Trials Training Week #6 Recap

Week in Review

The end of this week marked just 35 more days until the Olympic Trials! Writing the countdown in days makes it seem way closer than saying it’s 5 weeks away. The great news is that I feel like I’m in a really good place - both mentally and physically. I feel strong enough to execute longer workouts — even when they’re not going very well. This week proved to be a true test of mental tenacity in different ways.

First, on Wednesday, Jay and I headed out to Baylands to do 4x2 mile repeats. Jay was fresh off a flight from Taiwan that had landed less than 24 hours before, but he still joined me at 630AM as a pacemaker. Due to his jetlag, he hopped in and out of the reps, which forced me to put more effort in mentally, mostly because I it felt hard to hit the paces, especially partly solo. After all, I couldn’t mindlessly sit on Jay’s shoulder and let him do the pace work.

The goal was to start at 555 pace and to work my way down to the upper 540s. Instead, I went out a little too quick and hit 550/547 for the first interval. The second one was basically the same paces, but the effort felt more labored. By the third rep, I slowed to 555 pace and was ready to call it quits. I wondered if maybe I’d ruined the workout by getting too arrogant and starting faster than prescribed. I decided to take a short walk rest and rounded back for Jay, told him my plan to do a loop before grabbing him for the final fast mile. During this rep, I decided to just focus on effort and to not look at the the splits. Ironically, I hit the fastest paces on this interval, which was a nice reminder that sometimes you’ve got more in the tank than you’d think.

The next mental test presented itself on Saturday during the long 12 mile tempo at Lake Merced. With a slew of folks from all over the bay, we kicked of a warmup with about 12 people. With a variety of workouts ranging from 22 miles with every 3rd mile fast for the Kaiser races, hill repeats for the guys, and a 12 mile tempo for my gang, it was great to converge together for at least a few miles.

After 5 miles of warmup with Liza, JOB, Jenna and Brent, I changed my shoes, ate a few chews and set off for our first loop of the tempo. These miles flew by with Liza’s friendly conversation and the new terrain. After 5 miles, the group splintered off a bit so that others could do variations of their own workouts, so I had another 7 miles on my own. I wasn’t phased at all by the solo effort and, if anything, felt super energized just knowing that I’d be passing some of my teammates along the way. At mile 9, Jenna and Brent grabbed me again to help me for another mile. Their company was crucial because I had about 2.5 miles of uphill ahead of me and my legs were beginning to fatigue. Overall, I averaged 6:03 pace for the tempo, and didn’t feel like I’d gone to the well or anything. I was really happy with the effort and how comfortable that pace felt on a slightly rolling course.

With just 3 weeks left of high mileage, it already feels like it’s flying by too fast. I’ve been really enjoying this training cycle, mostly due to the the camaraderie of our little training group out here in California.