Feeling Good....2 weeks to go!

We have had a really busy month. After coming back from Flagstaff we immediately had company with my sister Renee, her boyfriend Tyson and fellow Canadian racewalker Bruno Carriere. They were with us for a week and it was a lot of fun but busy and tiring. After they all left we had a few days "rest"before my parents came for a visit. It was AWESOME to see them! I hadnt seen them since our wedding in October. We had such a great visit. We spent a few days in Arizona visiting my grandpa who lives there in the winter and went around to Sedona, Flagstaff and Grand Canyon. We were able to catch up with some of my European friends for dinner and training the next day while in Flagstaff for the night. The picture to the left is of me, my parents and good friend Sabine Krantz. It was nice to be back there again, I love it there!

The week that my parents were here I had great training. It was the week after doing 145km's which I think is my highest week ever and I was feeling great. It was nice to have my training partners with me again. Even though it was a great week of training, I was exhausted from being in the car for 21 hours over 4 days and doing some other sightseeing around San Diego with them that I didnt get much rest. By the time Saturday came around I was exhausted. My fartlek workout started off ok but I felt dead right from the beginning. My parents left the next day so it was back to regular life, or so we thought... We got an unexpected visitor, Lauren Forgues. She came out to train with us and will be here until April 7th. I am very happy shes here. We are good friends and its nice to have someone to hang out during the day with while we rest from training.

I have managed to get a really good block of training in, 6 weeks with 132-145km's per week and im still feeling good. This week is the last hard week before I slowly start to decrease my mileage and taper for my race on April 11th at the USA World Racewalk Cup Team trials on Long Island, NY. This week I had two really good key workouts that have been really good confidence boosters for me. On Tuesday I did 12 X 1km/500m and after a few days "rest" after the busy week with my parents I was able to get a really good workout in. Here were my times:

1st: 4:52

2nd: 4:51

3rd: 4:47 (25:24 for 5km)

4th: 4:47

5th: 4:46

6th: 4:43

7th: 4:44 (50:24 for 10km)

8th: 4:40

9th: 4:42

10th: 4:40 (1:15:36 for 15km)

11th: 4:40

12th: 4:39 (1:30:40 for 18km)

I felt really good, I even had to hold myself back from pushing more because I knew that I was already going fast enough. My heart rate was very low for me considering I can hold high 190's for a whole 20km race. I can tell that I am getting to the point where I am getting into really good shape that I need to be careful that I dont push too much since I am feeling so good everyday. I have been walking 5:40/km pace for my long walks also with a lot of ease. My heart rate has been lower than normal walking that pace and im feeling very relaxed. Today (Saturday) I had my last pretty hard workout before the race (which is 2 weeks from tomorrow). I had 3 X 4km/1km which is the same workout I did last week but I crashed doing it. Today was a much different story...here were my times:

1st: 19:16 (2.2 Lactate)

2nd: 19:03 (3.0 Lactate)

3rd: 18:54 (4.7 Lactate)

This is the best that I have ever done this workout and it felt easier than in the past. Last year I did this workout in June and my times were 19:47, 19:37 and 19:08 so today was much better and a few months earlier than last year. I felt very comfortable today and found that I had tocontrol myself and sometimes slow down so that I wouldnt push too much. The last 1km of the last 4km I could definitely start to feel the lactate build up in my legs and so I knew that the number would be a little high but im happy that I could stay consistent and finish strong. I am very happy with this workout especially with my split times: 5km's in 24:51, 10km's in 49:33 and 15km's in 1:14:22. My last 1km easy was a little slow (5:54) but after stopping to take lactate, my legs stiffened up a bit and it was hard to get going again.

These workouts are really positive for me leading up to the race in a few weeks where I will be looking for a good PB. Now I get to look forward to some fun workouts in my final preparation and a good taper.

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Training Partner for 9 days :)

After leaving Flagstaff, AZ we made our way to Albuquerque, NM where my husband Tim competed at the USATF Indoor T&F Championships where he won his 12th indoor title and his 43rd national title. It was a great weekend for our TEAM also as Tyler placed 4th in the mens race, Maria won the womens race and Lauren finished 4th. They all raced really strong. You can keep track of our TEAM at our new blog for Champions International.

