Hatchery Thursday, bikes, and physicals

Ladies,

Today promised to be a hot one, so thank your lucky stars we practice in the morning! Amazing... it was cool enough to force me to put on a sweatshirt before practice started, but by the end I was thankful to have on a tech shirt.

*Announcement!
Bret's mother has contacted... oh, what the heck, let's hear it straight from her:

"I called Promptcare East. They do sports physicals. They told me that a nurse will most likely do the physical, but then an MD would sign off on it as well. They don't take appointments, just walk-ins. Open 8-8."

There you go. If you aren't aware, Promptcare is in Bloomington, and is probably the fastest way to take care of your physicals. Of course if you have a family doctor and can get in, go there if that's your choice, but however it gets done, we need to start working on getting the physicals in. You must have 10 official practices before you can run a meet, and you can't get an official practice unless you have turned in your physical. This is an IHSAA rule, and will be followed to the letter!

Bikes!
Today marked the first day of using the bike option, and while our venue wasn't the perfect place to do it, two young ladies made the most of it. Only one thrown chain! Do not be afraid to ask for the option if you are hurting. Better to do it now than later, when it will take longer to recover from injury.

Tech shirts!
There was a little discussion today regarding athletic wear. My best recommendation is to replace your cotton Ts with tech shirts if you have them. Cotton can be brutal on the skin once it gets wet - chafing can leave you bloody! I would gladly lend you some of mine, but somehow I can't imagine some of you petite ladies swallowed up in my adult large sizes. Correction: I guess I just did imagine it! Whatever choice you make, your coach strongly states you must have a top over your jog bras.

Electrolytes!
Take them in. Gatorade, Enduralytes, salt tablets, pick your poison, but take electrolytes. This cannot be stressed enough!

Catfish Festival 5k!
The 5k is this Saturday for those interested. Entry fee is $20, race starts at 8 AM from the ball diamond area (easily visible from Highway 50). This is not a required run at all, feel free to go or not go at your discretion, but it is a nice local race where I believe the bulk of our team would be pretty competitive.

Practice Tomorrow!
Parkview track, 8 AM. Guest runner: Dr. Jimmy Sowders!

Fartlek

Ladies,

Had a nice little fartlek workout today, most girls going 5 miles, a couple going less (nagging injuries). You folks managed to work in about 2 or more miles of hard work, so that's a good speed session.

I hooked up Summer today, and you can find her data here. Note the fastest pace run - 5:36! You folks are faster than you think you are.

That's food for thought. You cannot teach fast - you have it or you don't. What you can teach is endurance, and if you start with someone with natural speed and can condition that person to be able to use that speed for longer and longer periods of time... you get the idea. That's what you try to accomplish with 5k racing training.

When I watch you run, especially when you are on step (what I call faster running, because of how the running gate changes to a more forward stance, the same way a speedboat gets up higher on the hull), I see there is plenty of talent to be a successful team. Time is what we need, time to get healthy, time to build conditioning, time to be prepared to train hard at summer's end.

Next week is moratorium. Run. Don't make excuses, run. It takes continuity to be a great endurance athlete. Find a team mate, and run.

It's going to be hot the next few days. Drink more electrolytes. This is no joke. Even in the mornings it's going to be insanely hot. If you take care of electrolytes, you won't suffer nearly as much. If you don't, you'll grind down to a nub faster than you can imagine possible.

The Hatchery tomorrow! Water every lap!

A different day, a different run

Ladies,

Back to the track today! We went easy, going 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6-mile distances. Danielle, Carrie, and Lauren went for the longest distance, and since Carrie hadn't been Garmined yet, she won the sweepstakes and was our data collector for today.

Carrie's run data here.

A word about Garmins in general... they are imperfect devices. The nature of a mobile GPS device, especially wrist-mounted varieties, dictates certain compromises. The accuracy of any GPS starts with the polling rate, or how often it looks to satellites to triangulate your current position. The more often the device polls, the more accurate the data. The trade-off is every poll eats battery. So... to extend battery life, the device polls less often. No biggie, right?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If your run is straight line, it doesn't matter a bit. When the GPS picks up your data, it's along a predictable path, so no real error is introduced. However, if you run a course with many turns, the polling rate can make a significant difference in reported distance. The Garmin can't draw curved lines... it only draws straight. That means if you turn a corner, and you hit the polling timing right (or wrong!), you could lose the entire corner on distance. The only thing worse than that would be to run on a circle.

