Applying to Grad School

These last couple days have been consumed with getting everything together for my graduate school application. After graduating in May, the plan is to starts a Master of Engineering while I finish up my last year of eligibility here in Flagstaff. I have really enjoyed my college experience here and would like to take it a step further with a master’s degree. Plus I couldn’t imagine jumping ship four years into my collegiate career and finish my running competing for a different university.

The application is due in a week, so I am finishing up my résumé and a statement of career objectives. I am thankful to have a brilliant girlfriend to help me edit and proofread this kind of stuff. Thanks Tina.

Surgery March 1st

I found out today that my surgery is scheduled for this upcoming Monday morning. I am happy to finally get this problem taken care of. After surgery, I will do rehab for several weeks and will be able to resume running approximately ten days later.

As of now I am leaving the Mt. Sac 5000 on April 16th on my schedule. If recovery takes longer than expected I will postpone my return to racing one week at a time. Hopefully, at the very least, I will be able to race a steeplechase in early May that will qualify me to run both the steeplechase and 5000 at conference.

Super Bowl, Knee Struggles & Swim PRs

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! What a great, American spectacle. I was rooting for the Colts (Manning is the man), but I am just happy it was a great game. We had some teammates over — Darius Terry, Joe Withers, Simon Gilna and Eric Lynch — and we all made and ate lots of food. My contribution was my Mom’s chili recipe and Trader Joe’s cornbread. Both were delicious.

Knee

The knee troubles continue. As of now, I am able to run 10-20 minutes without pain. As I go longer or increase pace it begins hurting. I have been icing, ultrasounding, and strengthening for over a month now with little improvement. It is getting pretty frustrating. And to frustrate me further, I have been trying to get a CD with my MRI images mailed to NAU’s team doctor for over a week now. Patience is a virtue, I guess.

Once the doctor receives the images, we will have some orthopedics take a look. Depending on their suggestions, I may end up undergoing arthroscopic surgery on my knee. I have read and been told that, as far as surgeries go, arthroscopic knee surgery is about as noninvasive as it gets, with reports of people back running in a couple of weeks. The quick recovery time makes the surgery very appealing. Frankly, I don’t see myself back running full strength in a couple weeks without the surgery anyway. Why not get it fixed?

But I am getting ahead of myself. For now, I wait to see what the doctors say.

Swimming

Today I did a time trial as prescribed by USATriathlon. The protocol for the test is a 200 (yards or meters), 1 minute rest, 800. I did this test a month ago and, converting from yards to meters, 2:45 and 12:45 equivalents. In today’s test I swam a 2:39 and a 12:13, 6 and 32 second improvements, respectively. I plan to continue to do this test once a month to measure my improvement.

Needless to say, swimming is going in the right direction. Still, I have a lot of work to do. For 2010, I want to be under 2:30 for 200m and 11:06 for 800m (at sea level). I swam over 20,000m for the first time this last week. I am hopeful that many more high volume, high intensity weeks will get me closer to that goal.

Indoor and Outdoor

Because of my recent setbacks, running the 2010 indoor season is out of the question. There are but a couple meets left before the conference meet and there is no way I will be ready. Outdoor runs into the middle of May and beyond, so I think if I continue down the road to recovery, I should be able to salvage a decent outdoor season. After the improvements I made in cross country, I think even a mediocre season for me should yield some solid PRs.

Dealing With Injuries

Today was NAU’s first meet of the 2010 Indoor season. Instead of racing a mile or 3k, or both, I ran 20 minutes at about 8 minute miles an hour before the meet started. Good news is that my last three runs have been pain free and it is looking like I am finally nipping this knee problem in the butt.

When the injury first came on, I figured it was nothing and I continued to push on. I wanted to come back to Flagstaff in really great shape and ready to start doing some hard workouts. It looks like the injury was more severe than I had thought, as this was three weeks ago. It can be really difficult to discern when there is a real problem and when there is just a little bit of soreness. Honestly, if I did it over again, I probably would go about the injury in a similar fashion. Running is hard and little aches are expected, but they should still be treated. The important thing for me to learn from this is that a day or two off, especially in DECEMBER, is not going to hurt me come outdoor season.

I was perusing some of the recent videos of Flotrack and found this one by UNC’s coach Pete Watson. He suffered 11 stress fractures and 4 broken sacrums during his running career. Needless to say, he has some good insight on dealing with injuries that he shares in this video.

