I’m sitting in crop duster right now heading back home to Tucson and figured it was time to stop shirking my blog obligations for the team. Part of the reason I haven’t been able to write since the Jax River Run in March has been because school decided I wasn’t working hard enough and threw every piece of garbage it could find at me. The other reason was because I wasn’t sure how to respond to being dubbed “no pants Burrell” by my favorite new teammate Tommy Neal. I’ve found a break in my workload, but I’m still not sure what to say to Tommy … You’re “no pants Burrell?”
Anyway, I’ve made some solid improvements since a disappointing run in Jacksonville, and I think I’m slowly getting back to PR shape. The first week in April, I ran 29:20 in a road 10k in Charleston. Overall, it was a decent performance with a brutal tailwind and a 2-mile hill in the middle of the race. However, I wasn’t able to finish with the strength and speed that I would have liked. My next race was a 5k at mt. sac. I felt certain I was in pr shape about a week and a half before the race. I had done a couple solid work outs with Jorge Torres who came down to Tucson for a time before the race (8x400 with 1 minute rest at 62, 400 jog, 6x400 with 1 minute rest at 59). Unfortunately, allergies and congestion, which have cripple most of my track seasons since leaving CO after high school, kicked in about 5 days before the race. I went in with a sore throat and plugged sinuses hoping the cool California evening would alleviate the congestion. It didn’t, but I ran 13:55 and still think the race went well all things considered.
I’m coming home right now from running the Bloomsday 12k in Spokane, WA. I’m still having trouble dealing with allergies with the severity depending on the day. Again, I think the race went relatively well. I placed 13th overall and 3rd American although I put myself in position to be top American and around 8th overall with about 1K to go. I was struggling for the second have of the race and ended up getting caught by a pack right at the end and lost about $5000 in that last bit – pretty difficult not to be upset about that even if I think I’m still improving.
Not sure what my racing schedule is going to be going forward. Basically, I’ll just keep after it until the allergens die down and the breathing comes to the level my legs are at (which has been at the Atlanta Peachtree the past 2 years – for some reason I have been able to breathe there). I’d also like to get a track race in the lower the 5k pr and will look to either Canada or Mexico. I haven’t been able to put together a good track race since 2007 so it would be nice to get that monkey off the back. We’ll see.
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