Well that was quick, wasn’t it? It might feel like finals ended days ago, and school is about to start up again on Monday? That can’t be right!
Hopefully you all had a very nice break, with some good activities–and also a bit of training. I was thinking about you all the other day…I got up early to go run and was driving in the pre-dawn dark to go to my run. It was raining a bit and the little voice in my head was trying to talk me into taking a day off–the weather is bad, I ran a marathon a month ago, I didn’t have to do this workout. But then I got out of the car and pulled on my gloves, the rain didn’t seem that hard, the weather wasn’t terribly cold…and I ended up doing more than I had even planned! Eleven miles, with eight miles at better than my marathon race pace. It was such a satisfying workout! I know that you guys can share that feeling of accomplishment!
OK, four weeks until our first practice together. If you are a thrower, you might want to check in with Vibha and see what she has planned. Vivian, Sean and Ananya have been out with the sprinters/jumpers/hurdlers and could connect you there. Kyle, Sylvana and others should be able to get you together with a distance workout. Whatever you do…if you are serious about having a good track season, you should be active in January! (Remember what that first set of 200s feel like?)
Coach Irina Stiasny:
Coach Irina will be at the school on Wednesdays through all of January! You can talk to Ananya about her schedule too. Remember, January is a good time to take care of nagging issues. Irina can help figure out what is going on and suggest some exercises to compensate for some weaknesses. If you really need attention, your parents can set up private sessions with her at her physical therapy business. Javier would also be happy to work with you to design an exercise program. Please don’t come to practice the first week, be hurt or limited, and then tell your coaches that you did not ask for any help in January! Hoping that tomorrow will be better, and resolving that tomorrow will be better, are very different things.
Don’t forget to get cleared on Home Campus!
Distance runners…here is a suggestion for the first two weeks of school. A couple things to keep in mind. One, don’t hesitate to work around the weather a bit. If today the weather looks good, and tomorrow the forecast is a lot of slop, then maybe run the longer/harder workout today even if the plan was tomorrow. Two, if you have been taking some time off because of finals or vacation travel, a good comeback plan is to run one week at 50-75% of your typical weekly mileage last cross country season, then another week at 75-90%, then back to normal mileage (don’t despair, you did not lose all your fitness from XC season! You will be back just as fast as you were soon!). Three, mileage goals…I don’t talk about mileage specifically here, but our goal is to add just a tiny bit to our weekly average from cross country season–an increase of something like two to four miles per week to what we were doing in the Fall is a good goal for January (if you have been running in December) and for the track season in general.
As always, don’t hesitate to email or text me with questions!
Suggestions for week of January 6:
Monday: Long run (whatever that is for you). Hills are great. Try to make the last couple miles a bit faster than conversational. 6-8x20sec strides to finish.
Tuesday: Maintenance run.
Wednesday: Medium-long run with six to eight 20sec hill blasts. (See below for a description of a hill blast). You can do the hill blasts anywhere during the run–right after drills and a warm up (say at the Linda Vista hill), or in the middle of the run (like if you are running Up and Over, you could head over to Matt’s Hill or Coach’s Hill and do these) or towards the end (there are good hills you could find on Stevens Creek Blvd, then jog a mile back to school).
Thursday: Longish maintenance run–I think Up and Over would be good if it’s not too rainy and muddy. Time the purple dot mile and see what your pace is–it would be nice if your last mile was faster than conversational, just a bit!
Friday: Shortish maintenance run. 6-8x20sec strides to finish.
Saturday: Long run with 6-8 strides at the end. Or…here is an option…on Sunday there is a 5km/15km race in San Francisco! The 15km could be a fun, long option that would encourage a bit of fast running even if you did not flat-out race. It’s not a cheap race but maybe you still want to try this. You get some fun gear and could go out for breakfast afterwards. Maybe you want to organize a group to go run this?
January 13 Week:
Same pattern as last week, except that if you like the hill blasts, you can do two sets–one during Monday’s run, and one set on Thursday or Friday. We still want two days with strides too. Check back here, January 20 we are going to add a little bit of transition to threshold work!
Hill Blasts: Here is what we are looking for from a hill blast. You don’t have to be too picky about your hill–it can be fairly mild to fairly steep, but not so steep you can’t have some speed. It is nice to not start out very steep, so you can develop some speed (I like hills that start mild then ramp up a bit). You want to mark off a section of the hill that will take you about 20 seconds, +/- 5, to run. Remember to roll into the start of a hill blast–you don’t want to push off to a quick start you want to accelerate from a jog to a very hard push. Focus on beautiful form–use those arms, knees up, quick feet like a puppeteer’s strings are pulling your knees up and forward.
Here is a photo of a hill I was running the other day–it was about six miles into a ten mile run when I stopped and ran my hill blasts. You can see, it is not terribly aggressive. You can see that branch I used to mark my start–there was another at my finish. I could have used trees or anything to mark beginning and end. The reason I want to have a specific distance is so I can compare times for each rep. If I start slowing down, either I’m dogging it and should pick up the next one; or I’m exhausted and it is time to stop. If I’m exhausted, that probably means my form is falling apart and it’s time to stop because I’m not getting what I want out of more reps. Part of hill reps is working on form, and if I’m too tired to maintain my form, it’s time to jog on back. Timing your reps is a good way to monitor and to self-coach!
