Got It Twisted

TRAINING

On my last blog I was pretty happy about running my highest mileage week ever and was feeling pretty good about it.  This week started off with a workout on Monday which gave me three hard days in a row (Sat workout, Sun long-run, Mon workout), which I usually don’t encounter.  However, last week we switched the Friday workout to Saturday.  Needless to say I pretty much hit a wall the next day.  On Tuesday I was dragging my feet on both my morning and afternoon runs and hills seemed to present themselves with a 20 pound bag on my back.  On Wednesday morning I went really easy again, to be honest I didn’t really have a choice.  While warming up with the team for the workout on Wednesday afternoon I wasn’t sure what to expect from the workout, and we were about to do 20 X 400m!

I eased into the first repetition and felt pretty good.  And then I still felt good going two seconds faster on the second 400m.  The workout ended up going very well for me, I guess my legs came around just in time.  I’ve only really surprised myself a few times this whole year in workouts and Wednesday was one of them.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been happy with the vast majority of my workouts since April but rarely have I hit significantly faster paces than expected.  My last 400m was run in 60 seconds flat, which is the fastest 400m I’ve run in well over a year (two injuries and marathon training will do that).

To make sure I wasn’t overdoing it I made sure Thursday was a very light day, which means running about 1/3 of the daily mileage I’m used to.  Once every week I have an easy day or a complete day off of running to make sure I get my recovery in.

Out of how many?

Fred Begley Memorial Trophy, Off-Track Athlete of the Year

Simon Bairu, Regina, SK, Canadian Cross Country Champion

Reid Coolsaet, Hamilton, ON, Canadian Champion & Top Canadian finisher at World Championships (Marathon)

Evan Dunfee, Richmond, BC, Canadian Junior Champion & CAN-USA Dual Meet Gold Medalist (10K Race Walk)

I’ve been nominated for the Athletics Canada Fred Begley Memorial Trophy for best Off-Track Athlete of the Year .  It’s an honour to be nominated for this award although I was quite surprised to read “Top Canadian finisher at World Championships Marathon” as one of my merits.  Many people have congratulated me on “top Canadian” which I don’t really like for many reasons.

Here are the main Reasons:
1) The Canadian team went to Berlin to race other countries, not each other.
2) I finished 25th at Worlds. That in itself is a better indication of how I fared against the rest of the World.

Now I can handle hearing the ‘top Canadian finisher’ comment from people who don’t really understand competitive running.  But to come from Athletics Canada, the governing body of competive track and field in this country, well I have to at least blog about it (yep, still hate the word blog).

I understand when someone who doesn’t run asks me “out of how many?” after I tell them about a race.  To real runners it doesn’t mean much to beat up on weekend runners or if top professional runners are ahead of you, achieving a personal best in itself is rewarding.  I’ve had a poor showing where I’ve finished 10th out of 9000 runners and I’ve had a great performance where I’ve finished 11th out of 13 runners (those two examples are from 10km races where the later was two minutes faster!).  Maybe my other accolade for the Fred Begley award should read “8th out of 12 000 in the Boilermaker Road Race,” haha.