Grand Forks, North Dakota. Its not exactly the sort of place I pictured my self ever spending time in. I'm out here with my advisor, Antun Husinec, to do some geology research. We're working in a rock core library at the University of North Dakota, basically analyzing rock core from oil explorations foot by foot, eight hours a day, six days a week. Not exactly my dream job either but on the plus side, its inside and not physically demanding, making training much easier and more effective. Previously I had been a farm hand during the summer, picking strawberries in the morning and doing about every other farm job known to man in the afternoon and was often too exhausted and dehydrated to accomplish anything when I got home.
Training has been good so far this summer. Before heading west, I spent two and a half weeks in Caribou training with MWSC again. There was a really solid group there for the summer which made everything pretty fun and productive. We did some physical testing the first week and while I didn't get a chance to do any treadmill tests, I feel I put in a solid effort in the track tests with a 10:14 in the 3000 (just shy of my PR from freshman year at SLU) and a 59.5 in the 400 Given the fact that I am not a sprinter, I was pretty happy with that. I also made some improvements in strength testing, but still need to work on my legs a lot. Despite all the rain, I made it up to Kamouraska-St.Andre, Quebec with Will Sweetser and Sarah Dominick for a day of sport climbing. The climbing was great, but upon our return we heard the very sad news about Willie Neal, which kind of put a damper on things.
Now I'm here in North Dakota, riding my bike on flat, straight roads and swimming laps in the pool. I was going to do a bunch of track workouts, but the track is securely locked inside the football stadium here. Between training and work, time is a bit of a blur, so hopefully I'll be driving back east before I know it. We're going to the Bad Lands Wednesday, which should be cool, and I may head over to Minnesota the week after, we'll see what happens though.
Train smart, be safe, and most importantly keep it all fun!
