First Race of 2012!!!!!!!

In a few days, I will be officially opening up my 2012 racing campaign!  I am nervous to write much before hand, knowing that the first one back can quickly spin in all sorts of ugly directions.  Allow me to use last year as just an example...... The stage is set at the good ol' Dempsey Indoor Track on the campus of University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.  Its what the Track World refers to as an 'oversized' indoor track because it is 300m instead of the standard 200m (like Penn State).  We made the trip in college a few times because of the competition that is attracted by the wide turns which makes for faster distance event times.  Anyway, to cut to the chase, it was a pretty bad race for me.  At that point in the year my mind was still focused on the everyday task of surviving workouts with the OTC, not so much on racing.  My expectations were high as a ‘professional’ among college kids.  And, as I soon would discover, my body was iron deficient. But all excuses aside, I went out and ran 9:26.  I had put myself in the race in the beginning and died a hard death the last lap and a half, being passed by almost the entire field, including a lot of girls that had never beaten me before.  I was embarrassed but I was at least afforded the peace that my body had maxed out and there was nothing I could have really done differently on that day. 

But that was a whole year ago.

This year has already been completely different. So much has been learned, tweaked, improved.  My nutrition is more dialed in, I am much more established and comfortable in my west coast living environment, I have a closer relationship with my teammates, my workouts have been much more consistent and manageable for my body.... etc.  Simply put, its no longer my 'Transition Year'.  

Personally, I struggle with allowing myself to feel completely settled into anything in this career because with one little injury or one political slip with a company like Nike, things can change quickly but I am beginning to see that that is part of being a professional in the sport. You HAVE to be able to get to a point where you can relax and appreciate where you are (as long as you are in a good place) and really allow it to work for you in order to get the most out of it.  As it stands, I would like to think that I have arrived at what my Professional Career is going to look like from here on out.  I am genuinely happy where I am at, with my Coach, in Eugene, with a team. I am willing to put it out there and take all responsibility for not succeeding because I feel I have access to everything I need to achieve at the absolute highest level that I am physically capable of.  And that is a BOLD statement.  I have no one else to blame for my failures.  My job now is to stay out of my own way and let the program work for me.  It may sound easy but I am an athlete who tends to overthink things and sometimes it actually makes it easier to have obstacles that you feel like you have to overcome, to distract your mind from the day to day training.  Ultimately though, as an athlete, I believe that the sooner you are able to find a program you believe in, a Coach you can absolutely trust, and a hope for what the future could really be for yourself, the sooner you are going to be able to reach your potential as an athlete.   I am certainly not there yet by any means, but this discovery is one of the first steps.  "It takes years to develop an athlete," Coach Row would tell you.  And I would agree but I would also add that, it takes a lot FEWER years to develop an athlete if they are in the right program and can remain in that system for their entire career.  I am truly hoping that this will be the case for me.  

One of the biggest changes I have noticed about myself this year is that I have been going into my workouts with the same sense of peace that I remember having at Penn State.  I remember taking note of my college teammates who came into workouts with fear and apprehension.  More often than not, they would not be able to complete what Coach had assigned and if they did, it looked way more painful than it was intended to be.  At Penn State, I had complete trust in the fact that Coach Sullivan knew me and knew what I was capable of and would always give me exactly what I needed on that day.  That trust in your Coach keeps your mind at ease so that your body can relax and work more completely.  It takes all pressure off and allows you to just run.  Easy and successful! Moving out here, my mind trusted Coach Row like that straight off, knowing his credentials and all that he knew about the science of running but I don’t think my heart did.   In the back of my mind, I knew there was no way that he could really know me yet...know my body, how I pushed myself or didn’t, what I was capable of, etc. because he just hadn’t known me long enough.  Sure, he has coached many other athletes at this level, but he had no experience with me.  So THIS is the transition everyone had warned me about.  I will admit it was not what I had anticipated as being the toughest thing for me to overcome. Although my run at Worlds last year was really disappointing, somewhere through it all, I felt something finally click.  Between Sally’s medal, Nicks disappointment, Lauren’s capitalization on opportunity, all of the sudden, I knew what a cool thing we had going on in Oregon and what a special coach Coach Row is to get each of these COMPLETELY different athletes to get here feeling prepared. 

