Long run today.
Got ten miles done this morning. I didn't feel well during the first mile, but by the time I reached the Altoona Campus I was running 8:30 pace and I came back about two minutes faster than I went out even though I added on some distance at the end to make sure it was ten miles.
I was glad this went well. For the last couple of months I've had some lousy long runs and the last time I tried to run ten miles I quit after only having run three. I got some good advice from this guy and it's made a difference. I was trying to do too much during the week and ended up too tired to run well on Sunday. He suggested I keep the mileage consistent during the week, cut the long run back a little and build it every week. I was being too impatient and trying to go out and run ten miles every weekend when I just didn't have the fitness. Over the last three weeks I've done 6, 8, and, 10 on Sunday and this gradual buildup has worked much better.
I'm looking forward to this week. We've got a hill workout tomorrow and a time trial on Wednesday. I figure I'm only good for 21 minutes or so over 5k, but perhaps I'll surprise myself.
Unrelated to running:
I went to a Curve game tonight with my family. Two things I don't really understand the appeal of: baseball and fireworks. To me, baseball games are slow moving and boring. Plus, the defense has the ball. That's just wrong.
The other thing is fireworks. I'm sure the first time you see them when you're a kid they're pretty cool; they're brightly colored and they explode loudly. But by the time you're an adult, you've seen them probably dozens of times and there is little variation between one show and another except in length and the volume of the explosions.
Oh, a third thing whose appeal I don't understand: deliberately, lugubriously, unbearably, irredeemably sappy patriotic country music which tends to accompany baseball and fireworks. If you know what makes people actually choose to listen to it, please explain it to me. And don't use other examples of unlistenable music, like much gangsta rap, as a reason I should like sappy, patrioic country music. That still doesn't explain what is appealing about it. And don't act like I'm a bad American if I don't like patriotic country songs. Just because someone wrote some patriotic words and sang them doesn't mean I'm required to enjoy listening to it.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
This post is almost as long as yesterday's run felt.
Yesterday's run was a death march of not-quite-epic proportions.
It had been rainy and cool for the first half of the week, and Thursday's workout (which I was absent from for reasons detailed in a previous post) was completed just before a torrential downpour, which announced itself with frequent flashes of lightning that were so close that the thunder which followed occurred almost simultaneously. Sitting at my desk at work, looking out the window, I thought, "There's no way they got their workout done today." But they did.
The storm seemed to be the grand finale to several days of persistent gloom and soaking rain, but was in fact just the end of Act I of this week's unpleasant weather. The clouds and rain disappeared offstage Thursday night and on Friday the curtains rose to reveal a new leading cast: the sun and the humidity.
Since Friday was the first day we had seen the sun in what seemed like a week, Mia and I decided to make a lemonade stand. Or rather, Mia begged me to have a lemonade stand and I acquiesced.
If we had used our business model as an MBA project, I'm sure we would have failed. First, it was a weekday, which meant that most people were at work. Second, even people who were at home because of retirement, disablility, faking disability, being a housewife or homemaker (I don't what the preferred nomenclature is these days) , being a kid for whom school has not started, or self-employment (legal or not), were most likely indoors retreating from the heat. Thus, despite our bright yellow construction paper sign which hung from a metal pole conspicuously placed at the edge of the yard, and the high quality of our product, we had no customers.
Just as we were setting up, two little girls from next door came out and we gave them some lemonade, gratis (free samples are good PR; we should get some credit for that), and then my daughter brought nearly every plastic toy in our house onto the front porch.
As I sat and read a book about going to grad school, the front door opened and closed repeatedly as more toys emigrated from the living room to the porch. Eventually, the porch began to look like a yard sale and I told her that she had brought enough toys outside and that I would be quite shocked if any were still inside at all.
She replied, "Ok, I just wanted to bring out a few more. Now we have enough."
I resumed reading and then a few minutes later she came out with more toys. I asked (not because I didn't know, but because asking a question both you and your child already know the answer to is a rhetorical device parents are required by federal law to deploy in these situations) , "Didn't I just tell you not to bring out any more toys?"
Once again, she answered, "I just wanted to bring out a few more. Now we have enough." I said, "That's what you just told me!" She then just kind of stood there and looked at me, knowing that I wasn't going to force her to take them back in, but understanding that she had a statutory obligation to look at me apologetically while I returned an also federally-required look of stern displeasure and uttered a final, "No more," and then, "I mean it," as if to resolve an unasked question about whether I meant it or was just joking, before both of us could return to our respective activities.
A few minutes later the girls from next door had to leave and, before they did, they let out their cat, Binks. Most people bring their animals in when they leave the house; these people let theirs out. Binks likes to kill moles and leave them on the sidewalk or porch and gets into hair-raising cat fights late at night. Binks proceeded to plop down amidst my daughter's toys and I shooed him away annoyedly. He's an outdoor cat; I don't know what nasty stuff he's carrying around.
It was too hot to be sitting outside anyway -- or at least we have been too spoiled by air-conditioning to find any good reason to sit outside in uncomfortable heat and humidity for very long -- so we went inside, cranked up the AC and played Loot and Would You Rather? on the coffee table until my wife woke up.
Our practice was at 4PM, so it hadn't really gotten any cooler by the time we started running. The plan was to do the Boyer run, which is five miles long and is relatively flat. The only hill is early in the run, but it is at least a 1/4 mile in length.
I knew from the start some of the kids wouldn't be able to finish. I suggested to my dad that we encourage some of them to turn around after a mile and a half or two miles or to ride back with him after he stopped to give us water.
