Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I was NOT ready to get back on a plane again Sunday afternoon. It was a very long trip but I survived! I slept a couple of hours from Calgary to London and another hour from London to Amman. I didn’t want to sleep too much on that leg  since we would arriving close to bed-time (1pm Pacific time) and wanted to be sure I would be knocked out. We were greeted by a team of representatives who managed to get us through security very quickly and had our luggage put aside for us near  the baggage pick-up. We went straight up to our rooms when we got to the hotel and then had a quick meeting down in the buffet area after we ate to got over the next days’ plan.

Chantelle and I laughed when we saw our room…Let’s just say that it’s not exactly the Hilton! It’s clean though so that’s good. I slept really well last night getting over 10 hours. Breakfast was interesting. Pita is served at every meal (the hummus here is truly delicious!) and his morning’s “meat dish” looked like cooked greens with cut up hot dog wieners in it. There were boiled eggs though and corn flakes. Lunch and dinner meals are much closer to what we’re used to and are quite tasty!

EVERY man here smokes…and they smoke everywhere. My eyes have been burning and all the pure Canadians are complaining.

We were bused to the track this morning but the stadium was closed so we ran on the muddy path that zig-zagged back and forth between rows of trees. We think it was a park of some kind. There were military walking by on the road that ran parallel to the path carrying machine guns…yikes! My run started out feeling not bad. I took my time and just kept the pace easy. I felt a bit ragged after 15 minutes but eventually I warmed up (and woke up!) and didn’t feel as bad. I loved Jon’s note about today’s runs:

We came back, had lunch, another meeting and then I did another run. Chantell Widney joined me and we ran from the hotel into the neighborhood…well, it was a really odd looking neighborhood and we got honked at every 5 seconds with no exaggeration! We decided to get off the main drag and run on the quieter streets…you could not avoid running up and down steep hills. It was like San Fran! We tried to make our way back to the hotel and realized we were were lost…really lost. We couldn’t hear or see the main street the hotel was on. Luckily a taxi driver turned on to the street we were on and I waved him down. We showed him our hotel ketwhich had the address on it and he motioned us to hop into the back of the car. In we got and he kindly drove us to the hotel for free…turns out we were just minutes away. Pretty embarassing driving up to the hotel in a cab! hahaha!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Today we woke up to sunny skies. It looks like the weather is clearing and we may get lucky this weekend. This is such a different place with different sounds and smells. One example are the delivery trucks that go by every couple of hours delivering gas to residents. The trucks play strange music on loud speakers. The music is a cross between something you hear from a  music box…it’s kind of eerie.  Then there are announcements in Arabic  on loud speakers five time a day reminding the residents to pray. You should have seen Chantelle’s face the first night. We heard this loud, aggressive sounding voice barking out what sounded like an order. I was brushing my teeth and she comes tearing into the bathroom, eyes as big as saucers, asking me “What was that??? What was THAT?!!!” hahaha! You had to be there!

OK, on with the day. I had a dreadful sleep last night. I slept from about midnight to 3am…then just lay there. With the time zone change, we are sleeping during the afternoon, so apparently when we go to bed, our body thinks it’s having a little afternoon nap so after a few hours, we wake up. Nice. I was a wreck the rest of the day, dragging my butt. I got the wo done in the morning. Jon wanted me to run it as close to race time as possible (which is 3:40pm for the senior women) but it was decided by the coaching staff to run in the morning so I had no choice. We loaded on to a bus at 11am. I looked over across from me and there was New Zealand’s Kim Smith sitting on the bus!  She and her team mate were tagging along with us so they could get a run in around the track. We warmed up on the same switch-back trail as the day before. I was running along when Kim came up from behind and we started chatting. I couldn’t believe I was running with Kim Smith (if you don’t know her, she has run 14:39 for the 5km).

