I haven't blogged in a little while as I have been busy with training, work, racing and house arrangements. Everything is calming down a little but it is going to get busy again as we close on our home next week and I will have to start moving everything into the new house. I also head off to Atlanta on next Friday for the famous Peachtree Road Race (10km) which takes place on Sunday 4th of July.
Training has been going well and my speed is coming around now. Its funny how all the marathon training I did has translated into giving me a lot of speed. I guess the saying that your strength is your speed is totally true. We have been more track based workouts as Greg and I had discussed as I would like to be in good 5km/10km shape before I go into the next marathon training phase.
I had my first race back since the marathon last week in Peoria, Illinois at the Steamboat Classic 4 mile road race. I travelled over a couple days before the race and was taken back by how bad I felt when I got there. I was wanting to run for around 60 mins when I got there but it ended up being 20 mins and a walk back to the hotel as my body wasn't responding. I decided not to push it and figured it was just reacting to the high heat and humidity. Luckily, I felt ok the next day and ran around the course with Ian. The race itself went well as I placed 5th in 18.04. I was 3rd with 100m to go but a couple of Africans had sat behind me and took off to beat me by a second in the end. It felt good to run well in my first race as I usually don't run too well on my first outing. I did think it wasn't going too well during the first mile though as the start is on an uphill and I was breathing incredibly hard. I realised everyone else was too so I wasn't too worried as we passed the mile marker in 4.26. I felt more and more comfortable as the race went on and passed 5km in 14.09. I decided to push the pace with 800m to go and it almost worked out well but it wasn't enough to shake the 2 guys off my back. The race brochure said that the Scottish record was 18.33 before so I guess that would be my first (unofficial) Scottish record. It was a good weekend as we were treated to a baseball game on the evening after the race with all we could eat and drink. The night was concluded with Jorge Torres and I pairing up to be unstoppable at the pub game, Bags. I left the next day to head back to Arizona but I got back late so I stayed in Phoenix with Julie's parents and left in the morning after an easy 40 min run.
The whole time I was away, Flagstaff was on fire. A big forest fire broke out on the south side of town and was pretty much controlled by the next morning only to be outdone by an even bigger fire on the mountainside north of town. It was slowly being put out and dying down but as I woke up from my nap today, I stepped outside to find the whole mountainside was ablaze again. The wind picked up and in a matter of an hour, the fire was out of control. Town seems to be pretty safe as the wind is blowing the fire north easterly but you just don't know what is going to happen.
We are getting ready to close on our house in the next week. Everything is looking great and we are getting excited to see how close to finishing the builders are. I think with Julie being at work all day, I will be doing a lot of the moving in myself but I guess I have to pull my weight sometime! Luckily we don't have a huge amount of stuff so it should be easy enough to transport everything over but organising it might be a different story. At least we both have our own closets so that will ease the matter. I will also have my own office to do my work out of so that will be a great place to just focus in. We bought a great sectional sofa a couple of weeks ago so that is also going to be fantastic to relax on. I now have to get all the home insurance sorted in case that fire comes down the mountain!
I had a good talk with my agent last week and it looks like I will be running the Chicago marathon but there also may be a possibility of doing Fukuoka but that is after the wedding so I would prefer not to have to worry about training hard during that time. Hopefully i'll find out in the next couple of weeks.
I hope everyone is training well and enjoying the summer sun!
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