Follow up to Twilight Meet

Well, the weather has certainly changed. It was downright chilly this morning - our coolest morning yet for training so far this season. Forecast is for more of the same the rest of this week. Perfect for training.

After looking over our results from the Twilight Meet I saw some encouraging signs. The gap between our # 1 and # 5 runners was 82". Ideally, we would like to shave that down to 45"-60" so we are definitely headed in the right direction.

The gap between our # 2 and # 5 was only 41" and we think we can get that down to around 30" by season's end. Even better, the gap between # 2 and # 6 was only 59". Our usual # 6 didn't finish the race due to a cramp but if we put him into the mix we will have a gap of less than a minute between our # 2 and # 7 runners. That is the kind of depth we were hoping to build before the season started and it looks like we are making definite progress.

Our training over the next two weeks will be focused primarily on strength - the ability to hold a fast pace over longer and longer periods of time. In spite of the really good times we recorded in the Twilight Meet, our pace still dropped off a bit too much in mile # 2 and, snd, subsequently, the later miles. We will focus on long intervals (1600's and 2000's) as well as tempo runs to try and build the kind of strength that we are looking for.

Today's 2000m repeat session went well - better than I thought it might. Most runners were able to hold their pace during the 4 repetitions of the 2000m loop. With only 2' rest it was a very tough workout and they took on the challenge quite well.

The women ran a 4.8 mile tempo run and had good success. We are close to getting some of our injured runners back - maybe in a couple of days - and that is something we badly need. We have only raced 5 the past couple of meets and our missing runners badly need to get some training and racing in before we get to the championship meets at the end of the season.

It's such a beautiful day - I think we'll spend some time in the pool this afternoon for some relaxation and a light aerobic workout to help our recovery process from the intervals this morning.