Posts Tagged ‘competing’

Contest Winners Announced! (See bottom of page)

The Race at Crystal Palace Diamond League

Photo: Getty Images

It was so awesome I can’t even describe it.  It felt…good?  Yeah good.  Like the way 5k’s used to feel before I broke my navicular in 2008.  It had been so long that I almost forgot how GOOD it can feel to race when you are properly prepared.  My body felt smooth and relaxed for eight whole laps, and not having a cramp allowed the body to do what it was trained to do once the pace started to grip in.

The hardest part was getting to the starting line.  After Stockholm, I was hell bent to make a turn around for London, but I was shell-shocked, hyper-sensitive and mentally fragile. I got all the right people on board to tackle the physical stuff, and then I set to work with assembling my mental arsenal.

With 24 hours ’til start time, my focus was getting to the starting line as relaxed as possible, which required diligent redirecting of my thoughts when they attempted to run wild.  But even after all that work, there was a moment after my warmup jog where I was about to scratch from the event entirely.  I had made up my mind that the race was going to be a disaster because it wasn’t possible to turn things around that quickly and I’d be better off not starting than pulling out half-way.

Scanning the field for Coach Rowland, I tried to find the right words to tell him my decision.  He was nowhere to be found.  Momentary panic.

The atmosphere was unmatched! Fireworks went off when I crossed the line and the crowd was incredible! Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images Europe

Then I had a vivid memory of 2007 at this same competition..I got this exact same feeling  to scratch the event after the warmup.  But in the end, I took the pressure off, decided to just “do my best,” and I won the damn thing!  This memory brought a smile to my face just as Rowland emerged from wherever he was hiding.  I ran up to him, said something like “holy hell I’m nervous,” hugged him quickly, shrugged and smiled, and ran off to the final call room.  He might have said some final words of wisdom but I didn’t hear anything else until the crowd roared on my way to the finish line.

Wow.  Double wow.

When I finally got a chance to come home after drug testing, I got online and my computer almost exploded.  The number of people who tweeted and facebooked and commented genuine excitement was so overwhelming, I cried.  Your support blows my mind.  Thank you.

How the Turnaround Happened

Going from 15:27 to 15:00 in eight days had nothing to do with last minute workouts.  There were five main factors that made it possible:

1. Dr. Lorenzo at Pure Sports Medicine discovered I had a stomach ulcer, which was causing my cramps. Diet adjustments and stomach acid control fixed 80% of it.
2. Neil Black at UKA and Alex Fugalo at Beyond Health found that my diaphragm and intercostal muscles (between all my ribs, front and back) on the right side had reacted into a tight wad of grizzle, (probably as a result of having an ulcer for several months and running through massive pain for so long.) “Magic Hands” Jon Murray of OTCE spent every day on the case, loosening me up so I could race cramp free.
3. Nike and OTC Elite helped me address the problem logically and quickly, and financially supported me through it. I was an emotional, over-reactive mess, so outsourcing human logic helped dramatically.
4. As the physical stuff starting coming around, I had to get my mind back on board to BELIEVE again, which required using all my tools (I wore a hole in my “Strong” shirt), literally talking to myself in the mirror and on all my runs, and working things through with my trusted peeps, (special thanks to AJam, Skip, Bridget and Jesse for the long talks, and Coach Rowland and my sports psych for turning the last few critical screws that kept my head from popping off.)
5. Getting in the right race makes all the difference. Ian Stewart, the race director of Crystal Palace, put together a field of evenly matched women ready to make breakthroughs, and we did. If every endurance race is set up for a world record, not only does it get boring to watch, but you lose depth in the events because capable athletes can’t make intermediate steps towards the highest levels.

My Favorite Reports

The coverage of the event was fantastic, so I’ll direct you to my favorite links that tell the story better than I can.

I still haven’t watched the short highlight video from Universal Sports because the link won’t work in the UK, but it made my sister cry and gave Jesse goosebumps.  Its a short one.  Check it out here if the embedded video doesn’t work. Or maybe here for Europe?

