2011

So XC came and went. My last post saw me at the height of my season as the last two meets weren't too great. Having a poor race at regionals was especially a bummer as I knew I was really fit. Bad race tactics is what did me in though. The whole season I had been taking the first mile out conservative and building into the race. It was normal for me to be in about 10th place on the team through the mile but then reel people in and finish somewhere 3rd-5th on the team. At regionals, for some crazy reason, I decided to change my strategy and go out hard the first mile with everyone else. My goal was to put myself in a good position so I could contend up front. It didn't quite work out that way... Because I wasn't used to go anaerobic so early in the race I tanked after the mile and never really recovered throughout the race. Another learning experience for sure. I had a lot of those in 2010.

After that I took a solid 2 weeks off with no training and then have just been playing around, having fun, working out sporadically since late November. I've worked out almost every day since then but it has been really random with no structure whatsoever. I start official workouts with coach Shelly tomorrow and am pretty excited to get back to some structure. I joined a swim team this spring and just had my second practice tonight. Ouch. My arms and shoulders are already feeling it big time. Luckily I'll only be swimming 4 nights a week with them. I'm tired of the swim being a continual weakness for me so I'm taking the best steps I know of to fix that.

I'm also starting my second semester of grad school, working 20 hours a week in the department and training on top of that so I should stay busy. Collegiate Nationals is April 9th so its time to get to work!

Hello Again

Whoa, It's been a while. I'm going to try and revive this blog in case there's anyone out there that still read. A quick recap of my year is in due order. However for now I'll suffice to say that I am successfully recovered from my injury from last year. Graduated from UT Tyler with a B.S. in Kinesiology this spring and am currently enrolled in grad school at UT Tyler for Kinesiology and working as a graduate assistant. I'm still running xc but working exclusively with my triathlon coach Shelly O'brien. Running is going great. I've been setting some good pr's this season running 27:32 for 8k at a meet in Memphis, Tennesse four weeks ago. 2 weeks ago at the Univesity of Arkansas I ran 34:12 for 10k which was a HUGE pr for me. I went through 5 miles in 27:29 which equates to about a 27:20 8k. Our conference meet is this Saturday and hosted by UT Tyler. We do not have a fast course by any means but I'll be looking to run fast and get close to my pr. Then at regionals in Memphis drop that time down some more. Maybe break 27? Stay tuned.

Training Hard is Easy

“Training hard is easy, recovery takes courage and confidence.” –Matt Dixon

My friend, Jody asked me if this quote spoke to me-

Sort of, yes, I guess. Its just true. That’s all. Anyone can train hard. Training's fun, pushing yourself is fun, doing more is fun. But to balance hard training with adequate recovery takes not only courage and confidence but intelligence as well. Training doesn't make you faster. When you back off and let your body recover from hard training is when you get fitter and faster. That being said I believe in hard training. You have to train hard to excel. But if your body can't handle the hard training because recovery your is off then its useless. You’ll get sick, burnt out, overtrained, injured, whatever. Trust me- all of the above have happened to me. Recovery is everything. Its nutrition, hydration, sleeping, stretching, taking the elevator instead of the stairs. Could I train harder if I didn't have school? Sure. School is a stressor and it takes away from my recovery. Sitting in class is horrible for my hip flexor injury. But school is also necessary so I have to learn to balance that. The person that will perform the best is the one who can best balance quality workouts with adequate recovery. Not the person who trains the most- the one who trains the smartest. Right now I'm training hard, like really hard. Harder then I’ve ever trained in my life but for the most part I'm nailing my recovery and my body is able to handle the workload. Later in the semester that may not be the case. As school gets more intense I may not be getting the sleep I need or other factors may play a role and I would have to respond by adjusting the training workload accordingly.

The thing is, like the quote says. To recover takes courage and confidence. You have to have confidence in yourself, your fitness and the plan. Just because someone else is training harder than you doesn't mean its right for YOU. You have to take the ego out of training. Its hard, really hard but its necessary to be able to do what YOU the athlete need to do for YOU. Because as an athlete its all about YOU. Training is selfish. You have to be selfish. You don't spend all those hours sweating and hurting for another person. You’re doing it for you. The best athletes in the world know what’s best for them and could care less what other people think. They just put their head down and train hard- then recover.

A lot of people may read this quote and say, “what are you talking about? Training hard is hard!” And their right. I’m not saying training is easy, or should be easy. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be. More often than not it sucks. There’s a lot of times in the middle of a workout where I look at myself and go “Why the heck am I doing this? This is NOT fun.” But why do we keep doing it? Because we love it. We love pushing ourselves, challenging our bodies, we strive for excellence and at the core its because we want to win. At our heart we all want to be winners. Each person can define what “winning” means for them but we all want to win. To be the best. So then training hard is “easy” because we choose to do it and we love to do it and we have an end goal we’re striving for. Recovering isn’t so much fun. As an athlete you don’t feel like your “doing” anything when your sitting around letting your body absorb the work. You may think its no big deal to make sure you get enough electrolytes or that there’s no such thing as the “30 minute window” for refueling and restoring glycogen stores after a workout. That’s fine. Maybe you don’t want it bad enough. You care enough to train hard but do you care enough to recover even better? Do you crave success enough to back off when its time to back off? How bad do you want to win? Everyone your going to line up against on race day is training hard. But who’s recovering the best? If I can train just as hard as everyone else but recover even better. If I can cover all the little intangibles that people overlook then I can win. I can beat them on race day. And that’s what I want. That’s what any athlete wants.

