School is back in and we are back to training

Classes began this past Monday, January 11th. We are having a one week transition period to get back into regular training and to assess what each runner accomplished over the holiday period. Here is our schedule:

Monday Men 6 miles at a comfortable pace
Women 4 miles at a comfortable pace

Tuesday Men 5 mile tempo run
Women 3 mile tempo run

A very solid session today. Given that we were running on a hilly road, I thought the times were quite promising. It showed that we were able to accomplish a good bit over the holiday break. This kind of stuff makes a coach VERY happy!

The guys seemed to perform a little bit better than the girls - on the whole - but there were a couple of very strong runs for the girls as well.

Wednesday Men 10, 8 or 6 mile run at a comfortable pace, depending upon X-mas mileage
Women 4 miles at a comfortable pace

Thursday Men - 10 x 300m hill repeats with jog back recovery
Women - 8 x 300m hill repeats with jog back recovery

* This workout went great today. Both the guys and the girls really worked hard and attacked the hills. Their splits were very consistent - a good sign that the aerobic work they did over the holiday was beneficial.

Friday Men 6, 8 or 10 miles at a comfortable pace.
Women - 4 miles at a comfortable pace

We'll have a team meeting after this workout to go over the training schedule for the upcoming track season. Now that we have everyone's class schedule we'll figure out the best training times and get that set up.

Saturday - Men - hard run (8.3 mi) at Rough Road - perhaps our toughest training venue.
Women - hard run (6 mi) at Rough Road

This is a very challenging road - lots of hills and mostly uphill for about7 of the 8.3 miles. It will be interesting to compare the runners' times to those from the cross country season. We'll be lengthening this run as the season goes on to a maximum of about 11 miles for the men and 8.3 miles for the women.

Sunday - Men do a 10-12 mile run at a comfortable pace, depending upon their mileage levels.
Women do a 6 mile run at a comfortable pace.

As of today - Thursday - the weather has been really nice. It was great today during our hill workout - the guys were running topless - as usual. All in all a great day. We have 2 basketball games on campus tonight so that will be fun as well. We usually go to those as a group when studies don't interfere.