So cross-country is all done and dusted! Not the best finish for the boys in blue but after a week off we are back on our feet and are looking ahead to the indoor season.

I don't really know what to make of indoor season. It seems like a huge inconvience in the sense that its pretty much two track seasons back to back but then again we do get to race the mile! The indoor mile is really going to be the main focus for me this season. Our first race is going to be the "Dual Meet" which is a traditional clash between The University of Michigan and Ohio State University. This meet is mid Jan and is the first crack at the mile so right now the goal is to be in good shape for that but also not be in too good of shape as its a long time untill nationals (which requires a sub 4min to qualify). This is going to be the hardest part of the indoor season for me. As pumped as i am to go out and train hard and race fast i know that there is only so much the body can handle. So while we are doing 3 workouts a week and going head to head with other great runners, at the same time i have to remain conservative and show my hand when the time counts. Not an easy task at all. It's becoming clearer every week how much of a thinking game this sport is and how only the smartest make it on the podium. Talent is becoming less important whereas composure is becoming vital. In saying that i think as a team we have a really good understanding of what we need to get done this season and also what we need to be cautious of.

For a while i believed the whole "Michigan winter" had been talked up. That is untill around 3 days ago. Running outdoors is not enjoyable in the snow. With tights, shorts, trackpants, 2 long sleeve tops, a jacket, gloves and beanie its still cold. Even on the 5mile tempo i hardly worked up a sweat because it was so cold. At the same time i secretly love it! There is something about being so miserable and battling the winds that gives you an adrenaline rush. So as miserable as it is i still can't deny that it is an addictive misery. It is certainly something you can't experience back home. I enjoy waking up in the morning for training and putting on my Michigan jacket, scarf and gloves and crunching my way through ice and snow to the indoor track. Its the small differences that makes this place so exciting. On a run the other day i jokingly asked "so when do the Yetis come out?", Brendon replied, " when softball practice is over". Definately one of the best one liners i have heard in a while, although i thought that comment was a bit rich after seeing the state of one of the water polo girls he has recently "befriended".

Hopefully the build up continues to go well. Last week i ran a 6.19 2400m indoor with Nick pacing so that was a good sign of the strength that ive accuired over the cross-country season. Between now and the Dual Meet i'll be doing a 3km in chch on the 9th of jan but other than that it is all about gettting fit and staying healthy! GO BLUE!

Yes, I know. We are all over the Liza Hunter-Galvan saga, as Kath and Kim would say, “over, O-V-A-H”. So, why did I fork out on a North and South, just to read Lorraine Moller’s article ? Because I remain puzzled by the unrelenting support Liza has had from the legends of our sport. I have a huge amount of respect for Moller as an athlete and a person. Her autobiography is one of the best books I have ever read, so thought, damn it, if her writing does not convince me, nothing will ! I sat down with the magazine, an Amstel Light, an open mind and.....

NO ! STILL DO NOT GET IT ! I just cannot fathom how Athletics NZ can be blamed for an adult, capable of making her own decisions, travelling to Mexico, purchasing EPO and shooting up in the bathroom. NZ does tend to have a blame culture, you do not need to look much further than Hone Harawira and his mates to see this. I just hope we never get an “it is not so bad to take drugs- it was the pressure that made me do it and everyone else is anyway” culture as well. I feel gutted for top marathoners such as Nina Rillstone who remain behind LHG on NZ’s all time list.

Since my last blog my tally of NZ Championship bronzes for 2009 has hit four. My partner has taken to calling me the Bronze Whaler. Evidently Golden Retrievers have more street cred’. I have been sitting on a tally of nine NZ titles since last century, much of that time away from the sport, but even so it would be quite nice to have a change of colour and crack double figures at some stage. It seemed pretty easy for Tiger last week.

The NZ Marathon Champs from Riverton to Invercargill provided some valuable experience over the distance and where else do you get a photo with the  Ranfurly Shield and a peck on the cheek from Dick Taylor ? It has left me itching to have a serious crack over the marathon distance after a really good, healthy, build up. The World Cross Country trial looms first however, in Trentham, late January, where I hope to add the seal to my “pre-selection”. Pre-selected athletes are expected to prove their fitness by finishing in the top six at the trial. World Cross is in Poland, in a place I cannot pronounce, Bydgoszcz, but wherever it is, it will require a lot of training, a lot of saving and some grovelling for more time off work. All well worth it.  It will be pretty cool if we can have strong kiwi contingent over there, and who knows what Kim Smith could do after mixing it up with the Africans last year.

