I've been keeping to my morning run schedule while here, but to be honest, it's cold when I run in the morning. If I didn't have other things going on, I could easily wait until 3pm and run (it was 68 degrees at 3pm today with 48% humidity). My workout this morning was 8x800m @ 4k-5k race pace with a 2 min rest [200m jog in that 2 min rest]. I really like this workout and do it at least every couple of weeks. In Texas I've been averaging about 3:14-3:17 for each 800m, though last time I did the workout I went 3:11-3:12-3:17-3:21 and quit because I felt like crap. Today I averaged 3:07.1 for each 800m and it felt easy. If I wasn't racing next weekend I would have kept going and run 10-12 intervals. Running is so easy up here that it's hard to explain. Any southern runner who has a chance to run up here for a few days in the summer needs to do it. There is a night and day difference. I have a 4-mile tempo run scheduled for Saturday. I can't wait!

I passed the 1000 mile mark for 2009 today. It took me 176 days to reach this and I'm on pace for 2080 miles for the year. As long as I stay healthy, I think I'll get close to 2200 once I begin to bump up my mileage in preperations for a half-marathon in January.

This working vacation has been a lot of fun. We drove about an hour and half yesterday to go to Florence, Oregon to see the Pacific coast. We drove through some very beautiful mountains in Western Oregon. It was overcast and misty once we got there, but we still played on a beach for a little while then went to eat some seafood (I don't really like seafood, but I felt I needed to eat some since we were on the coast). The meet is going well and I have to admit I'm little star struck. While hanging out in the coach/athlete hospitality tent I get to over-hear a lot of conversations between elite athletes and their friends/coaches/agents. It's quite interesting to hear what they talk about and what their attitudes are about other athletes. It's been fun so far.

I plan on running Pre's Trail in the morning and checking out the memorial where he died. I'm not a big Prefontaine fan, but just as every Muslim must visit Mecca at some point in their life it seems like every distance runner must visit Eugene and Pre's Memorial at some point.

Long Day

I woke up at 5:15am to make sure I had time and energy to run today. It's times like this when I think I may be taking my running a bit too seriously. Most recreational runners would just sleep in and possible take the day off, but my competitive instincts won't let me do that. I was able to get in a good 8 miler and I was able to really push the pace the last 3 miles. It felt good and I feel really fit aerobically right now. It wasn't but 6 months ago when a 5 mile run was a long way.... and now 8 miles feels pretty standard.

I left Huntsville at 8am to go to the airport and fly to Oregon. The USA National Championships are this week and we've had 4 athletes qualify. Since Coach Collier and Coach Self are on vacation I had to bring the athletes. The flight into Portland was amazing as we flew very close to a massive snow covered mountain just before landing. The scenary here is amazing and the weather is beautiful. I've search the internet and found several running trails in the Eugene area. I hope to run on as many of them as I can while I'm here. I can't wait for my morning run. It was a long trip and I'm pretty tired, but I'm looking forward to waking up early to get in a good run.

Anaerobia

This morning I went out with the intention of doing a 1200m time trial, followed by a couple of 400s. After warming up I ran 4:18.3 (88.8 - 86.9 - 82.6) and it felt way to easy for a time trial. I was timid at the start and ran the first 400m way too conservatively. I was disappointed with the time but encourage with how it felt. After a 400m jog and short rest I ran 2x400m @ 77 sec with a 400m jog between each. I felt strong on the 400s. Hopefully when I time trial again in a few weeks over 800m and 1500m I'll feel like I did today. I just need to remember to be a little more aggressive.

First Blog

This is my first blog and I don't know how long this will last... I've been envolved with endurance athletes the past 12 years, but with few small exceptions, I've never been much of a runner... until about 7 months ago. After losing about 80 lbs through diet and unorganized exercise I started running pretty frequently (losing another 20 lbs). It didn't take long for my competitive instincts to take over and the next thing I know I'm running over 40 miles most weeks with 2 or 3 'quality' workouts each week. I've also started racing as frequently as I can, as I enjoy seeing the fruits of my labor (obessive compulsive disorder).