Time to get on the trainer…

Just Rolling Along...

Training is continuing to roll along. I had a bit of a hiccup last week when I came down with some sort of flu like sickness for a day or two. I worked it right however and still got all my swims and runs in and just cut out a lot of biking. This week has been solid so far and the focus is on the swim. Big time. I'm on pace to do 30,000 yards this week which is more swimming then I have ever done in my life. My arms are already pretty exhausted but I keep plugging through. I am really impressed with how my body has been able to handle a consistent high work load for the last 4 weeks or so. Last week was a bit of a down week but still trained around 14/15 hours. My legs and arms will tell you otherwise but I'm having a blast doing 3-5 hours of training everyday. I'm feeling good and becoming more and more convinced that with enough sleep and good nutrition I can train as hard as possible! Collegiate Nationals is less than 3 months off...

A New Year A New Season

It's January 14th and classes are under way at UT Tyler. Also underway is a new season. I'm not really sure what season it is for me- triathlon, track, cycling, cross country or all of the above but it's a new season regardless. My last season ended with the regional cross country meet in North Carolina. I crutched up to the starting line, ran a terrible race, picked up the crutches and moved on. Since regionals its been a slow rehab process to get my hip back where I can run again. Christmas break messed things up pretty good. Not so much because of lack of training and rehab but because of all the travel that did not do good things for hip. Lots of sitting really tightens up my hip flexor bad as well as my piriformis and glute medius. (yes those are real muscles) I did keep up with my strength program in hotel gyms and by paying one day fees but I didn't see much improvement in the two weeks I was gone over Christmas.

New Years Eve I landed in Dallas, Tx and was back in Tyler that night. What an exciting New Years it was for me. I spent about 8 hours helping a friend move and missed midnight by about 5 minutes because I was carrying a couch downstairs. Is this what happens as you start to get older? Oh no. January 1st I moved from my apartment to a duplex across the street (With said friend I'd helped move the night before.) The duplex is great mainly because we have a garage! Right now there are no cars in it but there are 6 bikes, 3 trainers and a bike repair stand. Perfect if you ask me.

Its been nice to get back in a routine and train regularly again. I did about 25 hours in 6 days last week with only 50minutes of running so that translates to some solid time on the bike and in the pool and gym. I'm running about 10 times a week but they are all super short runs. Last week was 5 minutes at a time, this week we bumped it up to 7. Slowly but surely. Even though I'm still a long way off I have confidence that I'll be able to still race well and have a good season this year. (Whatever season that may be)

I pr'd my 200:800 swim test last Saturday by A LOT. The times still aren't very impressive but coming off the week of training I'd had and only a week back in the pool I was super excited. If I can keep getting faster in the water it could mean good things for 2010...

Until next time.

It's More Than Running, Its Life

I'm sitting here on the bed in my hotel room in Greensboro, North Carolina, Regionals are Saturday. For us Regionals is the biggest, last and most important race of the year. This is the race that the entire last 3 months have revolved around. All the hard work, long runs and early morning have been leading up to this. And I'm hobbling around on crutches.

I should backtrack a little bit here though. Things were going pretty well after the home meet on September 5th. I had some bad races but then figured things out and was starting to put together decent races. And with cooler weather I didn't have to battle dehydration and heat problems any more.

It started with some pain on the outside of my left knee and a nagging weakness/pain in my right hip. Not a big issue, I'd been running 75 mile weeks for the first time in my life ever and feeling GREAT doing it. I just needed to back off, take some more ice baths, get back on the foam roller and I'd be good. The morning after setting a pr of 28:23 at the regional preview meet in North Carolina on October 17th I set off for my normal Sunday morning long run with the group at the local running store. After grimacing for the first 16 minutes the pain in my left knee was excruciating every time I flexed or extended it. It felt like the knee cap was being wrenched to the side. I finally couldn't take it any more, turned around and walked 2 miles back to the parking lot.

I spent the next 2 weeks in some form of mild hypothermia from spending up to an hour a day sitting in the ice bath. I heated, stemmed, rehabbed, rolled, stretched, iced, even a cortison shot didn't help as much as we'd hoped. Basically I was doing everything I possibly could to heal my knee- including not running. In fact I ran only once between North Carolina and our conference meet on October 31st. The problem was an extremely tight left IT band and I was averaging 2-4 hours a day in the athletic training room or doing some sort of rehab work on my knee. On top of this all that niggle in my right hip had turned into a very worrisome weakness that prevented me from weighting it fully and didn't allow me to put my pants on without sitting down.

I was swimming like a beast though!

