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Hey Everyone!
Yesterday my team and I did my favorite workout of the year: the sand pit hills. About 3/4 of a mile from the Maranacook school there's a sand pit that can be accessed by trails only. Near the sand pit there's a man-made pond with an island in the middle (we call the pond "Donut" because of its shape) which has wide, dirt trails encompassing it.
So my teammates and I trekked through the woods to reach the sand pit. We had to be on the lookout because there had been an alleged bear sighting in the forest. At a soccer game yesterday, a person ran out of the woods screaming, claiming that they had fought and injured a black bear! Although the witness' story was not very logical and probably compete blasphemy, a group of wardens still had to drive out to Maranacook to investigate the situation. Much to their surprise (I'm being sarcastic here), they found nothing, but this evidence didn't diminish the fears of school officials, who circulated an email to their fellow staff members advising caution: a wounded bear was running rampant on the Maranacook campus!
Despite the bear warnings, we ran to the sand pit anyway. When we arrived, the boys and girls went off to their respective hills. The workout is 15 minutes (20 minutes for the boys) of hill repeats up a short, steep, and sandy hill. Sprinting up the hill takes about 5 seconds, which is followed by a recovery jog down the hill and back to the starting point, where each teammate waits his/her turn in line. Running in short, powerful bursts is fun and is also a great anaerobic workout. In past years, however, there have always been a few girls who haven't liked the workout as much as me, and they would hop out of line for a few moments to get more rest time. But this season, I was very proud that our whole girls team went through the entire workout without taking any additional rest time! In fact, the girls were very enthusiastic about the hill repeats. Hannah would sprint to the base of the hill, and then lose her footing as she ascended, which made her flail her arms wildly in an attempt to regain her balance. On one particular repeat, Caroline had so much momentum coming over the top of the hill that she flew into the air and almost tumbled down the slope!
When the 15 minutes were up, I jogged over to the boys' hill to finish up the last five minutes of the workout with them. I was happy that several other girls went above and beyond Rosalea's expectations and did repeats on the boys' hill. The boys are a little more analytical with their workouts--they calculated the average time that it took their entire team to complete one hill repeat (my brother tells me it was about 1 minute and 40 seconds). After the hills, we ran to Donut and did two 400m race-pace repeats on the trail around the pond and a set of core. And, for the perfect finale to my favorite workout, a quick swim in Donut!
Good luck to everyone in their races tomorrow!
-Abby Mace
