No Treble

Long distance running at the collegiate level is a full year expedition. 

At all points of the year, there are opportunities to race and compete. Whether it is Cross Country in the Fall, Indoor Track in the Winter or Outdoor Track in the Spring/Summer, there is something to compete in for distance runners.

For a runner in the position of myself, it almost seems like an endless cycle of training and transitioning between seasons with not much break in between. There is always something upon the horizon that is just in reach, and you are focusing on that and doing your best to prepare for it.

For whatever reason, cross country base season seems to bring this anticipation and excitement to me and many others to a whole new level. The preparation that goes into the months of July and August and the excitement that builds up towards the season captivates many upon many runners each year.

Those months used to build up mileage and bring yourself in a decent shape to begin the season, are some of the most unique months of the year. It's the only serious break that comes during the year and feels like the start of something new, a full reset on the running calendar. 

As simple as the base season may be, it can very easily be messed up and ruined when taken with the wrong approach. Working too hard and doing too much too early can have serious consequences in the latter part of the season, when championships races are apparent. However, slacking off and ignoring your fitness will result in potentially not being ready and able to handle the stress that a collegiate cross country season may bring.

Very frequent and apparent are the athletes that come back as the September hero that end up being injured or burnt-out by October. Just as apparent are the athletes who come back out of shape who struggle in September and although may succeed in October/November, may not have reached their full potential for the season. 

A perfect cross country base season is all about falling right in the middle of these two extremes. Coming into the season with enough fitness to build upon and work off of but not too much that means you won't last until it truly counts. 

As someone who has been on either side of the spectrum when it comes to a cross country base season, it requires an extreme amount of discipline to get right. Having the insight to control yourself and not get carried away, but still willing to put the work in when it's all so far away.

With cross country being such a small section of the collegiate distance running schedule, it brings a different vibe than the other track seasons. For myself, this vibe is one that I enjoy the most and makes this part of the year my favourite. This base season for me and countless others, builds excitement and anticipation for my favourite time of year.

Many things are bound to happen during the season, for the good or for the worst. Base season is the start of this journey and sets the direction on how the season will unfold.

It certainly cannot make your season on its' own, but it certainly can ruin it.

-Simone

We Are Only Human

The saying or phrase "We are only human" or any other form/wording of the phrase is one that is commonly seen and said by people in daily life. It is a simple phrase, with the common depiction and connotation that as humans, we do make mistakes and that we cannot expect to be flawless and perfect.

This makes complete sense as many of us strive for perfection in almost everything we do, which is simply just impossible and not attainable according to our human standards. This quote will remind us of this and make it acceptable for us to experience failure in certain activities that we are willing to strive for and be the best at.

For many, this is where the phrase stops. There is no other secondary look at how this phrase impacts how we think about our lives and what we do. We just continue our lives, trying to improve in the aspects we want to improve at while knowing that there are accomplishments we would love to achieve that will never happen.

This is a mindset that is extremely prevalent but one that I believe is foolish. If we are "only" human, then there is no need to try and push ourselves to achieve what is thought to be impossible. As a human, we know that the imperfections are either already there or coming and make perfection simply out of reach.

What gets me thinking about all of this is two examples that are currently in the athletics atmosphere that completely oppose each other when it comes to this phrase. These two athletes are at the forefront of middle distance/long distance running and create a great example to showcase why the "We are only human" phrase can prove to be accurate where in other cases, can be wrong.

The first athlete is the probably the most revered and cherished athlete of the current day: Eliud Kipchoge. For those of you who do not know who Kipchoge is, he is currently the reigning Olympic champion in the Men's Marathon as well as the World Record Holder for the event, set at the Berlin Marathon in 2018 of 2:01:39. He has also won the London Marathon four times in a row along with the Berlin Marathon three times in a row.

Eliud Kipchoge, London Marathon 2019

For all extensive purposes, it is nowhere near a stretch to call Kipchoge the greatest marathoner of all time. He has run 12 marathons and has only lost once (where he was bested by Wilson Kipsang's WR performance in Berlin 2013) and has competed at the biggest and most competitive marathons in the world. This type of dominance and consistency has really never been seen before in the marathon and is remarkable given the age and period we live in.

And behind all of these accomplishments is a man who can only really be described as a humble, selfless and a true professional. Living and training in rural Kenya, Kipchoge shares much of his praise for his teammates and spends most of his free time with his family and caring for his farm. He has praised the ability of the heart and mind and how mentality can overpower physicality to achieve what may be seen as impossible.

Maybe the most famous quote for Kipchoge is from his time in the Nike Breaking2 experiment, where he famously said "No human is limited." He goes on to say that it is all within our mind and we come to put limits on ourselves, and that is why we fall short. Without placing these limits, we can accomplish almost anything we set our mind to.

This completely opposes the "We are only human" phrase and puts the idea that our own limits are placed upon by ourselves. Kipchoge's achievements and thoughts prove that we should never limit ourselves to what we think we can do. With the mindset that Eliud Kipchoge has, nothing is out of reach and your mind will not become the limiting factor in performance.

To contrast this, my other example athlete who has been extremely popular in the middle distance running scene as of late: Asbel Kiprop. Kiprop is another Kenyan who is regarded as one of the best 1500m runners of all time, having won the 2008 Olympics and three World Championships in the event. Kiprop is also the third fastest 1500m runner of all time, with a 3:26.69 time to his name.

