One for the geeks

Our initial plan was that today was going to be a quiet day. We would go out for a couple of training sessions and then plan some of the activities that we would do over the next few weeks. Unfortunately these things never seem to work out that way and we ended up doing zero planning! Skype and catching up with friends seems to get in the way!

By the time we had got back from our first training session of the day and wasted time talking to family back home (just kidding), it was time for lunch. After that we took a drive down to the Nike store in Eugene to get ourselves kitted out in some Oregon gear. For those that don’t know, Nike was born in Portland Oregon, just a few miles up the road from Eugene. Nike still has a strong affiliation to Eugene and Oregon University because the founder, Phil Knight, used to be an athlete training under legendary running coach Bill Bowerman. We have been told that Nike pretty much bankrolls athletics in the US, and particularly athletics in Eugene (the Oregon Track Club and Oregon University see the fruits of this) and is part of the reason for their recent upturn in success. Its nice to know that every dollar you spend on running shoes is helping out US distance running ;)! Some of the stuff in the Nike store is awesome and you could easily spend a load more, but we stayed restrained and got a hoodie and hat each. My bro has put in a request for some college gear so I’m going to have to see what I can do (especially as, at this rate, our luggage allowance is going to be about 3kg over on the way back home!).


Andrea outside the Nike Store

Whilst out at the mall (I’m learning the American lingo) we saw a sign for the Eugene Running Company. Being geeks anything with the word running in it draws our attention, so we decided to investigate. It turned out to be a dedicated running store with loads of memorabilia from some of the top US distance runners based in the area. It was whilst looking that I got chatting to one of the store attendants about this stuff. He seemed pretty knowledgeable about distance running in general and his knowledge of UK distance running was also really impressive (although he hadn’t heard of me or Andrea so couldn’t have been that good ;) ). It turned out to be top professional US coach Brad Hudson, author of the bestselling book ‘Run Faster’ and who until recently coached Dathan Ritzenheim (who set the American record for 5000m this summer and placed top 10 at the Olympic marathon). He was really nice and encouraging when we told him what we were doing and recommended a bunch of races to do. It did amuse us later on that one of the first questions I had asked him was ‘do you follow athletics?’!! How was I supposed to know who he was!

Later in the evening we donned our new Oregon gear and headed to a sports bar to resume our Thirsty Thursday tradition that was put on hold whilst we were in Australia. Beer prices in Oz were twice the price of those in the UK so we couldn‘t justify it. In the end what was going to be a quiet day turned out to be a really cool one.


Thirsty Thursday arrives in the US

P.S. Sorry for this blog being a bit running biased, but we are in ‘Track Town USA’ so meeting famous runners could be a regular occurrence. We’ll be more rounded in future ;).