Time for Some Visitors

Training has continued to go well. I have been very consistent and my mileage is increasing comfortably and I couldnt be feeling better. I am just starting to get into a little higher mileage (much more to come) and as I have said in previous posts, I am so much more ahead of last year. I am so focused and ready to have a breakthrough season. I am getting into some longer walks finally. Last weekend I did my first workout over 20k. Did 22k at Lake Miramar about 30 minutes north of where we live in California. There is a great path that goes all around the lake that is 8km's long. Its so nice to "just" have to do 3 laps to finish a workout. Today we went there again to walk 25k and I felt great.

This month is full of visitors and soon to be residents coming to San Diego. The last few days we have had our friend Ray come to visit from Las Vegas. It was great to catch up with him again and do a workout with him. Today my sister Rebecca and her beautiful baby girl Anna arrived and will be staying with me for the week. I am so excited to see them again and to have a training partner for the week. The next person arriving into sunny San Diego is Lauren Foruges!!! She has spent the last few days driving and will arrive here on Monday. She is the first TEAM member that has decided to make the move here and focus on training in hopes of making the Olympic Team. I am so excited to have her here and to have, finally, another woman to add to our daily training group here. Another person from our TEAM will be joining us for a few days of training later next month and I am really looking forward to that also!

A Canadian magazine, Chatelaine, wrote a short article on me and tips from me about racewalking. You can view the article here.

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Wisconsin, beautiful?

This is the view we had from our hotel room in Kenosha, Wisconsin on the weekend. We were staying right on the lakefront and it was just beautiful. Tim said that it was probably the best weather he had ever had while in Wisconsin (Tim lived there for 5 years in his college days). This was my first time in Wisconsin so I definitely had a good experience. Along the lake was a bike path so we were able to wake up and step out of the hotel and start training right from there. It was awesome! We were able to catch up with some friends that live in the area for a few days of good training (Thanks Ben, Miranda and Amber!). I did my first 20km of the season on Saturday and it went really well, I felt great and walked a good time for this time of the year. I am still around 4 weeks ahead if not more, ahead of where I was last year.

It was really fun for Tim to bring me around to where he used to live and work and go over some fun memories that he has from his college days. We were able to go to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside athletic building and see all of the All-American plaques (mostly racewalkers, yay!). I wont humiliate Tim and put the picture of his plaque on here but lets just say that im glad the haircut he had is no longer in style!

Next up was the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. It was great to hear about all of the other athletes accomplishments for the school. UWP definitely has had a lot of success in athletics. Tim gave a great speech and was presented with a medal and plaque that will be hung on the walls of the UWP athletic halls. What a great honor and definitely well deserved! We had a great time with his parents who also came up from Long Island, NY.

We are glad to be back home and now heading into a busy few weekends of Racewalking Clinics. This weekend Tim heads to Houston to meet up with Jeff for a Clinic of Excellence and then comes a clinic in Santa Cruz, CA on Oct.30-31st then the final clinic of the year in Springfield, IL on Nov. 13-14th. I hope you can join us at one of the clinics, they are always a lot of fun and you learn a lot. I will be attending the ones in Santa Cruz and Springfield. See you then!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Dinner with El Presidente

Since my last post training has really come a long way. My heart rate has settled down a lot and my pace has dropped drastically. Since I am in base season now I am only training in zone #1 which is basically easy distance. The times I have been walking put me 3-4 weeks ahead of where I was last year at this time. I know that doesnt seem like much but it feels like a lot for me. I attribute my improvement to my weight training. I feel very strong and powerful already and I have only been doing weights for 3.5 weeks. Did I mention that I LOVE weights?! I dont know why I stopped the last 3 or 4 years.

Last Thursday Tim and I had the pleasure of going out for dinner with the great one, Jefferson Perez from Ecuador. He is the '96 Olympic Champion (only Olympic Medalist ever for Ecuador), 3 time World Champion ('03, '05 and '07) and '08 Olympic Silver Medalist. He's pretty great! Tim has known him since '96 before he won the Olympics. Jefferson was in San Diego studying at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) for the week at a political leadership summit. We were able to catch up with him last Thursday night and it was so nice to see him again. We hadnt seen him for 3 years. He has been very busy building his multiple businesses and going to school to earn his Doctorate in Business. It was nice to go through all of his racewalking stories. We miss him not competing anymore but he is still doing great things that are impacting the world.

This weekend Tim and I are headed to Wisconsin to go to Tim's alma mater, University of Winsconsin-Parkside. Tim is finally getting inducted into their hall of fame, 15 years after graduating. We are so excited for this and I cant wait to finally go visit his school where he has so many great memories from.

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Time to Buckle Down

Its been 2 weeks since I started training and so far ive been feeling pretty good. Ive been slowly building up the mileage and doing weights 3 times a week. Ive been a bit slow to start. My heart rate has been pretty high and my pace has been slow but I am seeing progress.

Today Athletics Canada released the 2011 World Championships/Pan Am Games qualifying standards. AC has made some good steps in the right direction. They have released the standards earlier than ever and they have stayed with the IAAF standards. The bad news for me is that they are using the Rising Star criteria again for both events. Since I went to the 2009 World Championships under the Rising Star criteria, I am no longer eligible EVER to compete at any major international event with the B standard, I will always have to achieve the A standard which is considerably faster. I now have to break 1:33:30 for 20km's in order to qualifying for anything, which is a minute and 20 seconds FASTER than the Canadian Record!

