In Germany...brrrr!

After my many tears after leaving Tim in San Diego, I arrived safe and sound in Wattenscheid, Germany on Mondy night after what I must say, was the best long flight I have ever been on. I was lucky enough to have two seats to myself and so I was able to sleep, stretch out and relax for all 11 hours. It was the best I could have asked for.

So far everything has been going well. I have been staying with my friend and Sabine Krantz's coach, Heiko Schulze, for the first 5 days while I wait for Sabine and her family to arrive back to Germany after training in Flagstaff, AZ. I have been able to train right out of his front door so that has been really convenient since I dont have a car and Heiko works during the day. I have been training on a compact dirt path which feels much different from The Strand at home. I feel like it takes more energy to train on the dirt path then on asphalt. I notice that when I go on the little parts of asphalt through the trail, that my heart rate drops significantly, its interesting. For the most part though, the dirt is smooth and is fine for racewalking. I have trained on this path everytime that I have come here for races so I feel comfortable being on it. Tomorrow we will go to the lake where there is an asphalt path, 10km's around the lake. Its great! I have a fartlek, one last hard workout before my race next weekend in Podebrady.

The weather has been quite a bit colder than im used to in San Diego. The sun hasnt been out much and yesterday it rained practically all day....definitely not San Diego! Im currently all bundled up as I write this, trying to get rid of the chill. Tomorrow, however, it is supposed to be a beautiful day with 24c as the high. I hope the forecast is correct!

I think this has been the easiest transition to the 9 hour time change that I have ever had. The first few nights I slept all through the night, the last two nights I have woken up breifly in the middle of the night but after some time, fell back to sleep. Im feeling the least tired for the first week here, then I ever have. Its been great! I have a great feeling about my race next weekend in great part to this.

Tomorrow I will move over to Sabine's house for the remainder of my stay (4 more weeks) but before that, Heiko and I are going to a local club's soccer game, or should I say futbol game, tonight. Futlbol is huge in Germany so it should be a lot of fun!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

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

Article in Hometown Newspaper

Today a newspaper article came out in one of my local newspapers in Peterborough, Canada on me and the race in New York City. You can view the article here.

Local race walker is in the groove

- Seaman is now a member of the New York Athletic Club which will sponsor some of her travel for races.

- Other personal race walk times include 46:25 in the 10km and 22:30.4 in the 5km.

- She finished 35th in the 20km at the 2009 World Championships in 1:45:45�. Seaman is a former member of the Peterborough Legion Track and Field Club.

Rachel Seaman is back in the New York groove.

The reigning Canadian race walking champion from Peterborough continues to take a bite out of the Big Apple as she captured her third-straight Millrose Games one-mile title on Saturday at Madison Square Gardens in New York City, the 104th edition of the event.

The annual meet is one of the largest indoor track and field events in the U.S.

"I usually don't get nervous for races but for some reason I always do for this one," Seaman said on Monday from her home in San Diego, Calif. "My base training keeps me strong and I start each year strong. This race is based on speed and my training helps on a stage like this."

Seaman, daughter of Nil and Christine Lavallée of Peterborough, not only topped 13 other competitors, she also smashed the course record she set in 2009. Her time of six minutes, 41.32 seconds was a six-second improvement.

She is currently the only Canadian to hold a record at the Games.

"The past two years I had (longtime U.S. champ) Teresa Vaill to hang off but this year the target was on my back," said Seaman, 25. "Everyone was kind of expecting me to win and prior to the race they were even asking me how much I was going to win by.

"It was a weaker field than in previous years with some high school competitors but all of that just gets me fired up to perform well."

The victory is a positive step for the 20-kilometre race walk expert who looks to bounce back from a roller-coaster 2010. The season included battling illness in the spring, missing out on qualifying for the Commonwealth Games and enduring a car crash in Toronto just prior to the Canadian track and field championships.

"It was a tough year," said Seaman. "I was in good shape but my mental state just wasn't there. The car accident shook me up a lot, too. I've changed my outlook and am feeling strong."

Evidence of that came a week before the Millrose Games when she won a 20km race walk at the USA 50KM Championships in a time of 1:37:18 - a new personal best, topping her 2009 World University Games mark by four seconds. Â

Seaman says she expects she'll need to reach the Athletics Canada's A-standard of 1:33:30 to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

"My goal this year is to get as close as possible to the qualifying time for the Olympics," she said. "My main goal is to drop as much time as possible."

