Week of 8/24-9/1
Monday: 40 minutes of running with surges lasting between 30 seconds and 3 minutes.
Tuesday: 30 minutes of easy running.
Wednesday: Chandler Relays at Twin Brook
Thursday: Stair work out inside the school.
Friday: 20 Minutes of easy running, followed by capture the flag.
Saturday: Lake Region Invitational
Sunday: 30 Minutes of Easy Running.
My workouts this week felt terrific. The Monday one messed with me a bit though. We were running around the middle school athletic fields, with the wind blowing and the cars going by. My coaches would stand in the middle of the fields and blow the whistle when it was time to surge.
Well it is little known fact that I happen to be deaf in my left ear, just something I was born with and could never be fixed. As a result I was surging in all the wrong spots and for to long, or just not surging at all, causing mass confusion through out the work out. Other then that all my workouts went smoothly.
One thing I really miss is having someone to run with, that you can push, and they will push you back. Having Nick Williams around was something I really took for granted and having someone to chase all the time helped me out a lot. Now I am in a position where I have no one to go after in work outs, which can not only cause trouble in training, with the right paces and what not, but also can make practice more lonely as well. This is definitely going to be one of the obstacles in training for me this year.
As for opening up the meet schedule of the season, I had one barely satisfactory meet, while the other was a totally unfulfilling attempt at fulfilling my potential on a course I have always ran well on.
Wednesday at Twin Brook, I ran the number one heat of the varsity rely race. It was just two miles, and I didn’t invest too much into it, but I knew it would be important to dig deep and hold with the leaders. I did hang with them for the first mile, before letting them go off and do their thing. I would definitely like to have run faster but there were a lot of little things in the week that hurt me, and Twin Brook has never been one of my better courses. I would end up coasting in with a time of 11:19.
Saturday I had great expectations. I had set PR’s almost every time I ran at the Lake Region course, and was ready to run hard and try to do it again. Being a veteran high school cross-country runner, I should know to watch my footing on any course. Unfortunately I did not pay attention. After opening up strong with a 5 minute first mile, I was on my way up “Puke Hill.” When my foot hit a loose rock in the ground causing my ankle to burst inward I immediately hit the ground. At first I thought I could just get up and keep going, but it was a little hard to put weight on the ankle. When I was able to get going again I found myself to far back to try and get myself back to the front, and finished up with a time of 19:41. The good news is that there was no broken bones, or sprains, just a ruined race.
Not all is lost though. I would much rather has this happen at an invitational pre-season meet, then at Regionals or States. Hopefully I have already had my one complete breakdown race that tends to happen once a season.