Monta Vista Cross Country is now two weeks into our season, after another solid week of training. Another week of cool morning runs allowed our team to develop a lot of good team habits before the first day of school on August 20.
We recorded several ‘firsts’ together. One Monday, we went up Fire Trail to run repeats on Matt’s Hill* for the first time in 2018; Coach is always pleased and gratified by the number of runners who say they enjoy Matt’s Hill much more than Linda Vista, even though Matt’s is much more challenging. Hill repeats are a big part of the pre-season cross country training; hills develop strength, encourage proper running form, and develop our aerobic and anaerobic systems. It’s hard to get more benefit in the same amount of time of training early in the season.
For many of our athletes, Wednesday was the first time they ran Up and Over, a classic MVXC route that we will get to know well over the course of the season. On Thursday we worked on discovering what our conversational pace feels like and how many minutes per mile we are running at that pace. Saturday we rolled out to Stevens Canyon for some really impressive ‘Dirty Fours’; holy smokes, this was an excellent workout. I was so proud to see all the athletes out running that workout!
Sleep
As I write this post, after a Saturday workout and just before school starts, I would like to make a comment about sleep. Sadly many Monta Vista kids develop some truly dreadful sleep habits. One of these habits is to sleep late on Saturdays and Sundays–there is an idea that because a student is sleep deprived during the week, it’s a good idea to make up for lost sleep on the weekend by sleeping late. Sleeping late on the weekend is a horrible idea…sleeping until 11 or noon on the weekend throws the circadian clock out of rhythm. Sleeping late on Saturday and Sunday is similar to flying across several time zones on the weekend; afterwards when you have to wake up earlier in time for first period the rest of the week, you spend Monday through Friday recovering from jet lag. We evolved as humans to wake up at relatively the same time every morning. We have better mental and physical performance if we consistently wake up at roughly the same time every day. So you will be much better off if you get consistent sleep with consistent bedtimes and wake-up times every day–and so you may as well get up early and run with the team on Saturday mornings!
This note on sleep is based on what I personally learned this last year working with the Stanford Sleep Center–I had developed some pretty bad sleep issues and I worked with a psychologist at Stanford to successfully improve my own sleep, and I learned a lot in the process. Last week, there was a very good article in the New York Times on college performance and sleep that will be worth pondering as we start a new academic year.
Good Luck!
Good luck at school and have a great first day! Freshmen–please don’t worry too much. It is natural to feel nervous your first day of doing anything new; we know you can navigate high school, but the start of something new always comes with a bit of anxiety. Sophomores, juniors and seniors–these freshmen are your teammates! If you see a freshman looking a little lost, take a minute to go see if you can help them out, please. And everyone–keep an eye out for people who look like they would be good additions to our team! Athletes can still join the cross country team this week. New additions will not earn PE credit after missing two weeks of practice, however if new athletes are fit enough to run 25 miles or more with the team, we want to have them as part of our family!
We will see you all on Monday at 3:45pm in the track grandstands for our first after-school practice!
Note: The schedule has been updated slightly…the SCVAL meet will be one week later, on September 25, and will be held at Lynbrook, not Central Park. A new schedule is available for download.
*A shout out to Matt Paquet, MVXC Alum and assistant coach from 2011 to 2013. Matt’s Hill was named for Matt.
