Hill Reps at Linda Vista Park
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win …
John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962, speech at Rice University
(Team, every time I think about this speech and this paragraph in particular, I get chills–this reminds me of distance running. We accept the challenges of a season, knowing that distance running is hard, and maybe we choose running because we like a hard challenge. We pick goals–a time at Crystal, a mileage goal per week, some fitness goal or something we will like to see our team achieve or an individual medal along the way because choosing that goal will focus and organize our energies and abilities. This is a great speech. And we have a great sport!–Coach)
MVXC started rolling the week of August 14, with our first week in the books. My guess is that the team ran a collective 1700-1800 miles–really! It’s hard to believe but every mile truly does add up. (This would be a fun thing to record sometime; what do we actually run in a week, especially as we get deep into the season? Hmm….)
Week One Milestones
Our first week of practice, MVXC is doing a lot of orientation and organization activities, and we are checking off a lot of boxes. This week, we started working on our warm up drills. We tried something a little different, with some of the seniors and juniors taking a lead in teaching smaller groups, and next week a few of the upperclassmen will continue to work with the freshmen during the MV drill set–this is always a challenge to get everyone being able to execute our warm up drills well, and we will keep working on that.
On Tuesday, we went off to Linda Vista for our first set of hill reps, and on Wednesday everyone got their first shot at running Matador’s Point. Thursday was the day of a billion lunges, and on our optional Saturday workout we tried something new–400s on a dirt circuit. The course we laid out is pretty killer preparation for racing at Toro Park–Saturday’s workout felt like money, every lap, a huge deposit in our collective fitness bank!
Roster Update
As of Friday night, we had 68 boys and 30 girls complete their athletic clearance! With a couple of exceptions, no more kids are going to be added to the cross country roster. Those exceptions are:
- Freshmen; we understand that there is a lot going on when you are starting high school, and we want to give freshmen some extra time to get organized and complete the on-line requirements and get their physicals complete.
- Winter sports teams; we have a couple of teammates from the Monta Vista girls’ basketball team join us this season. Cross country is a great place to train and get fit for all winter sports–basketball, soccer, wrestling. Athletes who enthusiastically run cross country all fall come back to their home sport with the endurance to go full speed from the start of the game until the last whistle. Cross country is not just a lot of training, this is a chance for athletes who like to compete, continue to compete while also training. We would like to help make Monta Vista’s winter teams stronger, so if a few basketball or soccer players think that cross country would be good fall training and team building, you are invited to join us this week!
MV Boosters
Parents, if your athlete is one of the 98 members of the 2017 XC team, please go the the Boosters’ site and join MVAB today! Last year cross-country had 100% booster membership and we plan on the same goal this year! MVAB is a great organization that does so much for the cross country team, and we truly need your support for Monta Vista cross country to continue doing what it does.
It’s easy to put off joining MVAB, or you think your spouse is planning on joining, but…this will take less than five minutes if you hit this link now! Please help us out and join the Monta Vista Athletic Boosters.
Coming Up
We have some good runs planned for the coming week, and the following week we have Parent Night on Wednesday, August 30 at 6:15pm. Please mark your calendars, we hope to see you there! On Thursday August 31, our athletes will be running the Watermelon Run, an early season time trial and check of our fitness. The Watermelon Run is a fun run, and there are some student-lead traditions around this run, so parents please note the kids may be a few minutes late on that Thursday.
The complete MVXC schedule is posted.
See you all on the roads!
