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
Hi Ross
That was great, thanks for taking the time to let us see how things are going. Really enjoyed watching the race at Stanford and will try again later for the relays. Hope we see you at Hampden! 🙂
Ross, good to hear that things are going better for you and fingers crossed looking promising for CG in Glasgow. I hope you manage to get the qualifying time and look forward to watching you do it via a link. Good luck, Kirk and Linda