'reppin  y'all...* 
bdilly 2002 XC
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Francisco Savinon @ Penn, 2003
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B Dilly U.
I've decided to become hardcore, again, about running. The thing is, it's easy to lose enthusiasm. Sometimes enthusiasm takes concious upkeep. That's what I'm going to use this for. Talking about training and goals and everything bring what you're doing closer to home. My hope is that by writing things down here, they will be contractual in my mind: something to attain unto, an obligation to myself. Here goes ;)
this year was tons of fun and new experiences. everything at college was new to me. you have to experience things sometimes, whether or not you know about them ahead of time.
watching the races this past weekend at the america east conference champs in maine, I was totally reinvigorated for running, as if i wasn't already hardcore. there's def. layers to everything including hardcoreness. layers like an onion. anyways! specifically, watching joy romulus and steve reese and frank in the open 8 is what i'm talking about. Joy's goal all season, indoors and outdoors, was to break 2:20. she'd hit it, on the dot, before. but watching her was spectacular because she was right with the pack and they came through the first four in 65... and as the second lap unfolded, the pack lengthened out, she still ran a 70! when ranked somewhere near 20th on the conference performance list coming into the meet, she busted out a 2:15, a five second pr, to score points for the team. that was awesome. then in the guys open eight reese took it out like a mad man, leading the race, and all i could think was that this was his last college race! and the last i would see him run (although i know now that he'll be at the albany last chance meet too)! And watching frank run it was excellent because he'd not run an 800 since the IC4A meet of indoors... he'd been hampered by injury. so to run a 1:51?! That was unreal! and get this.. in the four by eight,
he came back with a 1:53!he won the indoors ae conference championship open8 with a 1:53! so at outdoor conferences he ran two 800's in one day, one his new pr and one tying the old pr! that's unreal!
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my goals for next year start with my goals for the summer. i plan to start a regular routine of situps and jumping jacks, both being simple actions that can help a lot that i've never been consistent in doing, by any definition. to reach the height of potential, you have to hone all skills and seek out all subtle improvements. the few jumping jacks i did in a month's time before my outdoor track season of high school improved my speed greatly. so i'll do that. i'll see if i can get in weight training in saratoga over the summer. i believe that my uncle todd, who lives right down the road from where i'll be staying w/my grandparents, has a weight system. if he doesn't, i know he has free weights that i can borrow from time to time. and i'll run lots too :) the base will be important. i also want to attempt a quentin cassidy type workout near the end of the summer, albeit not as fast... the 60 quaters type of workout, following the pattern of annette's 20 quaters workout. this spring, we did 20 quaters at an average of about 72.7 pace. it still felt like we could've kept going. 60 is quite a step up from that, though, and 40 would have to be done first two or three times before i would have myself do 60.
goals for next year will start off with xc, of course:
i ran a 28:14 at colgate. i'd like to see if i can start off the season with a 26 flat or under. i know that a lot of times, well, always throughout my running career i've set goals that were spectacular and not done the work for them. i will not say either that i can only hope that this time i'll do the work for them. i will do the work it takes to get there. and if i can't run these goals, it'll be because of physical limitations. this summer is a jump-start to the rest of my running career. ok, here we go:
colgate 26flat
syracuse 25mid/low
paul short 25flat
albany 25mid
boston champs 24high
preliminary track goals:
--indoors: 3k 8:20
1600 4:16
800 1:57
--outdoors: 5k 14:45
3ksteeple 8:53
1500 3:54
800 1:55
*it's the last day of practice for the 2003 outdoor season. Tomorrow is the Albany Twilight meet. We had our team meeting about cross next year and it was productive. I found out a lot of good and a little bad. We already knew how many recruits were coming in, but to hear it again is still encouraging, six guys and six girls. The major boost for my confidence for next season was the summer training: annette has been working with and changing the training that we did last year, and over all, we're going up quite a bit in distance. This is very encouraging because it's what i planned to do anyways, but to know the entire team will have that as their agenda is important. WE all are going to be much better than we were this year. We'll be getting up to about 85-90miles a week, at the peak. I'm all types of excited about that. The thing that isn't so cool is the budget cuts that will not allow us to take the camping trip that we have in past years. :( Bah humbug. That was an excellent way to get to know people. We will still have team building activities and days where we get off campus. That should be fun. I will miss the chubby bunny competition, though!
