Filling the unforgiving minute
March 01, 2010 | 11:28 am
Training has been going well. In fact, I'm actually a lot fitter than I was expecting to be at this point. The last three weeks have been highlighted by lots of tempo runs and a couple of track workouts that have gone surprisingly well. Last Tuesday in particular had me feeling pretty excited; the workout was 200m, 400m 600m, 400m, 200m and then a set of 4X200m. I ran 28.5, 60.0, 1:34, 58.5, 27.0 and then all the 200s were around 29.5. The workout itself actually felt great; but I still feel sloppy. While I wasn't overly tired, and the times were relatively quick, it was more of a struggle to run that fast than it should be. There's a certain feeling you get when you're fit, no matter how hard the workout is, where your legs feel like a couple of pendulums. You're able to just relax, shut your brain off, and float around the track at a fairly good clip. During the workout I found myself trying to force this feeling, but basically had to fight for every step. It's not really a problem; I don't mind the fight, but if you want to race well, those times need to feel easier than they did. Time-wise it was an encouraging workout, but I have to keep in mind that it's only been a couple of months and doing the things I used to do is not easy. Even though it was just business as usual at the time. I suppose I'm getting there, but I think there's going to be a few ego busting days along the way.
This past weekend was all of the CIS conference championships. As much as I want to go into depth about UVic's continued domination of the middle distance events in the Canada West, I won't. But I did want to talk a bit about the Atlantic Univeristy Championships. First off, Mendurance member John Corbit absolutely dominated the weekend, winning three gold medals in the 1000m, 1500m, and 4X800m. But one thing that really stands out to me is StFX's Kyle Tramble's performance in the 600m. Kyle got tied up with one of the Dal runners fairly early in the race and the two of them fell. Now, I've never fallen before in a race, but I've seen it a few times on the track. And it's one thing for a 5000m runner to stand up, dust himself off, and start ripping it again. You lose a couple of seconds, but you'll likely be alright what with the adrenaline and all. In 1972 Lasse Viren won the Olympic gold medal while breaking the world record in the 10K after falling. But a 600m is different. If you fall, you're done. The race is over. You're talking about a distance in which less than three seconds separates winning the national championship and not even qualifying for the race. You just can't make it up. So when somebody falls in a 600m, they usually get back up, walk off the track, and sulk a little bit. But Kyle bounced back up and finished the race. I've seen two or three crashes in 600m races, and I've never seen anyone finish. That's an event I used to race indoors, and I always told myself I'd finish the race if it happened. But it never did, so I don't know what I would have done. But Kyle did it. And to me that's something that people should read about when they go to the Aerobics First website looking for shoes and stumble upon some guy's blog!
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