Sophomore Season

Whilst my freshman year ended in a disappointing fashion, I was determined to use my time at home over the summer to restore a decent level of fitness, in preparation for the cross-country season. I think things went pretty well overall. I started from basically nothing, just 40 kilometres a week of easy running, and ended at 110, with plenty of hard miles thrown in there. By hard miles I of course mean getting thrashed around the track by the WEP boys. The entire team, and by extension the entire club, is something almost alien to the one that I knew just a few years ago, though I’ll acknowledge that I haven’t been around much to watch the transition. I was privileged to watch our performances in the YDL, where we displayed a level of dominance I couldn’t quite believe. The very idea that the Club could have, in my own YDL days, simply strolled into Wavertree and beat the Harriers by several hundred points, would have seemed beyond the realms of all possibility. I was even more impressed by WEP’s performances at the Road Relays. Vale Royal, once so feared by all, was simply outclassed, and Wirral secured its first Golds in twenty years.  

Anyway, that was something of a tangent. I departed from Manchester Airport back in August feeling fairly content with my summer training. I had forgotten just how hot Kansas would be when I arrived. A year of intense training wouldn’t prepare you for this furnace. I almost immediately began dreaming of the English summertime – mild, with delightful, impromptu rain. You could go on a long run and not return looking like you’d been through a 60-minute cycle in the washing machine. The first few weeks made me feel like an old man who hadn’t run in years. You might recall my comments on the size of the insects last year, but I feel that I must stress again that they are enormous. Not only that, they are damned aggressive. You couldn’t get through a run without some horrible flying beast trying to gnaw at your neck. The cicadas are the worst. They’re like giant flying beetles, sometimes two inches long. We have a dog on campus that hunts them, which perhaps indicates to you how big they are. Still, one has to get on with it. My first month on campus has been spent praying for cold weather, which thankfully seems to have arrived. The last few weeks have been a mixture of bliss and torture, since the Kansas summertime isn’t willing to die quietly. These past few days have seen an inexplicable reversion to 35-degree heat, which caught be off guard. However, even as I write this there’s a cold front rolling in which might, I hope, banish the heat from this land until sometime next June.  

Not to harp on my struggles too much, but there has been another thing troubling me. As my family will attest, I happen to have a notoriously weak constitution. Sarah finally became fed up with this back in the winter of 2018, after I managed to contract about fifteen colds in the space of two months. The main cause of this was eventually found to be my Coeliac's disease. Lately however, I seem to be experiencing further problems, which I’m currently attributing to a perfect storm of events. Travel to and from the US always leaves me in a pretty poor state, but this time it was made worse by my receiving the first dose of the Covid vaccine, which kicked me while I was down so to speak. The heat has of course been a constant issue, and I became ill again around two weeks ago, just before I was due to race in the Bethel home meet. My two races before this point had been okay. The opening four miler wasn’t very fast – but I was expecting that to be the case (I actually ran 18.30 in the 5k race that opened my freshman year). The second race, the full 8k at McPherson, was fairly solid for this stage in the season. Anyhow, I became before I could run the next race. I think that this was probably food poisoning of some kind. I basically stayed in bed for two days and then, just as I started feeling better, I threw up. Like the weather, the illnesses in Kansas also flatter to deceive. The bad news is that I'm due to get the second dose on the 10th of October, so we'll see how that goes. 

I basically haven’t been right since. Training has been very difficult, with constant stomach problems that seemed to climax on Tuesday of this week, where I started feeling terrible, sharp pain in the abdomen. However, I seem to have rounded a corner. Training has been taxing, though we have all been very constricted by the heat. Owing to some issues that are yet to be fully explained, the Bethel cross country team now had a new coach. This, I am given to understand, is quite a regular occurrence at American Colleges. Coaches can either stay with one team for thirty years, or they can flit around every two or three. It reminds me of the Premier League in a way. Our new coach, Amber Russell, has something of a different approach, which has taken some getting used to. She is more eager for me to increase my mileage, which I see as a generally good thing, though her sessions a very different. She places a great deal of focus on fartlek's, which I know Sarah would approve of, and on soft surfaces. These two combined means a lot of running at pace on grass. I think the focus on training on the surface that we’ll be racing on as been very beneficial, though to be frank by illnesses have meant that I haven’t really been able to discern how much my fitness is improving. Our training group is also developing well – the team has added a couple of promising freshmen to the squad, which really helps to push me along. Today (Thursday) was our first track session. Coach really does love her volume. 25x300 meters, split into five sets. It went quite well; we eased our way in, but we were running at 8k race pace or lower over the course of the session. Very enjoyable, and gorgeous weather.  

Finally, I must apologize for the fact that there’s no pictures. I managed to break my phone, though fortunately I was due an upgrade, which means that Ronan-the-Great has been able to mail a replacement out to me. Hopefully that will arrive soon, because I’ve missed all of the WEP updates on the WhatsApp. I’ll be able to spend a lazy afternoon catching up on the gazillion messages! I’ll end by wishing good luck to all WEPs mini (and full) marathon runners who will be travelling to London Town in a few days' time. Bring home the Bacon!