In Calgary...2 days to go!

I arrived in Calgary yesterday and the trip went pretty well. To be honest, I have been quite tired this week because I had a very busy weekend last weekend....too busy! I have had a hard time recovering from it but I still have 2 days till my race at Nationals and I know that I will be strong when it comes to the starting gun going off. Calgary is 3750 feet of altitude and even though this isnt very high and I have done quite a bit of altitude training in the past, I still think that it is going to be challenging for the race. I am not sure what time I will go after on Saturday as I dont want to crash too much because of the altitude.

We went to the race course this morning and its in a beautiful park along the Bow River. It will take place on two parallel bike paths there and the loop is a very odd 2,452.137m's! I am very annoyed that they couldnt figure out a more even number because it does make it more difficult for splits but we will do our best to figure it out! Part of the course has a pretty long gradual hill in it which is not very ideal for a racewalking race. So to say the least, it will be a difficult race.

For now, I am getting as much rest as possible. After my race Saturday morning (at 7am), I will be flying that evening to Eugene, Oregon to watch the Senior races at the USA Nationals so that I can watch Tim and our other TEAM members race. I am really looking forward to that! You can look for results of my race here. Wish me luck!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Hello Again! 7 Days till Nationals...

A lot has happened since my last blog. My training has sort of continued to go up and down but I would say more up than down, thank goodness. I got rid of the cold/infections that I got in Europe but about a week and a half later I started having problems breathing and so did Tim. We went to the doctor and he gave us both an inhaler to expand our lungs and an extra strength allergy pill/temporary asthma medication and it seems to have done the trick. I have been feeling better and better since I started taking the new medication. Now I am only on the new allergy pill and im done with the inhaler.

My zone #1's seem to be back to where I was leading up to the race in Hungary and my heart race keeps getting better every week. My fartleks/speed workouts have been overall very good. I keep improving and ive been doing some of my best times for certain workouts. This past Tuesday I did 6 x 2k and it was my best one ever. Now tomorrow I have 10 x 1k which is my last hard workout before Nationals in Calgary next Saturday.

I have been back in my hometown, Peterborough, Ontario for 2 weeks now and its been great to be with my family and to greet my new nephew, Bruno as he was born the day after I arrived home. He is just as cute as my niece, Anna. The first week I was home, the weather was brutally hot. I did 20k one day, finishing in 31c! I was dead after that, it sucked. Then I got sick from my niece as she had a cold but it was hard to resist hugging and kissing her! Shes so cute!

Last Saturday I did a 5000m race at York University in Toronto. My goals for the race changed since I had gotten sick again but I thought that I should still be able to do half decent since it was just 5k. We arrived at the race and there were huge delays because there was a lightning storm earlier in the day. Because of the storm, we didnt know when we would end up racing since they had to catch up on all of the other events. We didnt end up starting for 2 hours after our scheduled race time. This made it very hard to figure out when to start warming up. We ended up timing the warm up pretty well but we were hungry from waiting. Nothing we could do though! We finally started and I took it out way too fast. I had my training partner from Quebec, Bruno Carriere, keying off of me and so the pace wasnt so good that I did for us in the first km. Bruno dropped off from me after that and I struggled alone. My left shin started hurting almost right away and I hadnt felt it in the warm up. I could feel it every step and so that was hard to ignore. Also, racing a 5k alone is very hard for me. I can focus on a 20k race much easier than a 5k believe it or not. I really struggled with the pace but finished up ok considering everything in a time of 22:19.53, still an 11 second PB, ill take it!

I am home till Tuesday and then I will head to Toronto to stay overnight there before my morning flight to Calgary on Wednesday. I am feeling really good leading into Nationals. It is a race against myself and the clock. We will see what happens! Im excited though. Thanks to my fellow Ontario Racewalkers teammate, Sarah Raetsen, for the race pictures above!

Keep on walking,

Rachel