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