Blood and Guts

So there was this meet last weekend. This meet was at the University of Texas in Arlington. A bunch of DI schools were there and it was fast. I ran my slowest time of the year by about 30seconds. No reason, no excuse, it was just dismal. I won't embarress myself by publicly posting a time but let me suffice to say that my last lap was 95 seconds. Thats 6:20 pace. I honestly did not know I could run that slow for that distance.

Enough of the bad news. I was rather down in the dumps immediately after the race but I rebounded quickly and put it behind me. My friend John was coming out to watch my race and just missed it after he got stuck in traffic. (Thank goodness) John gave me a ride back to my original home in Mesquite and it was good to see the family, went to panera that evening and pretended to study while actually crusin the net and chllin  with a couple other friends I hadn't seen in a while and catching up on old times.

Saturday evening I discovered I also lack talent in picking out good movies at blockbuster. For everyone out there- Don't, I repeat, DO NOT ever watch the movie "Way of War." It is a complete waste of time and I still couldn't tell you what it was about.

It looks like a good war/action movie right? Well when my brother, who has vastly superior knowledge then me when it comes to all things artistic, took one glance at it and said, "never heard of it, looks like a b grade film." I knew we were in trouble, and we were.

Sunday I got to go to church which was nice. I've realized that the biggest thing I miss at the church I've been attending (when I can) in Tyler is the worship. I guess I took for granted the awesome worship our little Vineyard in Rowlett has and have had trouble dealing with a more toned down, not quite as cutting edge and passion filled worship at the church I've been attending in Tyler.

The afternoon was spent with my buddy John again. Good eatin at AllGood cafe in Deep Ellum, good talking, good book shopping at HalfPrice and Barnes and Nobles. I used a gift card to purchase Into the Wild, by the same guy who wrote Into Thin Air. Finished Into the Wild Monday and it was pretty good, very interesting but worth reading.

The real topic of this post though refers to my track workout today. You see, just lack week I got 2 new pairs of shoes. The Nike Zoom Lanang ST are made especially for us steeplechase athletes. Their mesh uppers are perfect for draining water, which will ideally only by accumulating in the left shoe. They are seen below.

The Nike Zoom Streak XC are my new pair of tri flats and they pretty much rock too.

Their so pretty and white. At least, they were. Monday was my first time trying them out at the track. Of course I had to go no socks because I don't wear socks in a triathlon. 4 miles of intervals later this is what you got-

Mmmm blood. No longer white and pretty these shoes have officially been christened.  The only reason for the bleeding is I already had a scrape on top of my toe that got opened up and bled through. The injury itself was actually quite dissapointing but the result was fantastic. Love the shoes and I plan on racing them this whole year.

Track. Rain. Speed.

Awesome day at the track today! It was a fairly long workout, we went: 2x600, 3x400, 4x300, 6x200 with equal distance recovery jog between each interval and straight through the set. I was feeling good and hitting under my splits every time. As we started the 200's ominous clouds began to gather in the western sky and the formally tame wind began to pick up. People started to leave pretty quickly and even my teammate decided to bail. With 3 200's left me and a recruit that has been running with us were the only 2 people left on the track. On the 5th 200 it started to sprinkle and on #6 all hell broke. Josh, our faithful recruit was still right behind me as we rounded the final turn. Our coach was in his car yelling and honking for us to get off the track as I shouted back "This is the last one!" We finished, rushed to the car and hopped in soaking wet. Good workout, good day.

Sorry for the long layoff. I've just had trouble coming up with proper motivation to write another blog post. Let me fill in a few quick updates about whats been going on the last month or so.

1) Semi-injured hamstring that warranted a week of very easy workouts. The hamstring is fine now so no worries there.

2) Family wedding. My brother picked me up in Tyler Friday, February 20th where we drove back to Dallas to catch a plane for Tucson, Arizona. It was a fun weekend getting to see the family I don't get to see often, including my cousin who's at West Point and a good break from school.

3) Track. 3 meets into the season and I am an established steeplechase runner. It is a fun and different even to run and I am having a blast doing it.

4) Spring break and team training/testing camp- At the end of my spring break week I went down to San Antonio for some testing with IconOne. It was fun to see the athletes I haven't seen since camp and nationals last year and the tests went ok.

5) Overtrained athlete. After the weekend I talked to my coach, who has not been coaching me this spring because of track and other stuff and decided to start working with her again. I have somehow gotten myself into a fairly extremed overtrained/fatigued state which she was able to see just from observing me over the weekend. It was something I had kind of suspected just because I knew I was working out a lot but there wasn't any sort of specificity so it wasn't helping my running and it wasn't helping triathlons. Just junk mileage. I've kind felt lost this spring without a specific plan and just trying to figure out workouts on my own. Anyways I'm working with her again and it feels good to have some direction. Even if that direction has been mostly resting and not much training. Oh well, I have now worked with Shelly long enough to realize that she is ALWAYS right, no matter how much I have convinced myself otherwise so I just trust her and do what she says and somehow I get faster.

Thats about it for now, I'll try to keep the updates a bit more frequent. Collegiate Nationals is April 18th, I'm scared to death because I know I'm not going to be in optimal shape for it but oh well. My goal now is just to go out and have fun. Then the next weekend we have conference track where I plan on running the steeplechase and 5k.