Why hello there stranger

Two words. Blog fail.
It's been over a year since my last post. It's a good thing this isn't my job and I don't get paid for it. I'd be living on the mean streets of NYC if that were the case.  I suppose an abbreviated update is necessary. Finished my last outdoor season with a pretty stellar PR. Became an assistant coach at a local Division 3 college, I headed up the Distance crew. Started a long distance relationship with a pretty incredible guy in Minnesota. Battled through a cross country, indoor and outdoor season with my athletes, watching and helping them break through barriers and have PR after PR. Battled through finding a balance to train myself while coaching and working to make end's meat, complete with total flops and PWs (personal worsts). Made a huge life decision to move at the end of this summer from the beloved coast I was born and raised on and my big city living, to the middle of nowhere country, MN (I might be over exaggerating the middle of nowhere part) to be with that previous mentioned incredible guy.

Now here I am, it's July 4th. After my coaching season ended in May, I decided I was going to buckle down and try to salvage the rest of my outdoor season. It hasn't exactly gone as planned, actually it's been way worse. I knew I was not in tip top shape but I didn't think I was as bad off as I really was. While I tried to maintain throughout coaching, I wasn't consistent. That was one key. I also forgot to maintain my mental game, looking back that was one of my biggest flaws. I took all the bad performances pretty hard and to heart. I had given up any and all hope to go to Club Nationals and running a decent time. While I had the standard, I couldn't afford to trip out West without monetary assistance and with team budget cuts, I was the bottom of the totem pole to receive anything.

This past Wednesday things took a change. Thankfully my range of abilities on the track (while not always top tiered) sometimes helps me in some situations, other times it can be a hindrance. This time I used it to my advantage. The only way I was going out to Seattle for Club Nats with help for funding was if I could do multiple events. Seeing as I only had the standard in 400IH, I was a bit in a bind, until I realized we didn't have someone in the steeplechase. Good thing for me both steeple and hurdles are typically under fielded with athletes so goal isn't for time rather than to finish to grab as many team points as possible (I did this a few years ago in Nebraska). That range also helped with relays. So with that my grim outlook was turned around and next week I'll  be flying out to Washington to compete with my team. I have zero expectations for times in races, the goal is to finish as high in place as I can to score points and to fight through the race pain to give my all. I know no matter what I do my season won't have the outcome I wanted but hopefully these final races will bring a little bit of peace to it.

It's getting hot in here

Being in the mid west for Nationals I expected it to be hot, Kansas was hot, I did not expect it to be as brutal as it was. I especially wasn't ready to run 3000 meters with an excessive amount of barriers (35) in that heat. One would think that since Day 1 started in the early evening that some of that hot mass would dissipate, others would also assume since I'd be running through a water pit it wouldn't so bad. Here's the reality, 101 degrees at 7p not including the heat index, stifling humidity, and not so conditioned mid-distance runner are not a great mix.  The good news the 4th girl dropped out. Sweet deal for me meant unless I didn't finish, which I wasn't going to let that happen, I would get 3rd place, can we say score!  It wasn't pretty, well the 1st lap was, can't say so much for the 6 that followed, but I buried my head down and gritted it out. I finished no where near the other 2 girls as well as no where near my PB, BUT from what I was gathering from the seasoned longer distance runners all of their times were about a minute plus from their usual times, which in turn would have produced a PB in optimum conditions AND I scored my first ever individual medal at Nationals. Not too shabby for this hurdler.

SCORE!

Finding that silver lining was what I had to salvage from the meet because I underestimated how much it would tax me and the next day I completely busted my real race running my slowest time all season. Most definitely my most unproud moment of what was procuring to be the best season(s) yet. I managed to try push that disappointment out so that I could contribute my leg for 4x800, in which we secured the W.

 As a team we swept the women's, men's, and overall titles, and I can say that I lent a hand with the 10.5 pts I scored. Would I do things differently if given the chance, I'd like to say yes but probably not. Instead I'm going to look forward to the next 8 weeks of rest and recovery and to the upcoming next season, making what necessary changes to my training. Until September.

Kiddie pool ice baths at a track meet because it was so hot

Blogsphere vacation over

So again I have not been so great  about keeping up with the blog. In between my last post and now so much has transpired that I really just lost every bit of motivation that came along with keeping the writing up, I was excited, stressed, joyed and uninspired all at the same time.
Fast forward three ish months and now I'm ripped and roaring to share my thoughts and adventures that have transpired and are currently going about.
When I last left off I was getting ready to get my outdoor season rolling. I was beyond excited, I was coming off of the high of the best indoor season I had ever had, I thought as long as I stay healthy nothing could stop me from blowing my outdoor season away. While I did stay healthy and injury free that over the top season certainly was not quite the outcome. My opening race didn't happen until the very end of April beginning of May, which was a month later than it was supposed to. This was the start of the frustrations, and almost walking away from the sport. (Since I chose to have my blog public and I have since moved on from the incidents, I will not recant the stories that go with it). Thankfully I was saved from making a rash decision by a few of my super awesome friends and teammates. Unfortunately because of the prior stresses my training fell apart and so did my mental game which translated into mediocre races at best. When I was finally able to get myself grounded I was playing catch up and found myself behind schedule.

En route to Nebraska

Wrapping up this season I have yet to hit any of my goal times I set for myself. I'm sightly down on that but with that I have set all time personal bests in the hurdles & open 400 and outdoor best in the 800 so I can't be too down. So here I am on a plane to Omaha, Nebraska to the last meet, I have one last go to hit my goal time in the hurdles and a chance to hit a PB in the steeple chase (explanation to follow).
The steeplechase story...Originally I had planned on doubling at Club Nats with the 800 and the obviously the 400 hurdles. As I was entering myself in those events I couldn't help but go through the other entries for all the events to see who was there, right below the hurdle entry is the steeple. Curiously there was only 1 entrant at the time, let it go. Then as the week progressed  and the entries were about to close I kept checking my events to see what I'd be up against and of course couldn't help peeking down, now the tally was up to 2 women for SC. Interestingly enough none happen to be team members, so my curiosity peeked and I decided to send an email to the distance coach and infer if we had any girls that would be entering. With that the words that I typed  in addition to to  who's running question would set me up for my crazy ploy, because of course we in fact did not have any girls set up to enter.  After a few exchanges of emails I now was no longer racing the 800 but instead the 3000 m steeplechase AND my intended hurdle race. Mind you I have experience in SC which is the reason why I offered my "services" but I have certainly not been doing any where near the mileage for that race. Yep solidifying my craziness. But hey I was guaranteed to score at least 5 points with 4th place as long as I finished.  Taking one for the team.