Hey everyone,

 I started the season with some pretty decent results, but more importantly I felt really strong and was confident that as the season went on –things would just keep getting better and better. I had the best summer I could have ever hoped for, and there seemed almost no way I wouldn’t be fit enough to make it to NCAA’s. It’s fucking embarrassing that I am not going, and its fucking embarrassing that I finished 25 places worse at Regional’s this year than what I did last year after all the hard work I did. The problem is I did EVERYTHING I was told to do, not to mention eating right, sleeping, core and all the little stuff. I didn’t get sick, and I didn’t get injured – so it’s clear that the problem has been the training. Today, after having a few days to reflect, I was able to talk to Coach Berryhill.

Well I must say the boys in blue were a little bit dissapointed with our overall effort at big tens! we finished 5th with Wisconsin clearly dominating the race. The 8.35km course felt brutal exspecially after the 2min 40 1st km. I was sitting around 40th at this point in the race and went through the km mark in 2min 45. Although the 1st km is mostly downhill this was still unknown territory for myself. The race slowed down considerably but so did the rest of our team! Brendon was our 1st finisher in 14th place in 25.44min which was a huge run! Our next 3 place getters were 23rd, 24th and myslef in 26th with 6sec seperating us. Although we didnt finish where we wanted to i couldnt help but walk away quite happy with nearly chopping 2mins off my 8km time. We all know cross country times don't really mean much as each course is so different but this was definately a big step up for myself.

As we haven't scored any points as a team this season we really need to pull our fingers out at regionals in 2 weeks to qualify for nats. We need to finish 2nd to secure a spot and really only have 4 teams to worry about. The upside is that a lot of our tops guys didn't have the greatest race at Big Tens with a couple sick and a few other guys perhaps going out too hard. So if we can run smart and stay healthy then we should have a good chance of claiming that 2nd place. Untill then we have a couple of hard workouts and pleanty of time to freshen up. I must admit im quite excited for my first 10km but we will see what i have to say after i've actually run it!

Hey NZ runners,

For the two or three who read my blog, I apologise for the delay in updates. We recently lost a flatmate, well.. we didn't lose him, he decided to turn into a big tosser and bugger off and bail on the lease and take the internet and sick cable package with him. So for anyone interested in a move to the states, we have a room available. Very cheap rent: US$287 a month. Keen to use the rest of that eligibility, Physeder? DC maybe? We have room for a cot.

To the point: 

Two weeks after Dellinger we headed to Pre-Nats. Training had been going very well, with still a high level of volume and intensity the week before Pre-Nats/after Dellinger. The week of heading to the meet though we cut down the training.. Tuesday was 15x200 on the grass in around 32-33 w/ 60ses jog. It was a decent effort but the next three days were just jogging. The change in training left me feeling pretty flat in the race. At Pre-Nats you have to get out well.. I didn't. I just didn't have the pop in my legs. I ended up going through the mile in 130+ when I wanted to be in the 60's. Its so hard to judge though with all the people, I feel like you are either at the front or at the back. Unlike last year though I kept my head in it and kept passing people, moving wide on the very muddy/slow course and making my way up to 82nd by the end. I finished with a time of 24.56 -- faster than last year on a much slower course. Berryhill and I agreed that considering how I felt, it was a good effort and I took a lot from it: mainly that I can still run the middle/end well after being way back at the start. I also made the move to no.1 guy on the team which usually happens at about this time of year as our other top guy starts to fall to pieces.

This weekend was Conference, and to put it bluntly, was bloody terrible.

The tuesday after Pre-Nats I sat out the workout, I was not injured or sick but was pretty drained from the weekend. We were also going through dramas with the house and I felt like if I pushed it, I could potentially end up putting myself in a hole as the whole team has pretty much had the flu. I just ran easy for 4 days and ran the workout out on Friday: 18" tempo followed by a mile and an 800. Splits were 4.37 and 2.15 w/ 3mins rest. Felt good to get moving after a pretty stale week. This week (week of conference) we had workouts planned for monday and weds -- to keep the legs moving a bit more than before pre-nats to prevent that flat feeling. Berryhill had commented to me that this is the hardest time for him to write workouts as doing too much can make us tired, and too little will leave us flat. The workouts were as follows: 

Mon: 10x400 w/ 2mins jog. (all on grass). Averaged around 65-66. Felt very comfortable/relaxed.

Weds: 10x150 w/ 150 jog. Ran on indoor track. All around 23secs. Easy.

Weds was supposed to be 200's outside but we were bombarded with a huge snowstorm and going outside was not an option.. hence the indoor 150's. We didn't do 200's as that would mean even more harsh tiurns on the track and we haven't touched it for a year.

I hate winter. Fort Collins is crazy though, today it is warm and sunny and all the snow is melting after a week of negative temp's.

And to Conference...