Since taking my 3 weeks off, I have come back to training feeling a lot more confident in my potential. I know I can make big jumps and can achieve the A standard. I dont know if it will come this season or the next one but I know that I have the potential and that if I work hard and do everything I can to improve, that I can do it! I have re-committed myself this year to doing all the right things and train like a professional athlete. I have no reasons why I shouldnt be doing everything that I need to. Its time to buckle down and focus on getting my times down! Lets get it done!!!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Here We Go Again...

Three weeks off just flew by! Before you know it, you're back at it again. I didn't do much training during my time off. I only ran and at the most 3 times a week. I was really happy to see that I didn't gain any weight and when I did run, I felt like I didn't loose much fitness.

Last week I started back training. First day was 6km racewalk in the morning and 6km run in the afternoon. As usual, the first day racewalking felt weird and not very smooth. I feel like this every year after taking my time off. I only racewalked 3 times last week and ran on the days inbetween and hiked on Sunday. As the week went on I started to feel a bit more normal racewalking. My heart rate is still high for me but everytime I racewalk the average heart rate has been going down bit by bit. This week I will racewalk 4 times and so far im feeling so much better. I also started doing weights again last week. I havent done weights for a few years and now that I am back at it, I don't know why I ever stopped. I LOVE doing weights!!! Im not doing anything heavy but i'm doing typical distance athletes weights. Low weight and medium amount of repetitions. I am doing weights three times a week at Cuyamaca College. I signed up for the Strength and Conditioning course. It basically gives me access to the weight room and I can do whatever I want and all I have to do is record the machines I use and the weight I set them at. I have been spending a lot of time at the College because Tim is now the men's cross country coach there. The picture above is of the men's team, Tim and I at their 2nd race. Its been a lot of fun. Tonight I also started a yoga class. I am hoping that it will help increase my flexibility. I have never done yoga before but so far so good, I didn't embarrass myself too much :)

I am feeling very excited for the new season and I feel like I have changed my approach to training both mentally and physically. This year is going to be different and I cant wait to get the ball rolling. Here's to a good season!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

Time to Call it a Day, or Year...

Well I have finally come to a decision. It was a difficult decision for me but I know that I made the right one. I have decided to stop training for the season and take a break. After getting hurt a week after Nationals and struggling to get back into training after that, I just thought that I was going to have enough to prepare properly for a good race. I have been struggling with a lot of different things this year and I didnt want to end my season with yet another disappointment by putting myself in a situation that I wasnt prepared.

As I reflect on my season, I am extremely disappointed. Its hard to go from such a breakthrough year in 2009 to not improving from that in 2010. I know that I need to think about the positives and I did have personal bests over 5000m's and 10km's and those were two PB's that I really wanted to get. I also have to realize the different reasons why I struggled in the 2nd part of the season. The car accident was one thing that really hurt me mentally and I had such a hard time recovering from that. I am going to take this year as a learning experience and I am going to implement the things that I had wanted to for this past year. I am going to start doing weights again, I am going to keep building my mileage up since I realized that once I dropped my mileage at different times in the season that I tended to not do as well, I am going to try and race more often and most important, I am going to work on my mental toughness.

I have spent my first week off training in Florida with my mom, 3 sisters and niece. It has been a great trip and a nice way to get my mind off racewalking and just have a good time. I am looking forward to going home tomorrow and get into a regular routine. Tim and I wont be doing much travelling at all until Christmas time so im really looking forward to that!

Thanks for everyone's support over the past year. It has really helped me through a lot of the rough times and enjoy the good times! Talk to you all again in a few weeks as I begin my base training for the 2011 season!

Keep on walking,

Rachel

On the Go Again

After Nationals I had to make some decisions. Since I didnt get the National or Provincial funding standards I knew that I wanted to race at least one more time to give myself another chance. This season has been so disappointing for me to say the least. It seems like everything that could go wrong, did go wrong for me. I have been in the best shape of my life this season but you would never know it by my race results. When I was in my best shape of the season, the race I went to had a course that was detrimental for every competitor that was there. After that race, my mental state really struggled. It seemed as though after that I would get myself psyched up for another race and something else would happen.

I was able to train for a week after Nationals and was feeling really great until I did 22km's on Saturday August 7th and then my knee started feeling really tight a few hours after the workout. I had been feeling some IT band tightness after my race in Toronto but didnt think much of it until after that 22km workout. After that Saturday I could not bend my knee for a few days and was forced to limp when I walked normal. There was NO way that I could do any sort of exercise. Luckily I was able to see a chiropractor right away on the Monday to get some laser therapy (bio-flex laser) and it worked like a miracle. I still wasnt able to train for another few days but the laser just cleared the pain right up. My massage therapist in Peterborough (Josh Martin at Return to Function) said that the pain in my knee probably had to do with my very tight hamstring. It is also most likely from doing 50 laps on the track since the pain is on my inside leg. I have been able to train since last Thursday starting off with a run and it went well. I am now back home in San Diego and am back into training after yet another set back.

I am now debating what I should do for my next race. There is a race in the US, a race in Canada and a few races in Europe. Its very frustrating to have to extend my season till the end of September to try and chase a time but I know that I am capable of walking my goal time. As of right now a race in Germany on Sept.18th and a race in Norway on Sept. 25th are the front runners for me to do. I might do both. I will make my decision in the next few days.

In the meantime, I am in San Diego till Sunday morning then I fly to Fort Lauderdale, FL to spend the week with all the girls in my family (Mom, 3 sisters and my niece). Too bad im not getting ready for a warm weather race because I will be training in some heat!!! We'll see how it goes.

Keep on walking,

Rachel