It’s all about the things you hate.

For many people this post will be a "Duh" moment. But for me this change has been the one thing that has had a huge impact on my training and the way I perform. What is this "thing"? Doing the things you hate the most, consistently in your training. Pretty simple idea Right? I think We all have heard this and deep down we know it is true. I have always heard this since running in middle school, but it wasn't until I truly was honest with myself and committed to doing these things, that I saw massive improvements in my fitness.

Personally in my own training one huge example of this is the Long Run. I have always HATED longs runs, they take forever, you chug along at a slow pace, and lets just face it no one likes to run long. In high school I remember my coaches sending me out on long runs, and usually one other teammate and myself would instead run for about 30 min then go play with some random object we found in the woods that day. At this point in my life I was not that hot on the whole running thing, and could care less on how I performed.

As I got older and out of high school I suddenly had this desire to push myself , and see what kind of fitness I could achieve. I started to train very hard, but I still was not honest with myself. I still avoided the long run! Excuses like, it does not fit into my schedule this week, I am feeling tired or sick, or purposefully procrastinating so I would not have time to complete a run of longer distance, were all things I was guilty of. At this time I was running well, but was still far from the goals I had set for myself. Finally I made a promise with myself. I wrote out my training schedule at the beginning of every week, and decided that every Wednesday over the winter was going to be a long day, NO MATTER WHAT. From that point on I have run long almost every Wednesday over the last 5 months. That first 15 miles I can honestly say, WERE HELL! But every Wednesday after that got a little easier each time.

From that point on a strange thing has happened, I now LOVE my long runs on Wednesdays. I find myself sitting in class anxious to leave so I can get home and run long. The feeling of tackling something I avoided, hated, and was honestly a little afraid of also made me realize I could take on other mountains that stood in the way of my goals.

Another thing I always feared was the water.Even as a little kid I never completed swimming lessons because I was afraid of swimming laps. When I first started swimming again, I was about as bad as they come. Again it came to a point where I had to be honest with myself. I knew swimming with others would make me better. Sometimes you don't want people to see you being horrible at a certain sport, and I got caught up in my pride. It was the day I gave in and swam with other people that I truly started to see improvement! We build up thoughts in our head that people will laugh at us when we are bad at something, so we train alone in secret, thinking eventually we will get good enough to train with others. It was all in my head. All my fellow Tri-fusion teammates were all very sportive, and pushed me to be better at swimming. I have seen huge improvements in my swimming and I owe it all to the people I swim with week in and week out. I am in no means a fast swimmer, and still have lots of room for improvement. But the fact that I went after something I feared and conquered it, was probably one of the best feelings I have ever felt.

Why did I post this long boring Blog? These were two examples of things I avoided in my training, but once I made a commitment to get better at them, I saw huge improvements. For some people they hate hills, others just hate one sport of triathlon in particular. It does not matter what you hate or are afraid of, what matters is that you are honest with yourself in these areas and make a firm commitment to improve on them. Everyone has aspects of training that they HATE. But I promise if you commit to getting better at these, you will become a better athlete. So I challenge you today to be honest with yourself, and commit to tackling those things you hate in your training. I promise it will pay off in the larger picture of you as an athlete!

Training on Through

I have this very bad habit of tapering for every little race that comes my way. It does not matter if it is the smallest most insignificant race in the world, I have this bad habit of taking the two days before the race easy. This causes my solid training to be interrupted by small insignificant races. This year I set a goal to train through races that are not A races. Even if this means doing speed or hill repeats the day before a race so be it. Solid training is more important than setting a PR at some random 5k.

With the Spokane river run coming up I Really wanted to beat my time from last year, This is one of my favorite races because it is right by my house on the trails that I run every day. I finally got some injuries off my back, and was training solid again. Against my strong desire to do a very mini taper for this race, I trained hard the week leading up to it.

The day before the race I decided to not give myself any form of a taper. Saturdays are a brick day for me, so as planned it was time for a Brick. My Saturday brick consisted of 60 miles at 21mph, followed by a 10 mile tempo run at 6:12 pace. Felling good i pushed hard on the run knowing I was racing in the morning. The plan was to fry my legs, Then come race time mentally work on toughing out a race. You can physically be the toughest person in the world, but if you have no mental toughness, your strength will not carry you far. I did not care what place I was in the race, as long as mentally I gave my best.

