Tonight Renee Metivier Baillie will run 15 laps around a 200m track (elevation 5,300 ft.) at the 2010 USATF Indoor Championships. She may win, she may get dead last – heck, she may even DNF – but regardless of the outcome I am confident that 2010 is going to be a solid year for her. This is simply one race of many and while I sincerely hope she races great and has a “break out race” all I really care about is that she competes. But tonight’s race isn’t just one day in 2010 and if you have a moment I’ll share how I view tonight’s race in the context of Renee’s career.
2010 is just two months old, yet she’s already had a nice year. She ran well in her half marathon debut and two weeks ago she made fourth US Cross Country team by finishing fifth and all of the top finishers plan to race in Poland at the end of march. She’s racing a lot and while I doubt she will race this much in years 2011 and 2012, the reason we’re doing it is simple. She’s fit and her workouts are going well, yet she’s lacking a bit of that killer instinct that comes when an athlete has been successful and is confident. So that’s why she’s racing again tonight and will race the world cross meet at the end of March (and maybe the USATF 15k Champs in mid March) – she simply needs to be in the crucible of competition, the exposure to the fact that racing hurts and yet every race has a point where you have to commit. So that’s the first part of the post – to wish her luck and to explain why she’s racing a bunch in the first three months of the year.
But the second reason for post is simple. If 2010 goes well it will be because of 2009. She and I worked together via phone and internet from Jan 1st through September, then she and Austin moved to Boulder. Her training hasn’t been anything impressive in terms of volume or intensity, yet she’s been consistent. She had several poor races on the the track last year, but had a couple great races too, running 15:20 in Europe, her second fastest 5k and five seconds of her per of 15:15. Consistency is, in my humble opinion, the single most important concept for long term running success (feel free to debate that below). It’s the consistency in Renee’s training in the past 12-14 months which makes me confident that 2010 will be a solid year for her, a year where she can get back her confidence and swagger in the midst of an exciting resurgence of US Women’s distance running.
With that in mind, below is a workout from last March, a long run on Magnolia Road. Later this week I will add another video* below that one of the General Strength she did post run. It was a solid day and in my view, the fitness gained a year ago is contributing to the consistency in training and racing this year.
*Note: Everything that follows was added Sunday, February 28th, after Renee won. Yippie!
Okay, I can’t find that darn video from Magnolia Road, but she did 20 minutes of General Strength (GS) on her mat, immediately following the run, as it was snowing. I’m bummed I can’t find it because it’s neat. Oh well.
However, at this time last year she did Core H often, so I’ll share that (click here to download a pdf of her training). Tons of GS at that time because she was fit enough to get hurt; she was just 5 months post surgery, yet getting fairly fit aerobically; she was dying to run more but I felt it would have been inappropriate to run more, so she had lots of difficult GS work. So you can see how Core H fits in – done after hard days or medium days and we try to do it right after the workout.
Finally, I want to thank Mike Smith for his friendship and mentorship. I stole Core H from him and to me it’s part of Renee’s fitness…and no doubt Core H is part of the reason Beverly Ramos scored 16 points this weekend at the Big 12 Indoor meet (2nd in the 5k on Friday and 2nd in the 3k on Saturday).
…oh, and I guess I should also say both of the videos below are from our DVD, Building a Better Runner – Vol.2, but honestly, if you’re taking the time to read the blog please know I feel I owe it to you to share valuable content for free as the comments and energy underlying this site is a gift and I truly appreciate it. Also, if you go to this link you can download the entire Core H routine to your iTunes/iPod, though the file is huge (180mb). Just go to the bottom right of the screen and download the .m4v file.