Mar, Kim, Nicki and Chantell

The coaches were set to have everyone run the same wo this morning. I already had a wo given to me by Jon and didn’t want to stray from my normal routine so I asked if I could go ahead and do my own thing. I didn’t want to seem like I wasn’t into doing a “team” thing but I needed to run the session on my own (i.e. not race my team mates or do something I wasn’t accustomed to) and focus on what my body could do for that day. It wasn’t clear what the group wo was and in the end, most people just did their own thing. My session was just for some turn-over and nothing that would be too taxing: 2 sets of 3 x 400m (75″/3′) at 3-5km pace. Jon said this session wouldn’t feel great as I would still be recovering from jet-lag. He was right. I was breathing too hard for what I was doing but I got it done and Jon assured me later in the day in an email that what I was feeling was normal. I just have to trust that with a couple nights of better sleep and rest that I will feel a lot better on Saturday.

 

I was pretty bagged after the run and was tempted to stay back at the hotel while the team went on an excursion to the Dead Sea but I thought this was really my only chance to see this natural wonder. I grabbed my ear plugs and settled in on the bus, keeping my eyes closed, resting as much as I could and not getting excited.  I think people thought I was ill…not like me to be unsocial! haha! Was I ever glad I went! It was just an incredible experience! Everyone got into suits and swam, or rather floated. It was warm and sunny and we all had a blast.

Thelma!!

Rachelle, Chantell and Mar

Nyial and Mar post-float!

 The washrooms there though were how shall I say…a bit primitive.

I think I’ll hold it, thanks.

Friday, March 27, 2009

 

 We were up early this morning to go and view the course. The hotel is now hopping with athletes so it’s getting very busy (and noisy) so updating the blog in the lobby was impossibility!! We had a gorgeous day today. Sunny skies, warm…so we thought we would get lucky and have great weather for tomorrow’s race. We walked the course before doing our warm-up. The women have to do one 1.5k loop and then 3 x 2km loops. The start has a good 200m incline before we make a sharp left to head downhill for about 400m.

 

 

Looking at the 200m stretch from the start

The course then takes a left on to a flat 300m, another left up a short, sharp hill then a nasty, nasty slow climb of a good 800m. The longer loop just goes out a bit further on the flat and then joins up again on the way back to the climb that takes you back to the start for the loop where you start the decent again.

 

 

Downhill section

 

Flat section

 

Short loop start of hill to the left, long loop straight ahead

After the final loop , the course splits right and this time instead of heading downhill, you continue uphill with a much steeper incline.

 

 

The Climb

…and it continues

Bloody hell….

 

Looking at the finish…notice the grass…the only grass on the course…looks good for the photo finishes!!

Can’t believe I’m here!!

The next 200m is horrendous then you get a whole 50m of flat before you cross the finish line. The course looked tough to me. I didn’t see much time for recovery after that long, consistent climb.

 

 

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and trying not to fall asleep. I was finding it hard not to crawl into bed at about 2pm. I forced myself though to stay up and after a couple of hours the urge to sleep would pass. Jon called that night to wish me luck and to go over how to run the race. How nice of him to call from so far away! I was feeling very calm for some reason and slept pretty well that night.

Looking back with about 150m left to finish

We had a long time to wait before our 3:40pm start time. I was still feeling very calm and didn’t get the butterflies in my tummy until be we drove into the driveway leading us into the course area. Tents were set up just up from the start so we could stay warm and out of the wind…sigh…another windy race day.

The race director from the race I did in earlier this year in Seville dropped by to wish me and Derek good luck which was a nice surprise. The senior women walked down to the start to watch the Junior girls do their strides and start the race and then headed off on our warm-up.

We were not allowed on the course so the only flat section to run on was a 100m strip of field…so there we were running back and forth with all the other women for 20 minutes. It was hilarious! We had to be checked in to the start area 30 minutes before the start of the race and our tags were checked and checked again. No one was allowed in the warm-up tent except the athletes. As we headed down the hill to the check-in, we found out from some senior guys that a couple of juniors had DNFd including our top junior, Genevieve Lalonde. We then met JJ walking up and was in a state because she dropped out of the race. We wondered now just how tough was this course?!

