Videos and Mad Men

Here are some links to the videos of the races….

The race: http://www.flotrack.org/videos/coverage/view_video/237334-2010-brasschaat-meeting-flanders-cup/346717-m-1500-h02-section-a

And the interview: http://www.flotrack.org/videos/coverage/view_video/237334-2010-brasschaat-meeting-flanders-cup/346890-liam-boylan-pett-after-1500-at-2010-braschaat-meeting

And then, I’m also in the kick of the week video on FloTrack…it’s too bad that I’m one of the guys getting outkicked.

It’s starting to look like I’m not going to get in a race until Dublin on the 21st. I would have liked to get into one more, but not much you can do sometimes, so will just wait around until that one and try to take care of business there. Plus I get to race in Charlevoix on the 24th for the Ryan Shay Mile, so there will be plenty of times to race.

With no races this weekend, it means there is going to be a lot of downtime. To remedy that, we have been watching “Mad Men” the show about the 1960s adtvertisers in New York City. These dudes were crazy. They drink like fish, whore around like they live in Amsterdam, and then make some darn good commercials. We have decided that Don Draper is all that is man. We have also decided that I am pretty much the exact opposite of Don Draper. I don’t know where that leaves me.

Was able to get in some barefoot strides on a soccer field this morning and now probably going to relax the day away. We went to the Heineken Museum yesterday to meet my friends from Columbia Jon and Ana who happened to be in town for the day. It was pretty cool checking out the old brewery and they had a lot about commercials. Overall a fun experience.

Enjoy the vids. Let’s Go!

Old Heineken Brewing Factory

Meltdowns and Comebacks

There was a sweaty train ride, there were a few breakdowns, and then there were some races yesterday in Brasschaat, Belgium. All in all, things ended up okay, but not before they started off miserably.

We trained from Amsterdam to Antwerp. Antwerp was about 10 kilometers from Brasschaat. The train ride was awful. I guess they don’t believe in AC over here, because I was sweating like a pig. Then some lady sat right across from Maggie with two huge bags and wouldn’t move them up to the overhead compartments, it was a disaster. There was supposed to be someone from the meet in Antwerp to pick us up and take us to the track. Sadly/predictably, there was not. After minor freaking out, we found the 640 bus. It dropped us off about a ½ mile from the track around 1 hour after we were expecting to get to the track. Maggie had to warm up immediately. Turned out, we didn’t care about all that jazz and ended up racing our butts off: Maggie PR’d in the 8 in 2:03.6, Elizabeth PR’d in the 15 with a 4:09 (5 second best!), and then I finally raced instead of time trialing and it worked out pretty well.

So I ran 3:41.39 for 5th place in the race. It was supposed to go out in 2:23 through the 1k, but the rabbit only made it to about 700 and the leaders passed the 1k mark in 2:29 or so…leaving me somewhere in around 2:30. It should also be noted that I was an idiot at the start and let myself get shoved around like crazy and found myself in last place 100 meters into the race (they put like 14 or 15 people on the start line of a 6 lane track, it was chaos). But even with all the shoving and everything, I stayed pretty calm and just moved myself up throughout the race. At 400 to go Bumbi took the lead (which he would end up not being happy about), and then we started picking it up. There was still a pack of people because it wasn’t too fastly (I know that’s not a word but it sounds right) paced and it was very crowded on the back straight and around the final curve. I tried to bide my time, but found myself with really nowhere to go even though I had a lot left the last 100. I was able to pass some people, but not quite as many as I would have liked. I wish I would have tried going wide around the turn just to see what could have happened. But you live and you learn and I was pleased with how it went. 3:41 with a 55-56 last lap, gotta like that!

Also, I remembered that it was fun to beat people. I set out wanting to win the race, but I was able to beat some people that I really wanted to. I was finally focused on that for the first time all year instead of trying to run a fast time so that I could get a shoe contract. I sometimes forget that competing is the best part of this whole thing, and yesterday it felt good to beat some of the people that I did. Too bad 4 guys got me, but next time I’ll be coming for them.

Enjoy the pictures, still trying to figure out one more race in between now and the mile I am running in Dublin on the 21st…hopefully it can work out. Gonna be a tourist for a little this week, too bad the Dutch couldn’t win the game last night.