Race morning went pretty normal, hung out with some fellow Tri-Fusionites, and then warmed up for 30 min. Warming up my legs felt heavy and I knew it would be a long 10k. The Race unfolded with positive splits. I started fast then gradually slowed down. The one thing that had me nervous the whole race was weather to run through the giant puddle at the end or around it? I had been contemplating this all night. But when i arrived at the puddle I ran straight through it, splashing the race photographer. After the puddle it was a short run to the finish. My final time was 32:38(10k). I was actually quite pleased with this, because it is a new 10k Pr for me.

All I can say is that the Spokane River run is a great race. If you have not competed in it, you are missing out. It was so cool to see so many people I knew out there race morning, racing the trails. Untill the next race(which will probably be my next post) happy training :)

Snake River half marathon

Many people are surprised when I tell them I have never done a half marathon before, but I really have not spent much time racing up to this point in my life. My last major time spent racing was my sophomore year of high school(2003). It wasn't until 2008 that I decided to get back into the whole racing scene. I decided that this winter I would focus on training every day. The expectation was that this would be a chore, but in reality I have grown to love it.

I woke up Saturday March 7th excited. I wasn't nervous or anxious, I was mainly excited. I had no expectations leading into this race, because I had no idea where my fitness was, and what a reasonable finishing time would be. So I set a General goal of being under 1:20, I felt that this would be an attainable goal for my first half marathon. The secret plan for this race was to pace off of Tom Pileggi a strong runner from Spokane.

Upon arrival at the race site I noticed that Tom was nowhere to be seen, my super strategy was suddenly gone. I pondered what to do on my warm up. With the gun in the air and only seconds before race start, the new plan was to not have a plan. Just run and have fun, its just another 13 mile training run right?

The gun went off and the race started at a steady pace, I decided to let Mike Bresson a super fast runner from Spokane go from the start. He has beaten me at many races by large margins. I knew his running ability was great, and did not want to blow up chasing him for the first 6 miles. This plan worked for about 100 yards. That is when I realized i was leading a pack of about 15 people into a headwind. If I am going to push a headwind the whole race, I might as well take my chances drafting off Mike. With this I pushed off the pack and caught up to the leader. The first 6.6 miles of the race were very steady, Mike kept a consistent solid pace knocking down consistent mile splits. I didn't bother checking my splits because I knew they would all be fast, why check them if you already know.

With the halfway point in sight (6.6) miles I felt very relaxed, my legs felt good, and my body felt great. We rounded the cone, and the race started to pick up. I knew at this point I was running a little bit over my head, but the only thought that kept ringing in my mind was to attack, take the lead and see how hard you can push it. Attack or be attacked. With no idea what I was doing I surged past mike, increasing our pace by about 35seconds per mile. I led for about 30 yards and Mike passed me right back, returning my favor. I immediately pulled up again on his shoulder, and tried to push the pace, hoping sooner or later he would give up. This exchanged happened a couple more times, and eventually the greater athlete came through. With one final massive surge Mike took off, laying down the hurt and dropping me hard. With his last surge he was putting tons of distance on me at a very fast rate. This occurred at about mile 9.

The next half mile was probably the hardest, I let Mike get away from me, and I knew he was in no way slowing down. Just before mile 10 I started to feel refreshed again, my pace picked up, and I felt fairly strong again. with only 3 miles to go, I pictured a short loop that i often run at home, and imagined this short easy run as the only thing I have left to do, to finish the race. The last half mile drug on, but in a short while I was done. I had finished my first half marathon.

I was fairly happy with my race, It is always great to race a distance you have never done before, because you always PR. I learned allot, and already have ideas of things I would do differently. My Final time was 1:10:21.

This race taught me allot. Mainly the fact that Hard work pays off. After club XC nationals I was a little bit bummed with my running performance, and decided I needed to be more consistent with my training. At the time following club nationals I hated running in snow and freezing weather, It was cold wet, and long. But I did not want to be the same athlete that ran Club Nationals. This race made my time in the snow well worth it. Seeing how hard work pays off, has inspired me to work harder, and chase some of the loftier goals I set many months ago.

It was great to see so many people out racing early in the spring. Everyone I knew that was at the race had a good day. Mike, Matt, Tim, Steve, Eric, Haley, Evan and Kirk all rocked the course. Setting fast times, on an early season race. I would also like to thank everyone who cheered me on as they passed the other way. This helped allot. I am also glad that Matt decided to ride down with me. The Radio in my car is broken and if he wasn't there I would of had to sing to myself all the way to Pullman :).

Polar Bear Plunge

This was a blast!
I wonder if Speedo will Sponsor me after this?