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This last month of racing has been a fun and successful stretch… after the 10 miler I stepped it down for a couple competitive efforts in

BAA Mile, finishing at the Boston Marathon finish

road miles. The short races set me up well for my fastest season opener and 3^rd place in the steeplechase (9:42) at Payton Jordan. After the steeple, I ran the Bay to Breakers 12k, placing a close 2^nd, a strong race for me but one I would have loved to win in front of my hometown bay area crowd after growing up just north and going to school at Stanford just south. I now head to Boulder Boulder 10k this weekend and look forward to competing on a strong US team with Shalane and Deena, along with Ryan in the men’s race.

Post-race with champ and ASICS teammate Diane Nikuri-Johnson from Burundi

It seems like I have been all over the place when it comes to race distances, but really, it hasn’t felt too unnatural to me. Right now I feel like I am in good 10k shape. My training has been primarily more strength-based by design, but since the speed stuff comes more natural to me, I feel like I can race a bit over and under -distance from there. As I eye even longer distances and a marathon debut, I always want to make sure that I am spending time working on my speed, as I’ve seen that it’s needed to finish well in any even from a marathon to a road mile. So hopping in a couple of road miles, though I hadn’t trained for a mile at that point, were good stimuluses for my body to not forget those “gears”. And mainly I ran them because they are fun! Being a part of Boston Marathon weekend, however small, and the Drake Relays were fun atmospheres to compete in. Payton Jordan was a bit of a surprise to me, I wasn’t expecting to run so close to my PR after not doing much training specifically for a steeple. On my cool down I spent some time chatting with God and actually got a little emotional as I replayed my last few outdoor track races (Spring of 2013). Last season was so difficult, I was trying so hard and things just weren’t clicking, largely due to trying to salvage a season after knee surgery. I was fully focused on doing everything I could to position myself to make the World Team in the steeple, and came up glaringly short. And here I stepped on the track and ran my fastest opener despite feeling unprepared going in and doing most of the work into the wind in the race. It’s moments like this that you realize that running performances do not necessarily correlate with the effort put into the preparation.  It also taught me the importance of building a strong aerobic base, something I didn’t have time to do last year. As I cooled down, I thought about how God has been with me every step of this journey from Day 1 when I fell in love with running at age 13, it has always been me and him going after it together. He not only gave me the gift of some talent but the passion to train hard on my own, running to and from practice in my first year of running (7^th grade) and doing hill sprints on the way home, a passion that wasn’t natural.

Big thanks to this guy, John Ball (Maximum Mobility, Chandler) for all his help getting back to full-strength post injury!

That passion has gotten fueled by victory and dampened by defeat but he has never let the flame die, encouraging me that there is more. I’ve had many great coaches throughout the years to encourage my running but he has been the constant that has picked me up when I’ve had humiliated finishes and told me I had the strength to keep going when the easy thing to do is quit and move on to something more “safe”. He has been the one when I’ve had thrilling victories that I go back to in the private and give back everything I received, any praise or accolades, realizing He deserves it all, that without Him I would have quit a long time ago. God has been worthy of it all- every drop of sweat in practice and on the track, every tear shed in defeat, he deserves every bit because he created me, and Jesus has died for me so I can be eternally His. It’s these moments that you realize that these races can be about more than just times on a paper that will likely be forgotten a year from now. They can be building history with God. Just like the quality times of training together births beautiful friendships between teammates, it is through the fires of adversity that I have learned God’s character. I have learned his unconditional love for me, that doesn’t change when I get last in a race. I’ve learned how he delights in watching all of us run, fast or slow, just as a loving parent does. He cares about it because he cares about me. And I’ve learned to trust Him and see his hand in my life and how He works everything together for good, even when I can’t see it in the moment.

Not shying away from competing this month!

We driven runners are always looking forward to the next race and the next goal, we rarely look back and reflect on the journey we’ve been on, (until maybe our career is over). Of course I love to look back at the times I’ve overcome and succeeded, but when looking back at all my failures I realize I have the strength and courage to go through anything. When you realize that, that there is no need to fear failure, you’ve already been through it, you are free to go after lofty, impossible goals, which is what I feel God calling me to do. And I know He will be with me every step of the way.

By, Ryan Hall

This clip, http://youtu.be/p3JPa2mvSQ4, basically sums up the last season of training for me, and yes Bob, baby steps really do work.  Less than 5 months ago I wasn’t able to run at all, and then was able to run but still with some pain.  It took a lot of baby steps throughout the winter, a hefty dose of patience and a big shot to the ego some days when looking at the watch, but eventually getting fit enough to line up at the Boston Marathon pain-free was a success for me.

