I write this while there are only a handful of hours left in 2007 and look back at the far off travels and successes of our training group. We held training camps at home in Mammoth Lakes, California and down at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. We flew to Houston, Colorado, Boston, Jacksonville, Palo Alto, and New York. On longer flights we found ourselves racing in Rome, Stockholm, London, Madrid, Monte Carlo, Brussels, Kobe, and Osaka. Our team’s greatest moment came in New York City for the Men’s Olympic Marathon Trials where Ryan Hall, in the most dominating performance I have ever seen, won the race in record breaking time to earn a spot on his first Olympic team. I was so inspired by this race; it has me excited to prepare for the women’s marathon trials in Boston this April.
As I sat down to write this blog I intended to reflect on 2007. With an Olympic year just hours away, I keep being yanked into my preparations for the Trials and eventually the Beijing Games.
Beijing is only eight months away. Between now and then I will log over five thousand miles. I will go through 15 pair of DS Trainers. I will take 200 ice baths. I will log 600 hours of afternoon naps. I will get more than 200 massages and have a total of about 1000 acupuncture needles. All this in an effort to maintain health and get as strong as possible.
Along with training hard and intensely taking care of myself I hope to stay connected with the simple joys that have kept me running for the past 24 years. I hope to still hear my feet landing on pine needles. I hope to maintain playfulness as I toy around with a faster cadence. I hope to weave through the trees and feel the rhythm of my breath. I hope to notice the seasons changing. I hope I still jump at the chance to chase a leaf blowing down the street. I hope to be aware enough to feel sweat starting to gloss my neck. I hope to playfully hop over rocks and roots without breaking pace. The greatest thing I can ask for is to be joyfully running my way to Boston and Beijing. Greater still would be that our entire Running USA team will be together on that flight to China this summer.