I'm a fan of Helen Clitheroe, who had a huge breakthrough as well. Photo: Getty Images

Ryan Fenton of Flotrack (an excellent summarizer by the way) wrote an article called “Comeback of the Year?” which sheds some light on why my reaction to winning involved spraying Lucozade sports drink in the air like Old Faithful, and stopping to bow (bow?!) to the incredibly enthusiastic British audience on my victory lap. Check it out here.

Runnersworld (online) points out the drama of quick turnarounds in their weekly race report (with some excellent vocabulary I might add). Those guys compile the relevant happenings in our sport in a subscription-worthy manner. Props.

And finally, Flotrack was on site to catch a post-race interview:

Watch more video of London Diamond League – Aviva London Grand Prix 2011 on flotrack.org

What Happens Now?

I’ve already celebrated, hard, and just about recovered from both the race and the celebration, so now I wait.  Because I finished so far back at USA’s, there are a lot of people who can take the open spot at Worlds before me.  There is a chance I could go to Daegu for the World Championships if like 23 things fall into place at once, but none of them are in my control.  I delayed my flight back to the USA for a week to let the chips fall where they may.

The Contest Winners!

And finally, I’m happy to announce the winners of the “race-time-guessing-thingee” games. Thanks for participating!

Stockholm winner: Armando from Edinburgh
With me tweeting and blog-gloating about all my hard training in Font Romeu, all your guesses for Stockholm were very generous, (thank you for the confidence!) but Antonio was the least optimistic so he wins. His prize was supposed to be a postcard from Stockholm, but I’m throwing in some free Picky Bars from my special Europe stash as well.

A little taste of England

London winner:  Matthew from California
There were many close ones, but this guy was right on the money! His prize is a sizable stash of English sweets you can’t get at home (some mouth-watering, and some silly looking) and a signed bib number from the race. Wahoo!

Man I love contests.

More

Volunteers meet you at the airport and escort you to the hotel (thanks Maria!)

Five weeks ago I finished 8th at the USA Championships in 15:31, and it was HARD!  I’ve spent the last four weeks at 6000 feet in the Pyrennes trying to get myself in better form, and finally…FINALLY I get to put it out there on the track tonight in the 5k at Stockholm’s DN Galan, and then eight days later, again at the Crystal Palace Diamond League in London.

Last year, I was here as a rabbit for a 5k world record attempt, got to hang out with Sweden’s most famous athlete Carolina Kluft, and was more of a tourist by nature of the fact that I didn’t have my own race to think about.  Sounds great right?  Well, I much prefer being here on real business of my own.

Pre-race workout crew

The last two days I’ve been enjoying meals in the dining hall with all the other elite athletes.  I’ve seen a lot of familiar faces, but its been particularly nice catching up with my hometown girl Alysia Montano (AJaM as I like to call her) and her new husband Louis, Alice Schmidt (who I think the world of) and her hubby James, Sally Kipyego (SKip) and OTC high jumper extraordinaire (and surprisingly humble dude for someone so easy on the eyes) Jesse Williams.

Would you give these glasses up if you were him? I mean, dude. Those are amazing.

I could go on for pages and pages about how awesome AJaM is, but suffice it to say she is so much more than an amazing runner.  Having someone from my home town here, someone that really knows me, makes all the difference in the world.  Plus, watching her try to trade her sunglasses with our awesome volunteer shuttle driver (thanks Vincent) will be a lasting memory (she failed).

Exibit A (left) hot Swedish girl. Exibit B (right) tourist's reaction to Exibit A.

I cruised around Old Town Stockholm just to pass some time yesterday, but a part of me has remained disconnected from my environment this trip.  After salvaging an altogether lost season before USA’s, and a month of total focused training, all I really want to do is go race.  When jogging the bike path yesterday, the riverfront was alive with Stockholm residents going about their life, enjoying summer.  I passed people barbecuing, sunbathing, laughing, cycling, and yet I felt somehow removed from it all, like I was running in a video game world.  I would pass local joggers going the other direction, and if we hadn’t brushed shoulders, I would have a hard time believing the other person was real.  At one point, I was approaching a young woman with her dog, sitting on the waters edge staring at the sunset.  I was overwhelmed with the desire to run up to her and touch her on the shoulder.  Introduce myself, to hear her voice and see her see me…to know I was really in this place, and that I existed in the same world that she did.