And her training is taking a step in the right direction with higher mileage.

"Last year, I managed only eight weeks total of 130 kilometres of more and already I've done six weeks of 130k or more."

Seaman is set for the U.S. Pan-Am trials next week in Florida, along with several races in Europe in April. She then plans on several months of extensive training alongside her husband and coach Tim Seaman (a two-time Olympian and former U.S. champ) prior to returning to Canada for the nationals.

"I'm feeling a lot stronger and I'm also back on the weights which I haven't done since I was in Peterborough and training under Richard Borek.

"I've got more confidence going into this race season," she added. "I know each race is going to get better and better."

Keep on walking,

Rachel

3-Time Millrose Games CHAMPION!!!

Yesterday I was just a bottle of nerves all day. For whatever reason I tend to get extremely nervous for the Millrose Games. I dont know if its because of the track being so small, the fact that I have to go practically 100% effort right from the beginning or what but I have been getting really nervous about this race the past few years.

I knew that the target was on my back since I was the 2 time defending champion and meet record holder. This year I didnt have Teresa Vail as my guide so it was up to me to go out in the lead. This however didnt happen until 2 laps into the race. Nirvana Zalba from Mexico blasted out of the start line and sprinted the first few laps and it brought us through the first 400m's in 1:33!!!! Wow, that was too fast. I knew that there was a potential of her doing that and once she did I was sort of afraid to let her go and get too far ahead of me. She ended up crashing pretty quickly and from then on I was in the lead the rest of the race. I was just trying to push as hard as I could the whole way and get as big of a lead as I could. I ended up getting a few paddles (lifting and bent knee) so with a few laps to go I couldnt tell if I had any red cards or how many so I didnt want to push over my limit the last few laps (I only ended up having 1 red card). I ended up finishing in a time of 6:41.32 which is a new meet record by 6 seconds from my win in 2009.

I am thrilled with my time and thankful that this race is over for another year. I just hate how nervous I get especially since I dont get half as nervous for races that are 100% more important than this one. Oh well! It was my first time wearing the NYAC letters on my singlet and it was so great to wear it in NYC. We had such great support from them at the race.

My dad and I spent the rest of the weekend in NYC and had a great time. We were able to work out in Central Park and catch a broadway show and bus tours. Now im looking forward to going back home to San Diego tomorrow and get one week of good training in before my next race in Coconut Creek, Florida on February 13th.

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Feeling Goooood

Last weekend was a great way to open up my real racing season. It was nice to be back on the roads racing 20km's. I had only done one 20km race on the roads last year and racing 50 laps on the track just isnt as fun :)

We woke up to great temperatures on race morning but the winds.....the winds were unreal! At the start of the race it was around 30mph winds. I have never raced in this bad of winds before and whenever I have trained in that wind, it has been miserable. I didnt let it bother me because being the first race of the season, time doesnt matter as much, its just about getting a good effort in. I attacked the race with Tyler Sorensen and the first lap was definitely too slow but it was really hard to tell the pace we were going with the wind and there was no km split (the laps were 1.6667km's). After the first lap (of 12) we got right onto pace of 8mins a lap. I was feeling really good and then with 4 laps to go Tyler took off from me (to chase the Olympic Trials standard of 1:36) and I tried to keep my pace from there but I started to tighten up and my last 3 laps werent so good. I lost a lot of time in those laps and my hopes of finishing in 1:36:xx wasnt going to happen. I ended up finishing in 1:37:18 which was good enough for a 4 second PB.

I am still very happy with this small personal best time because I am just glad to be back to where I was in 2009. This is still extremely early and I have barely done any workouts faster than zone #1 pace (easy pace) so I know that each race will get better and better.

Tim raced his first 50km in 4 years and it was definitely a tough day for him. Not only did he have the winds to worry about in his early stages of the race but once that died down the heat came out. By the time he was done it was 77F so thats pretty warm. He felt good through 30-35k and then Ben Shorey put a surge on and he couldnt respond and thats where Ben won the race. Tim really struggled after that and finished 2nd in a time of 4:25. After he started struggling he just needed to make sure he finished so thats what he did.

I am now in New York City getting ready to race at the Millrose Games tomorrow afternoon. I am looking to win my 3rd straight title. You can view the results after my 4:35pm race here. Wish me luck!!!

Keep on walking,

Rachel