KIMbia Athletics

Replacing light fixtures, painting doors/walls, moving furniture, cleaning—ah, the joys of selling a house. Since I got back from Stockholm, Michelle and I have been working hard to get the house ready. Not the ideal time, but it was important that we get the house up and sold so the transition to Portland in the fall is easier.

With all that work I have not even had a chance to really reflect on the race at Stockholm, so here it is. I was happy with the race overall! My only problem is that I am having a hard time getting comfortable in the middle of the race and just going with the flow. I feel like I am pressing the entire race, and that is never going to lead to fast times. Luckily the race was on the slow side and I was able to have some pop left in my legs at the end. With 500m to go, Mottram dropped the hammer and never looked back. To be honest I was not really paying attention to just one person in the race at that time, because I thought if anyone made a move the pack would go with it. Unfortunately, Mottram put close to 2 seconds on us in just 200m. With 350m left I was ready to go but as I started to move to the outside, I noticed Songok was already on my shoulder, and I was boxed in. It stayed that way until 70m to go, and finally a gap opened and I was able to unleash. I really moved well in the last 100 and that made me very happy with the race overall.

When I talked with Jerry about the race, he reminded me of the sharpening work that is still to come. I never really thought about it, but up to this point we have done everything at 61-62 pace, and that makes it really hard to settle into a race. Now over the next couple of weeks adding in a bunch of mile race pace work should make it easier to settle in to the slower races. I mean, if I do a bunch of repeats at 56-57 pace, and I need to race a 62 pace it should feel easier. At least in my head it does!

I am confident that our timing leading up to the Games is going to be perfect. I will be providing regular updates over the next few weeks, so check back and leave me some comments.

Speaking of which, answers to some earlier comments:

Does your wife ever travel with you to your meets overseas? Do you ever take a full day off of running or do cross training? What would be your ideal in how often you’d be running a race during the middle of a season?

Much to Michelle’s displeasure, she does not get to travel with me overseas. She was busy with grad school and now she is finishing up her dietetic internship, so that limits her ability to travel. She does, however, travel to some of the domestic events. And she will be going to Beijing, which is awesome.

I do take full days off, and they are not scheduled. I just read my body and take them when I need them. I do not do anything training related on those days.

I always want to race as often as possible in the summer. I do realize, though, that the races take a lot out of us and recovery is important. At least once a week for shorter races and every 10-14 days for 5Ks would be awesome.

I was curious as to where you train while in Europe. I mean, do you just go run on the streets around where you are staying when you are not on the track, or do you try to find trails when possible? When you are doing track work, are you able to use the track you will be racing on, or do you find other tracks in the area?

We usually decide in the spring where our base is going to be for the summer. I have been in Berlin, Teddington (London) and Hulst (Holland) in the past, and all have been great. We usually are able to find soft surfaces, which is always nice. At the meets it depends on the city—usually there are trails to run, but everyone once in a while it is city streets. Luckily we are only running 5 miles most days. The meet always provides a practice track to do stuff on, and we are never allowed to go on the competition track before the meet.