To do our Jobs we have to believe that defeat is Not an Option

Since the indoor season life has been back to the grind. Working 30-40 hours a week plus my training schedule. I love both of my jobs so it makes my life pretty stress free. I took about 10 days down after USA's that double kind of kicked my butt. It's just a little too tough for me at this time with the altitude component. It's also not entirely important but heck it was a lot of fun!

I'm still not entirely moved to track workouts on a weekly or bi weekly basis yet, which is good! Still building that strength. I think I'm almost out of this phase of training which will be welcomed with open arms! I have however opened up my outdoor track season with a win down at ASU! I ran the 3200 meters for the first time in 9 years. I ran a 2:20 personal best(10:04)! It was fun to see what I could do and a good precursor for a future 5k I will be running in a few weeks! I was feeling pretty sluggish leading up to that race so to come out on top was a huge accomplishment. Once again I was able to play with some race tactics that will help me later on down the line. That day was about hanging on and saying yes until it was time to kick and kick is what I did.

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to have the ASU coaches put on a 2k steeplechase simulation for me the morning of their meet. I ran 6:39 by myself on an outside water pit (not my jam). This time is 8 seconds faster than I ran last year in the same type of race simulation; once again hosted by ASU. It was so great to have Coach Kepler there to scream at me splits and tell me when I was falling off. My second lap was actually my slowest. This is a good sign for me, that means I had a lot left and could have ran another K at that pace. I'm super excited to open up my steeple season next week at Stanford. Hopefully it will own my steeplechase PR once again, but that will be a mighty big feat to open up that fast!

Here is a video of my best water jump from last week: (Thanks to Andy Ponce de Leon)