Apologies that I haven’t updated the blog posts in a while! This post shall round up my training/racing over the last few months from January to now.
Indoors was unfortunately nowhere near as successful as I had hoped for. My first race was great, I ran a 1:52 800m at 5000ft altitude the day after an 8mile tempo run and off the back of a 75mile week. After this I had big hopes for the indoor season. However the races that followed were uncharacteristically bad! I ran my first mile race in 4:21 followed by a 4:23 2 weeks later. I had been training well but the lack of consistency over Christmas showed in the latter stages of the races and I would begin to detach from the group and gradually slow down resulting in poor times. I got blood tests which also showed my iron levels were low which may also have been a factor in the poor performances. But the main focus was just to continue training consistently for outdoors.
I ran my first outdoor race at Stanford in early April. I was nervous going into the race as I had no idea how I’d run and feared a repeat of indoors again. I felt good throughout the race though and won in 3:47 (1500m) which is my fastest ever season opener. This was a big boost going into the next race 2 weeks later, also in California. This race was filled with quality runners and was expected to be quick. I felt great through 800 and ran a 2:01 split, slightly slower than it should be. The 2nd half picked up however and I was able to get in a break away group. I held my position and kicked on to run a lifetime best of 3:43.2, just 1 second off the qualifying time needed for the commonwealth games. This time has placed me 3rd in the Scottish rankings for this year so far.
I am heading to California to race this weekend in Stanford again to try and give the games qualifier another shot. In order to be selected I need to run the time twice by the 8th of June, which means I have this weekend and 2 other races in May to get the time. It’s a tough task but not impossible!
Below are links to 2 of my outdoor races. The first was my season opener in Stanford, the 2nd was a video of the 4xmile relay my team ran in Pennsylvania this past weekend. The Penn relays was a great weekend and the atmosphere in the stadium was like nothing I’ve experienced before. There was nearly 40,000 people in the stadium and I was on the first leg. My aim was to give the 2nd leg runner the baton in a good position amongst the group.
I will continue to keep posting as my outdoor season progresses. I will be coming home for summer in 5-7 weeks depending if I make the NCAA finals or not. Training is going great, I am consistently running between 70-80 miles per week and I believe it is this consistency that is the main reason behind my current form/success. And as always, the sun is still shining and the temperatures are continuing to climb here in New Mexico!
http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/251505-Stanford-Invitational-2014/video/741709-Mens-1500-H06#.U0Tb8ie9KK0
http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/251558-Penn-Relays-2014/videos/744512-Mens-4xMile-F01-Event-459-Championship-of-America-Oregon-4-all-time#.U17Dndq9KK0
The 2nd link is still only accessible to flotrack account holders however it should be available to the public in a couple of days
