Getting motivated again

It was a tough November but I'll be all the better for it come summer. There have been some serious setbacks over my career that put my recent injury troubles (see Strange Injuries) into perspective. I was starting to feel really down about not having done a proper track session for 4 weeks until, during a conversation with a friend about my newly born son (see photo here: The very unusual athlete), I was confronted with the question: "I wonder how long it will take him to beat your pb in the 400m!?" So it's a matter of time, eh?! That's fine. If he does pursue athletics I hope he smashes my best time, but that comment reminded me of how deeply unsatisfied I am with my current PB and how much work I have ahead of me if I'm going to fix that problem.

I ran my personal best 400m in 2005, winning the Canadian National Championships on my home track in very windy conditions with 46.12 seconds (I also ran 21.02 in the 200m earlier that year). I was pleased to have broken my previous PB of 46.35 but felt that I had underperformed. No worries, I thought, I'll run what I'm capable of in August at the World University Games.

I made a horrible tactical mistake at the Games and was eliminated in the 400m semi-finals finishing tenth overall in an event I felt I could win (it was won in 45.95 with no wind). After lackluster performances in the 200m and 4x100m relay my teammates and I never even got out of the blocks in the 4x400m relay final. The microphone in the starting blocks malfunctioned so I couldn't hear the "set" command and even though it was illegal to start the race since I still had one knee on the ground it started anyway. Although we protested we weren't allowed to run against time and thus ended a physically and emotionally draining 2 weeks.

Fueled by the disappointment (anger?) of the summer I had the best fall training of my life. I ran a 500m in 60.1 in October then in November I did workouts like 5x250m with 90 seconds rest in 30.2 (average). By December I could run (hand-timed) 38.8 in the 350m and ran a session of 3x300m in 35 with 5 minutes rest. I was itching to run a 400m because I knew that 46.12 was going down. With this attitude I went to les Jeux de la Francophonie in Niamey, Niger. What happened there will be the focus of one of my next posts but, long story short, the day before my race I got terribly sick. I lost 10kg (22lbs) in 3 days. I suffered some symptoms for the next 3 months, either couldn't train or trained poorly during that time, and managed only 46.40 as a seasons best that May.

Since then I've come close to my PB, managing to run both 46.21 and 46.23. I've also made a lot of "life" decisions that I knew full-well weren't the best for my career (moving to a cold-weather place with no training partners and no coach while doing graduate school being the most relevant!). I fully accept that my decisions that are to blame for not breaking that 46.12 and I took them with a "rest of my life" perspective. I feel that in many ways I've made the right choice but now, at 27, I'm having some athletic mortality angst and don't want to retire before I've done what I fully expected to do in 2005.

The fitness level I have now makes the kinds of workouts I just mentioned seem surreal but I know that I've done them before and can do them again. When my son asks what my best 400m time is I don't want to say "46." This will be the 8th year of that "46" and I'm sick of it. The past month has made me focus on all the little things that I find easy to neglect when I'm worn out from intense track sessions. All the tedious stabilizer work, the self-treatment, stretching, and mobility drills will be compulsory for me this year. If I end my career with a 46.12 best, fine. But I'll have had years to better that mark and I won't accept any regrets or excuses if I fail. Today I test my ankle on the track. Whether it's another week of everything-but-running or not, I'm ready.