Sunday, April 26, 2009

Some like it hot

On fire...well my body and feet that is. Wish I could say the same for my races. Again the pleasures of spring weather in New England, always bringing the unknown. One day it's freezing the next it's like the dead of summer. Today would be that steamy summery weather. I thought that it would be perfect weather but it took a turn for the worst with temps rising to 90. The complete opposite of the prior races. With sprint races, warmer is better, but acclimating to the heat can be essential to racing, especially when your body has been training in the cooler temperatures. I'm not really sure which is worse to run in, freezing or extreme heat.
I invoked on a what I thought would be a good double, 400 open and 400 hurdles. Unfortunately the heat didn't converge well, I don't think my body knew what to do with the temperature. Though not what I had hoped for I just have to chock it up to a training day and look forward.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Come rain or shine

Bring on the hurdles, the time has come to step up and move to going over the intermediates. The IH's are far and few between for races so the more I chances I can get to race the more aped I will be come July. They have also changed the qualifying window for club nationals so my time from last year's nationals now won't carry over. We're required to hit the standard during the 09 season only- indoor or outdoor- but there's not intermeds in indoor so the sooner I get it out of the way the better. I thought that this would be the perfect meet to do so. Perfect it would be if the weather would just cooperate. Getting to the track it wasn't so bad but right after I finished the warm up and started to do drills the drizzle started, then the drizzle turned steady, then the temperatures started to drop. And it boy really sucked. My hands started to go numb, I even had to run in my tights it was so cold. In the end it didn't turn out so bad. I was able to go over all but 2 hurdles very smoothly and time wise I was able to hit the qualifying time. Now no worries come closer to the end of the season. It did however take a while before I got the feeling back in my hands. Guess you can't win them all.