Admittedly up until this point in my season there hasn’t been much conflict. Things have been going along as planned and I had been reaping the benefits of that in training and racing.
But a story without conflict is a pretty boring story… and you can see where this is going.
After coming home from Australia, I jumped headfirst back into training, racking up over 300 kilometres in my two weeks home. I had been feeling tired and flat, but I trudged forward naively thinking I would bounce back. Entering race week I was still feeling incredibly flat and my workouts were showing it.
The day I left for Japan, I finally decided to back off a little bit and give myself a day off. I hopped on the plane to Japan assuming that not training that morning would be enough to leave me sufficiently rested to race well.
Obviously one day off after probably three weeks of being on the edge of over-trained and under-rested is not enough to fix the problem. The morning of the race came and I was feeling pretty good. I came to this race specifically to go fast and it seemed silly to change that plan. I went off with the leaders and our first two kilometres was seven seconds quicker than my previous fastest two-kilometre split in a race. And that was pretty much it for me. By three kilometres, I was already slowing and the remaining 17 were a mental struggle not to drop out. I ended up walking 1:22:07, over two minutes slower than my goal time had been.
Reflecting on the race I’m sure I could have gone at least 30 seconds quicker had I not gone out so hard at the beginning. But at the same time I don’t regret that decision at all.
This was the race where conditions were perfect and it was silly to not try for something special. In fact that is just what my teammate Inaki Gomez did and he was rewarded with a new Canadian record, smashing the existing record by over 30 seconds and walking 1:19:20.
Every good story also needs conflict resolution. Moving forward my focus is now on recovery. Overtraining can ruin an entire year or more and so I have to be incredibly diligent and smart moving forward.
My next race is in May, the World Race Walking Team Championships in Rome where two years ago we missed out on a medal by one point despite being huge underdogs.
This year we will go into it as one of the favourites, a new territory for us but one we’ve seen ourselves as belonging to for a long time. Before that though I will be heading to Flagstaff, Arizona for some distraction free training at altitude.
