Back on the Track

Well, after about a month I'm finally back on the track and running consistantly to schedule. I had my first track workout on tuesday which was pretty successful. I did a broken mile in about 4:06. The workout was 2 sets of 8x100m at 1500m pace with 15sec recovery, ha. What I had to do was set my watch to countdown 15seconds and every time it beeped I had to go. If I finished the 100 in less then 15seconds then I had extra recovery and if I took longer to run the 100m then I had less recovery. On paper this sounds like a ridiculously easy workout, in reality however, it was tough!

The next day, on Wednesday I had one of the most fun runs I have had in a long time. Logan Burke and I went out to Thetis Lake to throw down an hour on the trails out there. I started the run in brand new never run in shoes and by the end of the run I don't think there was any white left on them at all. We were running through ankle high mud, shin high puddles, hurdling fallen trees, dodging roots and climbing up and down various pitches of hills. There were a lot of times I thought for sure one of us was going to roll an ankle or completely eat it, but ironically the only time either of us fell was on flat ground when I carelessly stumbled over a rock.

I was meant to have my second workout back this morning, however I slept through it... oops. So now I have to do it tonight after work at like 11pm. I'm actually pretty excited to do it at that time. It's been so nice and clear here lately, it'll be pretty cool to do a workout under the stars. It's another seemingly easy one on paper, but we'll see how it goes. 2(8x200) at 1500/3k pace with 1minute rest.

Slow and Steady

A day in the Life.

Wake up/get out of bed no earlier than noon. Shower. Get dressed. Cook breakfast/lunch and dinner all at the same time. Play a little COD on live or watch TV. Head to work at 14:00. Work until 22:00. Go home. Play more COD or watch TV until 01:00 or 02:00. Go to bed. Repeat.

... I need to become an athlete again.

Another Shot.

Well, it's been almost nine months since I last made a post on my blog. There have been a ton of things happening in my life since then, some pretty major things to be honest. I'll try and do a quick catch up. Mmm, but where to start.

Track and field.

I had kind of a bitter sweet summer of racing. I had an amazing start to the season. I was running pb's every time I stepped out onto the track. I eventually lowered my pb from 3:49.81 from the previous season down to 3:46.63. The race that I did it in was pretty cool as well, it was the Harry Jarome Internationl Track Classic. I had felt absolutely terrible the couple days leading into the race and during warm-up nothing changed. My run, drills, strides, everything felt so labored and just plain shitty. But as they say, that is often when you have your best races, and I sure did. I had no expectations going into it, I had no worries about splits or anything. I just went in knowing that I could win it and I did just that and it happened to bring a great time along with it. Unfortunately that's kind of where the positivity ends. After that was Nationals in Toronto which were terrible. I ran like 3:56 and didn't even come close to making finals. But I still had Canada Games coming and had a great shot at winning that. Heats went really well and pretty much exactly how I had predicted. Then for some reason they decided putting finals like 3 days after heats would be a good idea. Between heats and finals I just totally lost interest mentally. The day came to race and I had no drive and I don't even know what place I ended up but it definitely wasn't on the podium. Then I had my couple weeks break which was great, lots of fun. After the fun was had I started my base training, and everything was going awesome. I started throwing down some great long runs and was feeling good. Suddenly with no real reason I hit a huge mental block and running became unenjoyable and a really big chore. I struggled through it and eventually came around and got into training hard again... just in time to get injured. And that's where I'm at now. I am nursing this stupid hip injury. Good news is that I'm on the mend running again and have the deep burning desire to get back out there and hammer out some workouts when I'm 100% again. Oh, and I finally found a sponsor too! I'm now a proud member of the Running Room Athletic Club. I hesitantly left the Calgary Spartans in October and joined the RRAC and have loved every minute of it. Matt Norminton up in Edmonton has really got a great thing going and is doing more than anyone I know in Canada to help make our sport better.

Life.

Man, life has been a roller coaster. I'll try and sum it up quick. Kyla and I broke up right after Nationals last year. I struggled with that for awhile, a yo-yo of emotions you could say. I'm proud to say she's still a good friend and I think we've finally found a pretty good balance where both of us are content. In my weird mental battles with running and such I've gone on a few benders and have lived the life of a "normal person" that I always used to wish I could. I now know why I chose the life of an athlete, I never felt so shitty as I did when I was drinking and staying up and not eating right. Mmm, what else... I've taken up the guitar, or at least trying to. And the most recent and exciting news iiissss.... I'M A STUDENT AGAIN! I enrolled in three online classes last night. I'm on way to be back in university and racing in the CIS again next year! I'm really excited about it, but kind of nervous too. I decided today on one of my runs that it's kind of like having a baby. All of a sudden I have this huge new responsibility in my life that I'm not quite sure I'm ready for.

Well, I think that brings you mostly up to speed. I'm going to try and keep this a little more regular so I don't have to write huge novels like this every time.

Cool guys, thanks for reading.