My slowest marathon by far, but when I look at it through the What About Bob eyes the gains I made in a relatively short time weren’t baby steps, they were giant leaps.  The key to progression is to not to look at where you are at, especially when it is far from the level you have previously been, it’s to look at progress.

It’s not exciting to make baby steps. I’m a dreamer. I always envision making giant leaps in training, but this has never been the case. The key to becoming great at anything is consistency over a long period of time. So this has become my goal. Constantly train year round, not trying to hit mega-miles or crazy workouts, just simple hard, smart, training that leads to gradual improvement rather than taking big risks in training for immediate gains. Recently I’ve been running workouts on the same hilly 4 mile loop in Flagstaff, and each week it has been encouraging to see a few seconds off my average mile pace.  I’m not reaching to try to run a pace I’ve run in the past, I’m focused on baby-stepping my time down from the weeks before. It’s not as exciting, it’s not a new idea or concept, it’s simple, hard consistent work that pays off in the long-term.

When I was growing up, my brothers, Dad, and I would always being doing some form of manual labor together, mostly re-doing roofs.  My Dad had a saying he would remind us when we were starting to get bored of pounding nails on a hot black roof in the bright beating summer heat: “Head down, butt up” he would say.  That saying is permanently ingrained in my head.  I can’t say I enjoyed those hot summer days, but there was always a great deal of satisfaction when at the end of the day we would look back and see the tangible progress we made towards a new roof.  Sometimes baby steps can drive you mad, it seems like you aren’t making any progress at all.  One lousy shingle doesn’t make any difference on a massive roof, but the longer you keep your head down and butt up, at the end of the day you will be proud of what you’ve accomplished.

In our culture today, myself included, we are constantly looking for the quick-fix or how to fast forward the process.  We are high-acheivers that want to climb the ladder faster and skip rungs if we have to, which leads to us slipping and falling down the ladder at times.  I’ve learned not to rush the process, not to be greedy, but to keep my head down and baby step along towards big goals.

Directly after my race at the Mountain to Fountain 15k, I drove the dogs out to their grandparents in Big Bear Lake and met up with Ryan in LA to fly to Ethiopia for a 3 week training stint (4 weeks for Ryan) at Ya Ya Village athlete hotel (for more on YaYa village see my blog from last summer). Conveniently we happened to be on the same flights as a contingent of Ethiopian runners that competed at the LA marathon, including the women’s  winner Amane Gobena, which was fun to get to know them and hear a bit more from their coach about good places for marathoners to train around Addis.  It was Ryan’s first time in Ethiopia, and I had been just for a week last August during the rainy season and thus wasn’t really able to see the trails.  Unlike when I was in Africa last summer in base season, I had a bit less flexibility to just hop in and do whatever they were doing, I needed to be preparing specifically for races coming up.  However I was hopeful we would be able to connect up and overlap with runners there often.  I live at altitude, so unlike many Americans/Europeans that go to Africa merely for the altitude and do their own thing, the objective for me is to train with them and learn from them, both about running and life in general.

Trying to keep up with the drills in Bekoji

Sure enough, my first day there I ran into Kalkidan Gezahegne, (2010 World Indoor gold medalist in the 1500m at the age of 16).  Kalkidan and I remembered each other from Boston Indoor Games in 2011. We were both at the track for a shake out the day before the 3k, and she looked a bit alone and out of her element, so I invited her along for the run.  She didn’t speak much English then so it was a bit awkward but I could tell she appreciated it, little do we know that 3 years later we would train together in Ethiopia!  Her English is much improved since, and it was really fun to experience Ethiopian running through tagging along with her and chat about the differences between Ethiopian and American running culture.

I would often run afternoon runs with Kalkidan and a few other guys that her husband/coach coaches on the “satellite field”, a large open grass field.  The runs would be in a single file line, lead by the fastest guy in the group, an unsponsored 5k guy that by his beat up running gear and mud hut home you would never know is capable of (in my opinion from watching his track work) running sub 13 in the 5k (he will actually be running Doha diamond league as a breakthrough opportunity, excited for him!).  The runs would start at 11 min mile pace, but quickly progress down, until we hit about 6:45 pace where we’d stay the final few miles of the 40 min run- no cake walk on rolling terrain at 9,000 ft.  (I was thankful these were not in the forest- when Ethiopians run there they zig-zag around in the most nonsensical patterns that is enough to drive us Western runners mad!) Afterwards they would often do “gymnastics” (the classic Ethiopian synchronized drills) while I would do some strides (which they called “fartleks”).  They all got a kick out of the fact that I would stop and stand still in between strides, rather than shuffle along (at a near stand-still) as they did.

