you’ve got to learn how to fight before you learn how to fly

First off, congrats to my training partner, Eric Gillis, for fulfilling AC’s Olympic requirements for Beijing in the 10 000m.  He capped off the last piece of the puzzle by winning the Canadian 10 000m champs last night in Toronto.  I thought it was going to be tough for me emotionally to watch the race since I really wanted to be out there but I guess I buried the 10 000m a few weeks ago and it was nothing but exciting for me to watch Eric get ‘er done.  It was also a good night for Speed River athletes in the 1500m with Milne running 3:39 to win the race.

Tomorrow will mark exactly eight weeks since my last running workout and exactly 4 weeks until the Olympic trials.  I’m not worried.  Not in the sense that I think I’m for sure going to make the Olympic team or anything.  I’m not worried because I know I’m doing everything I can to get ready so I really don’t have any energy to waste worrying. 

Running has been improving in the past week and I have graduated from the Running Room jog/walk program and I’m able to run continuous.  I never thought I’d be doing “10 and 1’s”, but there I was, jogging for 10 minutes, waiting for that one minute of walking where I didn’t have to be in pain.  Last week my left hamstring and calf hurt every single step due to weakness.  Now it’s only my calf that is sore and it’s not so bad anymore.  I can’t wait until it doesn’t hurt every step.

I’m in the position where I still need to be patient with my recovery but, the reality is that I only have one month left to get a good time under my belt.  There’s a fine line and I need to make sure that I’m not overdoing anything and at the same time taking the right steps to get faster.  It’s going to very interesting to say the least.   I have to keep reminding myself that I may see some ugly interval times in the beginning.  I’m confident that I’ll be able to ramp up fast so I can’t look too deep into some of the early workouts if they don’t go as well as I’d like.

This morning I was running with a couple of the Kenyans living in Hamilton and I was telling them about my cross training and Anthony said, “In this country you’re lucky you have facilities.  If you get injured in my country, you sit on the grass.”  I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to keep my aerobic base up, now it’s time to fight and soon after that it will be time to fly.

I’ll be checking out some races at OFSAA this weekend in my hometown, Hamilton.  I heard China wanted the Olympics in June but had to go with August so as not to conflict with OFSAA. 

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