The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind.
After a few hard weeks of training and competing, I’m taking things a bit easier and letting all that hard work consolidate.
I don’t get to race locally often, but since my last post, I’ve been lucky enough to race twice.
A couple weeks back I decided to enter a 10km race on the track in Coquitlam. The plan was a long session in the morning and to back it up with a hard effort in the afternoon. The day could not have gone better.
In the morning I got through my fastest ever 40km in training, 3:05 (or about a 3:15 marathon) with my coach and teammate on the bike keeping me company and giving me my drinks and gels.
After scarfing down a recover milkshake, a couple PB and honey sandwiches and a few hours of rest, I was off to Coquitlam for what I simply hoped would be a hard effort.
After my warm-up I felt surprisingly springy and when the race started, I went off at a pace I figured was way too quick. I thought to myself, ‘O well, let’s just see how long I can hold this’ and lap after lap my pace stayed the same. In the end, I walked 39:21 and broke the Canadian record set in 1990 by an Olympic silver medalist.
While I was surprised and happy for this given the circumstances, more than anything, I was confident that I was heading in the right direction.
By far the best part of the day though was seeing so many of the kids who had competed earlier sticking around to watch the race and cheer me on, which was a huge motivation for me late in the race.
Then, after my race, to see all the younger race walkers racing to personal bests over 800 and 1500m was awesome.
The next weekend was the Harry Jerome International meet, out at Swangard and we were lucky enough to have a 5km put in for us.
While I hate 5km (way too short), we were going after the Canadian record of 18:45.
Unfortunately, all the training had caught up with me and I was only able to muster 19:30, but came away with the win, which was more important on the day.
As my last race before Rio, it was nice to be able to do it in front of family and friends (and a record crowd of 6,000 people).
My favourite part of the night, though, was getting mobbed by a pack of kids looking for autographs and who all wanted to how to race walk. It was great to see the impact of sport working in real-time.
When the monotony of heavy training can sometimes get you down, these races have been the perfect thing to remind me what I love about sport and reenergize me as the countdown clock dips below 50 days.
Next week, I leave for St. Moritz for a month at altitude training with some of the world’s best in my last big block before heading into Brazil at the beginning of August.
It’s all becoming very very real now, and I couldn’t be more excited.
