Latest - 2010 = let down!!!

So it's been a while since I wrote my last blog, so I must apologise to all involved, including Jonesy who's kept nagging me for a while! Sorry mate! Anyways, I have just been so busy the last few months with finishing university, graduation, training, racing and general day to day life stuff that I haven't had much time to sit down and write anything. Anyways, here it is, my season didn't quite go as I wanted, honestly, it was a complete let down and left me very down about the whole thing. After getting myself in such good shape I had some really lofty goals I wanted to achieve, goals I thought were attainable. But, as always, running is a funny sport and it never quite worked out for me. After Arkansas, where I ran a 1500m pb of 3.48 and then Mt Sac where I ran 14.01 5k pb, things just seem to go wrong, I ran at drake relays a week after Mt Sac and felt s**t. At the same time, I was starting to suffer bad plantar fasciitis which despite backing my mileage off, wouldn't go away, I was icing couple of time a day, stretching, massage and everything, but it never really improved. This, along with other cooking the training a little left me feeling a little stale, tired and low on confidence and things just seem to lose momentum. After that, it was about trying to get the season on track and try to achieve the goals I set. However, I ended up 3^rd at conference after sitting on a Kenyan for about 7 laps after a quick opening 2k, before dropping him hard with 400m to go to come through and finish 3^rd, I didn't feel too bad in that race, however, I could feel my foot a little and it was a very hot and humid affair, so time was fairly steady at 14.30 odd. Then, it was off to regional's in Austin where, I can honestly say, I have never experienced anything like it in my life, it was low 30's and about as humid as it gets, over the weekend, guys just seemed to be dropping like flies, absolute carnage and I can say I've never seen anything like it. I remember pouring tons of water on myself before the race and within a lap or two of the race, feeling bone dry before sweating my b*lls off again!!

Anyways, that was the end of May, I finished my season there as my foot wasn't improving and I felt it was time for a much needed break. So I took about 3.5 weeks completely off and since arriving home have been receiving regular physio treatment for my foot. Things seem to be improving and this last week or so I've started an easy build up running 20-30 minutes as well as plenty of strengthening work to aid the treatment and drills and strides to ensure good biomechanics.

One thing I would like to talk about is training, I think my biggest problem this year was I pushed it too hard and didn't back off when I needed to, having talked with John Nuttall recently and my coach at home, I think its important to try and run sessions more at 75/80% rather than trying to push the boat out every time you go for a run or do a session, my biggest problem is looking at my watch and thinking "well last time I was running 60 sec pace easy, now I feel awful running 63 sec pace", and I don't always account for change of weather conditions, different type of session or what ever factor maybe influencing a change of work out results and sometimes I think we need to just run and not think about what we did previously or want to do. So from now on I will try to ensure I don't kill myself every time I lace up my trainers. This can be a difficult task to achieve, especially if your training with several others, you never want to appear weak or back down and its tough to say I won't spank every rep today or kill myself.