Perhaps I feel this way because I really could be anywhere in the world right now and be focused on the exact same task, so my environment really doesn’t matter.  All I want is to run 12.5 laps in a stadium, any stadium, and get into the rhythm I’ve practiced so diligently and see what happens.  The result doesn’t even matter.  Any goal I have is completely visceral.

For those of you who want to follow the races, check out this pre-race recap by letsrun. You can find results here, and if you are smarter than I am, you can find a live stream online.  You should know that there is a world record attempt scheduled, and it is one of the best 5k fields I’ve ever seen assembled.  I could have a very good personal result even if I’m near the back, so please no condolences on my facebook page if I run a season best but get last!  The field is so stacked that I will truly need to be focused on my own race, and my own personal progression.

Now I just have to kill 10 hours until my race goes off at 9:25pm! That’s enough time for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Not a bad idea, actually…

For those of you who are self-professed track geeks, see if you can pick out some big names on our massage sign up sheets. Nobody can pass up a Swedish massage in Sweden!

Everyone needs to get the wiggles out before competing.

I squeezed in for the last one. Phew!

Photos…

Another killer Old Town Stockholm view

It looks good, but it tastes like dirty rubber sneakers.

Feel free to share this post with lovers of running, travel, and black licorice that tastes like death, and comment away!  Closest guess to my 5k time tonight (comments posted before the race of course) gets a postcard from Stockholm!

More

Q:

oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh...

Hi Lauren,

In a month I will be starting cross country at a division 1 college, I’m nervous, so nervous that I can’t even imagine finishing a race. and the thing is, its a real possibility. Over the course of the two seasons in high school I ran, I dropped out of four races, maybe more. I just feel like I can’t get passed this worry to get to my true potential. It makes me dog the race because its obviously better to finish slow than not at all. If I felt the pressure in high school, how do I deal with it in college?

-Ally

A:

Dear Ally,

I’ve dealt with that too, and it sucks.  Three years ago I crumbled under pressure on America’s biggest stage: the USA Championships.  With 600 meters to go, I stopped and walked, and eventually talked myself into finishing (though well behind my potential.)

Your racing is most likely carrying too much of your identity, so if you fail, in your mind it has consequences for who you are as a person. If you read about adolescent development (which lasts until you are in your mid-20′s by the way) the defining area of growth during that age is finding your identity.  In order to do this, you start to see yourself as you fit in with larger groups and systems….no longer an oblivious girl with dirty knees and a big smile just running for fun, you are hyper-aware of your competitors, of the expectations of others, of what’s at stake.  In my opinion, its the biggest growing pain for athletes.  Until you learn to master this, it will own you.

The way this translates into your running is as follows:  your races become little tests and challenges for you to find out more about yourself as a competitor and as a person. You start seeing people around you doing things like dropping out, and they get labeled and talked about by other people.  You see that and you think, “Oh man, I don’t want to be like that.”  You see their actions and draw conclusions about their identity.

Dropping out of a race does not determine who you are.  It is simply something you have done.  It is a behavior.

You are not a drop out.  You dropped out.

Once you disconnect those actions from your identity as a person, you have the power to change your racing.  Once you realize that your racing doesn’t define you, there is way less pressure.  Fear is gradually replaced by excitement and a simple desire to see what you can do on the day.  You need to get back to the basics, girl.

So I recommend you do the following:

1.  Take out a piece of paper and write down what you like about running.

2.  Write what you like about competing.

3.  Write down the way that you have felt before your best races.

Keep it really simple, and cross out anything that you wrote down that is out of your control (i.e. “winning”).  The rest of the information should be tacked up on your bedroom wall for the entire summer.  If you focus on those basic things, you will perform much better.  If it worked for me, it can work for you.

I have a saying that I repeat to myself whenever I get really fearful of competition or start to feel too much pressure.  I focus on my breathing, picture something calm like a breeze going through palm trees, and let this run through my head on a loop until I feel better:

Running is not who I am; its something I do; its something I love.

You always have the power to change your behavior.  Now get busy so you can go out and kick some butt this fall!

Lauren

More

I’m definitely doing it: rabbiting a World Record attempt for Defar in four days.