After leaving Albuquerque we finally made our way back to San Diego. After a very long trip back we arrived at our apartment in Imperial Beach, CA. On Monday afternoon my sister Renee, her boyfriend Tyson and our friend and fellow Canadian racewalker Bruno Carriere all arrived to visit with us for a week. I hadnt seen my sister since our wedding in October so it was so nice to see her. Bruno had expressed interest to us at the USA Junior Racewalk Camp in December about coming to San Diego to train with us and we were able to get him here during his spring break. It has been a week so far and its been so great to have a training partner for once. He has been able to get his highest mileage week ever of 110km's. He is getting in really good shape and it looks like he will have a good racing season ahead of him. His first race will be at the USA World Racewalk Cup Trials race on Long Island, NY on April 11th where most of the TEAM will also be competing. The picture above (a little blurry) is of Bruno and I at the 2009 Canadian T&F Championships.

My training has been going really well since coming down from altitude. My heart rate has been a lot lower for the same times that I was doing before we went to altitude. My body has been doing really well. Now I have had 3 good mileage weeks in a row of 138km, 137.5km and 125.5km (with a day off in this 3rd week). This week I should have around 145km's before I take a week "easy". My next race will also be at the USA World RW Cup trials. Looking forward to a good one there!

My parents will be coming to San Diego on Saturday for their spring break so I am really looking forward to seeing them. I will have 2 training partners with them being here for the week so that will be nice :) I miss training with them everyday like I used to when I was home in Canada. We will be heading to the Grand Canyon when they are here and so we will be stopping over in Flagstaff for a few hours so that we can see all of my friends that are up there training (Erik Tysse, Olive Loughnane, Sabine Krantz and Bastian Krantz). It is going to be so nice to see them all, its been awhile!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Last few days at 7000 feet

Our last few days in Flagstaff were interrupted by some bad weather. We ended up getting a lot of snow that forced us to train indoors for a few days. Luckily on the Monday I only had 12km easy racewalk to do and the guys were supposed to do some 500m's anyways. On Tuesday Lauren and I had intervals to do so all in all it worked out really well to be forced to train indoors on the indoor track at NAU.

Tuesday I had 7 X 2km's with 2mins rest inbetween. I had a good feeling after the workout on Saturday and I knew that I wanted and needed to do better than the week before since last week I tried to do the same workout but it ended up being a bit of a disaster and was very discouraging. I think that last week I still wasnt 100% over my bad cold. Luckily this week it went really well and I felt really good, even better than Saturday. The goal today was to just make sure that I started "slow" enough and gradually got faster for each interval. Here is how it went:

1st: 10:15

2nd: 10:12 (2.3 Lactate)

3rd: 10:02

4th: 9:56 (3.9 Lactate)

5th: 9:54

6th: 9:47 (3.6 Lactate)

7th: 9:38

I felt really strong and I know that I wasnt pushing too hard. I technically could have gone faster since my lactate really wasnt that high. 4.0 lactate is considered what you can for 20km's but I didnt think that I needed to push any more since technically you can walk about 10 seconds faster per kilometer than you do at altitude so I was walking plenty fast. Thanks goes to Coach Tim for walking a few of them with me.

On Wednesday we left Flagstaff to drive to Albuquerque, NM for the USA Indoor T&F Championships where we have four of our Champions International TEAMmates racing today (Tim Seaman and Tyler Sorensen) and tomorrow (Lauren Forgues and Maria Michta). What a difference the drop in altitude makes. It is 2000 feet difference here than in Flagstaff and we have been feeling great since we have arrived here. My heart rate has been so low and training has been feeling so easy. I think that Tim and Lauren will have a great benefit from being in Flagstaff.

We will be finally making our way home to San Diego tomorrow, I really look forward to getting back home and going about regular life. We have had a great training camp with lots of good memories.

