Friday 26 August 2011

The American dream. . .

It's official, i'm in Stillwater Oklahoma. Training day in and out with the best college athletes in the states. When I was being recruited by Coach Smith he said to me "Our training group is probably the best distance group in the world for guys between the ages of 18-24year old's, excluding East Africa. And being here for little over 2weeks I would well believe it!
The group here is somewhat different to any other group in the country.Mainly because on the men's side there are no sprints, jumps or throwers. Well there is one thrower. But the rest run anything from 800-10,000m's.
This means there are about 25guys that run distance so no matter what level you are at there is always someone to run with. Even this alone is awesome, especially compared to doing 13/14 mile runs by yourself in the Irish winter. The cool thing is as well, everybody on the team is from a different background, culture, society, country. For instance we got people from Canada, England, Germany, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Romania, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Burundi and now Ireland. Which makes me think that there should be a lot of drama and fights on the team but instead everybody seems to gel really well which makes an awesome positive atmosphere. By the way sorry if I left any countries out.
The facilities here are unreal for track and cross country. First off OSU has its own Cross Country coarse. We have a track that can't be used for competitions but is perfect for training on. Then inside the Football stadium we have a gym where we do core and hurdle drills, a training room where we can get treated, ice baths and numerous dirt roads to do our long runs on. This is my favorite part though, every Sunday through Wednesday we get training table. This is basically we get to eat where the football players and basketball players eat and so the food is UNREAL!
OSU is pretty good at sports in general, the Football team is ranked 8th so far this year, i'm not sure about the Basketball team but the Football stadium can hold 60,000 and the Basketball 15,000.
So enough about the school facilities. I have just finished my first week of college which has been pretty handy and my 3rd solid week of training which has been not as easy as school. But I finally think I know a schedule that works for me in relation to classes training and napping.
Okay so I forgot to mention what I did before I actually arrived in Oklahoma. Instead of going straight to Stillwater I went down to Louisiana to visit my sister. I have to say leaving Mum, Dad and Lil was hard but I was grand once I got on my way. Even though I didn't spend a lot of time down there we did loads. First we went out to the Caraways house. After hanging out there and shooting some targets we went tubing with Alligators on the Calcasieu river which was really fun. So a big shout out to them for putting up with me for the day! Then have to say spending time in Leesville Louisiana is always epic. That is where Aislings boyfriend comes from. His house is right beside a national forest and Fort Poke, an Army base where U.S soldiers get trained up. All I can say is those Watermelons had not a chance when me and Win took the guns to them!

I've no other real news. Only that I'm excited to be here, running well and ca't wait for the season to come.
I will keep ye posted, Peace.
P.S i'm trying to get pics up but if not this time I will learn for my next blog.
                                           View from training table.
                                                Long horn Cow on our tempo
                                                           The guys training
                                                      Again. . .
                                                  . . .
                                                     . . .
                                                everyone in the icebaths
                                                 Boone Pickens Stadium



                                                       
                                                       

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