Things Are Coming Together

Well, it's been an eventful month. Let me just rhyme off things that have happened in no particular order and then address them in detail after. I'm back to the single life now, training is really coming together, I raced a pretty solid 1000m, I ran a road 5k, I had a few more little hiccups in training, I got older, I had the weirdest St. Paddy's day ever, my tickets for Red Hot Chili Peppers arrived, and I continue to learn a lot about myself.

Non-Running Based Stuff:

So as I said, I'm back to the single life. Which is bitter sweet. Having a relationship end is never easy. A constant in my life for the last year is now gone and it's been tough getting used to it. What's really been helping me get through it is knowing that we made the best decision for both of us. I know she is now able to focus a lot more on herself, and I am really happy and excited for that. It was crappy and hurt, but for the long term it will be a lot better for both of us. Being in the sport of track makes it really hard to have a relationship and be fair the to the other person. Especially when you don't really live in one place for very long like I have been doing. I have determined you either need to have the most understanding partner in the world (extremely hard to find), or be in the same training group to make things work.

Some of you may have read the very introspective post I put up and then took down. I just sat down one night and put pen to paper with no real vision of what I was going to write and just let my brain tell my hand what to do. The result was a very personal and, I think, interesting look inwards on myself. I got a lot of positive feedback on it, and I really appreciate that. Since it was so personal, it was kind of hard for me to put it up. I decided to take it down after a few days because, with the positive, came the negative feedback. Some very important people to me read it and came away with a bad experience. I never had any intention of that and I decided the best thing would be to take it down. I have been debating sharing it on an individual basis based on interest. If you would be interested in reading it, please either comment below or contact me via e-mail, twitter, or facebook.

Over the last month, I have continued to do a lot of self reflection and I have had some really amazing chats with good friends whose opinion I really trust and appreciate. I have learned a lot of things about myself and am really excited to get back to focusing on Peter.

What else, I turned 23! I know I'm still a baby, but I sure am starting to feel old. As most people know along with my birthday comes St. Paddy's day, my week birthday anniversary. I can say, without a doubt, that this St. Paddy's was by far the strangest I have ever had. Started out normal enough with Geoff Harris, Olivier Collin and myself going to a little pub I'd been meaning to check out for a long time now. It didn't disappoint, we had a couple cleansing ales and played a few games of pool. Around 8:30 we decided we wanted to go somewhere else. I knew of this bar that is just a bit outside of Old Town Scottsdale, which would have been crazy on St. Paddy's. We decided we see how it was. Turns out, they were having a theme night! The theme was "Gothic Surgical Green and Black Medical." Needless to say it was no the normal Scottsdale crowd. Long story short, after a few drinks we started mingling with the crowd, and ended up getting in on a little photo shoot they were having in the back of the bar. I asked the photographer to find the craziest dressed people and have them take a photo with us because it would be a pretty funny contrast, he just looked at me and said "Dude, you guys are the craziest dressed people."

And last but certainly not least, actually probably the most exciting thing of all... MY CHILI PEPPERS TICKETS CAME! It's official, in september I'll be coming down to the desert with a buddy to take in the Chili Peppers and have a bit of a vacation!

Running Based Stuff:

Just before and for a little bit after my 5000m in Seattle I was plagued with a few really strange little injuries that kept me from training at 100%. For a little bit leading into the race my Achilles was acting up and as stated in my race report, Wynn found a bunch of weird things wrong in my stomach that was affecting a ton of other stuff. I quickly sorted all of that out and got back into things. And then my lower legs felt as though they were casted in cement. So my training took a bit of a hit with that as well. FINALLY, as of a week or so ago, I have everything sorted out and feeling good. Training has been going really well and I have finally been able to fight through that pain at the end of workouts and finish strong instead of giving up like I was mentioning before.

I ran a 5k road race here in Scottsdale at the beginning of the month. It was a lot of fun. I won the race a got a sweet plaque that I have no idea what to do with. And this past weekend I ran 1000m race at the ASU Invitational. It was pretty much a team time trial. It was 6 guys from the training group and 1 kid from Minnesota. We also had Andrew Ellerton pacing us through 800m. I ended up 4th in 2:23.05. Which is right where I ideally WANTTED to be, but not exactly where I expected to be. I wanted to run around 2:22.5 +/-, but in all honesty, I wasn't entirely confident I could actually run that. I figured I'd be about 2:24. In the race that lack of confidence came through and I was quite as aggressive as I wish I would have been. But I have a lot of confidence coming out of the race. I went through 800 in about 1:54 feeling super comfortable and relaxed and was able to close in about a 27 feeling really strong. Splits, from what I got from the video were, 28.3, 28.7, 29.0, 28.5, 27.9. So my last 400 was my fastest with the last 200 being the fastest of all. You can watch the race HERE

That about sums everything up. We're getting into race season now, which seems crazy. Speaking of crazy, the Olympic Development camp, that I am a part of, is starting this week here in Phoenix. There are a bunch of athletes down training and attending seminars and talks put on by different people. Should be a lot of fun, and a little hectic.

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For What It's Worth.

It came to my attention that my last post was inappropriate.

For this I sincerely apologise.