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Finally Adjusting to Altitude

Well we have now been in Flagstaff for just over 2 weeks and this time more than the other two times that we have been here, I have been having trouble adjusting. This was mostly happening because I was sick the first week that we were here. This delayed the adjustment a lot and I also know that if you get sick at altitude that you have the potential of getting no benefits from being here. This started to worry me a lot. My heart rate was really high and I was feeling terrible. I took the first Saturday easy instead of doing a fartlek workout I just walked easy distance. A few days later on the Tuesday, I had been feeling better so the plan was for me to do 7 X 2km. I clearly was still not completely recovered from my cold because I felt terrible. I ended up only doing 5 X 2km's and 2 X 1km's. This really made me feel discouraged but still I moved on with the rest of the week hoping that Saturday's workout would be better. The weather was supposed to be getting bad on Saturday so we decided to try and workout at the NAU Lumberjack Skydome (indoor track). This facility is amazing! Its built of wood and is massive, its sort of hard to tell from the photo above. It was a bit of a treat as far as indoor tracks go since it was 300m's. Coach Tim wanted me to do 12 X 1km so that I could get a positive workout in and feel good. I walked the first 5 with Lauren as her workout was 6 X 1km and 6 X 500m. We started off easy and gradually picked it up. My times were:

1st: 5:12

2nd: 5:09

3rd: 5:05

4th: 5:02

5th: 5:01

6th: 4:53 (3.2 Lactate)

7th: 4:52

8th: 4:48

9th: 4:48 (4.0 Lactate)

10th: 4:49

11th: 4:49

12th: 4:45 (5.0 Lactate)

Im really happy with the workout. It felt pretty easy for the most part and im just really happy that I had a good workout. This is technically my first "hard" workout in over a month. I think that even just based on this workout that I could probably walk 1:40 for 20km's at altitude but even thinking that, I really dont think that I want to go to the IAAF World Racewalk Cup in Chihauau, Mexico this May. Id rather spend my time and effort going somewhere that I can walk a good time. We will see....my racing schedule has not been set yet.

We only have a few more days left here in Flagstaff. Unfortunately starting yesterday we got a lot of snow. I still managed to walk 25km's in a blizzard but it was tough. Today there was no way that we could train outside. It looks like I am at home in Canada here today. Instead of walking on the treadmill we decided to go back to the indoor track and walk on the outside lane there instead for 12km's. Tomorrow we will go back to the track again and I will attempt to do 7 X 2km's again. Should be fun :) Then we leave on Wednesday to go to Albuquerque, NM for the USA Indoor Track and Field Nationals where Tim, Lauren and a few of our other teammates will be competing. Tim will be attempting to win his 12th Indoor Championship title and also trying to surpass Henry Laskau in overall National Championship titles. Currently he is tied with 42 titles.

Keep on walking,

Rachel

46:25 and then off to Flagstaff!

Tim and I had a nice and busy 5 days at home before we left for our drive to Phoenix to visit with my grandpa and then race at the US 50km Racewalk Championships. We had planned on meeting Lauren Forgues, Trevor and Bruce Barron there to race and then drive up the mountain to Flagstaff for altitude training. Myself, Tim and Lauren had planned on walking just 10k and Trevor 20k. The plan was for Tim, Trevor and I to walk together for 10k this way they would help me get a 10k PB hopefully and it would be a good pace for Trevor enroute to his 20k. Tim and I had been sick the whole week (Tim worst than me) and so Tim didnt want to push himself too much before going to Flagstaff. The race went really well. It was great weather (maybe a little chilly for the first few laps) and the course was great (other than the hairpin turns that consisted of just one cone). We walked 9:22 for the first lap (2km loops) and progressively got faster with the next laps being 9:18, 9:18, 9:17 and 9:09. It was a nice negative split with the 5ks being 23:19 and 23:06 finishing up in 46:25. A minute and 5 second PB, wow! It felt great, it didnt feel terribly hard but not super easy either. I am thrilled with the time especially since I have done barely anything fast, no km's at that pace in practice at all really. This bodes really well for later in the season since we are starting to do some fartleks now twice a week. Trevor also finished up really strong breaking the US Junior 20km record by almost 6 minutes walking 1:31:51. Lauren also had a very good race walking her 2nd fastest 10k ever in 51:16. It was a great start to our training camp in Flagstaff. I think we could have all walked at least a second faster per turn since they were so tight so that gives us a lot more potential for the next race.

We are now in Flagstaff and luckily for us, the snow storms seem to have stopped, at least for the time being. There is quite a bit of snow on the side of the road but the roads are completely clear. We love it up here! We are staying in the same condo as last year, right beside our 2.5km training course. We will be here for 2.5 weeks and then we will be driving to Albuquerque, NM for the US Indoor Nationals where Tim hopes to win his 12th National Indoor title and surpass Henry Laskau as 2nd most National Championships of anyone in track and field for the USA. Im really looking forward to watching him race since it will be my first time at that meet.

