The season is off and running (pun intended) and so begins my tour of training camps and race locations. I packed up my training gear, some street clothes, and my recovery pump at the start of January and have been on the road since. From Chattanooga, to Ottawa, to Kenya, to Montreal, to Ottawa, to New York, to Vancouver, to San Francisco, and now in Flagstaff... it’s been a busy last four months and it will not be letting up anytime soon.
I opened up my season in New York with the United New York Road Runner’s half marathon on a tough course and in some windy conditions. The following weekend I raced the Modo 8k in Vancouver and then had two very wet and cold weeks of training. I headed to California for the true test of my early season fitness at the Stanford Invitational where I raced the 10,000m on the track. The field wasn’t what I hoped for so I ended up running the entire race solo. I came away with an 18 second personal best, running 32:11, which puts me very close to the World Championship standard of 32:00. So here I am… back at altitude here in Flagstaff hoping to find 12 more seconds when I head back to California for the Payton Jordon track meet.
Packing for months of travel, training and racing is not fun… planning and locating massage and treatment options proved to be a bit of a hassle in some locations, so I found I was really reliant on my RecoveryBoots to keep me going through heavy training loads and hard workouts. I found them especially helpful when I needed my hands free to work from the comfort of the living room and to eat some fried chicken and waffles post-race.