Off We Go...

Tomorrow I start my 5 week journey to Europe. I will be staying in Wattenscheid, Germany for my whole trip except for the 2 weekends that I go away for the races that I am competing at. My first race in April 9th in Podebrady, Czech Republic and my second and last race is May 1st in Sesto San Giovanni, Italy. I am looking forward to improving my time from a few weeks ago in Huntington Beach, CA and enjoying the experience. I will be staying with good friends of ours, Bastian, Sabine and Thomas Krantz. Sabine is a fellow racewalker and is Germany's best. I look forward to spending time with them and their new addition, 7 month old Thomas.

My training has been going very well since the race in Huntington Beach. I took the first 5 days after the race extremely easy to make sure that I had recovered completely and I did my first somewhat hard workout on the Saturday (15 X 500m/500m fartlek) and then 22km's easy on Sunday. After that I started back to normal training this past week doing 4 X 3km/1km fartlek on Tuesday, 20km's easy on Wednesday, 10 X 1km/500m fartlek on Friday and then 25km's easy today (Saturday). Overall I will have 142km's this week and im feeling great. The 3km's fartlek workout went so great, I felt so strong and still felt pretty fresh at the end of the workout. I think it was one of my best workouts ever, finishing the 15km fartlek in 1:13:24. My confidence has changed ever since I broke the Canadian Record. I know that I am capable of better this season and im very excited about it!

I have heard nothing but good things about the race in Podebrady. Everyone seems to do well there and so I hope to jump on the band wagon. In past results there have been a lot of women who are around my time so that will help pull me along. Only 2 weeks till the race, im excited!

For now I still have to finish packing and get on the long flight to Germany. I will post updates while im there!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Race Video and Interview

Here is a video and post-race interview from the race in Huntington Beach, CA on the weekend. Thank you Chris Rael for the great videography!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

CANADIAN RECORD!!!!

Well...Its been awhile since I last posted and a lot has happened. I went to Florida and raced at the USA Pan American Racewalk Cup Trials and had a disaster race, a real disaster race walking 1:40:03. The reason for the disaster race was definitely too much travelling the 15 days before the race (I flew almost 10,000 miles in those 2 weeks) and I think I had too much stress in the week that I was in Florida and so all of that led to a big failed race. I was so extremely disappointed after that race that I really questioned why I was putting so much effort into all my training.

I went home from that race with a choice to either put that race behind me or rethink all my goals. Obviously I decided to move on from that race and make it fire me up and train with even more focus. Training from that point on has been going extremely well. I have been feeling great.

Exactly a month after the race in Florida, I had a completely different experience. We had some of our TEAMmates come to California for a race in Huntington Beach to try and get a 20km race in before going to Nationals in June. I decided that I would jump into the race as a hard effort and see how I would feel after not resting at all for it. I did 2 weeks at 140km's before the race and a hard workout (10 x 1km/500m fartlek) the Tuesday before and so I definitely wasnt planning on this being a peak race. I also had no pressure going into this race since no one knew I was racing and I wasnt thinking of this as being an important race at all.

The weather was perfect, no wind and 51 degrees. The course was perfect also, measuring at 1.051km's around, it was a circle with no turn arounds. We couldnt have asked for a more perfect situation. Chris Tegtmeier and I were planning on going 5:02 a lap which would give us 4:47 per km. My main goal was to feel as comfortable as I could to walk between 47:30-48mins for 10km's as possible so that when I did get in a "real" race that I would be confident that I could double that when I was more rested. I did not know that the day was today.

We just started clicking laps below 5:00 and Chris kept looking at me each lap asking me "Is that ok? Or should we slow down?" and I just said "Ya, I guess, I feel great, lets just keep going". So we just went with the flow and I felt amazing from the first step to the last. To show how good I felt, here were my 5km splits: 23:49, 23:43 (47:32), 23:34 (1:11:06), 23:16 (1:34:22), WOW! I am so proud of how I raced, it couldnt have gone better. Oh and by the way, I broke the CANADIAN RECORD!!!!! This was just so unexpected! Its amazing! This record was always a goal for me but I didnt think it would happen this year but im so glad it did.

This race has now change my whole outlook on my upcoming training and races. I used to think that I could achieve the Olympic 'A' standard but now I know that I am capable of it. I am now only 52 seconds off of the standard and I have 500 days exactly from today till the 2012 Olympic Games and I believe I can get there. I am so excited for what is to come!

Thank you all for your support! It makes the world of difference to have people in my life that push me to do my best.

Keep on walking,

Rachel