Friday, March 30, 2012

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)

Friday, March 9, 2012

"A person like me can't be stopped. If I put it in my mind they can't stop me... Ain't gonna stop me"- Friday Night Lights

It's time to discuss what's going on currently in my life and let's finally talk about the U.S. Indoor Championships. For those of you that have not seen the 3k, check it out here on RunnerSpace: http://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=25&do=videos&video_id=59994
Obviously, I lead for most of this race. When I saw the start of the race developing into a 10 minute 3k race, I wasn't interested anymore in my initial race plan(hanging out for the first mile then hammering with everything I had). I immediately laughed; then got to work on clipping off :76's, what I thought would be fairly realistic for me to run at 5,200ft. Once the group caught up to me my mental and physical capacities were blindsided. I gave into the pain of altitude and crumbled slightly but had I not gone for it I would have never gone to that dark place. This was important in my training because I have only been on the track for workouts a handful of times during this indoor season so each race has been another opportunity to test my fitness and get a little bit more fit. The following day in the 1500 I was able to execute a proper race plan coach Kep and I pieced together. I went with 600 to go, made moves on the straight aways and hit a huge freakin wall with 300 meters to go!!! I absolutely had nothing left! It was great!

The following week I was to continue training but that huge wall I hit took a few bricks out of me. I decided to listen to my precious body and give it some rest. I saw my massage therapist, Monica. She fixed my SI joint. It had been out for a few weeks leading up to USA's but I didn't wanna do anything out of the ordinary so I just dealt with the pain. I'm back on course now. First hill workout in awhile today, long run with progression in the middle on Sunday, light threshold Tuesday followed by a lil steeplechase track session Friday night in beautiful, warm Tempe! I hope everyone is having a fabulous week!

XX -ShayShay



The view at 7,600ft after my hill workout this morning!



I also celebrated my 27th birthday while in Albuquerque(:



200 meter into the 3k when I suddenly realized my race plan was changing before my eyes!