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Champions Again!

Well as you know, I have been having hamstring problems and so I either havent been able to finish speed/fartlek workouts or do many at all. This was different than last year for sure. Last year I did not many fast workouts but the ones I did were successful and gave me a lot of confidence for Millrose Games. My build up was a lot different this year though with much less fast work. Even though I didnt really want to test my hamstring anymore before the race, my coach, Tim, wanted me to walk 2 X 500m's not all out but fast enough to build up my confidence a bit before the race. I ended up walking them in 2:11 and 2:07 and didnt feel like I was pushing all out. This helped my confidence a lot although I still did get very nervous the day before the race.

I was feeling very good all day Friday. We went for a 2km hike just to wake up our bodies and loosen up a bit. We headed off from Long Island into NYC on the train for my 4:35pm race time. We met up with the rest of our TEAM that were also racing there and then headed to the Madison Square Garden to warm up. I felt very calm once I was with everyone and was warming up. The race started 15 minutes earlier than scheduled and that made all of us very upset. With no choice, we all headed to the start line early and I just didnt worry about it. Before I knew it, the gun went off and all the girls bursted to the lead and me, well, I was left behind a bit. After that I got a little worried about getting lost from the lead girls so I did my best to get around everyone and finally caught up to them within about 50m's. I sat behind Loretta and Teresa and then Teresa made a move around Loretta and I went with her. I then sat behind her until a lap and a half to go and then passed her and put the hammer down. I managed to beat her by 3 seconds in the last 250m's (roughly). I wish that Coach Tim would have told me to pass Teresa sooner because I think I could have broken my meet record but im still very happy with the win and especially happy with how easy the race was. Throughout the whole race I was looking over at Tim and being like 'hey, this is easy, I am going to win this'. I knew it after a few laps that I would win because of how good I felt and how easy it felt. All this with virtually no speed/fartlek work.

Tim's race went equally well. He led the race right from the beginning and led till the end. He looked great, much better than Andreas haha :) (see race photos at: http://www.racewalk.com/defaultRW.asp)

You can see the women's race video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHHC7fTGomY and the men's race video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaYOIM-lBdM&feature=autofb.

Now we have been home in San Diego for a few days and we leave again tomorrow (Friday) for Phoenix to race at the US 50km RW Championships there on Sunday. I will be walking a 10k with Trevor and Tim as they walk 20k. Ill be looking for a nice PB! Wish us luck!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

What a Week of Weather!

There was quite a bit of bad weather all around the world this past week and even though San Diego is usually excluded from this, this week it was a different story. It was brutal conditions all week here. It was raining so hard and the wind was incredible. It was so windy on Thursday that when I was regular walking to our starting point on our training course here, the wind literally knocked me over and I dove into the mud. At that point, I took it as a sign that I should take the day off. Tim had wanted me to take a day off sometime soon anyways because of my hamstring and I hadn't taken a day off since Christmas day, so it was ok.

I tried again to do a fartlek on Tuesday but after doing 4 X 1km/500m I had quite a bit of pain in my hamstring again and so I decided to stop. I wasn't even going very fast, I was only doing 20km pace for the 1km's (4:52/km) but the pain still came on. Since I still had pain I decided to get an appointment with our massage therapist and get her to do some needling in my hamstring since that has helped relax it in the past. Ive still been able to train every day but just easy zone #1 workouts, nothing fast. To say the least, I am a little under prepared for the Millrose Games which are this coming Friday, January 29th. Last year I had only done a handful of speed/fartlek workouts before the race but this year I have only had one! I think that with just my base work that I have a lot of strength and that I should still be able to walk fast, I just wish for my confidence that I would have had a few more workouts faster than zone #1.

This week with the day off I did 114km's. I wanted another 130km + week but because of the day off, it wasn't possible. I did a really good 25km walk yesterday. Its the "fastest" zone #1 walk ive ever done. I walked 2:22:31, a minute faster than last week and it felt so easy and heart rate was good. Today I walked 15km's (in 1:26:14) this morning at around the same pace and we took lactate after to make sure that I haven't been walking to "hard" in my easy days and it was 1.0 lactate which is perfect since it is supposed to be 1.2 or under for zone #1 workouts.

We travel to New York on Tuesday for Millrose Games. We are really looking forward to the trip and to see family and friends. Wish us luck!

Keep on walking,

Rachel