Summer Vacation: Training for the Worlds Part 1

All-American David McNeill is running Monday, August 17 at the IAAF World Championships in Germany. He took some time off from his training to give Lumberjack fans an update on his summer and preparation for the Worlds. This is the first of three blogs by McNeill before his return to Flagstaff for the 2009 cross country season.

By David McNeill

Greetings friends, family, and fellow Lumberjacks,

Hopefully this blog will find you all well into some pre-season training as the fall of 2009 fast approaches. I, somewhat fortunately, find my spring semester of 2009 still slowly drawing to a close, as I was fortunate enough to be selected to represent Australia at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, in Berlin, Germany.

Since the NCAA championships in the middle of June, I have extended my season and my training to run my final race on August 17. Along the way, I have been lucky enough to travel some of the UK, run in a couple of highly competitive European races, and get a glimpse of what life is like for athletes outside of the NCAA. Here is a short account of some of my experiences since my 5k race at Arkansas in June.

I stayed in Flagstaff after nationals till the end of June, to take advantage of a couple more weeks of altitude training, and return to some of the harder workouts I had put on hold in order to freshen up for the college season finale in Arkansas. With my team mates on a well deserved hiatus, training was all of a sudden very quiet…but not altogether solo, thanks to the company of my sister, who was visiting for two weeks, having Coach Heins on a few of my runs up the “lung burner” (my favorite run in Flagstaff), and some pacing by my teammate, Ahmed Osman for a workout of 8x1km on the track.

Next stop was San Francisco for four days to visit an old running friend, Julian Marsh, and to show my sister some more of the country. Thanks to the help of Julian, I had the benefit of some expert pacing for my final two workouts in the U.S., before boarding a plane to London.

In London, I have been fortunate enough to stay with some of the other Australian distance runners preparing for the World Championships. I arrived at the start of July, and was already on my way to Cork, Ireland two days later, for my first European race over 3k. 7 minutes and 58 seconds after the gun exploded for my first track race in Europe, I crossed the line in first place. The race was fairly uneventful. I went into the race with the only goal being to win the race. The pace was always comfortable, and after riding the Kenyan express to 2800m, I ran away unharmed over the final 200m to clinch the win, and a necessary boost to the confidence – that I was still fit and ready for another 6 weeks of work.

I will split my account over a couple of blogs, so for now, keep training fellow lumberjacks, and if interested, stay tuned for a couple more stories from the rest of my trip!