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!
 

 

Perth, Western Australia....My new homeland with lots of Pictures along the way

View of the mountain range somewhere near Arizona

Some peaks from 30k in the air

  This entry will be a recap of my journey across the pond of sorts, while providing some new pictures and updates of my status in Australia. The 2.5 days of total travel really really took its toll on me the 1st couple of days Down Under. It hits your body so hard that its difficult to really enjoy those first few exciting days, especially for me because I only slept about 2-3 hrs over the 46 hr journey from Charlotte, NC to settle in WA.  I snapped a few pretty cool pictures of some mountain ranges from my 1st flight across the country, no significance but I like mountain ranges and I hope you do as well!

What's wrong with this picture?

 An additional note to the picture above, after settling into my window seat from the QC to LA, I kicked something with my right foot and looked down. This is what I saw, that's always a good sign on an airplane right? You pieces falling apart at my feet haha

   To the left are my new Skull Crusher headphones that really helped my trip go by a bit smoother.  I debated on ordering the official "snoop dogg" version but when I found the exact model without the Dogg father's signature on them for a cheaper price I had to go that route. These headphones nearly drown out all outside noise while providing an amplified mini sub woofer to pump out those bass busting beats that I prefer at times.

 Here is a nice shot of what I did for about 11hrs in LA while at the airport. I got into that cool swanky, "Air New Zealand VIP Lounge" and felt like a rock star for a couple hours as there were only about 10 people hanging out w/me. As the night progressed I was accompanied with about 130 other people, so i didn't feel so cool anymore but I did manage to have about 4 sandwiches, lasagna, 2 jack and cokes and 4 beers while kicking back.

 After arriving in LA, i was stuck in no man's land because the air New Zealand section was still closed due the huge time gap in the time zones. I just laid on top of my bag until people finally came out and everyone rushed to the line. This was the 1st and only place I had to surrender $50 for checking my carry on bag which was too large for the overhead bin. Due to an error, I was able to ship a 47lb bag and my tri bike across the world for FREE!!!

   After waiting for eternity, we were called from the VIP lounge and escorted down to our flight by the concierge. We were able to straight shot to the front of the line and take our seats, which was pretty cool. Since this was the longest flight that I had ever taken, i had hoped this would be a "baller" plane with all the bells and whistles.  Since I was able to get an aisle seat I was stoked because I knew I could hop up and down as much as I wanted to stretch out the legs. The Air New Zealand 767 was very nice and satisfying to me as it was a brand new plane with our own personal TV's and a fair amount of room. I was VERY FORTUNATE to sit next to a very personable couple who were flying to New Zealand for vacation to stretch for 2 weeks. They were from San Diego and seemed to be very well traveled as I spoke about heading to Malaysia as a possibility, the gentleman had even played golf there once. This flight went by very well for me, I popped 2 ambien and slept for a maximum of about 2 hours some how? I just cannot get comfortable sitting up I guess, but oh well, i watched 4 movies along the way.

Check out the h20 and mountains

2XU compression(blood circulation)

 Upon arrival to Auckland, NZ, I said my goodbye's to my new friends. I had a 7.5hr layover so i attempted to leave the airport to explore the city but was unable to do so, because a baggage snafu with my bike and bag, which took almost 2hrs to clear up.