            So its now 2012.  My second year.  The challenge has been set.  The goal is June but I don’t want to leave anything this big to chance.  It needs to be a consistent, steady progression and every race is an opportunity.   Physically, mentally, for your body, your mind, your confidence.  Here it goes…

Testing

After the flu, the flight, and the drive back down from Portland, I was glad to get back to my little cave of an apartment! I was back just in time to receive word that I would be undergoing physio testing for my first workouts back! hmmm......somehow, that doesn't seem like the best situation.....As I suspected, Coach simply carried on without a skip in the beat- after all, its MY career and my concern what I could or couldn't/did or didn't do over break.  As far as he was concerned, if I didn't contact him with any major injuries or huge setbacks, the little hiccups were to be dealt with as a professional.

I can handle that.

Its just sooo different than it used to be....but then again, I have different goals that require different preparations.  I can adapt.  I can achieve!

The testing really wasn't that bad.  I was still feeling super human after the 30 hour recharge slumber following my flu and had taken the travel days cautiously too.  I have always been intrigued by the human body and with my background in Kines, I get really excited for these tests! Last year I had my lactate threshold tested but this year, there was no messing around.  Sub-max and Max, it was!  I was tested two days in a row and even though I had learned all about the prodigal of tests like this in school, the administrators keep me on my toes with some variations.  Our clubs physiologist is one of the best in the world.  Apparently he was one of the go-to guys for the Tour de France team Garmin/Slipstream! How sweet is ThAt?? The tests he assigned for us were specifically designed for us- elite distance runners.  The measurements they took and recorded throughout would be the exact ones that they could digest and regurgitate back to Coach to be directly applied to workouts.  Nothing more, nothing less. All functional.  Of course, this all takes time so I have to wait to see what the results will come back as.  Then again, Coach is all for them being for HIS use anyway, so I wouldn't be surprised if I never see them but Im certainly going to ask! It all makes me that much more confident in where he is taking me, none the less.

For me, testing was useful in another way.  Since parts of it were running to exhaustion, it made me think about where exactly 'exhaustion' is.  I have always believed that running is a HUGELY mental sport (I don't have exact percentages for you, because the percents change at different levels....in high school, talent and fitness make a much greater impact but at the elite level, when these things equal out and EVERYONE is fit, the ratio could be more like 98% mental....) Anyway, I have struggled with this.  I always thought (or maybe it was that I 'wanted to BELIEVE') that I was working harder and was stronger than a lot of my PR's and performances showed.   I believe that most people hold themselves back subconsciously.  That if you learned how to, you could unleash this potential from within yourself that would surpass anything that you have ever done by light years!  How else would you explain how seemingly 'normal' looking people can accomplish these extraordinary things so above and beyond anyone else around them??  I strive for this ability.  Testing made me mad because I found myself giving in earlier than I believed I should have had to.  I promised myself that I wouldn't cop out before my heart rate was max for at least X amount of time, or at least until the time that a normal steeplechase race would last, but each time, I caved.  My excuses could have been that the tests were designed to be harder than races, that there HAS to be a physiological response behind your conscious decisions or else your legs WOULD fall off, but I still feel like I could be getting more out of myself.....just to tap into THAT.....to break down that barrier, or at least push it back ever so slightly.  I guess I can be confident that even if it doesn't come as natural for me as it does for some of my competition, I firmly believe that this 'awareness', this personal recognition of 'limit', can definitely be improved on over time.  Its all relative, right...when you look at someone who has never exercised before, their pain threshold is comical but when they realize that a little sweat never killed anyone, they naturally begin to be able to handle much more and before long they are running a marathon.  The improvement may not be as huge and noticeable in us elite athletes but that doesn't mean that no improvements are being made.  Where there is a will and a work ethic, there is a way! I just have to find it!

Check out my brother! He's famous!

http://www.bgsufalcons.com/index.aspx?path=mcross

GO JOSH!!!

Holiday Setbacks....or Blessings??

