Jessica Bray is a secondary school triathlete building her skills, fitness and experience. This is her story.
With the more I gain fitness I have been able to see an improvement in my everyday life, in both sporting and daily processes. If I think back to before I transitioned into a running focus and even at the start my fitness was lower than it is now, and I was less capable of running longer, faster and more efficient, compared to now, my two hour runs are always doable, in the fact of completing its just how comfortable it may be done.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 63]: Football Tournament
My long runs have began to be run consistently before school starts every Friday morning, now that I have increased my time to two hours I am getting myself up by 5am to give myself time to get everything ready to start running by 5:40-45, this leaves me enough time to complete the run by around 7:40am. At first this was hard, especially having to run through the dark, and know I will have to go to school after.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 62]: Weekly, Long Run
This week was the first offical week into my half marathon training program towards the Auckland half on October 3rd. Giving me three months to train specifically, and to get myself to the best I can in the time provided. I’m certain through my training program with Ray I will achieve this to my optimum.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 61]: Half Marathon Training
If you were to ask me a few days ago how I thought this run was going to go, I would have probably thought badly. I felt fatigued, tired and sore. With each tapered training run through the week I still felt heavy despite the de load of mileage. Something came over me Friday night as I started my solo road trip down to Taupo, I suddenly felt excited, energised and ready to race.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 60]: Taupo Half Marathon Victory
This past 2 weeks of racing has by itself shown me what I can achieve through consistency and the love of running. I have raced both my Thames Valley Cross Country Champs going up against all the surrounding schools, before most recently racing at Waikato/Bay of Plenty Cross Country Champs, up against all the larger schools around including private schools like St Paul’s, and St Peter’s. Coming from a school with only 2 going to race each year on average I am definitely not one of the larger schools that attends.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 59]: PODIUM
Over the past week my cross country season has begun, theoretically this is my better field of competition to track and field with it offering slightly more distance and a more complicated terrain. My school cross country was my first race and it went well setting out the front from the start and pulling away over the slightly shorter 3.5km race, finishing 5 minutes ahead of 2nd place giving me confidence in my ability and showing my training paying off.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 58]: Club Racing
We are finally one week until my first cross country of the season. Moving out of track and athletics season and into the colder months means I’m entering my last round of cross countries as a high school student. My last chance to produce my best running yet.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 57]: Time To Get Going
This weekend I did something slightly different to normal, I moved my long run and bike forward one day giving me time to go on my first solo hike, I had just brought all the new gear I needed and planned a route, although I did muck up my route slightly I still got where I planned on staying just with a different route there than expected.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 56]: Going Bush
Yesterday was a key point in my running journey so far for me. I competed in the Waikato secondary schools athletics and was entered in the 3000m race. Usually I avoid running track events as they aren’t my strongest suit as I train off track and more for longer distances, but when it comes to anything under national athletics there isn’t anything else but the 3000m as the longest distance.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 55]: Waikato 3,000m Champion
This week was slightly differently set out to my usual, instead of my normal school routine I had a week away in Palmy competing with my school for the volleyball nationals. I’ve been playing volleyball since I was in year 9, so this was my 5th year playing but due to COVID and other sports overlapping I haven’t been able to make the past 2 senior nationals.
View More Monday’s with Jessica [Ep 54] – Volleyball Nationals