2024 Advanced Training and Racing Thread (still competitive jerks) (Read 209 times)

Anyone else read Kara Goucher's book?  I just finished it and... wow.  Some of the stuff that went on at Oregon Project under Salazar was pretty horrendous.

She is the one who was married to the guy who ran for the Oregon Project, right?

I listed to it on Audiobook and it made me glad I wasn't a professional athlete.

It also let me know how bad other people have life. I may not be an olympic athlete, or even worthy of a State Championship in a (real) sport. I also didn't have problems having kids, or deal with my employer not paying me after they said they'd pay me with the stance of "what are you going to do about it?"

So I will be upset about not getting into TCS along with 96% of the other people who didn't get in. I can melt metal with electricity, and my bad days are now filled with a coworker blaming others for making mistakes he originated. I wasn't molested multiple times by my employer while they were drunk.

Flavio - Thanks for posting those BW percentages, that's useful. I've been going to a chiro a good bit lately (finally sorting out stuff left over from a high school injury) and haven't hit the weights in a while because of that (just letting certain muscles relax more), but am going to get back to it soon. I'll take a healthy step back from where I was, but I should be able to get back to that squat number before long. DL will take longer.

I made a trip to the LRS yesterday in search of a pair of dedicated 5k/10k shoes. I left with a pair of Saucony Sinister on order. SO very light compared to anything else I wanted to try - 5k courses here often have hair pin turns, so I wanted a low stack, stable shoe.

ETA: For those living under the rule of those who prefer measuring air temperature using a scale developed to measure water temperature, what are your favorite (preferably English speaking!) local-ish podcasts of a somewhat running and/or health/fitness-related nature?

Mmerkle - good luck tomorrow!

 

Great answer!

 

Also, yes, mmerkle! Wishing you the wind at your back tomorrow for all directions. Sorry to read about the stomach thing. That happened to me before Philly... hope you can get good fuel in today!

 

And yeah RP, she married Adam Goucher, 5000m Olympian for the US in 2000. Both Adam and Kara claim not to have participated in the doping regimens... I don't know enough to judge.

I can understand the trust placed in a coach, and the associated culpability. At one point I trusted someone too. She kind of makes it obvious in the book how she turned a blind eye because the allure of success/being the best was more important. Her book is good, and really opened my eyes. On a different forum there was a woman who was a gymnist, and was coached by someone who ended up going to jail. I will be honest in saying I was jealous of her success, yet never knew the hard times she might have gone through.

Marky I disagree. I honestly think she would have taken everything the males were taking had she been given the opportunity. I also think she is very glad she didn't get too deep in things, and her husband was watching it from the outside saying "this is wrong."  If she would have been a single female on the team it could have been substantially different.

Just remember, Ben Johnson was the one who was caught at the time. I think only 2 guys in the whole race were clean.

Flavio - on the fall: oof. Sorry to hear, we've all done it. Probably once or twice a year for me. It happens so fast - usually just a fluke thing that's hard to prevent. After it happens, you keep thinking about it on every run for a while, kind of like PTSD. I don't know exactly how you get bruises though - I go down on the pavement, usually on palms/knees, and get some nasty scrapes. Which take forever to heal, and need to keep bandaged for a couple weeks. It's hard to keep bandages sticking to palms. I just had one a few weeks ago, and am finally bandage-free as of a few days ago.

Yeah, it's really disturbing--to the point where I sometimes had to stop reading. What is not stated in my blurb or anyone's response so far is that Salazar sexually assaults Goucher. Twice. And the "subtle" crossings of boundaries are actually not so subtle, Goucher just pushes them away as such to probably protect some sense of self.

 

Dorothea: I thought this is what was the big news about the whole thing. Anyone doping is not really news.

On language in general: it's fascinating to me and is one of my favorite subjects to read about. I have plenty of book recommendations if anyone is interested! (Specific to the English language, anyway.)

Mark & Mike - go get it! Looks like good weather for my 10k tomorrow too, slightly on the chilly side.

 mmerkle - good luck for tomorrow!

 

Weather looks like it should be pretty good for my race tomorrow, clear, 13C / 55F at race start with light easterly breezes. I took a bit of a risk smashing out a couple of big weeks into a pretty sharp taper and I was regretting it until about Thursday. We’ll see if it works out tomorrow. Goal is to beat 2019 Mark, which is the last time I ran this race, which means 1:14:41. It’s gonna be close but there’s normally a pretty deep field in this race so I should have some others to work with for a change. Just gonna go out at 3:30/km and try to hold it!

Good luck to mmerkle and Mark.  Get after it!

Marky_Mark - good luck to you as well (sorry I missed you before)