On a Roll

First I need to apologize for not posting in a long time. It seems as though I got out of my routine when my sister and niece came to visit and lost it from then on. Here is a recap of what ive been up to the last month and a half :)

When my sister and niece came to visit we had another person arrive in San Diego. Our close friend and training partner Lauren Forgues had decided to move here to give herself the best chance to improve and give her athletic career her all. It has been amazing having her here. Its great to have another girl here since the only other people we train with here is John Nunn, Andreas Gustafsson and of course my husband/coach Tim. She has really excelled in the short time she has been here. This is going to be her year and she is going to surprise everyone, I am so excited for her!

My training has been going really well. Ive been really focused this fall, way more than ever before. I have done a couple workouts that I did last year at this time and this year I can really tell that I am way ahead of where I was last year. I have been able to get much more mileage in this year, especially since we didnt "loose" training because of a wedding/honeymoon like we did last year. Last year I only had one month over 500km's and so far this fall I have had two and this month it seems like it will be my third. I have been on a roll and feeling great.

On the weekend on December 5th we went to Las Vegas to participate in the Rock n' Roll Las Vegas Marathon/Half Marathon courtesy of the Competitor Group. We did this event last year and we had a great time. This year Tim decided to do the full marathon since he is in training for the USA 50km RW Championships and I did the half marathon again. We decided that I would walk the first 15km's with Tim as a tempo walk for me. The gun went off and things were looking good but Tim started to have stomach problems and he ended up having to stop 3 times when I was with him. Having to start and stop a few times made me tighten up a bit but I still felt good. We were walking between 5:00-5:05/km and it felt so comfortable. I was able to talk very easily with Tim and my heart rate stayed very low which we were both surprised about. When it came to the 15km mark I decided to keep walking with Tim till 20km's when the half and the full marathon course split up. I was feeling good and thought that Tim would like the company for as long as he could have it. I went through 20km's in 1:41:25 and 1:47:09 for the half marathon (21.1km's). I was thrilled with this especially since I had just done 120km's that week before that day so I wasnt resting at all for this "race"/workout.

So far it has been an almost ideal fall base training period and its looking good as I look towards the winter/spring racing. This weekend we will head to Canada to spend Christmas with my family for the week and then the day after Christmas we will fly to South Texas for the USATF Junior Racewalk Training Camp for a week then finally we will come back home to San Diego.

Our first race of the season will be on January 23rd in Irvine, CA at the USA 50km RW Championships where Tim will look to win his first 50km Championship and I will walk a low key 20km with Tyler Sorensen for his debut 20km. We are really looking forward to the event.

Happy holidays to everyone and dont forget to keep on walking,

Rachel