First off, I have been sick the past few days and haven't run since Wednesday, it is now Sunday. Although being sick is a major drag it is giving me time to refocus, and while I have lost four days of development, I think I have mentally recovered whatever slight bit may have been lost. Although going into sickness I was extremely psyched for this track season, I think I am now even more focused and again seeing things in the big picture, as well as wanting it more and more every day I can't run.
Last weekend I went to Boston for the Boston Indoor Games with my friend Mike Brondello who currently runs at Campo. Mike's sister goes to Boston University so we stayed in her dorm room while there. Before I bought my ticket, I found out about what I thought was an all-comers the day of BIG and signed up for the 5k online. After talking to Campo alum, Chris Vizcaino, I found out that it was a much bigger meet than just some random all-comers meet and that he would be racing the 3k there, so I was excited to see him as well.
I like Boston, it is a pretty cool city. The Subway has way more stops than BART and has better pay methods to save money. The "T" line in Boston is the major form of transportation because of this, something the Bay Area should look into so that the freeways aren't always so crowded.
I was going to run the 5k at the Terrier Invitational but instead changed to the 3k so that I wouldn't miss the Boston Indoor Games. Since it is so early and I haven't done any sort of race pace work, I didn't treat the race as a race so much as a way to find out roughly where I am and finished in 9:07. It was fairly easy, my last 50m I opened up a lot but definitely didn't go near the Well, like the Well was a good distance away and I used an extra long slurpee straw to take a teaspoonful of Welljuice. It's worth about a 9:45 3200m, which is a good indicator, especially for how easy it was and that I havent done any work specific to racing.
After that I put on my sweats really quick and cooled down to the nearest "T" station because BIG was about to get interesting. Too bad for whoever sat next to me, I must have not smelled too great.
I got there just in time to watch the last 3/4ths of the mens 800 and saw Khadevis Robinson outkick Nick Symmonds for the win in 1:50. Soon after, I saw the women's indoor 2 mile record dropped from 9:23 to 9:10 right in front of me by Meseret Defar, while a white Australian girl hung on for a 9:13!!! Respect to Kim Smith. After that I think was the Mens' mile which was of little interest since it didn't go under 4 and I had seen a 3:59 earlier that day during the Terrier Invitational. I have to say that I was disappointed in how the race played out, but no disrespect to the milers, things just didnt work out in that race. I got spoiled.
Later was the mens' 3000 meter race. Craig Mottram dominated, he went out faster than the mile field in 60.5 opposed to 61 for the first 400m. He continued just hammering the pace, lap after lap, 4:05 at the 1600m and then began his negative split battle of insanity. The next split 400 split was 5:04, he had run a 59 5th quarter. He continued running 30 seconds for each lap to finish in 7:34.5 for the 3k which is on pace for an 8:05 3200, and equivalent in effort to an 8:08 full two mile... indoors with those short turns and all. Pretty baller. After that he got all excited and started high fiving everyone around the outside lane, I saw that from a few feet away and was like "OMG ME TOO" so I went and got a high five from him. I am a huge Mottram fan so getting a high five from him was definitely the highlight of the trip and maybe even the winter. The only thing I think was cooler than that was getting all my winter miles in and running without flaw until now. But I'll get better soon.
After all that I was going through security at the airport in Boston and some guy asks me "Did you race this weekend?" He must have caught on because I was wearing two different Arcadia Invitational backpacks and Nike Frees. I turned around and told the guy I did but was mainly there for BIG and we start a conversation. The guy is Jason Jabaut, a 3:57, 1:48 runner who was racing the mile the night before. I spent the next 45 minutes talking to him about running, one of my favorite pastimes and something I rarely do with sub 4 guys. He let me in on his training with the Nike Farm Team which was recently disbanded but based in local Palo Alto. Apparently those guys did 3-4 hard workouts a week. Sometimes they would do an 8 mile tempo in the morning then come back and do hard 300s in the afternoon... while running in excess of 100 miles a week and doing their 2 hour long runs around 5:30 pace.
I got some good tid-bits out of him about his philosophy on running as well. He told me that he didn't think that running that hard all the time was actually the best way to train, that a different training program allowing more rest may have suited him better than the Farm Team's training. He then said that it set him up to run well now, everything he does is so much easier than the training there mentally, but more physically benefiting so he is racing better. He told me that cross training and supplement training (specifically weight training) in addition to a training regimen aren't worth it if you are tired because of such activities; that running should be the first and foremost concern. If something is making you sore and have a bad workout, it isn't worth the effort and energy. That doesn't mean however to not do weights, just cut out supplement training when it begins to hurt your running, or cut it back to an easier level.
Then he asked the big question: "Why do you run?" I didn't have an answer for him, just that I want to be really fast. He told me that he was looking for a coach after the Farm Team was disbanded and one prospective asked him to write her an essay on the topic "why do you run." It took him weeks and dozens of drafts before he was able to respond in the best way he could. This was the essay he wrote. I actually didn't find that until about 15 minutes ago, while searching for his PRs. If I had something more to add, I forgot it.
