Western Australia: A place to grow as an athlete

    Recently some of you may have seen where I have been posting about "Club Helena Valley" on facebook or perhaps on my athleticore account. Basically, through The Running Centre in Perth, I have been able to connect with some of the best local and national athletes around. Thankfully my old friend Cody Angell is a sales and marketing manager at the shop and he has introduced me to several amazing people who have been more than supportive in my journey Down Under. So many thank you's to Cody and Janna Angell for hosting me and to several of my new mates at the Running Center for being so kind and forgiving to me for my general ignorance.

  One cool thing that will get my networked into the active members of the city is being attached to the running center's blog center ( http://therunningcentre.com.au/?page_id=14 ) check out the last name on the page, the tourist! Hopefully some people will be able to see my view points from my experiences here and how they relate to my experiences back home. Onward to the insane athletes that I have been able to jam with a bit on some training sessions of late.

   G$, a common term I used back home has been used once again with the introduction of Gerry Hill. I have been fortunate enough to run with Gerry several times and 1st hand watch his toughness while racing a 10k on the track after hitting the 1st mile in 4:53! Gerry has been training for a year solid and he managed to knock out a 2:37 at the Perth Marathon for 2nd place overall, I pretty legit time. I believe that Gerry and I are at similar levels of fitness for the 15k distance and below, so it will mean that we will be pushing each other to the limit. My goal is to see where I can take my level of triathlon while also pursuing some major PR's on the track this summer. As of right now, Nathan Doig, Cody, G$ and myself appear to be on similar playing fields with fitness so the goal is to work together perhaps for an upcoming 5k to see if we can chip away at our personal records.

Neil Berry, our Prefontaine impersonator

   Right now, my 5k PR is 15:27, G$'s is 15:28, Cody's is 15:31 and Nathan recently ran 8:42 for the 3k, so if all goes according to plan we should be able to push each other. I need to trim down a bit of weight to blend in with the gents here and become more efficient to reach my goals. Just a couple of days ago I was running with a young buck named Neil Berry aka berrylicious on a 15k tempo run from the shop and I was digging a bit deeper than normal to stay on his heels and I felt confident with my effort. 2 days later Neil belts a 14:47 5000m for a massive PR!

If I continue training with these guys, I have 2 options:

1. Continue improving and take my racing to another level
2. run myself into the ground and get injured

   Let's hope that with the assistance of these amazing athletes I will reach the 1st option. Aside from my track goals, I have also been fortunate to train with Ryan Baugh as he has been dragging me out to the local pool for some sessions. I realized I am very rusty in the water and that Ryan seems to be an underrated triathlete because he is fairly new to the sport and is very modest. It's INSANE to think that Ryan just began triathlon last year and knocked out a 4:20 half ironman! With some additional training this year he is aiming to trim nearly 10 minutes off of his time, so I plan to continue training with him so that I can Knock out a huge PR for myself at Busselton.


   I will continue updating my progress as a continue to pursue some pipeline dreams while down under. The next goal is to friend a paycheck as I have been trying to make contacts so that I can eventually move out into a new flat and off the pull out sofa! The goal continues to remain vehicle free the entire journey, I will either run, walk or cycle to my destination!