Hillcrest Circle.

If you look at Carrie's data, you can see what the Garmin did to her path there. It's the best illustration of how accurate/inaccurate the technology is. The final piece to the accuracy of distance is the accuracy of the GPS itself. The satellite triangulation can pinpoint you to around 3 meters, fine if someone is trying to drop a smart bomb on your head, but it can lead to slight inaccuracies for an endurance athlete.

Here's the thing, and this was a long way to get there... always assume you went farther than your GPS tells you, unless you are doing a straight course. Every turn introduces error, to the tune of under-reporting the total distance. 

Tomorrow we meet at the track again, Thursday will be the Hatchery. We are trying to build our running time ladies, so expect practices to start to take slightly longer. 

The trails

Ladies,

First, and apology. I thought everyone got the text for today's run, but clearly that's not what happened. I'll have to make certain next time everyone gets the message.

Second, I really intended for today's run to be easy. It wasn't. Just the run to get to the trails and back was about 3 miles of rolling terrain, anything but easy at our current conditioning level. Then I sent 4 of you into the deep trails, and that got worse. Sorry about that!

That said, I really loved the condition of the trails. They are in great shape, and I intend to make full use of them this year. We could easily do mile repeats back there and have a great surface for it.

Tomorrow we'll do Parkview. Thursday I'd like to to the Hatchery. Just getting that out there right now!

Here is my run data today, as collected by Lady Garmin.

The Graaaaveyaaaard....

Okay, so maybe that didn't go as well as expected.

I've run in Greenhill Cemetery before, but it's been a while. I remember it being a pretty big loop, and I suppose it could be, if you stuck to the perimeter. Alas, the way the roads are laid out, that is easier said than done. As a result, the course is a 0.6 mile soon-to-be-tiresome way to get 5 miles. Not a good plan for anyone possessing any form of consciousness, so it's quite doubtful we'll do that one again soon.

Too bad. I like the rolling terrain for our purposes. Not to worry though... I'm planning on BNL one day next week. We'll run from campus to the railroad bed. That will be a good run!

Next week is the last week of June, and it's the last week I can have contact with any of you for one week (IHSAA required summer moratorium on training). Our big goal next week is to continue to build miles, but also to continue working on faster-paced running.

Notice I didn't say all-out running.

It's too early in the training cycle for all-out running. You can push, and you can push each other (already happening!), just don't go flat out. I have another drill up my sleeve, my ladies... just wait and see...

Oh, and here's Brett's data for today. 

The Hatchery

Ladies,

Sure, it was a muggy morning out, but somehow things never seem so bad at the Hatchery. You all did a wonderful job, most of you getting 5 miles. It was good to see you running together, which is something that doesn't always work out.

Tomorrow we'll start from Parkview, but I think we'll head over to Greenhill Cemetery. It might be pavement, but it has features that make it very reminiscent of a lot of cross-country courses - apart from the graves, of course. The terrain rolls a bit more than we've been doing, and since it is a loop, the faster runners will see the slower runners over and over.

What is the exact distance of the inner perimeter? I don't know. Tomorrow, we'll find out!

Wednesday, easy

Ladies,

Today, outside of a couple of injured girls, we tried for 5 easy miles. Yesterday's workout was a hard one, so we needed a recovery day to help heal.

A word about recovery days: use them. Trying to bypass recovery is a wonderful recipe for getting hurt. It takes a while to convert the body to long-distance endurance athletics, and there are no shortcuts. Stress/recovery is the pattern, not stress/more stress.

Tomorrow we are running at the Hatchery. I am pulling things together for a real trail run soon. Details will soon follow.

Here is a map of a proposed run starting at BNL. Click Here

A stroll through the park...

Yes, it's Tuesday, and that means the dreaded hard workout.