The basic idea of a rabbit, for the rookies out there, is to have someone take the lead in a race at a designated pace for a set distance.  In this 5k, for example, I’m most likely going to be asked to run 68.0′s for the first 5 laps, and then drop out without tripping the field (which is harder than it sounds).  I’m still waiting for the details.

Race directors sometimes feel it will help them sell tickets if they can say someone is making a “World Record Attempt.”  Since so few athletes can run those paces, these potential record breakers are choosy about which meet they will do it at.  They have great bargaining power as a result, and can say to a race director, “Sure I’ll try for a world record at your meet, but you will pay me $____ appearance fee and you will provide two rabbits for me, one for the first mile and the other for the first 3k.  I get $_____ if I set the record as well.”

Rabbiting is a subject worthy of great debate in our sport, and I’m philosophically conflicted about it.  It has its moments of use, and you can’t really break a record without one anymore.  But mostly I’m a fan of rabbiting for selfish reasons:

1.  Its a chance to be a part of a World Record (which is an incredible opportunity).

2.  Its a pay day baby, and I could use some flow.

3.  It sets me up nicely for my next race.

I’m rarely one to put physical limitations on myself but I can comfortably say I won’t be breaking the world record myself; its of no threat to me to help someone else do it.  But you won’t see me rabbit often.  The circumstances have to be right.  For example, I’d never rabbit an American to an American record in the 5k because it is something I aspire to myself.

I’d really like to hear some opinions on rabbiting here, so feel free to share a comment.  Its a debate with lots of valid points.

My current opinion on rabbiting as a whole?  Too many races have pace-setters, and its hurting the sport.  If week after week the focus is on breaking records, we highlight the huge disparities in the fields, string everyone out from lap 3 onward, and eliminate any chance of the unexpected happening.  That’s why Championships are so much more fun to watch…no rabbits.

Knowing that I’m a championship-type racer, you could have guessed my opinion on the subject.  Had there been a rabbit at the USA’s at 15:00 5k pace, I wouldn’t have won.  But isn’t that the point of a race?  To have everyone step on the line with their own bag of tricks and use them the best they can?

Every race strategy has its disadvantage.  People with no kick need to lead early, but then they have to cut the wind.  That’s just part of the deal.  Sorry.  And people with good kicks and less endurance can get left behind if someone pushes the pace early.  That’s part of the deal.  Bummer.  Every race is different and you have to make choices every lap that give you the best chance to win.  If you don’t run your best race, you don’t win.

That leads me to my other problem with allowing rabbits.  They provide an advantage to one particular type of runner, and a disadvantage to all the others.  Rhythm runners with great VO2s thrive with rabbits.  Imagine if races started putting in “stunters,” rabbits who slow the pace down to ensure a sit and kick race?  This would make the races very exciting by ensuring close races, but it would provide a huge advantage to one particular type of runner. Any kind of rabbit provides an advantage for certain competitors, which when you think about it, should probably be illegal.

Another good argument against rabbits is that it has been deemed illegal for a male to rabbit a women’s race.  And I’m sure its also illegal for a robot to rabbit a men’s race.  So if there is already ethical debate as to how much assistance is too much, to me this raises a red flag for the entire practice.

In Barcelona last week for the European Championships, there were some huge upsets in the middle and long distance races.  The Spanish monopolized the 1500′s by slowing the pace down early and kicking hard.  Someone else could have taken the lead and pushed it, but they didn’t.  Every race was an absolute nail-biter, and the crowds were swimming in endorphins after each finish.  I’m sure the fans felt they got their money’s worth.

World records are getting so fast now and some are so ethically questionable that we are doing the sport a huge disservice by putting too much focus on records.  So what is a good solution?  What do you think we should do?  What do the fans want?

More

Q:

-Helen

A:

Hi Helen,

After leaving it all out there in a mentally draining race, the best thing you can do is let that performance sink in and allow your mind time to recover.  Don’t go racing right away like I did.  And that same principle applies to hard training…you think you need to hit the workouts hard for your final five week push, but five weeks is a LOT of time.

I like to say, never let an accomplishment go uncelebrated.  If you are in a rush to get back into the grind, you will miss an opportunity to pat yourself on the back and gain confidence from what you have already done.  A good dose of confidence can do more for you than a week of workouts.  Seriously.