Let’s Go!

The track as we were getting ready to leave

A belgium beer waiting for the bus home.

Brasschaat Race Day

Just woke up and about to have some breakfast before departing for Antwerp Central Station in Belgium for the second race of my tour de europa. After a long week of preparing, its nice to finally get ready for race day.

Will have a pretty big breakfast today and then pack some sandwiches and snacks for the road. I race around 18:05 - they do military time over here - that’s around noon for you folks back on the east coast.

Not much else to report really. We went out to dinner last night at a pizza place to make it feel more like a track meet. For Dutch pizza, I was pretty pleased, but its still no Bee-Pizza, that’s for sure.

Short post today...here’s a link to the race:

http://www.acbreak.be/

On the left hand side click on the “FC/International Meeting” button and you’ll be able to find start lists and later on, I presume, results. A bunch of Americans flew 3000 miles to race in a different country. Pretty awesome. Bumbi, my training partner throughout the year, will be there, so i’m pretty pumped about that. Someone to warm up and cool down with is always nice.

Let’s Go!

Bees?

Beads?

oh, bees.

(they were all over at the track last year)

Layin' Low

The sight of me in my Dad’s house is nothing special. I plop down on the couch in front of the tv and set up shop for hours at a time. Meanwhile, my Dad goes in and out the front door doing lawn work, car work, or just relaxing in the garage so he doesn’t have to listen to the vh1 show I’m watching. One time around Christmas ’08, my Dad was walking out with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

He took a sip on the fly said, “Gaahh,” and smacked his lips approvingly. “That’s a good cup’a joe, Lee.” I peered up over the couch at him. “It’s too bad you don’t drink coffee.”

I groggily responded, “Well, I actually do now.”

He stopped in his tracks, “Well shoot,” he looked down at his mug. “It’s actually not that good.”
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I have drank a lot of coffee on this trip. I think it is because there isn’t much else to do. Yesterday I had a pancake (crepe) and a cappuccino while relaxing around before my mini-workout. Both were delicious, and I’ve decided I’m going to head back a few more times to make it my regular stomping ground. Hopefully they like me by the end even though I’m not that great at talking to wait-staff in normal conversation.

Was able to do some strides at the track yesterday – 3 sets of 50-100-150 at 15 second 100 pace, then 14.5, then 13.5 for the last set. Do that kind of stuff just to keep the legs fresh and ready to move on Sunday for the race. It has been hot in Amsterdam (no, not comparable to the East Coast right now) so I jumped into one of the Amsterdam Canals after my run. I wouldn’t have done it, but a bunch of little kids were jumping in, so I decided to join in on the fun. It saved my day after the longest and hottest tram ride to the track ever.

Finally race day tomorrow…Let’s Go!

Bikes everywhere!

Anne Frank Huis

Normally, runLBP finds itself more on the fun-loving, light-hearted scale of the web-journal-sphere (I hate the word blog, and even more hate the word blogosphere), but today we went to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and things were put a little more into perspective.

This wont put things down in the dumps either. The Anne Frank Museum was really something everyone should see. You get to walk through the entire office that they were on top of and then past the moving bookcase and into the “apartment.” At first, you think, oh this wasn’t too bad…there are 2 rooms on the bottom floor…then you walk up a ladder-type staircase that leads to the living room/kitchen/bedroom. Then there’s the attic of the attic where you can actually look out and see the blue sky and a chestnut tree. It seems spacious and nice. Then it’s realized that the people were stuck in there. They couldn’t move during the day, had to have blackout shades up in the windows so that no one could see in. It is really intense to be in the spot and look out the window that Anne Frank looked out 60 years ago. It was an important part of history, and I was glad to have seen it.

Check out http://www.annefrank.org/ and you can see a little more about the Frank’s “Secret Annex.”
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I am officially entered in Sunday’s Brasschaat Meeting. I will be running the 1500, and it looks to be a pretty good field. It will be interesting to see how it all goes and hopefully I find myself in the mix. Will head up to a track today to get in some striders and then take it pretty easy tomorrow before heading to the meet on Sunday. I’ll put up a link to coverage of the meet once I find it…Let’s Go!

Top of the Anne Frank House

Shrimp Nuggs, Chicken Nuggs, Macadosh, mmmm.