As we were talking in the meeting today of the returning runners (and frank too), annette asked us to define commitment. we went through the group, and one point i made during my defining of it was that I don't necessarily eat right, and that i was going to work on it. Later, near the meeting's conclusion, Annette asked if we had any comments or questions. I raised my hand and said, "I'm gonna miss eating as much ice cream as I do now." They laughed. I really wasn't joking!
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The last chance meet at albany was my last track meet of the season. The goal was to run a 9:40 and beat my two middle fourties times for the steeple so far this season. Instead, three laps into the race, I bit the track. I was looking at the person ahead of me who'd already gone over the steeple, instead of looking directly at the steeple. I went up with my lead (right)leg and my foot hit the front of the barrier. My left thigh, the trail leg, slammed into the steeple as I went head first over it. I stuck out my right hand as I was going near the ground and totally screwed up my wrist. I slammed into the track, knocking the wind from me. I swore and got up, continued running. When I finished the race I looked at my left arm, and it was skinned from wrist to upper shoulder, bleeding in a spot or two, and totally red. I walked over to Franky who was standing near the fence right there at the finish. We talked. I told him that having him around helped me, seeing his dedication. He said, don't think you haven't done the same for me. I wish I was that dedicated as a freshman. And I knew, i just knew, that I couldn't let the memory of that race, that season, that conversation, slip my mind. I will remember and from here on out, will fight everyday so that when competition time comes, it's easy, baby.
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My first day back to training, I let myself go buckwild. I was going fast and I knew it. I have a tiny tiny pain in my right leg today, but I probably had run 3.8 miles in 22:08 yesterday. The distance is not absolute. The success this season is.
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The tenth active day of practice, returning to form, already has put me in better form than ever in my life. The run was 8 miles, and the four splits were: 12:21.77, 12:30.47, 12:15.96, 10:45.16. it was a total of 47.53 which works out to a 5:59 pace, barely under six minutes per mile pace. The funny thing is, I have a point that i always measure the time to from the house, or from that point to the house, and the fastest i'd ever done it was the four and a half minutes it took me to traverse the area on the way back home during my first run back in training. Today, during the 10:45 split, it only took me three minutes and fifty one seconds. Today was the fastest sustained pace for a run over five miles, by far, in my life. Makes sense when you consider that I'm now training at the level that I raced at last year. I'm just starting to reach my potential. These are the first steps towards realizing it.
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I hate to break the chain of positive reports! I had a strong pain in my foot that lead to my weakening of the training last week. It's thursday, the 19th of june, today. So I'm hobbling over the break. I want to win this year! I want to fight! I want to put Binghamton, the bdilly, on the map!!! also, in two or three weeks the summer track meets start in colonie.
*It is the first day of October and things aren't as good as I'd hoped. My Iliotibia band (the injury known as runner's knee) struck after being here at college only a few days. It took a long time to loosen and it seems that I'm going to be making up for cross country during the indoor and outdoor season. I'm redshirting cross country. I'm definitely not bummed, though. I'm more focused towareds running than i've ever been.
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It's only a few days from new years and I'm looking foward to indoors. I ran one race [at cornell] and had the perfect speed. All I need is to get back into those distance runs. I've done one 90 and I'm doing more of them over break, to the point near when we go back that I'll be doing them nearly every day. I'm expanding the training annette gave us a little bit, because I need to be doing more than the xc guys. I can't just follow their rest period training-I wasn't ever training hard in the first place.
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when i got my grades online a week into the break, my enthusiasm for running was promptly murdered. I thought that my gpa was too low for me to compete. when i emailed annette, i didn't get a response till a week before we were going back to practice early. So, the running i planned to do wasn't accomplished. I did run, just not nearly as much... but that makes it all the more beautiful: at westpoint, I ran a 9:23, beating Jeff and Sergey, from the bdilly as well. We were the only three binghamton competitors. My last lap was a 31. That's abso-positively freaking awesome. I'm feeling real good about this. gotta represent at the armory this sunday. got to. I believe I ran a 9:14 or something like that last year. I'm killing it this year. I'm running closer to my potential than ever before, running through the pain. I've still got so much farther to go as the 31 last lap shows. If I learn to run all out, the steeplechase will be mine this year, all mine. and i'll add a couple'a points indoors with the 3k, too.