Track and Field Videos on Flotrack

Back in Flagstaff

On Sunday I returned to Flagstaff after a great four week stay in Simi Valley. I have not been able to jump back into training with my teammates, as I am still fighting a sore knee. The good news is that I got an MRI and there is nothing serious — no tears. Basically there is some inflammation behind the patella (knee cap) that is causing the pain. When the swelling goes away, the pain should follow suit.

My last post I mentioned setting resolutions, or goals, for the new year. With this minor setback, I may have to alter a few ambitions, but hopefully the big picture remains the same.

2010 Goals

• Continue to improve my running by logging high mileage weeks.
  • This track season I really want to improve my 5000 time of 14:50 and my steeplechase of 9:09.
  • Compete at NCAA Cross Country Championships once again and improve on my 95th place finish of 2009. The ultimate goal is to be an All-American — top 40.
• Improve my swimming.
  • I will try to get in the pool at least once a week for the entire year. Obviously, when time and running permits, I will spend more time in the pool.
  • Seek out coaching to improve my stroke.
  • Compete in some of the Ventura Splash and Dash aquathlon series events, assuming the series continues in 2010.
• Compete in more triathlons.
  • I had a great time competing in the Breath of Life triathlon last June, and will likely do this one again.
  • As of now, the San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island in July is on my calendar. As I understand the rules, if I am one of the top-3 amateurs I will earn my elite license.

Now for a shout out: Congratulations to my girlfriend, Tina Johnson, for her first Half Marathon last Saturday! My parents and I went down to Irvine to watch Tina compete in her first race over 5k! She did a great job and I am so very impressed and proud that she has become a runner just like me.

Making the Best of a Bum Knee

About a week and a half ago, my left knee started bothering me. I thought it was nothing, so I continued running through it. The pain never got too bad, but it persisted, so I have decided to take some time off of running to let it heal. I have been seeing a physical therapist/chiropractor, Brett Darrington, that helped me recover from many an injury in high school. Here are some pictures my teammates and I sent to Brett for his help in high school: Thanks from Jason, 2005 Royal Cross Country team, 2004 State Champions.

While I wait for Brett’s magic to kick in and let the knee heal, I have been swimming a lot. This month I have swam almost 23 miles. I am really working on improving my stroke as opposed to increasing my swim fitness. I want to be quick and efficient through the water and swimming hard intervals with poor form won’t get me there. With this in mind, I stopped by Big 5 Sporting Goods a couple days ago to pick up a Nike pull buoy and Speedo paddles. After three days of using these new toys I am already feeling a difference. Today, I set a PR in the 50y by two seconds — 30 seconds. Now I need to focus on hitting 50y splits in 30 seconds on my way to 200, 400, 800 yards and beyond.

Finals, Snow & Training

At most universities across the nation it is finals week, including at Northern Arizona University. The only difference with NAU is that some finals have been canceled. That’s right, CANCELED, due to snowfall. From about 4am Monday morning till early this morning, the snow never let up over Flagstaff. There is now about 2 feet of accumulation. In fact, last night saw blizzard conditions with wind gusts up to 40 mph, leaving some wicked snow drifts this morning.

Because conditions were/are so poor, NAU decided it would not be safe to require students to come to campus for finals after 12pm yesterday and all day today. Lucky me, I had a final yesterday at 10am (before the school shut down) and none today. My next and last final is tomorrow at 7:30am, and it looks like conditions will be better today so I will be studying like I will be taking the exam.

My balcony. Hopefully we don't need those bikes anytime soon.

For people that missed their final, they have been given two options: either accept the grade they had before the final or reschedule the final exam for the first week of next semester (in January). If you aren’t happy with your grade, it is a crappy situation. Moral of the story: don’t bank on the final boosting your grade in the future — especially at the end of Fall semester.

Training

Yesterday, Andrew Belus, Will Porter, Eric Lynch and I went running around downtown Flagstaff in the snow. We had a great time throwing snowballs at people and cars. Of course this was fresh powder, so the snowballs were plenty soft enough to not do any damage. That didn’t stop one guy from turning his car around and questioning Will with a wrench in his hand. Dude needed to chill out.

Needless to say, it was a great way to officially start my 2010 track campaign.

My van was completely covered in the morning.

Today I decided not to be so brave and opted for the treadmill at my apartment’s clubhouse. I put 10 miles in at around 7:00 pace. Probably a little too fast for this time of year, but I quickly realized that the faster I ran the less time I had to spend on the treadmill staring at a wall. I did bring some tunes with me so that helped ease the monotony.

