800m, I'm Back Baby!

’m not an idiot often but when I am I miss my race. The Foote Field 800m was on tap a few weeks back. I left shop early to go home and relax and start pre race routine. Arriving home I started to get ready and literally said, “I better put my Garmin on so I know exactly what time it is”. Unfortunately I did a workout in Vancouver the day before, so I arrived at Foote exactly the moment my event started, exactly one hour late as my Garmin did not reset to current time zone. Like I said idiot!

Athletics Canada is staging an 800m exhibition masters race (age 35+) at the 2019 Canadian Track & Field Championships in Montreal in late July and I had posted a time of 2:25 earlier this year but had hoped to lower that time at the Foote Field Open to guarantee a spot. With GarminGate and missing the event I sent an email thanking the organizers for the opportunity and wished them a successful event, in that I didn't think my time of 2:25 would earn me a spot on the start line.

That same evening I received the following reply, "that’s okay, Jack. Your seed time is among the 12 fastest who’ve applied for this event, so I anticipate there likely being a spot for you in the race. I should have more information for you next week". In the days to come I in fact received an invitation to register and am now heading to Montreal later this month for the Master 800m invitational. I may have also registered in the Open 800m qualifying round, as well, I am there anyways and well I like a good challenge.

On the workout side I have been doing a combination of short speed, hard tempo and core strength developing rotational strength, balancing lower back and abdominal strength and improving coordination. You cannot be at your strongest without training the rotational muscles of the trunk!

The hard tempo was the Edmonton 10k which was a great day on the roads. And by hard tempo, I mean the hardest I could go for 10km up to that awkward moment when you are wearing 4%'s and you realize you can't run 4% faster and fade at the 6km mark, 37:09 for 10K and atop the Master 50-54 category and fourth Master 40+ overall.

The speed sessions have been 40m to 100m sprints with limited rest at top speed, one of the latest was 10 x 110m in 17 seconds for each of the ten repeats on the track and some 30 x 30 second with 30 second recovery workouts on the road. In combination with the short speed sessions I have also been doing plyometrics keeping loads light with quick movement so that the exercises carry over to the 800m distance and then on to Nordic sprint racing down the road in the winter.

On the technique side my main focus has been the heel to hamstring action and foot placement.

Two weeks until the big race, allot of work to be done...