Ladies,
You are close. I mean, really close to greatness. How close? How about this --][-- close?
Let's review. We have 10 girls on the team, and you have almost to a person improved every meet, in leaps and bounds for many. Your workouts show that even more incredible things are on the horizon. The speedwork has gone great, everyone is beginning to get healthy, and the gap between #1 and #5 is shrinking by the moment. Not because #1 is slowing down either... rather, everyone is raising their game.
This brings us to that point in the season where I have to get some things out there. I have pushed you hard the last two weeks, and you can count on me doing a lot more of it. I have been repeating the same ideas over and over, and my tone about racing has become more and more adversarial. For some of you this may be unexpected. I could certainly understand that coming from the freshmen.
Well, that's what competition is. Someone out there wants the same thing you want. If you want that something, you'd better be ready to do whatever it takes to get it (within ethical and legal means, of course). Feelings have nothing to do with it. It's understood there will be winners and losers, and it's up to all to do all within her power to come out on top.
My specific job is to help each of you be the very best athlete and competitor I possibly can. In that respect I am the personal coach of each of you. In that capacity I will tell you everything I've learned about your rivals, including strengths and weaknesses. On a day-to-day basis, that means your teammates. I have to pit you against one another in order to develop the mindset necessary to race your real rivals - those quality runners from other teams.
Let me say you are very fortunate to have such a talented team, because you are able to fairly replicate the race environment you will face when it's for real. Your teammates are going to fight just as hard as your competition will.
Going back to the need to pit you against one another, let's think about how summer runs go... everyone is friendly, it's a good time, and no one goes particularly hard at it. You know it's about distance more than time, so you have a long time to relax and chat. You become good friends, and that's great (and necessary).
The difference now is if you don't start fighting to gain advantages on one another you fall back into the habit of running as slow as the slowest person wants to go. That's helping no one, not even the slowest runner. Growing hurts, because you are stretching yourselves in ways you otherwise wouldn't. That's both mentally and physically, by the way.
This is not a switch you can flip on and off that easily. Weeks out from your peak race you have to get progressively more into your race frame of mind, your aggressive spirit, and you become very, very adversarial.
So here we are... clumps of runners in the same time range, all beginning to eye one another. Okay, I said it! You are all beginning to figure out how you're going to beat one another. Great! That is exactly what you should be doing. You will also more and more find me pointing out weaknesses of your teammates as they exhibit them, giving you something to think about and target as you try to unlock the puzzle and come out on top.
I don't play favorites... I will freely share this information with all of you. I want you to attack your teammates' weaknesses. If you are successful, then we can learn from that. You will have learned a valuable tool to use against outside competition, and your teammate will pinpoint something to work on and remedy.
With my training partners, let's say I'm in the middle of a hard workout that has a competitive element - say a cycling time trial. From the time we start, my mind goes from managing my workload, monitoring my "pressure", and simultaneously looking for openings against them. Any sign of weakness is quickly detected and used. If I pass, I do so decisively and keep moving on - remember, always project strength. Until the very end it's a fight.
The second the exercise is over, we relax and start discussing what just happened. All of us share what we were thinking, what we saw, and what we tried to do. If I beat someone, I will share with them what I saw and when and why I did what I did. I do this to help them - after all, if I wanted to maintain that edge I wouldn't want them to know how I did it. No, as much as I want to beat them, I also want to help them get better. Better training partners push me, making me a better racer. See?
As weird as it sounds, though you are friends, you have to attack one another. You have to make life hard for each other as you work out. You all have to prove you can take it longer than the other girls. And when it is over, you have to congratulate each other, win or lose, and mean it. You don't have to like losing to others, in fact I hope you don't. I hope it does bother you, because competitors always hate to lose. Take that negative and turn it into a positive by learning from it. Figure out what went wrong and why, then do whatever it takes to fix it.
You are close. I mean, really close to greatness. How close? How about this --][-- close?
Let's review. We have 10 girls on the team, and you have almost to a person improved every meet, in leaps and bounds for many. Your workouts show that even more incredible things are on the horizon. The speedwork has gone great, everyone is beginning to get healthy, and the gap between #1 and #5 is shrinking by the moment. Not because #1 is slowing down either... rather, everyone is raising their game.
This brings us to that point in the season where I have to get some things out there. I have pushed you hard the last two weeks, and you can count on me doing a lot more of it. I have been repeating the same ideas over and over, and my tone about racing has become more and more adversarial. For some of you this may be unexpected. I could certainly understand that coming from the freshmen.
Well, that's what competition is. Someone out there wants the same thing you want. If you want that something, you'd better be ready to do whatever it takes to get it (within ethical and legal means, of course). Feelings have nothing to do with it. It's understood there will be winners and losers, and it's up to all to do all within her power to come out on top.
My specific job is to help each of you be the very best athlete and competitor I possibly can. In that respect I am the personal coach of each of you. In that capacity I will tell you everything I've learned about your rivals, including strengths and weaknesses. On a day-to-day basis, that means your teammates. I have to pit you against one another in order to develop the mindset necessary to race your real rivals - those quality runners from other teams.
Let me say you are very fortunate to have such a talented team, because you are able to fairly replicate the race environment you will face when it's for real. Your teammates are going to fight just as hard as your competition will.
Going back to the need to pit you against one another, let's think about how summer runs go... everyone is friendly, it's a good time, and no one goes particularly hard at it. You know it's about distance more than time, so you have a long time to relax and chat. You become good friends, and that's great (and necessary).
The difference now is if you don't start fighting to gain advantages on one another you fall back into the habit of running as slow as the slowest person wants to go. That's helping no one, not even the slowest runner. Growing hurts, because you are stretching yourselves in ways you otherwise wouldn't. That's both mentally and physically, by the way.
This is not a switch you can flip on and off that easily. Weeks out from your peak race you have to get progressively more into your race frame of mind, your aggressive spirit, and you become very, very adversarial.
So here we are... clumps of runners in the same time range, all beginning to eye one another. Okay, I said it! You are all beginning to figure out how you're going to beat one another. Great! That is exactly what you should be doing. You will also more and more find me pointing out weaknesses of your teammates as they exhibit them, giving you something to think about and target as you try to unlock the puzzle and come out on top.
I don't play favorites... I will freely share this information with all of you. I want you to attack your teammates' weaknesses. If you are successful, then we can learn from that. You will have learned a valuable tool to use against outside competition, and your teammate will pinpoint something to work on and remedy.
With my training partners, let's say I'm in the middle of a hard workout that has a competitive element - say a cycling time trial. From the time we start, my mind goes from managing my workload, monitoring my "pressure", and simultaneously looking for openings against them. Any sign of weakness is quickly detected and used. If I pass, I do so decisively and keep moving on - remember, always project strength. Until the very end it's a fight.
The second the exercise is over, we relax and start discussing what just happened. All of us share what we were thinking, what we saw, and what we tried to do. If I beat someone, I will share with them what I saw and when and why I did what I did. I do this to help them - after all, if I wanted to maintain that edge I wouldn't want them to know how I did it. No, as much as I want to beat them, I also want to help them get better. Better training partners push me, making me a better racer. See?
As weird as it sounds, though you are friends, you have to attack one another. You have to make life hard for each other as you work out. You all have to prove you can take it longer than the other girls. And when it is over, you have to congratulate each other, win or lose, and mean it. You don't have to like losing to others, in fact I hope you don't. I hope it does bother you, because competitors always hate to lose. Take that negative and turn it into a positive by learning from it. Figure out what went wrong and why, then do whatever it takes to fix it.
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