Track and Field Blogs - Kevin Sullivan

I know, I know…I have really neglected this whole blogging thing, but I am officially back in blog mode. So my New Year’s resolution is to be much more consistent with my Flotrack blogs. My goal is to have one every two weeks and I am hoping you will all keep me on track if start slacking and I stray from my bi-weekly target.

When last I blogged I had just finished up with the outdoor season and in the process of packing my house up to meet up with my wife in our new digs in Tallahassee, Florida. We’ve been a little cramped having moved from our big ‘ole four bedroom house in Urbana, Illinois into a two bedroom apartment here in Tallahassee, but until we can unload our house in this dismal housing market we are stuck renting for a bit. (If you know anyone moving to east central Illinois let them know we have a great deal on a house for them!!). Our location couldn’t be better though. I am an 8 minute jog from one of the many great trails here in Tallahassee, Tom Brown Park/Lake Lafayette Heritage Trail/Alfred Greenway. It is pretty amazing how many great places there are to train here. It has been such a refreshing change from the “sidewalk trails” through Champaign-Urbana or the 30-40 min drives to get to any soft surface to run on.

And, on top of all that, Karen had an outstanding coaching season with her FSU women’s XC team taking home their first ever ACC team title as well as a 3rd place finish at the NCAA Championships in November. You are never really sure how a new team is going to react to a new coach and if they are going to buy into your system, but these girls we on board from day one. And the great thing was that all of them to a person were committed to the goals they set for themselves at the beginning of the season. It is great to be around a team that is 100% committed to being the best they can be; doing the little things off the track and taking care of themselves on the track so that they can be as sharp and competitive come race day as possible.

My own training was pretty uneventful. I took the first two weeks of October off, but it didn’t really feel like it as I spent most of the time unpacking boxes from the move. We then did a slow build up, gradually getting some mileage in while working in some light tempos and Brazilian circuits to get back into training mode. By mid-late November I started to get some more structured workouts in while still building in some more volume in workouts and overall weekly mileage.

I am currently hitting right around 90 mile weeks and starting to get a little more focused on the indoor season. I’ll likely only run two indoor meets, the Reebok Boston Indoor Games and the Tyson Invitational, just enough to break up the training and get a feel for where my fitness is at. And, the professionals are starting to roll into town. I ran into Molly Huddle on the trails on Monday morning, and the Mike McGuires group from Michigan will be down here soon as well as Ray Treacy’s Providence group and Zap Fitness. If that is not a rousing endorsement of the training environment her in Tally I don’t know what else to tell you. Come down and check it out for yourself…you won’t be disappointed.

Good training everyone!
Sully