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the armory meet is sunday. this thursday we ran a 3 min on, 3 rest workout, 2:30 8's. i took the first out rediculously fast, 2:22, then lead the second one perfectly paced and let someone else lead the third. then i took the fourth at 2:30 pace again. i can't believe i'm already leading workouts! this season is gonna rock
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The meet at the armory went well. Out of the five or six binghamton guys in our heat [the slow one] of the three k, i was first. i wasn't always sure during the race that i was going to be though. Everybody took it out quick, and we all did surprisingly well. I hit my pace for the first 8 laps, 35's and 36's, then started to slow, even though i was still catching up on people. Tom and then Jeff were the last two teammates I passed. I still had a kick in the last lap, though it only seemed like a kick to me and the people in the stands because of my slower middle laps that were before it [peak at 41... aieeeee]. The last lap was a 34 for a grand total of 9:13. a ten second drop from last week!
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The American East Indoor Championship meet was @Boston again this year. Their track is just unbelievably awesome; one banked more steeply than the armory, I believe. I got a ton of photos of everyone and of the facility. My races were some of the best ever. I had to run the 5k on friday, and took it at five flat pace like I tried to a week or two ago, except I never gave up this time. I'd lead the race with 4:59, 5:02 splits and lead for the next half as well. I was passed by a new hampshire guy and then chris pierson from albany [cv]. I knew that I wasn't going to let Pierson beat me though, [he was just unlucky that I know him] and I stayed with him in the 24th lap and then beat him in the last by .36. My third mile was 5:09 for splits of 4:59, 10:01, and 15:10, then a 30 second last lap for 15:40 and a pr by 14 seconds. I'd gone through the first 3k in 9:22, which Pete says is an indicator of steeple time [the first 3k of a 5k]. Also notable is that I ran a 9:22 3k the previous week in Cornell, my only race of the day. What is it about these championship meets that gets the blood flowing? :) Saturday I ran the 3k, and acclaimed it afterwards as my best race ever. I was very tight from the previous day: entering the third mile and trying to keep five flat pace, I'd begun running only on my toes and expanding my stride, following sprinting form. Usually you don't run in sprinting form for a mile and my calves tightness has reminded me of that untill today [tuesday, four days later]. My physical condition lead to my body telling me to give up many times in the 3k. I kept saying, they're right there though, a few steps ahead of me. Instead of giving up I would surge to make up the gap of a few steps I'd let widen. Completing the 12th lap with another one of these surges, to pull up on the shoulder of the two guys leading the heat, I laughed to myself because I knew the race was totally mine if I was still with them at this point. Instead of leaving it to the last lap, I tried to pull on their outside shoulder on that very back stretch, then left it till the homestretch, passing them and kicking hard for the last 400m. I won the heat by four seconds. Maybe next year, or this spring, I can get into the fast heat of the mile or 5k. They'll only be one heat of the steeple and irregardless of whether there's twenty, I'll be in the fastest heat. 9:16 is the IC4A qualifying time and baby, you ain't seen nothing yet....
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Arghh.... to focus as much as I have on getting back into running and to do so with portents of success was a good thing. Now it's a bad thing, as my times are not reflecting the shape i'm in at all. I ran the 1500m and the 400h this past weekend in the bearcat home invite. It was entertaining to get to run events other than what I usually get to do, but I'd already psyched myself out. Believing I couldn't run with anybody in the 400h races, I didnt' even beat the people that I probably could have, and ran one of my slowest 400h hurdles times in four years. I just plain died in the 1500m too, after going out in exactly correct pace. My breathing didnt' help for it [the asthma stuff has been kicking back in] but that played a role in me just giving up too. I hate this running drama... I wanna just be able to train and race at the best level I can. I want to stop the excuses, stop the whining, the thinking about it all. I just want to run hard.
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