Sunday, July 15, 2012

To train or not to train

Friday afternoon at work, and I was in a bit of a downish mood. I didn't want to do anything other than laze around all weekend and drink a beer or two. I had weights and two longish runs scheduled, one on trail with hills and another hard effort on the road. I wanted so badly to just blow them off. Lucky for me I was following the BBC online sports feed.

A sports commentator made the following tweet which stuck with me and changed the course of my weekend. He was talking about Mo Farah - our Brit 5,000m star athlete who was competing on Friday at Crystal Palace in London. A pre-Olympic warm up meet.

Tom Fordyce wrote:

Nice moment at Palace after stadium emptied. Mo, fresh off 5,000m win, ran 3,000m hard & then 4x200m, each in 26 secs with 200 jog recovery. And that, when no-one is watching and the lights are down, is where gold medals are won and lost.

I might not be going to win any gold medals, but what Tom wrote applies to us all. It's not enough to want to win or do a good time on race day. You've got to want it during the training sessions. So I went by the Y on my way home, did my weights, did the trail run and the road run and can now type this knowing I put the effort in to do well at Bandera and my other goal races. At least for now. Mostly I am motivated to train, but there are times when I just plain want to be lazy. I will try to remember Mo Farah, and all the other people who get out there and work hard when nobody is watching.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

The ups and downs of sport

What a rollercoaster summer for British sports fans:
1) Soccer: England lose on penalties in the Euro cup
2) Murray gets to Wimbledon singles final
3) Marray wins in the Mens Doubles
4) Murray can't hold off Fed - no disgrace there tho
5) England whitewash the Aussies in the one day cricket - sorry Amanda if you're reading ;)
6) Adam Gemili does 10.05 to win world junior 100m
7) Wiggo holding the yellow jersey in TdF (and Froomey not far behind)

and the Olympics is still to come!!

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Speeding up - slowly

2nd place in age group tonight at the Sunstroke Summer Stampede at Brushy Creek 5k. Tried to get under 29 mins but just missed it. Very humid after the rain. I tell you I have forgotten how to really push over a short distance. I'm so used to conserving energy for the long haul. There was just one point tonight where I felt sick, and I thought "Oh yeah, I remember that feeling." Need to work harder at working harder. But I'm enjoying this and it is great to be done with a race in less than half an hour!

Monday, July 9, 2012

Toenails

At last - the second toenail on the left is off. I only pulled it a little bit, honest. The right came off last week. Perhaps they'll grow back less like claws this time. Too much information? It's all part of the game on this blog, so get used to it.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Here's a link to my 100 miler report on the Hill Country Trail Runners website.

http://hillcountrytrailrunners.net/docs_reports/Kettle-Moraine-100-mile-run-Julia-Gale.htm


Also, check out my coach's awesome blog Run More Talk Less (which is a pretty funny name if you know her)

http://runmoretalkless.blogspot.com/
Here's what the timing people said:

We've researched your issue. It looks like they unfortunately may have given you the wrong bib number. You were originally assigned 2187, and it looks like you ran with 2287. Your time was 29:14, and did place you 3rd in your AG. We will update the results online.

So that's good. Got a little chest infection going on. Will take it easy this weekend and do my social networking!


Friday, July 6, 2012

Alright then. Time to resurrect the blog - on Olga's instructions. Latest is that I got diddled out of 3rd place at the Lago Vista Firecracker 5k 'cos my chip didn't work :( Actually I don't care that much, but I'd like to know my time. I can never seem to remember to stop my watch in races - what a dimwit I am.

Lots to follow this summer. Paul and Meredith doing the 100 Slam and IM Kona, Cheryl Zwarkowski attempting a Badwater Triple, Josh Winter doing his first 100 at Leadville. And Andrew doing his second IM in 3 weeks. Did I miss anything out? And then there's the Olympics. We have tix for Taekwondo, Archery and Track&Field.

But first I have to get through the weekend of Wimbledon. Just like a number 9 bus ......we don't get anyone in the finals for ages and then 2 come along together. Murray and Marray.