We repeated last week's chase exercise, except this time we extended it to two loops. For that reason, the time differential was extended to two minutes between groups. Lauren and Diana lead out, followed by Shelby, and Summer, who were chased by Danielle, Carrie, and Bret.

The goal of the workout is not to run all-out. It is to put in an 85-90% effort, but be conscious of the people running in front or behind you. Runners have to learn how to conduct a controlled chase, and not spike the heart rate unnecessarily. Likewise, if you're on the front, you have to learn how to put enough pressure on those behind so they lose the desire to catch. Mental games are a huge portion of racing at a high level.

The course is almost 2.25 miles (if you run the loop twice). The results are:

Danielle - 15:45
Carrie - 17:13
Shelby - 17:28
Brett - 18:02
Summer - 19:55
Lauren - 20:36
Diana - 21:47

Total workout distance was a bit over four miles, with a one-mile warm-up and a one-mile cool-down. Everyone went full distance.

I let Danielle wear my beloved Garmin 910 (the envy of all Wendys), and it recorded some good pieces of data. Check it out here.

By clicking on it, you get one of the most essential pieces of information - pace per mile. A very close second place would go to the individual mile splits. Taken together, you can get a clear picture of the type of effort put forth. How?

Let's look at the information. Mile one was 7:18, and mile two was 7:18. Obviously the average was therefore 7:18, which is an even, sustainable effort, exactly what is desired.

On the other hand, let's take that 7:18 average, but this time mile one 6:58 and mile two was 7:38. Which run would result in the faster time if the run had been extended to 5k?

This is an easy one - the first run. If you analyze the trend, run one is steady, but run two shows a marked deceleration. It is easy to extrapolate another 20-40 second drop in pace in the third mile, taking the pace out to something in the neighborhood of 8:08-8:18, which means a full minute added to the overall time! This is not good at all, and completely unnecessary. Pace is obviously very important, and learning our own personal limits is key to running the perfect pace.

Tomorrow's run is at Parkview, Thursday at the Hatchery. Friday - trails?

More, more, MORE!

Ladies,

Today is the beginning of the third week of summer training, and we upped the mileage again. Runners were allowed to go out to the 6-mile distance, with most going 4-5 miles. We're a little behind what we should be, but with the injuries we have there is little choice. We'll get where we need to be soon enough.

Wendy Miller ran with us again today. She's a great addition to the summer training - she's an experienced runner, having completed everything from track to ultra-marathons. She's an 18-minute 5k and 3:18 marathon runner, and if that doesn't mean anything to you, it means she's elite. Wendy also has a Ph.D. in Nursing. Needless to say, she's quite accomplished.

From time-to-time there will be other women from the community running with us. It is so important for you to see role models from all walks of life who enjoy this sport. As a father of two daughters, I can't say enough how vital it is to communicate to you the value of these connections.

Tomorrow we do a speed exercise. Parkview track, 8 AM!

The Hatchery

Ladies,

Our first off-road adventure of the summer was deemed a success. The hatchery is a nice compromise between the road and true trails, and it wasn't as tough on the injured runners as the hills of Spring Mill certainly would have been.

Eleven runners made it today, and since it was completely safe to let everyone run their own pace, that's exactly what we did. I had a chance to run with a few of you, and I really enjoyed the time. I hope you did as well.

We're back to Parkview tomorrow morning. 8 AM!

For what it's worth, this is the Garmin data for the run. Ignore the distance! 

Another good day

Ladies,

It was good to see no one worse for wear after yesterday's run. We will play with speed and race tactics as the summer goes on, but for now, our number one priority is to build base without getting anyone hurt. We also want to get anyone already hurt healed before the serious stuff happens in the fall. It's a long season, and we need everyone.

To that end, though we discussed running at Otis, I think we'd better go for Avoca instead. It's off road and it's nearby, so tomorrow we'll meet at Avoca Fish Hatchery in Avoca, IN. We'll run from the gate, running the perimeter of the ponds. I'll lead the first lap so you'll know what it is, then everyone can go at their own pace. It'll be a nice change.

