Summer Recap!

With the start of a new semester, it is about time for an update about my summer and the start of the season! On Monday I had the first classes of my last fall semester at UP. This was both sad and exciting; sad because it meant the end of another amazing summer, and exciting because with the start of school comes the start of the cross-country season.

My summer has been pretty great. I started it with a 5-weeks research project with one of my professors. The focus of our research was the local women’s professional soccer team, and we were trying to find out why it is able to draw so many fans: their average attendance at home games is 16,772, and no other women’s professional team anywhere in the world even comes close. So yes, I basically got paid to watch soccer games in local bars in Portland & to talk to soccer fans about why they love the sport :). It is currently being peer reviewed.

After flying back home and running Dutch Nationals, where I got fifth, I finally took my break. I say finally, because my body really needed some time off. Ever since the indoor season, I wasn’t quite able to put things together in training, and despite running 2 small 1500 pr’s, my season was disappointing. It was time for a break! I took 2 weeks off, only running occasionally when I felt like it, joining my Dutch teammates or my sister or dad when they happened to go for a run.

My first week back was when the European Championships took place in Amsterdam. Luckily for me, Femke was doing an internship with the organization and also lives in Amsterdam, so I got to follow it super close and had a very inspiring, fun week with lots of track & field action to watch.

By the end of the following week, I joined my parents and Femke for vacation in France. Training on vacation can be hard, but it is also fun because you get to explore all these new, beautiful places. I got very inventive; for instance, I would get my run in when we got back from an activity, while Femke started dinner. She would tell me how much time I had, I would go running for that exact amount of time, and Femke would already be serving dinner by the time I got back, so that I would literally stop running, jump into my chair despite being a hot, sweaty mess, and join my family for dinner. Or one of my family members would join me for part of the run. Or I would run back from where our hike ended to the campsite. Or I would go for a run as soon as we had parked the car after a long day of driving to a new campsite, while my parents set up the tent… Yes, I am pretty spoiled. I also spent a week in Font Romeu where my Dutch team, the Ruitenburgrunners, were having a training camp. It was fun to have people to run with every day, to experience altitude training, and to see Mo Farah, Paula Radliffe and her kids (coaching, not running), and other distance stars in action!

I was barely back from France or I left again to go to Iceland. Iceland is a beautiful, wild country: it has many volcanoes, glaciers, black sand beaches, geysers, and other volcanic activity. And pretty good running trails too! After 3 days I took the next flight to Portland. I had a few days to relax and catch up with friends before I got to meet all my new & old teammates during team camp at the beach, where I also saw Susan Kuijken getting 8th in the Olympic 5000m finals in a pr, after she had already gotten 14th in the 10k final a few days earlier.. Just the thought of running 50 laps on the track (she also had to run the 5k prelims) in less than a week makes my calves hurt!

The next week was filled with relaxing, running, and other activities like the yearly compliance and team meeting, individual meetings, iron testing, and getting gear. Overall, I am very happy with the way summer training went and I think I am in a good place. And the team looks good, real good. Many of us will run a local meet this Saturday before gearing up for the Roy Griak Invitational in Minnesota three weeks later, a big meet with a hilly course and a lot of strong competition. Lots of exciting things ahead!