I went in feeling confident having raced and beaten a lot of good guys in our conference over cross and on the track. We figured Top 10 would be a good day, top 8 would be great.

The course was in a great spot, a golf course right by the mountains in Provo, UT.. the Mormon capital of the USA and lamest college town in the world. Also the Top conservative city in the US, really my style! Race was was cold: under 5C.. Course had some long, gradual hills which were made all the tougher being at altitude. Long story short, I felt shit. I couldnt even hang with the top 10 for a mile. It wasn't for lack of trying though, I just didn't have it on the day. I ended up a miserable 18th being beaten by some huge shit-kickers.. All I can take away from it was I scrapped under 25mins at altitude with 24.59. Absolute shite. Whats tough is that guys who I finished right around at Pre-Nats on what I felt was an off day, were right around the top 10 this past weekend.

It seems to be the trend though, it takes me a few weeks to adjust to the change in training, the same thing happened last year when I ran shit at Conference then beat a lot of the same guys to just miss out on All-Region at the Mountain Regional, hopefully the story is the same this year.. except this time I will be shitting bricks if I am not Top 25 at Regionals.

I haven't really spoken to Berryhill yet, except that I am frustrated at not running well at this meet. I know he is as well though.. I am fit, am just in that transition period right now. The plan as always been to peak for Regionals but Conference is important to us and I wanted to feel good.. shit happens I guess.

Two more weeks left till Regionals in New Mexico.

Keep it deep.

d-wal

 Grand Rapids was definitely the most fun i have ever had on a cross country course. It was also the slowest course i've run on but considering the conditions the Michigan boys ran very well. First place was Peter Christmas (Michigan) in 25.07 min. Our next three guys weren't too far behind which gave us the overall win. So things are looking good for big tens. My race was alright. It was comfortable but nowhere near as fast as i wanted. Finished 2nd in 26.40ish which is a massive PB so i can't complain!

We had our second "Michigan" workout today. A "Michigan" is a workout where we do 1600m 1200m 800m 400m on the track and in between each rep we jog 200m and do a 2 km loop up around the stadium ( mostly flat with one 400m hill in it). I must admit i was a bit nervous before hand when Ron came into the showers at morning training and said " i hope you boys are ready to cry and vomit this afternoon.... it's gonna be a fast one". Turns out it wasn't actually that bad and for the first time I was able to lead the group on the track reps and some of the 2 km's tempos. Happy days! So the next race is a 5 km out at Eastern Michigan and there are some fast Ohio guys in it. This race will determine whether or not i red shirt this cross-country season.

For the rest of the team the next race is Big Tens at Penn State. Im not sure how we sit in terms of points with qualifying for nats but i know Big Tens is crucial race. So this next three weeks will be interesting and if we qualify for nats then it's going to be even more intense. i love running! there is always room to improve!

With the Dellinger Invite out of the way we are on our way into the meat of the cross season. Oregon was a great chance to see where I was at but there has certainly been no easing off – we have continued to keep up the pretty heavy workload that we carried into the meet; keeping Conference and more importantly, the Regional Champ’s as the priority of the season for a chance to pick up a spot to NCAA’s.

After Dellinger on Friday, the training since has been as follows:

Fri: Dellinger Invitational.

Sat: Travel from Eugene (very long day) – 1hr easy in PM.

Sun: 90mins (60 moderate/30 tempo)

Mon: Easy 30mins.

Tues: 9x1km w/ 2mins rec. Averaged 2.57-low.                    Weights.

Weds: 1hr easy.                                                                           Plyo’s.

Thurs: AM: Easy 35mins. PM: Easy 50mins.                          Weights.

Fri: Workout over hills: 3mile – 2mile – 1mile.

Sat: Easy 1hr.

Sun: 90mins moderate.                                                            Beer/NFL

sessions for this week were tues/fri. Tuesday was pretty tough – started out with a couple of 2.54’s but the weekend had taken its toll. We ended up cutting down to 9 as opposed to 10 but it was a top workout nonetheless. The rest on Friday was 5mins after the 3mile, and 3mins b/w the 2 and 1 mile. Splits were: 14.56 – 9.59 – 4.47. We ran the workout over our tempo course which has some tough hills towards the end of the workout, particularly in the ‘2mile’ rep. Just after finishing the session the weather turned to shit, it’s been snowing and near freezing temps since. Made for a slippery Sunday run.

This coming week will likely be relatively light as we head to Indiana for Pre-Nationals on Thursday morning. Last year I was very intimidated by the meet and the early pace but am ready for all situations this year. I believe I can run as fast if not faster than I did at Oregon which will hopefully have me in the Top 50 which is the goal. The aim is to get in it relatively early and try and relax as much as possible with the pace and hold my spot, rather than getting caught in the back.

d-wal