I noticed that my heart rate seemed like it was higher than it should have been, 166 bpm, for that pace and incline (2%). I have done some reading recently about riding on bicycle trainers (basically using your normal bike as a stationary bike indoors) and there seems to be a consensus that your power output while riding a trainer is limited compared to riding outdoors by how well you can cool your self off, among other things. Obviously there is no wind, unless you have a fan in front of you, to increase the convection coefficient (had to throw in some heat transfer terms as that is what my final is on tomorrow) to help cool you off. I wonder if this was the main contributing factor to my unusually high heart rate. If I have to get on the treadmill more this winter, I will be sure to play closer attention to it and see if I can come up with some good conclusions.

2009 Cross Country

The 2009 NCAA cross country season finished a week and a half ago now. Going home for the Thanksgiving holiday allowed some time for me to think about the season, go over what went well and what needs some improving, and to start thinking about the next season.

I officially started the 2009 cross country season on July 6th, a week after my triathlon. I jumped into a 70 mile week and followed with 80 and 90 mile weeks. It may seem a bit aggressive, but I wanted to get in as many 100 mile weeks as I could. The following week was 77 miles in 6 days (My only day off during the season. Just happened to be the only day all season that I couldn’t make any time to go for a run.) and then I started my first 100 mile week of seven.

This season was a huge success for me. I accomplished both of the goals I set in the Summer: make the top-7 and place in the top 100 at NCAAs. As some of my teammates had some struggles this season, I was actually the only person on the team to score at all seven meets (George Kyte, Aztec, Cowboy Jamboree, Pre-Nationals, Conference, Regionals and NCAAs). When all was said and done, I logged 1,806 miles this season. I have never been as diligent about logging mileage as I was this season, so I do not have a reference to compare with, but I believe that this season far surpassed the mileage I have run in the past. Since high school, I have had a steady increase in mileage and I attribute a lot of the improvements I am making now to that.

In Jack Daniel’s Running Formula, he says something along the lines that the benefits of high mileage are long lasting. My old teammate Marten Bostrom, who was known to run upwards of 120 mile weeks while running collegiality, talked about the benefits he gained from running such high mileage. Now, about seven months after joining the century club, I am convinced.

With this in mind, I had a meeting with Coach Heins yesterday talking about goals for the upcoming indoor and outdoor track seasons. I told him that my ultimate goal in collegiate running was to leave NAU as an All-American — no easy task, but that is why it would mean so much. My best opportunity to reach this goal will be next year’s cross country season and everything I do until November 2010 will hopefully be preparing me. We agreed that a year of high mileage is the obvious route to take. Over the next 12 months, I will try to build my aerobic system more and more with a plethora of 100+ mile weeks.

This is not to say that I am not looking forward to competing on the track this Winter and Spring. For indoors, I will focus on running a good conference meet and contributing to another Big Sky Conference title. If training is going well, and depending on how some of my teammates are running, I may get the opportunity to run a 5,000 at the University of Washington in Seattle. For outdoors, the main goal is to qualify for the first round of the NCAA Championships (aka “Super Regionals”). In the steeplechase, a sub-9 minute performance should get me in. If I am running well enough in the 5,000, a time in the low 14 minute range may be good enough.

Then there is the 10,000. As of now, I do not have plans to make my 25 lap debut this Spring. If the high mileage is feeling good, and Coach thinks I am ready for a good effort, then I will suck it up and give it my best. 25 laps just seems so brutal.

As for now, I am running easy a few days a week and doing some swimming. Since I want to give triathlons a serious try post college, I will try to get into the pool regularly all season. If I can swim once a week up until Summer, I should be way ahead of where I was when I started swimming a lot last May. Next week I will start running more, probably around 70 miles, and should be running 100 miles again shortly after the new year.

Looking forward to may miles of trials, trials of miles ahead…

Nationals Send Off

The NCAA Cross Country Championships are now three days away. All the hard work is done. The only thing left to do is rest and do everything possible to make sure that I am feeling fresh and ready to race Monday morning.

Feeling fresh is all about tapering just right. If I taper too much, I risk feeling flat on race day. If I don’t taper enough then I won’t be rested enough. The taper is definitely not an exact science and philosophies vary from one coach to the next.