We might consider a rotation of venues so that we can get into a regular routine. I don't want to wear you folks out on any one course, so consider what you might want to see, then we can post it here. I will have one day a week at least at Parkview, but beyond that we can meet other places if you gals wish.

I did get a commitment from a mother today to escort to Spring Mill, so that's back on the table. Still, we need to have people healthy before we go nuts with this.

See you tomorrow at Avoca!

Good taste of speed

Ladies,

We had a nice little drill today, didn't we? Racing tactics are something to consider all the time, practiced frequently, and planned in advance for race day. In time they can become second nature.

Our workout today was a staged affair, where the girls were split into 3 groups. The idea was to capture the group in front of you (overtake them), or avoid being caught if you are were ahead.

No one likes to be chased in a race - it's mentally tough. But consider, how can you win if you aren't being chased at some point? How can you be in the lead unless you catch everyone ahead of you? Either way it goes, it's something that is part of doing your best. It's mental pressure and poise, and that takes understanding and practice.

It turned out well. We did have some caught, and we had some avoid being overtaken. That's as it should be.

Tomorrow we bump back up on the miles, and will finish with strides on the track (if we have time).

Thursday we will likely meet at the golf course, though the final word rests with the ladies themselves. I will post tomorrow the final decision.

Sorry to have been gone so long

Sorry I haven't posted sooner, but Internet has been sketchy where we've been, so here is the short of it. Tomorrow (Monday), so long as you're not suffering any residual soreness in the nature of toothache-like pain in joints or shins, take your run up one mile. This means the distances are bumped up to 3, 4, and 5 miles. To refresh your memories, 3 miles - run to Englewood and back. 4 miles - run to the cable company and back. 5 miles - run around Hillcrest Circle and back. If the forecast held true, it's probably pretty hot. Make sure to stop and get water at the old cable company if you are running the 4 or 5-mile distances. First runners in go back to pick up the next runner until everyone is in. Walk a lap on the track to finish. I will have a little speedplay in the workouts this week, if all is going well. I will see you all Tuesday morning!

Sunshine and Smiley-Faced Cookies

The turnout might have been a little less today, but those that showed put in another great effort. The cookies were just my way of saying "Thank You" for what you've done so far.

We've caught a break again on the weather - 58 degrees, sunny skies, light NE wind. That will change, and soon. Keep hydrating.

Practice will continue in my absence. The oldah girls can handle it, same workouts as before. Monday, bump it up one mile. Simple.

We will begin some light speed play next week. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, and have a few ideas about some things I'd like to try out. More on that later.

Some are beginning to experience pain. Ice! Fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off for an hour. Tylenol or Advil also helps. Let me know when things hurt, we want to take care of stuff before it develops into something worse. It's normal for stuff to pop up, so don't hide it.

I will miss you folks while I'm gone, but I'll be back on Tuesday. I'll also try to post daily while away, if I have access to Internet. Could be dicey!

Great practice!

Ladies, I am so pleased with how it's going right now. We have good numbers, everyone seems eager to improve, and the weather couldn't be better. It was the best possible way to start.

I wish I could say the good weather will last forever. It won't. By this weekend the temperatures are expected to climb again, so things will get a bit harder. That's okay. We'll manage it and continue to improve. Just be aware to keep hydrating as it gets warmer.

I'm very happy with the leadership I'm seeing from the older girls. They are really helping the newcomers feel welcome, and are also helping the transition into high school running. Every little bit helps. Younger ladies, don't forget to thank the older girls.

Tomorrow is the last day I will be here until next Tuesday. We will finish this week as we have done, with 2, 3, and 4-mile distances. Next week we will begin popping it up a little. We will try going to 3, 4, and 5-mile distances, though perhaps not every day (Monday-Wednesday-Friday 3, 4, 5; Tuesday-Thursday 2, 3, 4). This will add three miles to everyone's week, but should provide a rest day in between longer days.

Today marked the first time we did strides. It's a good, gentle exercise for maintaining some contact with speed and flexibility. We won't go all-out on them ever, and we'll even go easier now.

