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"

10.11.2011

Getting Chilly

This is a first for me, below zero by the beginning of October.  For about a week now, I've woken up to frost on car windows, frozen puddles in the parking lot, and a lack of morning sun.  When I got here in the beginning of August, the sun was still up after 10:30, but for 6 weeks or so, we've been consistently losing about an hour of sun each week.  The walk to my evening lab is getting darker, and the walk back home is pitch black.  I think the sun is setting somewhere around 7:00 now, and it's usually not up until 8:15 or so.  Last week the Seawolves travelled south to Washington for our last invitational of the year.  It was definitely nice to get a break from the cold weather, and a great chance to run fast!  It was a 10k for the men and 6k for the women, the longest one of the year, but that wasn't enough to stop the Seawolves.  The men and women were 1st in the team score, as well as pulling off the individual men and women titles.  In 2 weeks, it will be GNAC time where we will begin our post-season racing on the path to the National Championships.  Until then, we'll be putting in some heavy work up north.  Still no snow up here but it certainly isn't far off, and I've got my winter gloves all ready for some serious snowball fights as soon as the white stuff falls.  So I guess the cold weather in Alaska has it's ups and downs, but there is one thing I'm really not liking up here.  Our apartment has a T.V. with about a hundred channels (twice as many as I had at home), leading me to believe that I would have access to roughly twice the hockey coverage.  Not in the USA however.  It's all football, football, football.  Don't get me wrong here, I enjoy watching a football game or two on Sunday, but if it's not accompanied by a leafs game on Saturday night, something's up.  Let's get real here, winter is not nearly as fun if you can't cheer for the good ol' blue and white!  As a loyal fan, of course I've been keeping track of the scores online and I do believe they are rocking a perfect record at the moment, but the lack of live hockey is making it tough to follow the soon to be 2012 Stanley Cup champs.  Yeah, that's right, I said it!  This is the year!  Or maybe next year, or the next.  Either way, this drought is bound to end one of these years.  Do you beLEAF?

10.04.2011

The Simple Life

Wake up, eat, class, practice, eat, nap, eat, class, eat, homework, eat, sleep.  Throw in a bit of travelling on the weekends, and you get the life of a university runner.  In the span of no more than 6 weeks, I have completely altered my views on what it means to be doing serious training, and I'm certain my views will continue to change throughout my university years as I learn to adapt to the added workload.   It's a huge jump from the high school running scene in almost every aspect.  To start with the obvious, the running itself is much more demanding.  No longer can I expect to be running at the front of the pack on 40-45 miles a week.  This was probably the biggest jump for me personally, since I had been consistently in between 40 and 45 miles most weeks in my last 2 years of high school.  Just like every other college freshman in the nation, I understand that a jump in mileage will be the key to prepare myself for faster races down the road, but I also understand that when you are working harder, you need to recover harder.  While it may sound cliche, I know that recovery has played a huge role in helping me adapt to a more intense program.  I always thought that I was pretty good at recovering from workouts in high school, sleeping a lot, taking an occasional ice bath, stretching, and maybe a bit of core tossed in there too.  But once again, I was only running a fraction of the mileage that I am now.  It's a whole different story in the world of college sports.  Daily ice baths, saunas, deep tissue massages, structured dynamic stretching and core programs,  pool running, and naps after each practice are only a short list of the recovery tools that are required in order to keep my legs feeling fresh throughout the season.  But all of this running and recovering doesn't mean a thing unless equally strong efforts are made to stay on top of classes.  In a world where professors don't nag you to take a make-up test or prompt you to hand in your assignments, it's not hard to fall into a never-ending struggle to keep good grades.  It's much more work than high school and it comes with much higher expectations, but the key to getting good marks in school is not at all different from that of running.  Success follows hard work.  Study, Run, Recover, Repeat.  That's the key to success.  That's the simple life.