I also got to tag along a bit with the “Jama group”, Aden Jama’s team including recent 3-time world record holder Genzebe Dibaba, 2 time gold medalist Kaki, the recent 2014 Indoor gold medalist Souleiman, and others, the majority from neighboring Djbouti.  Of course I was curious to watch Genzebe train as she is on fire right now, and for her sake and because I want to continue to join them in the future, I won’t divulge too much detail of their program.  But needless to say they work hard and they hit the weights hard! I was kind of sad I had to leave to run Cherry Blossom 10 miler because I would have loved to do some more training with them.

This is how the Jama group recovers post-workout: takeout spaghetti eaten with fingers

As I found last time I was there, even the best Ethiopian runners were quite welcoming to Ryan and I. In Ethiopia in general, one of the things I love about it is despite the fact that foreigners are almost nonexistent, they are very nonchalant about our presence. We once had a bus continue on and take us privately to our destination for free, refusing money, simply because  “here in Ethiopia, we respect foreigners”. You will have little kids shout “firenge!” (white person) while running by and sometimes get called “China” (the Chinese have been building roads in Ethiopia, so are likely the first or only experience the locals have had with a firenge and they can’t really tell the difference).

One of the main things I took away form interacting with the Ethiopian runners is their confidence.  After finishing a run with Kalkidan one day, she proclaimed that I would win gold medals.  I’ll take it! They expect success and talk about it as if it is inevitable.  They also didn’t seem to look to their workout times for confidence, which is a good thing, because trying to run intervals on a track at 9,000 feet elevation is no joke.  I was hitting times I probably could have run in high school.  You just aren’t able to run race pace, so I don’t think they expect to, and just work hard and expect that when they go down, they will have what it takes.

Colorful, delicious injera with “fasting platter” of vegetables

I tried to apply this mentality to my race at Cherry Blossom 10-miler, also the US 10-mile Championships.  I really had no idea what I could run, especially after training up there and not getting my normal feedback, but I knew I was strong and decided that I was just going to trust I was fit enough to go with the leaders.  I could have made a case for playing it conservative; I was jet-lagged, had just traveled 30 hours 2 days before the race, and at Houston half I had gone out aggressively and spent 10 miles running alone.  But I also felt I had unfinished business after underperforming at Houston, so it was a risk I was willing to take.

As expected the race went out hard upfront, yet I felt surprisingly comfortable, and was getting excited knowing we were on American Record pace.   I was sitting back a bit because I didn’t want the African runners to see me- I’d learned that sometimes in Africa when a white person goes to the front in a workout, it causes fireworks, so I tried to stay out of view. Somewhere after the first few miles though we went around a roundabout and the pack didn’t take the tangent very well, and I couldn’t help but hug the turn.  That was a mistake- I was spotted and a hard surge was thrown in, just as I thought might happen, though it took me by surprise.

I was able to work my way back to the pack where I stayed until another hard surge was thrown around the halfway point. In hindsight, I wish I had done more to cover this move, but I ran a 5:03 that mile, so maybe it wouldn’t have been

Hanging on at Cherry Blossom 10-miler

possible. This type of racing was definitely a new experience (afterwards Janet said it is common for Mamitu to run this way, good to know for next time!).  I ended up spending the next 5 or so miles trying to catch back up, and slowly slipping further back, though not fading as badly as I did in Houston.  It was enough to still run under the old American Record pace, though I watched as my Team Run Flagstaff Pro teammate Janet set a new one ahead of me.  Though I didn’t get the record, it is the first time I have run under one, and it was a neat moment!

Unlike Kenyan runners, where English is largely spoken thanks to British influence, I’ve found Ethiopian runners are less likely to speak English as proficiently. Since Ethiopia was never colonized, they maintained their original historic language and alphabet, and they are always surprised but delighted when a foreigner makes attempts to converse in it. Ryan and I have started learning it in our free time, so it was fun to surprise the Ethiopian runners at Cherry Blossom with my new skills.  As I rode the bus back with winner Mamitu Daska, chatting about my time in Ethiopia and the strong Ethiopian presence in DC, it was a neat moment of realizing the power of running to unite cultures.  Looking forward to learning some more and practicing at Boston Marathon in a few weeks!