So training-wise, it was a pretty frustrating Christmas.  I began break at home by taking a few days off to rest my knee.  After traveling to the Annual Meeting, my tight hamstrings and high mileage weeks added up cause some irritation of my pes anserine tendon on the lower inside of my knee.  It wasn’t bad enough to stop me from working out (with the aid of anti-inflams and regular icing) but it made me cross train the days in between and wouldn’t go away.  Even with soft tissue treatment and none weight bearing secondary training sessions, it would have good days and bad days.  One of my first years at Penn State I remember one of my Coaches telling me that you will never perform at your very best unless your whole body is well.  If there is any part of you that is tight or irritated or ‘off’ your energy (some call it Chi) will not flow smoothly and it will limit you from reaching your potential.  I always think about this and strive to always feel like my ‘flow’ is unhindered.  Despite believing in this theory, it was still hard to convince myself that  complete rest was ok if thats the only way I could correct the problem, especially since I could kind of run through it.  I gave myself until Christmas break to feel 100% and if I didn’t by then, I would allow myself a few days to rest completely.  So I finished the last hill repeat without too much trouble but it just wasn’t good enough.  It was nice to have the distractions of home to keep me from feeling horribly useless but allowing my body to ‘come down’ like that made me realize that my knee probably wasn’t the only thing that needed the rest.  I don’t know if it was being home and out of my routine in Oregon or what but I took the level of my motivation as a sign that I may have pushed training a bit too hard in the fall.  Mom was even able to continue some soft tissue work and I still had trouble convincing myself that I was rested and better.  

The second week started off slow but I was getting some good work in when I came home one night after dinner with friends to a crippling stomach flu.  I tossed and turned and pucked the first night and slept through the entire day and following night.  I can’t remember EVER sleeping that much! This sidelined me a few more days and butted me right up to the travel back to Oregon.  I try to see the positives in the break, though inconsistency is my biggest training pet peeve. The weather in Ohio was very runnable the whole break, when I did run, I got some good work in, I was home, with family, I ate good, and I feel like my body got a chance to really ‘reset’ itself.  I am ready to begin this   next training cycle into the Final Stretch.  I am glad I had a fall like this- I pushed harder than I was ready but it was a lot closer to where I am at than all of last year.   I am healthy again.  I am motivated.  I am smarter.  I am READY.  Bring on 2012.

Home for the Holidays!

Currently, I’m headed back to Oregon after spending the holidays in Ohio.  I struggled earlier this year on deciding whether or not it would be wise to come home at all for Christmas.  Traveling is really hard on the body and I have to do so much every other time of the year, its nice to have time when I can stay put longer than a few  weeks.  I had also been in such a great routine this fall, it was tough to convince myself that it might be an ok/ good test of focus to be in a different environment. Thanks to the slight, yet surprising, encouragement and support from Coach Row, I decided to go for it.   While my career goals and dreams seem to be most important things right now, they are really just vital pieces to a larger, more rounded, complete, and fulfilling final outcome called My Life.  

The reason I am even in the position I am in today is in large part because of my family. While the weather remains just as grey as ever in NE Ohio and the roads I ran on as a high schooler go past the same old lots and farm fields, Father Time continues to rudely remind me how long I have been away by adding years to the people I love.  Whether its my little cousin who is now beating computer games and speaking in full sentences or my grandparents who are moving just a tad slower or my dad who takes longer to recover from exercising like a 20 year old....Life is always a gift and it is important for me to spend as much time as I can with these people who have given me so much of theirs.  When I find myself wanting to be selfish with my life and do only what I want to do, I remind myself that, whether I remember it or not, these people invested a large part of their youth and life to raise me and give me what I have today.  Sometimes I wonder how nice it really is for them...having me home.  Try as I might to be pleasant and helpful, my old tendencies from years of childhood in that familiar environment, flood back to me.  Spreading my things across the entire house, shooting my brother dirty looks, and bragging about how great everything in Oregon is.  I guess I’ll just trust them when they tell me they love me and maybe one day I’ll figure it out with my own family.  Anyway, it was fun to see everyone and it beat sitting alone opening mail packages.  I am blessed! Love you all!