Asbel Kiprop, World Championships 2015

However as many in the community know by now, Kiprop has tested positive for doping with EPO (Erythropoietin) and has been banned from the sport for four years. Along with this, he is facing having pretty much all of his accomplishments erased from the history books and given back to the IAAF or Olympics.

Previous to this, Kiprop has had other controversies including his repeated failures at Olympics in the 1500m where he has made up excuses and countless others. But since this doping case, the train has completely come off the rails. From having a complete and utter meltdown to having an affair with his training partners wife (along with posting a video on the internet) to literally threatening to KILL someone on Twitter, Kiprop has degraded into a disgrace and a sad case of how bad things can go wrong.

It is impossible to say when Kiprop began using EPO, but his use of it may show the weakness of himself and what his goals in athletics were. This mistake that he has made and his actions to follow just show a man that is in disarray and had a weak mindset from the beginning. He shows that is some cases, we are really only human and our mistakes are inevitable and may lead to downfall.

Kiprop is a fine example of how the "We are only human" phrase can in fact be proven true and find itself in someone's psyche. In attempts to attain glory, Kiprop lost himself in becoming a cheat and is now paying the price that he simply does not want to pay and will aggressively fight against. His attempts to obtain glory led to his mistakes and proved the phrase to be accurate.

To say Kipchoge's career is almost opposite to Kiprop's is not really an understatement. The former has been the ultimate professional and shown that limits are only in the mind and prevent us from becoming who we want to be. The latter has ruined his career with disgrace and shown that he let his mind determine his limits and force him to cheat to obtain success.

I find it crazy and extremely interesting looking at the stark differences between these two. Only being born about 50 km from one another and both training in the city of Eldoret, these two men have led completely different paths in their athletics careers.

We are only human, that is certainly the truth. But whether we let that limit us or not is the factor. Whether you want to end up like Eliud Kipchoge or Asbel Kiprop in anything in life, it's your decision.

-Simone

Favourite Worst Nightmare

The inactivity on this blog has been somewhat of a shame, if I'm being honest. One of my goals when starting this blog was to keep it consistent with updates about myself and other things to do with the running community. However, its been about five months since my last blog post and that is not what I expected.

This break did not just consist of myself deciding not to write or not wanting to write. I have started multiple different posts and have gone as far as pretty much completing them. But I decided not to post any of them, and instead just scrap them. Why I did this involves many of different factors that I don't think is really necessary to get into at the moment.

The one factor that I would like to address however is the fact that none of the posts were about anything to really be happy about. Since October, there has been little to be happy about when it comes to my running endeavors. Even when something good came along, it was always followed shortly after by something that would just take all of the wind out of my sails.

And that was the main problem. The last thing I wanted to do was to flood this blog with a bunch of sad posts about how nothing is going right and how I should keep trying. I'm not trying to gain any sympathy from anyone, and I think complaining is probably more counterproductive than productive. But it's pretty hard to keep a blog updated about your running endeavors when I haven't been pleased with them for the last five months.

Nevertheless, I am finally here now writing about how my running has been since my last update. I might as well get it out of the way now, since there is still a long outdoor season to go through and I can't stand this blog being inactive for that long.

I think a good start may be going back to November and talking about the end of my second cross-country season in University. I had a pretty good season compared to my first and if there was no such thing as championships, I'd be pretty happy with it. But as it turns out, that's not how it works.

An under performance and lack of experience running the 10k race distance at OUA's mean't that there was no Usports Championship for myself. In addition, having the worst performance that I've ever had at a National Championships in my final Junior race ever was not ideal. It wouldn't have been a huge stretch to say that this month was the most heartbreaking of any since I started running. And that would be saying something, since heartbreaking might be the most accurate word to describe my running career so far.

But that's only one half of the school year and there is still a whole season of indoor track to comeback and show that these setbacks are only temporary, right?

It started off well. Eight second PB in the 3000m with minimal track training in December, I'll take that. I was super motivated to show what I was capable of and with the experience that I had gained, I was for sure that I could complete the goals that I set out to do.

G$ observing his specimen

I started off slow in December, but felt I was building to something good and that I was really going to peak and show my stuff at the end of January and February. But right when I gearing up for the big 1500m and 3000m races of the year, it all suddenly hit.

With lateral pain in my midfoot, I found it hard to do the easiest of runs without needing to stop. I failed to do any consistent running for a little less than three weeks, which compromised myself to the bike for the mean time. If this had happened early on in the season, it wouldn't have been too bad. But right in the middle of the season, I missed three potential races where I could've ran what I believed I could've ran.

I finally got running to an on and off basis after those three weeks and actually was able to get a couple good races in, with indoor PB's in both the 3000m and 1500m. But these were still not really close to what I was looking for and after only doing two workouts on the track in about five weeks, were extremely unsettling.

I understand that injuries are a part of running and should be expected, and I was probably due for one with the luck I've had so far. If there is anything to be taken away from that, it might be the confidence that I know I can run much faster if I can get significant training in and stay healthy.

So pretty much, the only other thing that I'm happy about this winter is that I can third in the Trackie.com prediction contest for Usports. I'm happy that I was able to use my skills in picking the top three seed times and the random upset every once in awhile to the best of their ability. It's a shame I didnt make a March Madness bracket...

At the moment now, I'm starting to get into the swing of things with base workouts in preparation for the upcoming outdoor season. I'm not really going to go in with any expectations. As I have learned in the past, expectations mainly only lead to disappointments.

TL;DR- Haven't ran fast in awhile, and that is what I want to do.

-Simone