On the Upside

Training is continuing to go well....a little too well. Its exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time. I am well ahead of where I have ever been at this time. Im well ahead of where I was in July/August when I was in my best shape last year. With a month to go till my first 20km race of the season, im anxious for it to get here.

Last week we did  a lactate test again to follow up on the one we did in November and I was able to improve upon the results from November. I was able to go faster than the last test and my lactate was considerably lower. This proves that the training is working and im improving which is always nice to see the proof.

Ive been doing all of my training with TEAM members Nick Christie and fellow Canadian Bruno Carriere who is here for 2 months training in the sun and escaping the snow. It has been so great to have people with walk with everyday. This is something I have never had in my whole career. When I lived in Canada, I had my parents to train with a lot of the time but never have I had consistent training partners. Its really helped in the hard workouts to have faster guys to push me when in the past its been hard to push myself. All of my fartlek workouts have been going so well and to the point that im just waiting for a bad day to come because it cant be reality that things go so well, can it? Tuesday we did 3 x 4km/1km, a 15km total fartlek and I was able to finish in a time of 1:12:13 with 3k total easy. This was very encouraging for me. Its results like these that give me confidence that I can achieve the Olympic A standard in a month.

On Saturday it will be exactly one month until the race in Huntington Beach and im sure the time is going to go very quickly. Right now the plan is to have Nick and Bruno walk with me and im excited to have the comfort of every day training with them to keep me at ease during the race.

A few weeks ago we did a 3km race on the track at Cuyamaca College, the day before the USA 50km RW Olympic Trials. It ended up being a disaster weather day which is quite rare in San Diego. It was cold, windy and pouring rain. My goal was to break 13 minutes but it became apparent that it would be tougher than I thought to do that. I ended up walking 13:07 which I was quite happy with anyways considering the weather. Its a new PB but I havent raced a 3km in over 5 years.

Speaking of the USA 50km RW Olympic Trials, my husband and coach Tim fought so hard and ended up coming 2nd in a time of 4:05:50, Olympic B standard. He was just 15 seconds off of his PB from 14 years ago. He was so inspiring to me and all of our TEAMates. He fought right till the end and I hope that if im ever in the same type of situation that I would be able to fight like he did. Even though he did not qualify for his 3rd Olympic team, we were incredibly happy with his result.

Now just a few more hard weeks of training to go and then we start to rest up for the race. Cant wait!

Keep on walking,

Rachel