When we got into the changing tent, we picked up our front bib numbers that had the timing chip inserted into it and put on our spikes. We had loads of time to kill so we took our time and stayed in the tent to keep warm. Eventually I made my way outside. It was really windy and the sun was trying to shine between large clouds. It was far from warm but a good racing temperature. My strides felt fine and I was surprisingly relaxed. I have to thank Thelma and Jon again for getting me into those International races in Europe. The set-up and feel were so similar to this race that the stress was almost non-existent. I felt like I had been here before! We finally lined up in our chute and as soon as the gun went off it was chaos!

Even with that uphill start, the front runners bolted up that 200m stretch and within seconds it seemed they were already 50m in front of the rest of us! CRAZY! There was a lot of pushing and shoving especially once we hit the first left-hand turn. I just tried to stay upright and on my feet. Chantell Widney was up ahead so I tried to stay in the mix on the downhill and keep her in my sight. When we hit the next left turn bringing on to flat bit at the bottom we were faced with a wall of wind. Nice…so the one spot you could recover on or maybe even find a decent rhythm and you had to fight against a brutal wind. We cut left early on this the first shorter loop.

We hung another left to start the climb and about a minute in, I knew I was in trouble. I was having troubles with my breathing the past two weeks on hills where I found myself breathing much too hard and here again, I was struggling with my breath. I told myself not to panic, that the downhill stretch was just around the corner and that I could use that for some recovery. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for me. The flat section with the wind felt worse than the first go at it and the next run up the hill worse still. Now I had really slowed up and was wondering if I could keep my legs going for 4 more kms…not a good feeling at all. It was on this  loop that Chantel Wilder came up from behind, tapped my on my back for encouragement and where I willed myself to hold on to her for dear life. I managed to do it but paid dearly for the effort and with one loop left to go had to slow up again. Rachelle then passed me and at this point I knew my goal was not to come in last.  How brutal is that!? Next thing I know, I see Rachelle lying on the ground right across the course! I had to hop over her….nothing like hurdling over your team mate. She had actually collapsed. What the heck was going on?? Nothing seemed to be going right! OK, so now I can’t stop otherwise we won’t have enough women to score. I cannot tell you how hard that last loop was! I swear I was running 4 minute kms at the fastest and even had to walk a few steps…in a race!!! Haha! It wasn’t at all funny at the time and I thought man Mar, do you ever pick the best race to walk in…worlds…way to go! That last loop was a blur and the final 300m hill was ridiculous…just ridiculous! I might as well have walked the entire hill, I was going so slowly. Well, I finished with very little dignity left.  I walked the chute wondering what just happened and saw the rest of the team hanging about talking near the tent. I think they forgot I was still out there I had come in so far back haha! We walked back to the team tent and got our gear on while chatting about our experiences on the course. Catherine had a phenomenal race placing in the top 40!! Chantell had a very solid run and of course Chantelle also nailed her race and tried to drag us along. My heart went out to Rachelle who couldn’t finish today. Luckily she was ok. The consensus by everyone was that it was the toughest race they had ever experienced. Kim Smith swore that this would be the last xc race she ever did. We were laughing about it and to be honest, even though I was truly disappointed I didn’t run at my potential, I was not ashamed of my performance today. I have been going at it hard since September, have run 14 races, travelled substantially for 7 of those events on top of school, singing  and everything else. It’s been an incredible year full of new and exciting experiences and this is just another to add to the pile which will only make me a better and tougher runner.

Your coach is one of the few people who can make you truly believe that you don’t suck.  Jon wrote: “…Today’s result wasn’t a true reflection of your ability but the race is over and we have to put it behind us; the world cross is a savage animal and often it can reduce the best runners to also-rans. You know what the event is all about now and it’s not like anything else out there…You should be proud of yourself- you might not feel so right now, but  viewed as a whole you have had a great first international cross year!”

Check out Jon’s article on the ups and downs of racing. I got this link just days before the race…good timing!

Finally convinced that I didn’t suck, I let it all go and had a great time at the banquet! This was a HUGE party and the food was incredible. It was unbelievably fun!

Chantell and I dragged as many people up on the dance floor as possible including shy little Chelsea and Connie our team physio, who said she hadn’t danced like that in 12 years!

Food!