It's Race Week, Baby

Well, it's almost here. We were beginning to feel that it might never get here but it is race week. 5 more days until our first race week of the season. We had 2 challenging workouts over the weekend and have only one more "hard" workout before our race at Jacksonville State University on 9-4.

We had a good bit of rain over the weekend and it muddied the dirt road we use for some of our longer workouts. The forecast for the week is mostly sunny after Tuesday or Wednesday so, hopefully, the course at JSU will dry out in time for the race. It is a great course - all grass and quite flat and accurately measured - good for fast times and you can leave knowing your time was legit - unlike some courses we have run. Forecast is for cool temps the morning of the race which is also nice.

We had a team meeting last night and began working on race plans with our freshmen runners. They are really excited and I just know they will all take off too fast at the start of their first collegiate race. We discussed it and I warned them and I know they will still go out too hard. That seems to be a rite of passage for freshman runners.

Our workout last Friday went quite well. We used the distance from our 5' maximum effort run and did repeats in 5:45 with 60" rest. All the runners finished 5 repetitions and some managed to do 6. These were run at close to current 10K pace so it was a strong session for them.

Saturday's training was just an easy 30' run with some 100m strides at the end of the session. We ran those at close to 1500m pace and they all seemed to enjoy the feeling of running fast. We cut the mileage short on this day to help our freshmen recover from the hard day before and to rest them up for the really hard session coming up on Sunday. I know their legs appreciated the reduced mileage.

Sunday's run was probably our toughest of the season so far. The guys ran a total of 10 miles and the women ran 7. The men ran a 1-2-1-2-1-2-1. The first and last miles were scheduled to be run at race pace for 10000m. The 2 mile sections were scheduled to be run at tempo pace. The single miles in between the 2 mile sections were scheduled to be run at a comfortable pace. The women had the same type of workout but only ran 2 tempo sections - 1-2-1-2-1.

It had rained a good bit overnight so the road was muddy and slippery. Also, there was some confusion about the workout and when to run tempo and when to run easy. As a result, not all runners ran the workout the way it was designed. The effort was good but the times were not up to what we had set out as goals for the session. In addition to the sloppy footing and confusion (my fault for not making sure everyone was clear on what to do)I think the freshmen's legs were tired from 3 weeks of training that was harder than they were accustomed to. They have been very good about really putting forth a lot of effort so one "off" day seems ok. I am sure they'll do better the next time we do this same workout.

Today's run was 45' easy with 6 x 100m strides at 1500m pace after the run. We try to finish each easy run with a hard 800m-1200m-1600m at race pace, but the loop where we do this was pretty muddy from the rain so we opted to do the strides instead.

Tomorrow is our last hard workout before the race on Saturday. We are going to do 300meter hill repeats on our grass loop. The men will do 15 repeats and the women will do 12repeats. We take an easy jog back around to the bottom of the hill for our recovery.

Wednesday is an easy recovery day and Thursday is an NCAA mandated off day.

We will have an easy shake out run on Friday morning and then travel to JSU in the afternoon to run over the course.

Saturday is race day and we'll see what happens!!