Puerto Rico!!!

 I am in a BEAUTIFUL hotel room to Puerto Rico getting ready to head over to the track for the Ponce Grand Prix where I am running my first 1500m of the season, and my first professional track meet!! Since arriving on Thursday afternoon, I have been in absolute paradise; our hotel is framed by a spectacular mountain range on one side and the crashing waves of the Atlantic on the other. My balcony is 50 feet from the water, and the waves crashing on the shore, along with the songs of exotic birds, have provided the soundtrack to my trip thus far. I've done each of my runs along a packed sand path that follows the ocean, and the post-run frolic in the waves has left little to be desired. It is hot and humid as expected, and the past 48 hours have made me grateful for my 2 months in Florida this winter, which make the current conditions feel a little less oppressive.

Although I am loving the picturesque views and lovely people, everything about this trip feels a little strange, and puts me rather out of my comfort zone: for my season-opener to occur in the second week of May after not having raced indoors is nerve-wracking (I haven't toed the starting line of a track race in over 8 months). I am travelling solo to a meet for the first time ever (until this point I've been accompanied by my parents, my coaches, my Duke teammates, or a Canadian National contingency). I am going into this meet off of a strong base of mileage and long threshold workouts, but without having done much race-pace speed prep or many track workouts to speak of. I am learning to redefine my goals and approach to racing more generally; I have gone from a relatively large fish in a competitive, but—towards the end of my collegiate career—shrinking pond to a minnow swimming for dear life amongst the whales. No longer can I define success by how I fare within the ACC or where my season best positions me on the NCAA ranks. I have to have a little more faith in my coaches, my preparation, our workouts and periodization, and my race intuition, and remember what it is like to put my body through the shock of that season-opening mid-distance hurt. Ultimately, I just have to jump into this feet first, equipped with the tools I've accrued throughout my 13 years of competitive running (yes, the grade 6 meets in my oversized Bramalea Bullets singlet count) and hope for the best.

Through the uncertainty and little growing aches along this journey of post-collegiate running, there is a small but prevailing voice reassuring me that everything is going to be OK. This voice takes on many identities: sometimes it is my Duke coach Kevin, who knew me so well by the end of my collegiate career that regardless of the situation, his words of advice were unwaveringly accurate and always exactly what I needed to hear to get me in the perfect pre-race head-space. Right now it is Dave Reid, imparting his pearls of wisdom and sharing stories from his era of racing which he endearingly refers to as “the dark ages” when no one knew any better than to run fast and turn left. Then there are the eternal words of Joe Sax, with his easy half-smile telling me that the hay is in the barn, get in the race and never say die, and just let the chips fall where they may. But I've still got a lot of hay to shovel; it ain't in the barn just yet!

We are so skilled at talking ourselves out of good days or strong performances before we even arrive at the track—as they say, racing is 90% mental and the rest is in your head. The reality is, at the end of the day, after the race prep and strategy-planning, the routine pre-race meal, shake-out run and visualization, you just have to step on the line, take a deep breath and tell yourself to shut up and run. Which is exactly what I intend to do at 9:35 tonight at Francisco "Paquito" Montaner Stadium.

And in between the intense running-related foci there are a few other things to enjoy...like the fact that I'm spending the weekend at a Hilton resort on a Caribbean island surrounded by muscular world-class sprinters, before jetting off to Santa Cruz for a few days, then down to L.A. to race the Oxy High Performance meet, marking my first ever trip to California!! I think most would agree, not a bad way to spend 10 days. I plan to come back with a tan, a PB and a lot of experience—and maybe a little Puerto Rican rum...you know, for making gluten-free vegan coffee cake. Let me know if you want to share some when I return :)

http://www.poncegrandprixdeatletismo.com/