Looking forward a bit, I'd like to mention summer racing. I strongly encourage the team to enter the Limestone 5k. This is generally well attended by high schoolers all over the area. It will also give us an idea of where we are in a race setting. I know we won't be peak condition, far from it, but occasionally we need data points to determine the direction of our training. Low-key races can provide that information. I might pick one more race out along the way, so stay tuned.

See you all in the morning!

First day come and gone

Eleven of you ladies made it this morning, and I must say, I was quite pleased with the turnout. I know we have more out there yet, so here's looking to the future.

Our practice broke down to stretching, easy run (2, 3, and 4-mile distances), and a cool-down walking lap around the track. That's pretty much the pattern I want to continue this week. I don't think anyone spoke of running much more than a dozen miles a week at this point, so caution is the byword.

Pace for this early portion of the summer should be easy - very easy. Conversational easy. For the beginning runner, this is one of the easiest ways to monitor pace. If you can't talk, you're running too hard. Don't worry about the hard stuff - it will come soon enough. Let's lay the foundation for a successful season first.

A couple of issues were discussed this morning I wanted to expound on a bit. First was the training log. Keep one. It can be as simple as a small notebook in which you write the time or distance you ran today or as detailed as the barometric pressure and relative humidity. Any information you track can be useful in some way, but track something, miles or time running at least. This will give me the best idea of how you are progressing and when I should make adjustments. Running logs are also a great way to help diagnose causes of injury.

I mentioned a heart rate monitor today. Heart Rate Monitors USA have good ones starting at $44. If you are interested in training by heart rate, this is a good place to start.

Pacing is critically important to racing. We'll be talking tons on a regular basis about what appropriate pacing is. This is conditional, because there is racing, resting, training, etc. paces. Being at the right pace at all times us very important to getting the most out of yourself.

Shedule for this week:

T - 2, 3, or 4-mile run easy.
W - 2, 3, or 4-mile run easy.
Th - 2, 3, or 4-mile run easy.
F - 2, 3, or 4-mile run easy.

Yup, same thing every day. I want to see who gets sore and to what extent by Wednesday. You might find you have to reduce your run distance after a couple of days because of soreness - that's fine. I don't want anyone running over 4 miles this week even if you feel confident you can. 

First Practice Eve

Tomorrow is the day!

As we start into the official unofficial start of the Girls pre-season, it's a good time to reflect on our goals for the season, personal and team. This is a general statement with no particular right or wrong to it, but I think it's important for us each and every one to know why we are doing what we are doing.

Mine is simple; I love endurance sports, I love working with young adults, and I love to be a part of the improvement process of teams and individuals. I'm competitive, and will make a contest out of just about anything. Surprisingly, coaching has a lot of competitiveness to it. ;)

It's not too late to ask a friend along! Though we are a cross team, I have no problem training athletes for other sports. If someone needs conditioning and wants to join us for the summer, the more the merrier!

Remember, bring a towel for stretching. Practice will last around an hour.

School's out!

Enjoy it, ladies!

I'm excited about the coming season. I can't wait to start working with all of you, to see the improvements we're going to make. Cross-country is such a sweet sport, I never get enough of it.

There was a text sent to all of you with cell phones. I did so to test the group setting on my iPhone. I received only one response, so I hope it went to the rest of you.

One of the questions I've been getting is "will we practice more than the first day?". Of course! The summer schedule will be Mon-Fri, every week except moratorium (the first week of July). I cannot have any contact with any of you that week by IHSAA rules, but other than that, I hope to see a great deal of the group all summer. My family will also take a short vacation, but I will have plans laid out so the running can continue.

You might be wondering about your own vacation with your family. Of course you should go. Just take some shoes with you and try to run wherever you are. Some of my favorite running memories are from exotic places on vacations. My runs in the olive groves of Florence last summer sure are keepers!

I'd also like to remind you all Anytime Fitness has a summer special for students - $99 for the summer, which gives you access to weights and all of their stairsteppers, bikes, and treadmills. It's a good deal. I'm a member, and I love the place.

Start thinking about what you hope to accomplish this year, both personally and as a team. We have a good number of girls signed up to run, and if we can keep all of you healthy, the sky is the limit!