September Seventeen

After the marathon I took two weeks off, no running.  And then I had one week of easy running.  Now I am easing into workouts this week.  This is the first time in almost two years in which I’ve been able to get right back into training form one season to the next.  The last two times (fall of ’08 and Winter ’09) I’ve had to ease my way into training after injuries.  Both of those times it took me almost two months of easy running before I could do a running workout and this time I’m doing workouts after 10 days of running.  Needless to say I’m pretty excited to be putting in back to back healthy seasons.  I know my strength lies in consistency and if all goes well I can build upon my marathon training of the past five months.

After finishing 25th at Worlds in the Marathon the Hamilton Spectator and CHCH (tv) ran zero stories about me.  It’s as if Hamilton has a plethora of athletes in the top 10 or 20 in the world so there is no need to write about some slacker coming in 25th.  CHCH did do a story on Caster Semenya and phoned the local running store, Runner’s Den, to get a quote.  Dan, the manager, told the reporter she should talk to me, seeing as I was just at Worlds.  So I had a little interview on the evening news.  I spoke about how it was very unfortunate that checks weren’t put into place earlier but she came out of nowhere so quickly at the last minute to improve from 2:04 (not even qualifying) to 1:56 (number 1 in the world) that it caught people off-guard.   She wasn’t on the radar and then all of a sudden is under the microscope.  I think that her case was not taken care of properly although I believe if the timing had been different that the same governing bodies would of been able to handle it much better.

Josephat has a Kenyan friend, Peter, staying with him until the Hamilton Marathon on Nov. 1st.   Peter is hilarious and I’m sure I’m going to get some good material out of him in the coming months.  Peter is in Peru right now to race a marathon on Sunday so I only got one run in with him so far.  At the end of the run I asked them if they wanted to do some two minuters tomorrow…
Peter: “Sure, I need to test the Turbos”
Me: “The what?”
Peter: “The turbos!” pointing to his quads.

He then told me he runs 7-8 marathons a year.  I told him I hope to never do more than two in a year.  He then lets me know that rule only applies if you’re running marathons under 2:10.  “If you’re not under 2:10 then you can run up to 13.”  13 in ONE year?  Yes.