After running once in the 2 week lead up I lined up to race the American Southwest Conference Championships with jumping jacks serving as my only warm up. The UT Tyler men's XC team was 4-time defending champions, going for our 5th straight title and as the number 4/5 runner with no real 6th guy to rely on I had to race. Race I did, and I am extremely proud of my performance. It wasn't especially fun or pretty but I ran with all my heart taking 13th overall, 2nd team all-conference and 4th on the team. Others faltered though and we the team took 2nd. At the end of the race I just thanked the Lord for giving me strength to run and compete. God had kept my knee strong enough to run and give everything I had for the team. We still had regionals in two weeks though...

The bus ride home from conference was bad. My IT band kept tightening up and causing me some pretty intense pain that I had to get the trainer to massage out a couple times. Since my knee had been improving I was hoping that a few days off it again and I could try to get 2 or 3 workouts in before regionals. That, I believed would be enough to keep me sharp and the extra rest I knew would benefit me. My knee did continue to heal, but my hip was a different story. Wednesday, November 4th I spent all morning at the Doctor's getting X-ray and MRI done to determine if I had a stress fracture or not. The verdict was no and so Thursday morning I went out and completed a solid workout on the track.

The next few days had my knee hardly bothering me at all but I was now limping noticeably because of my hip. If I didn't have a stress fracture then why did it hurt so bad!?! Sunday morning November 8th, less than a week from regionals I went down to a park with some nice paths and completed possibly my best workout of the year. I was popping! Monday morning I woke up and couldn't walk.

It's not a stress fracture but instead tendinitis of my psoas (hip flexor) where it connects on the femur at the lesser trochanter. I've been using crutches to gimp around all week and it takes extreme concentration, effort and pain to even lift my right knee in the air. It's been getting better all week but the race is only 40 hours away now. Painkillers and anti-inflammatory's have been a mainstay of my diet these past few weeks. I can only swim with a pull buoy and my legs tied together. The decision to race may not come until I'm quite literally on the starting line.

It's so cliché, I know, but you don't really appreciate something until it’s taken away from you. Much worse than the physical pain of a hurt leg is the pain of not being able to run. I love running, I really do. There's nothing like going for a run when your depressed, when your mind is full, when your crying out to God for answers, when you feel great, when the weather's beautiful, when it's early in the morning and the first rays of the sun are causing the dew on the grass to glisten, nothing.

We arrived in North Carolina today and headed over to Guilford College for everyone to run around and re-familiarize themselves with the course. I and my crutches stayed behind and while the team ran I limped around the wet, muddy field and cried out to God. "Why Lord?" “Why?” “Why this terrible blend of physical and emotional pain?” "I've been trying so hard to follow your will Lord." "I just want to run God." "I just want to run."

Spiritually this semester has seen a lot of challenges and growth in me. God has been working on me in a lot of areas and I’ve grown much closer in my relationship with Him. It’s funny how God will choose to work on a lot of different areas of your life at once. Actually it’s not funny, it’s painful and somewhat depressing. I’ve tried so hard to listen to God and hear be receptive to what He’s telling me but it’s not always for us to understand the why of things. The Lord works in mysterious ways. There it is- another cliché but so true. When we’re in the midst of a struggle it’s hard to understand why things are playing out the way they are.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, or Saturday for that matter but I intend to run if at all possible. I didn’t come to North Carolina to be a cheerleader. That’s all I ask and if God grants me that gift in two days I will be grateful. In the New Testament Paul calls Christians not to a life of ease but one of hardships and suffering. Physical, spiritual, mental and emotional suffering. My prayer is that God heals my leg enough so that I can suffer this Saturday. Suffer just as Christ suffered on the cross for us. I believe that as we push ourselves in the physical realm, as we sweat, bleed, hurt; that we grow closer to God and gain a better understanding for the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for us on the cross. I pray that God will give me that opportunity to grow closer to Him when the gun goes off in Greensboro, North Carolina at 12:00 pm, this Saturday, November 14^th.

Happenings

Sorry for the long period of silence. I've spent the last month or so moving into my apartment and getting started with xc and school.

So far things are going pretty well. I can feel that I'm fit just not racing well yet. I had a terrible race last weekend and backed off this week. I should be rested and ready to go for another good run of... running. I raced the Rose City Triathlon yesterday. It was fun and I did pretty well for how little biking and swimming I've been doing. I am still super pissed because my 47 year old XC coach beat me out for 3rd spot. He was in a later wave and got me by 11 seconds when results were calculated. I had sort of forgotten that he is an incredible athlete and got complacent with sitting in 3rd spot on the run. Oh well, hopefully that will be fuel for my competitive fire. http://results.active.com/pages/displayNonGru.jsp?orgID=216359&rsID=83742

Classes are going well. All my classes are super interesting concerning the bodies physiology and response to exercise. I love it! Definitely in the right major for me.

I'm contemplating working on a blog post inspired by the sermon I heard this morning about indulgences so check back and see if I find the time to put my pen to work for some real literary work. In the meantime I'll try to post some more frequent updates concerning how the XC season plays out.

Next up: We have a meet at ULM this saturday, September 19th.