Tee to Green Workout at Flag Ranch Golf Course

Keeping all this in mind, Tuesday was NAU’s penultimate workout of the season. We went out to Flag Ranch Golf Course, about a five minute drive West of campus, to do a “Tee to Green” fartlek. As the name suggests, we ran pick ups from one hole’s tee off to its green and jogged from the green to the next hole’s tee off. The idea was to get in about 20 minutes of hard  running on a soft surface similar to what we will be racing on without feeling the usual mental drain of a workout. Coach Heins said we could go as hard or easy as we liked on the pick ups, going completely off of feel. It was really a fun workout and I think we got out of it exactly what Coach wanted us to.

This afternoon we will have one last workout on Cardinal field to freshen us up. After the workout, there is a team send off dinner at Jotini’s on the Green at the Continental golf course at 6:00pm (2380 N Oakmont Dr.). All are welcome to come, have dinner, and show your NAU team spirit!

After the dinner, we will be heading down the mountain and staying the night in Phoenix. We have an early morning flight tomorrow and will be traveling for most of the day. Shortly after arriving in Terre Haute, there will be a banquet for all the teams. Tomorrow night or Sunday I should have a little update about the banquet.

See you at Jotini’s!

Doing Work at 7,000 Feet

Summer is always over too soon. I leave behind a summer of great opportunity (internship at ITT Aerospace Controls), my first Olympic distance triathlon, training with friends and great memories from my brother’s wedding.

I have made my way back up to Flagstaff, Arizona for another year of school and running. Tina and I made the ~7 hour drive on Tuesday. Let the acclimating begin.

Upon arriving Tuesday, I got an easy 5 mile run in with Kam, Darius, Joe and even a few minutes with Tina. I averaged slower than 7:30 pace so natuarally I felt great. That evening, my new roommate Myles Kloer cooked a delicious dinner for his Mom, sisters and his roommates. He’ll be a great fit.

Wednesday I got an 11 mile run in on Soldier’s Loop then headed over to my physical at NAU’s Skydome. Later in the evening I got to meet most of my teammates for the year at our compliance meeting.

Thursday I helped move freshmen into Reilly Hall from 8-noon. I was exhausted all day (part of the acclimation process I think), but my legs perked up in the afternoon for a 12 mile run with some strides.

Yesterday we had our first workout as a team at Buffalo Park: 4×2  mile repeats. We were supposed to be going 80%, but I admit I definitely was running harder than that. I was happy to see that I was 15 seconds faster on the same workout a year ago. I am feeling fit and I think I still have lots of room for improvement in the near future. A few short months will confirm or deny this.

In the evening Tina and I drove down to Munds Park to meet some UCLA cross country runners for dinner. They are staying in a cabin there for a few weeks of altitude training. Tina and I were amazed to see so many large, beautiful homes down there as we have passed through Munds Park many times on our way to and from Phoenix. From the highway, all you can see is a mobile home park, a couple gas stations and a church. Nevertheless, we had great food and enjoyed a game of the Royal favorite Go Home. Of course, my team won. (Thanks for the clutch rolling Tina. Sorry Kelcie… you really have Alex to blame.)

Today was a recovery run. 11.5 miles to the base of Fisher Point with Andrew Belus, Ben Ashkettle and Simon Gilna. We stopped briefly on the run just to look at the beautiful setting. If I ever get a mountain bike out there I will take pictures.

Tomorrow we will be doing a long run, hopefully ~18 miles for me to put me at 100 miles for the third consecutive week. My miles of trials is only just beginning.

One 100-Mile Week Down…

…20 miles to go on my next.

Last week I finished my first 100-mile week of the season. I got two double days in and finished it off with the longest run of my life, 20 miles. Tomorrow I have another 20 miler scheduled to cap off my first 100-mile week in singles. I can say that doing that mileage in singles has been much more difficult than when I have done it in the past in 9-12 runs.

I am feeling strong and I am really happy with my fitness right now. As I have said in the past, it is going to take some big improvements for me to make my cross country team again this year. I am hoping I get adjusted to altitude quickly after I get to Flagstaff on Tuesday and I am looking forward to getting to work with the rest of my teammates.

On a sad note, the Director of Track & Field and Cross Country, J. W. Hardy, is leaving NAU for a better oppurtunity at Boise State University. Hardy was a great coach and an even better person and NAU will miss him. I wish him the best of luck at Boise State. Fortunately, Cross Country and distance in general is coached by Eric Heins so there shouldn’t be any differences in training for us next year. The question becomes, who take Hardy’s position as Head Coach? Heins has my vote!