3/26/10

Friday’s Training – Am: 50 mins easy Pm: 35 mins easy

Mileage – 12 Miles

I was awake a few times throughout the night from the pounding of the rain on my hotel window. I usually sleep with a sound machine that makes a rain noise but this was different. My room is on the 17^th floor and it was more like someone knocking on the window rather than the soothing pitter patter of rain drops. I eventually remembered that I had some ear plugs so I got them and fell back asleep. I woke up around 8.30am, made some coffee and unpacked my bag. I usually don’t have coffee in the 5 days leading up to a race as the studies I have read have shown that you get a bigger benefit from the caffeine come race day when you have your coffee. This was just a tune up race so I decided against coming off the coffee but I might as well have as the coffee that came out of the machine in my room was pretty bad. I luckily brought my own Starbucks VIA packs so I could try them out on race morning. There is also a coffee shop in the lobby so that will be good for an espresso before I head out to warm up tomorrow. I spent a little time trying to workout on the map of the course and a google map where I was so that I could run the course this morning. The knocking on the window started again just before I headed out so I knew I would be getting pretty wet during my run. I was only half a mile from the start so I ran along to Broad street which I guess is the main street in Richmond. It had a very inner city feel to it with shops and some run down buildings but what amazed me (and I remembered having the same feeling when I raced here last year) was that only two blocks down and running parallel to this street was Monument Avenue, a gorgeous street that is lined with old Georgian and Edwardian looking homes and buildings. The race is named after this street and you basically just run down one side of the street, turn around, and then head down the other side. The street is appropriately named as every half mile or so there is a big monument or statue in the middle of the road dedicated to some one of importance. The only name I could see on one of them was Arthur Ashe, the 3 time Grand Slam winner who was born and raised in Richmond. I ran for 50 mins and then stopped to do some drills and strides before heading into the hotel to quickly get changed and grab a big breakfast. My biggest problem now was getting dry as I was soaked from the run and I couldn’t peel off half the clothes I had on. After squirming about for a few minutes, I managed to get into some dry clothes and headed downstairs for some eggs, potatoes, pancakes, pineapple and OJ. I also managed to grab some snacks for later on a tomorrow morning. I got back to my room and realised that I had to somehow get all my clothes dry again for my next run so I threw them on the fan and cranked the heat up.

Most of the day was spent relaxing in front of the TV and napping. I realised when I got up and walked about that I had gotten some pretty bad nipple chafing this morning so I went for a little walk to see if I could either find some Vaseline or band aids for my second run. Luckily there was a pharmacy just along the road but they only had huge tubs of Vaseline so I was just going to improvise with some lip salve. When I got to the checkout I found some travel packs of Aquafor (pretty much the same as Vaseline) and immediately rub some on as my nipples were getting very sore at this point. After 10 minutes of stinging, they felt much better and I felt more comfortable about going for a second run. I called Thom Sudeth, the elite athlete coordinator about what I was supposed to do in terms of picking up my number as last year I had to go to the expo and get it. He said he would be at the hotel an hour later but 4 hours had now passed and I didn’t know what I should do.

I met Thom just before I left for my second run and picked up my number and he told me he would be taking the elites out to dinner. It was pretty cold when I was running, especially because everything I was wearing was wet from the morning. I warmed up though and the run passed by without much to worry about.

I met Thom and the Africans for dinner and we headed to a place called MamaZu’s. I figured it had to pretty good because when we walked in, it was packed out with an hour wait. We had a table waiting for us so we sat down and Bart Yasso ordered the food for us (because it was busy and we had a big group, we had to order family style). This was fine until I realised that every time they brought a plate full of food, they gave it to the other end of the table so that meant there was nothing left for me. I was getting very hungry and pretty annoyed at this point so I had to just grab a plate and take as much of the food as possible so that I wouldn’t be starving for the rest of the night! After hearing some of Thom’s stories (apparently he has 84 guns in his closet!) we headed back to the hotel and I snacked on some energy bars and trail mix as I was still a bit hungry.

Now I’m just going to watch a film and try to get to sleep as I have to wake up at 5.30am for our 8.30am start.