Nothing Comes Easy

I suppose the lesson of this weekend is that nothing comes easy. With highs, come lows, and this week was a pretty tough one for me, and I am now trying to recover from it. I am definitely at a place I haven't been before and I suppose I will be getting new lessons from it, as is always the case. The week started out with two midterms on monday, both of which I shit the bed, I even got my mark back for one of them on wednesday and I failed it! So depressing, I don't know why but during both of them I froze up and couldn't think through the problems. I didn't prepare properly either but there was no way I should have done so poorly by any means. I have put a lot of pressure on myself to do well in school so this was really disheartening, which set me up for this race on the weekend with the mindset that I have to at least do well in running. When things did not feel great in the race when I picked it up to a decent pace at about 7k I struggled until 10miles in 52:21, then ran the next mile in 5:36, completely out of fight and quit. What was going through my brain, was that I was doing poorly at the two pursuits I am putting most of my energy into so I just didn't have the mental fight in me, I was defeated.

This is really a new place for me also because I am so busy and have a level of mental stress I am not used to, and I suppose it is making it harder for me to recover and be fresh and ready to race, maybe I need to adjust my expectations. Right now, I am not entirely sure what I need to do. For starters I need to keep plugging away and ride this low point out, also I am going to start forcing more of a routine so that my life is a bit more predictable and consistent, so my body isn't confused as to what it is going to do each day. When you are busy, routine and consistency are definitely keys to success. Basically I need to be proactive and adjust accordingly, life won't get any less busy.

Race Week!

Finally in good shape again and excited to be racing on Sunday. It is actually hard to get excited since I am so busy these days but I am. Not just for myself but for Steve and Richard who I have been training regularly with for the last month. We have been working hard and I am excited to see how fast we can run this weekend. I am not in great shape but things have been going well and I fully expect to be able to run around 67 minutes given decent conditions. As per the race preview it looks to be a competitive race with Richard, Steve, myself, Mark Bomba, Todd Howard, Jason Warick, Scott Simpson, Jason Loutitt, and debutant(I think) Shane Carlos, among others. We can only hope for favorable weather and hopefully we can throw down some good times. At the very least it looks to be a competitive race which is always fun.

Training the week before last was pretty rocky but things came around last week after my sunday long run of 2 hours. Although it was cold and horrible a strong 2 hour run always makes me feel better and this time was no exception. A few days later we hit the track which I was a bit leary of since I have always and will always detest running on it, and never feel comfortable on. Despite my dislike for the track I managed to slug out a good workout of 5 X 1600 off one lap jog all in under 4:48 which was possibly my best track workout ever. I was quite pleased with it, especially because my guts were good throughout, and I managed to claw back the workout when it got away from me with a 68 second quarter about halfway through the workout. Later in the week we did some relaxed cut down/tempo stuff in the park which served its purpose as a feel good workout. All in all it was a really solid week followed by a day off yesterday, my first in 5 weeks. The legs are feeling pretty good but still some achiness in the calf area and some feelings of imbalance, but nothing too serious. I'll report back after the race!