If it were me, I’d recover for 3-5 days doing light running, maybe one brisk run in there if you feel good.  Then my first two workouts back would be fairly light…the automatic type workouts that you don’t need to get amped for.  For me that would be a tempo run and some 200′s or something like that, or maybe a mixture of tempo and race pace.  If you tease the body with some very doable workouts first, you allow your body to recover and your mind gets hungry again to work hard.  All you really need is a solid two and a half weeks within that five week block, with 3 or 4 workouts that push your buttons, and you’ll be ready to rip another great race.

Work hard, veg hard.

Trust me, after a tough race, turning into a puddle of drool on the sofa watching repeats of “Saved by the Bell” is under-rated.  Just check out the state of my apartment after my last veg-out.

-Lauren

[/column]

More

I’ve never been good at rebounds.

When playing basketball in elementary school, I was great at putting myself in a position to shoot, but the game would move halfway down the other side of the court before I remembered to keep playing. And in tetherball, when I got one of those sweet set ups to absolutely obliterate the ball in an arc over the other players head, I’d smash the hell out of it and stand there stupidly enjoying the sting on my hand while the other player recovered enough to smash the ball back into my unsuspecting teeth.

Photo by Phil Johnson (www.tracktownphoto.com)

When I agreed to run Pre one week after winning USA’s, I knew it was bordering on impossible for me to get my head back in the game in time. But its Pre. And its Nike’s big event. And its in the town where I live. Besides, you don’t turn down the Prefontaine Classic unless you have a really really good reason. And my main reasons for not wanting to do it didn’t seem good enough.

Yeah, I had just run a 5k, but back to back 5k’s are not unheard of. It just depends 1) How you ran the first one, and 2) How well you managed your recovery in those first few days. Well, for #1, I ran it HARD, so a successful turnaround depended entirely on #2. So how did you recover, you ask?

Did I cool down properly? Nope. Not at all, actually. I allowed myself to be carried from media and autographs to drug testing and then it was past 11pm. Whoops.

Did I get rest? Nope. None in fact. I stayed up all night and then flew to a wedding in Sun Valley Idaho where I ate rich foods, drank too many mojitos and danced until my legs ached. I finally fell asleep at 11:00 the following night.

Did I focus on getting my head back in the game right away? Nope. (I’m not doing very well here, am I?) I learned over the years that you have to celebrate your victories when you get them because you never know when or if you’ll have such a moment again. And since the credit for my season’s turn-around involved so many different people, I was of course obligated to celebrate with each of them in turn.

To be perfectly honest, earlier in the season when I was sucking so bad, I never thought I’d get invited to Pre. It wasn’t even on my schedule as a “maybe.” I was envisioning my season as a long open path with two hefty hill climbs: USA’s and the European circuit. Last week I was meant to be coasting down hill riding no hands.

But, you know when you’re riding or running up a killer climb and you keep glancing up at the top as motivation to push through the pain? You’re thinking, “I see the top! In 200 more yards I’ll get to rest, so lets push it!” But then the top turns out to not be the top, and the path takes a turn and Keeps. On. Climbing. That was Pre.

I heard rumors of a World Record attempt, as well as an American Record attempt, but I knew that it would be suicidal to get roped into that just yet. I may have won USA’s, but I still have a long way to go before I’m chasing records. What I needed was my own race plan, and to regain the perspective that for me, this year (and every race in it) is just one step on the path of my comeback.

I’ll tell you what though, the crowd at Hayward Field welcomed me on the track with such a huge applause that for a minute I believed I could do anything. I found myself saying, “What the hell! Lets chase the American Record! Maybe I can do it!” But in my heart, I knew I wasn’t there yet.

In a dreamer’s world, belief is all it takes to make records fall. In reality, they require a lot of hard work, and luck. But most fundamental of all, is respect; respecting the record is the key to breaking it.

Maybe one day I’ll be ready to have the race of my life on the day of the Prefontaine Classic, running for the win in record time…that would be cooler than a milkshake swimming pool. But so long as the meet is held the week after USA’s, I’m much more likely to get hit in the face with a tetherball.

More