Hi all,

My last blogs have just been overviews and updates about what I have been up to, so this time I though I might add in some info about my training as well because I know that’s the kind of thing I find interesting when reading things like this.

As many of you already know National Cross was held over the weekend in Launceston, the home of 1D fanatic J. Birtwhistle. I raced in the U20 8km and finished up 5th overall and 4th Aussie. I wasn’t stoked with my run but I didn’t have an absolute stinger so I guess I can’t really be too disappointed with how I went. I came into the race pretty confident after running 30.35 at Gold Coast 10km in July; I just couldn’t put it together on the day and wasn’t in it from the start. Well done to all the boys in our race, we are pretty lucky having a strong U20 age group to constantly push each other.

From here I am looking at a number of races on road and the track to finish off the year, with my final race of the year stopping at the U20 De Castella 3km at Zatopek in December. Leading up to that I have a few races on my mind that I now just have to select from, Noosa 5km Bolt, UQ 1500m Classic, NSW 3km Champs which are all in November, and possibly one or two 800m races in October. So now my coach, Lloyd Way, and I will choose which ones will be best for me, with the aim of getting in some quality 1500m races early next year in the track season.

I thought I would outline what a typical weeks training would look like for me, this obviously isn’t the same every week but it doesn’t change too much.

Monday:
AM – 12x3min hills (up and back), 14km
PM – Rest

Tuesday:
AM – 25 cutdowns, 6x400m, 12km
PM – Easy 30mins, 6km

Wednesday:
AM: 1 hour in Mt Cootha mountain bike trails, 12km
PM: Rest

Thursday:
AM – Easy 30mins, 6km
PM – 30min threshold or 8x1km, 14km

Friday:
Rest or 30min easy, 6km

Saturday:
AM – Some sort of track session, 12km
PM – Rest

Sunday:
AM – 90mins in Mt Cootha mountain bike trails, 18km
PM – Rest

I do most of my sessions out at QEII but every now and then I enjoy going to UQ and jumping in on some of Mike Whiting’s squads sessions. They are all good guys and great runners so it is great for thresholds, as I have no one in my squad around the same sort of ability to do those longer sessions with.

As far as diet goes, I guess you could almost say I don’t have one… However my roommates and I generally eat pretty healthy anyway. I think its good to indulge every now and then, and because I don’t really go out that much I like to substitute that with going to the movies. I don’t know what it is about going to the movies, as apposed to watching them at home on the internet, that makes it that much more exciting but I get sucked in every time. If you haven’t seen it yet, my movie of 2013 so far is The Internship, best comedy I have seen in a long time.

Thanks for taking the time to read, hopefully the next time you hear from me I will have had some more good results.

Thanks, Jack.

Bellow is a little video with Jack Curren and the rest of the Australian Junior cross country team taking on ‘Little things,’ by One Direction. 6 months in the making but definitely worth the wait. Very clever and amusing video. Awesome work by the boys.