An Exception

Okay, so when I say I'm doing no sugar it means no sweets. I will still eat wheat thins or kashi cereal which contain sugar. Anyway, I challenged my mom to do this with me and I'm so proud of her because she has been passing up cookies and desserts galore left and right! It's not bad avoiding desserts and such when I have someone else doing it with me. I feel so much better though. Healthier, at least. Now here's the exception: SUU's track party is tomorrow and I'm on my coach's team. There's four different coaches and each picked certain athletes to be on their teams. As far as I know, there's a root beer mile and a twinkie eating contest! I talked to my mom and I'm going to participate in the twinkie eating! She said it was okay if I took one day off. I know I'm going to feel so sick! Hopefully it'll be fun though. I am so excited because my coach talked to me and another freshman girl today and told us we're going to be training with the top girls once cross is over. We might be red shirted track however. This is because the fastest girls are all seniors and juniors. Whatever happens happens though because a red shirt year is meant for getting stronger. Monday we did 6x400s really fast. It was definitely a shock to my system. Splits: 71, 72, 70 (may have even been a 69), 78, 77, 81. My legs died the fourth rep, as you can see. Training has been going well though. I have luckily stayed on top of my sleep and health. NO injuries either! I love college and running. Life is good :)

Here's a little of the college life: karaoke night with the team!

30 Days

I saw this video in one of my classes and thought it was inspiring. If you think about it 30 days really isn't very long. Watch this video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html

Being in college, it's not easy to eat healthy and lately I've been feeling bleh. So, after watching this clip I've decided to not eat junk food or sugar for 30 days. In high school it was easy but I've been slacking off big time. It's probably going to be hard now because I'm constantly surrounded by crap, but I want to feel better so I'm going to do it. Wish me luck and I'll probably post some more soon about how it goes!

Mary Cain

Just read a sweet article about a high school girl named Mary Cain. She's training under Oregon coach's legend Alberto Salazar and forfeiting her eligibility to compete at the high school level; however, she can still compete at national races such as footlocker and Nike cross nationals! This is amazing. I would recommend reading this article, it's so cool.
http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/10/20/alberto-salazar-to-coach-high-schooler-mary-cain/

Hey, I love motivational quotes

SUU Running

I LOVE SUU and especially running for them! Seriously, I am so grateful for this amazing opportunity in my life. I love when my coach gives us motivational speeches about how fast we may possibly be in the future. I love all my hilarious teammates and the feeling of running fast. There’s really nothing like college. I’m having so much fun. Workouts are going well and I recently finished my first rhythm. My coach does this rhythm training where we run 3 days for a certain distance and 3 more days at a higher distance and then 3 more days with an even higher distance. So for instance I run 3 days at 4 miles, then 3 days at 6 miles, and finally 3 days at 8 miles. All the while my crazy coach sometimes has us do 4 days of consecutive speed workouts! Due to my previous injury and conference for the rest of my teammates coming up, I only did 2 days of speed on Monday and Tuesday. Monday’s workout was so much fun and I felt amazing! We ran 8x60 second pickups on the grass. Tuesday my coach had me come up the canyon with the faster kids on my team and do a really intense workout! It was 3x4 sets of 400 meter repeats. The first set we had 30 seconds rest in between the 400’s, the second set we had 60 seconds in between, and then the last set we had 90 seconds rest in between. Gah! We were at 10,000 feet and each time we received more rest then the repeats had to be faster. I made it to the 2nd 400 in the 3rd set. It was so hard. Really. THEN after the 400’s my coach made them run an all-out mile! It was brutal, but I was glad to think if I was in shape I probably could have made it through the whole thing. Coach Houle’s workouts are so hard but I’m glad they’re hard because I know I’m going to improve by doing them. I was just thinking about this the other day and how much better college running is than high school running. The training, individualized attention, and overall help you get from so many people is much better. I love it and am so glad I chose the college I did! The people are mainly the reason it’s amazing. Hopefully I can stay healthy so I can come back stronger.

I'm not in this picture because I had to leave the home meet early but here's my team!

Running Again

So much has happened this month! But not with running... However, I am back and feeling healthy as ever! September consisted of biking, swimming, stem, and icing. No running whatsoever. It was also a ton of junk food eating because I had zero motivation to eat right. I thought, "If I can't run, what's the point?" Well, today was the first day back of speed. Yesterday I ran 3 miles with the girls at 50% which was easy for me because, well, it was 50%. But today I did about half the workout and man it was KILLER. I don't think I've ever had to come back from something like this before and I cannot believe how hard today felt! First of all, practice is at 2 pm everyday. That means the heat destroys. Secondly, I haven't run speed for over a month. My coach told me, "Run with the girls until you see Zions Bank... if you're still alive..." I thought he was probably joking but boy he wasn't! It really was HARD. Now I can see why it's so difficult for people who slack off on working out to come back. It's painful, period. Today was encouraging though! I ran about four miles and my back felt great until the end. I could feel it a teeny bit at the end, but otherwise everything else was great. I really need to get my cardio up. I can tell I haven't been running and I feel so out of shape. I know everything will work out though. The workout today was an 80% run. It went like this: two lap warmup on the track, then 80% (which is about 6:10 mile pace) mile on the track, then 2 more miles at the same pace on the road. Then we stopped and coach recorded our times. This is where I stopped, but the girls continued. They all lined up and then they ran 2 more miles up a canyon at 80%! I felt like I was going to die after the 3 miles and cannot imagine going 2 more up a freaking canyon. This makes me want to work harder though because I want to be up there with the other freshman. I am so grateful my back doesn't really hurt anymore. It was definitely a learning experience and now I know exactly what to do if I get injured again. I am so excited to be back! I didn't blog much when I was injured because I didn't have anything to write about... But now I am going to train hard for track and I hope to do well!