2011 TRAINING/RACING IN REVIEW

    Throughout this year, just as every year I have had some major ups and downs when it comes to athletics. I took a huge leap of faith towards the end of 2010, packed up my bag(literally), gave away all of my clothes and essentially started over in Australia. Luckily I was very fortunate to meet some pretty cool people who really showed me how to race just a bit better while embracing the torture of racing. In July upon my return from my adventures in Australia, New Zealand and California I shattered my arm and wiped away all goals for 2011 and got a much needed break that I did not want.

   Even though I did very limited training from May-September I managed to rack up some new personal records even after my injury somehow. The list of 2011 includes;

3k - 9:08 > Challenge Stadium, WA
4k - 12:13 > HBF Run for a reason
5k - 15:25 > Challenge Stadium, WA
Marathon - 2:40:43 > RNR Savannah, Ga
Olympic Distance Triathlon - 2:03+ > WA
70.3 Ironman - 4:30:09 > Busselton, WA

       My main goal of 2012 has already been stated and I can tell you its going to be a very hard target to hit. Looking ahead I will have most likely in the ballpark of 5 months to go from chunky monkey Chris to fit and fab stallion. I would like to run in the 2012 USATF Master's track and field championship as well, which is late into summer but attaining my time goals will be a spring mission for me. I have been trying to figure out what makes me tick, what training works for me and how to train in a new fashion to maximize my fitness.


   After accessing my goals for 2012, I know for a fact that I need to visit with a dietitian to help me buckle down and get my race weight down while also building appropriate strength in order to handle faster speeds again. Having a coach would be the best thing for me as I do need an accountability partner but I am optimistic that Karin and my other close friends will assist me to getting my lazy ass out the door for some workouts. In the past while training according to the Scott Simmons training plan, I quickly lowered some PR's and focused much better while racing, so I am going to adapt some of those training philosophies once again. My mileage will need to really ramp up and be much more consistent with threshold/speed sessions. As it stands right now, over the last 2 months I have hit 38 miles in a week as my highest mileage paired with some 20-30 miles weeks, nothing that makes champions, lets just say (972 annual, 33 per week avg!). Optimistically I keep telling myself I will be fine starting on January 1st but in reality I know that I needed to start months ago.

   The marathon was a much easier goal for me to conquer in my opinion because all I needed to do was put time on my feet. I didn't ramp up crazy mileage, mostly because I just didn't have time too, but I only did 1 marathon pace run which was a whopping 5 miles leading up to Savannah. Attempting to race at below 4:50 per mile is going to hurt in a bad bad way. My hamstring injury from 2003 continues to pop up nearly every time I do strides (which is non existent at this point), so I am thinking that my legs will begin to rip apart by the end of January, just in time for the CRC Winter Classic 8k. Tentatively I am hoping to join up with many CRC members for quality training so that I can really get into my groove and may even throw in a couple road races for tuning up and fun of course. So after Saturday if you see me eating a double bacon cheeseburger with onion rings and chili cheese fries, I give you permission to slap me.


  On my next blog I am going to speak about progression and how it has worked for me. Starting from my late high school years up until this point and how making little gains in fitness gave me confidence to continue pushing my boundaries. It's pretty cool looking back and seeing the slow yet steady progress through the years.