Monta Vista started school on Monday, August 20, and MVXC athletes did not miss a step!
With two weeks of 7am practices (and 50-90 miles under under the feet of most of the athletes), MVXC rolled into the first week of school without a pause. Monday was a lighter-than-usual day as we took some time to get organized on the first day of after-school practice, and we followed that on Tuesday with a full-on hill repeat workout up on Matt’s Hill. Thursday was a long day on either Matadors’ Point or Horse/Horse + Garrods and the team rolled comfortably. Your coaches have been so proud of the way MVXC18 has been working so far!
Saturday we had a solid turn out for a 7am set of Matador Miles. We had an excellent, fun, enthusiastic group. An observation from your coaches–these workouts are valuable and they are doable! It’s easy for Saturday morning workouts to become a little mythic, as if only superheroes can run these workouts. In reality, anyone who wants to improve can handle these Saturday workouts. The elapsed time from when we started the clock on the first set of reps to the time we shut down the timer was 33 minutes. A half hour! That half hour has an outsized impact on our race performance, working in a zone which pushes our bodies to develop aerobic power, our ability to process lactate/lactic acid, and overall endurance. Every Saturday we see the same pattern; kids show up at the track a little sleepy and looking unsure about whether they want to be out of bed or not, by the time we get to the start of our course there is a quiet nervousness…and thirty minutes or so later, everyone is loud and talking and laughing as they record their marks in the Quality record book, and joking and happy as they start the warm down and strides on the way back to school. Everyone is feeling happy–or satisfied–and enjoying being with their friends and feeling good about the workout being over by 9am and having the whole day left. By the time we are wolfing down breakfast at the track, it’s as if the workout never happened!
Except the work out did happen, and our bodies are busily adapting to the physiological stimulus we have just applied. We will be more fit and more capable because of that workout!
(There were some nice Matador Miles run on Saturday…it will be great to see how these translate to races. There have been some people doing a lot of work this past summer!)
(It’s also a good idea to get up early on the weekends, anyway, and not sleep in until noon. This is not only coach wisdom, read what the New York Times says about sleep and sleep habits.)
This week MVXC also held our parents’ meeting–it was great to see many of your parents!
Coming Up/Other Information
While training has been going great, we are not training to train–we are training to compete. Next week we will have the MVXC Watermelon Time Trial. The Watermelon course is tougher than what most teams run during there pre-season. The Watermelon is 2.6 miles with some decent climbs, giving athletes an opportunity to get their race-sense back. You can check out last year’s results and our all-time records on our Stevens Canyon Course.
Stevens Canyon Course Map and Elevation Profile
We will have practices over the holiday weekend, at 7am on both Saturday and Monday. These practices are optional but highly recommended…particularly as the next Saturday, September 8, will be our first race as a team! In less than two weeks (!!!) MVXC will be heading to Toro Park for the Chieftain-Spirit Invitational on September 8. Parents, please sign up for the ride pool–and we want you to cheer for your athletes! This is our first time at Chieftain but not our first time at Toro–MVXC all-time records at Toro are on-line also.
We are all getting excited about starting to race. The team looks so very good! It’s going to be nice to start measuring ourselves.
Great week everyone! See you at practice…
