10.26.2011

GNAC's and the marathon men

Ready for another blog?  I sure am!  The Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships (what a mouthful) was the latest race for the seawolf squads held in Yakima, Washington last Saturday, and things went very well.  Both of the Seawolf teams came out on top, extending our undefeated streak to 5 races.  Throw in a couple individual titles, as well as two freshman of the year awards, and you've got a pretty solid weekend for the Seawolves in Yakima.  This weekend was also a little redemption for me personally, after my sub-par effort in Bellingham, Washington two weeks prior.  I have been dealing with a little bit of an Achilles problem and it's thrown a few curve balls in my training plan, so I've been stuck doing a lot of cross training for the majority of 3 weeks.  I've never done any serious cross training before, so I was pretty skeptical as to how the benefits of being in the pool or the gym could compare to the benefits of running, but after Saturday's run I have a little more faith in all this supplemental stuff.  I put together a few decent workouts in the pool in the span of a few weeks, but didn't even manage to get in an outdoor run with the team between my last two races.  I had a couple of days on the treadmill and one on the track, then it was off to Yakima.  I really had no clue how my fitness would compare to everyone else,  so it was really exciting to get in a positive race in Yakima without any issues.  Now it will be all about gradually progressing back into a normal routine with the cooperation of my Achilles, and moving towards Regionals.  Now, onto some road racing fun from the homeland!  Some serious Canadian marathoners toed the line in downtown Toronto ten days ago to get after some Olympic Qualifying standards at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.  Mother nature wasn't very friendly however, and threw in some wicked winds on the streets of T-Dot to try and slow them all down.  But this time, Reid Coolsaet and Eric Gillis were too much for mother nature to handle, and came through with some big PB's and 2 Olympic qualifying times.  I actually got up at 5:00am in Alaska to watch the whole race.  The only problem was that CBC's international race feed wasn't working, leaving me to rely on twitter updates from the race to keep up with the action.  Usually I would have gone back to bed in a situation like this, but the Canadians definitely made it an exciting race to watch read about.  Also in Toronto was Fauja Singh, the oldest marathoner in the world.  He's 100 years old!  Pretty impressive stuff!  Equally as impressive is the length of his beard.  I can only dream of growing facial hair at a fraction of the rate that he does.
"The Legend"

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