At the bottom of 17th street, which was only a mile or so into the run, Pat, Scott, Andy and Tim were in a group about fifty feet ahead of me and Mary was about a hundred feet behind me, but I couldn't even see Andy, Megan, Patrick, Colleen, Chelsea or Matt. As we passed a bank sign displaying the temperature, it read 100 degrees.
My dad was standing at the next corner and he asked me to tell the kids in the front group to stop at the Jaffa so that we could regroup and get some water. I don't know why he didn't tell them himself since they had just passed him about fifteen seconds earlier, but I was already a little addled from the heat, so that thought didn't occur to me at the time. By that point they had gotten about seventy-five yards ahead of me, so I had to pick it up in order to catch them. The pace wasn't fast to begin with, but the fairly modest increase in pace felt significantly harder than what I had been running.
Vicki was at the next corner and I saw Andy take of his t-shirt and toss it to Vicki; I thought it was kind of funny because it looked more like he was throwing it at her than throwing it to her. When I reached her I asked if she had her camera on her. She said she did and I told her she ought to go back to the bank and take a picture of the temperature display at the bank.
It took me another block to catch Tim and Andy, who had fallen off the pace Scott and Pat were setting. I gave them the message about regrouping and yelled it to the other two, who didn't seem to hear, so I caught up to them and told them. Then I slowed down again. I was hurting from just three blocks of running that, on a cool day, would have been no more than tempo pace.
When we reached the Jaffa, Pat asked me, "Are we just supposed to wait here?" I told him they were and then I turned around and headed back to check on the kids behind me.
I passed Mary about a block back and she said she was doing well. Then Andy (a different one), Colleen, then Chelsea and Patrick. They were alright, but I had my doubts about their finishing. When I got within eyesight of my dad's car, I saw them getting in, so I turned around and headed back to the Jaffa. They got there just as I did and gave the kids water. I told the kids again that if they didn't feel well to stop and walk and, if need be, wait for a ride.
Pat, Scott, Tim and Andy took off and I stayed behind to explain the rest of the route to Patrick, who got lost on a run last week. Patrick is a heck of a nice kid, the seventh of eight kids in his family, including a sister who was on my cross country team in high school. He runs with his back hunched over and his shoulders held high. While he runs slower than most of the team, his turnover is incredibly fast, which gives one the impression that if he straightened his back and opened up his stride he would suddenly glide down the road at five-minute pace.
After I was sure Patrick would be able to find his way back, I went on ahead and passed Colleen and Chelsea, both of whom were already struggling even though we had just stopped for water less than half a mile earlier. I was sure they wouldn't finish and I told them to walk if they needed to and to get a ride with my dad at the next water stop, which would be at Mansion park, another half-mile away.
I caught Andy and Mary a few minutes later. They both seemed to be doing well, although Mary joked that it must be nice for me to be bald since her hair traps the heat from her head. Eventually, I pulled away from them until the crossing at Sixth Avenue, where they caught up and we had to wait several minutes before it was safe to cross. Just before we reached Mansion Park, Andy stumbled on a curb but, fortunately, didn't hurt anything.
At the parking lot where my dad had parked we got water and I told him that he was going to need to pick up Colleen, Chelsea, and possibly Patrick. He had already picked up Megan, who had missed a week of practice while on vacation and wisely bagged the run since she was in no shape to run five miles in any conditions, let alone this oppressive and fairly dangerous heat.
I started running with Andy and Mary again and we took an alternate route down some well-shaded side streets behind Baker Mansion. When we turned onto Union Avenue there were some guys mowing the grass between the curb and the sidewalk. As we passed them a piece of bark or leaf flew into my mouth and stuck to the back of my throat and I spent the rest of the run trying to dislodge it and, in the process, no doubt making some nauseating noises.
The best indication of how brutal the conditions were came a few minutes later. Mary suddenly asked, "May I stop and walk?" I told her that she could stop whenever she needed to and that I encouraged her to do so given the heat. The reason this was significant is that Mary is extremely competitive and, though she's never said so, she can't stand for anyone in her general vicinity to be ahead of her. I've seen her sprint ahead of people at the end of a warm-up. She is often ahead of me on our distance runs, even though I'm pretty sure I would beat her by at least three minutes in a 5k. On one run in particular, she had been ahead of me the entire run but I began catching up to her toward the end. When she heard my footsteps approaching she would suddenly sprint until she was ten or fifteen meters ahead and then would slow down again. Once I'd started to catch up again and she would do the same thing once more.
When Mary stops to walk, you know it's bad.
I had to wait for a while to cross Union Ave because traffic was heavy. It was just after 5PM and it was Friday, so people were either just getting off work, heading to a bar or restaurant, or both. While I waited, Andy and Mary caught up to me again and we all crossed together, but it was clear that they were beat. As soon as I started running again, they dropped behind.
I wasn't going to have any problem finishing, but I wasn't feeling great. After the left turn at Pizza Hut, which is at about the four mile-mark of the run, you must cross about half a mile of blacktop parking lots for a hotel, Value City, Dunkin Donuts, a car dealership, a mattress warehouse, a Chinese buffet, an Army recruiting center, a Super Shoes and a car wash.
Once I got past Pizza Hut, which is shaded by some trees which stand on the bank of a small creek that runs behind it, the heat really hit me. With no shade from the sun and the with the pavement radiating heat from below, it felt like running inside someone's mouth. Soon, Mary and Andy were so far behind me I couldn't see them anymore.
In the last 1/4 mile of the run, I caught Andy (the other one, who had been running with Pat, Scott and Tim). I was surprised that he had been with them for so long. Yesterday was his first day back after being out for almost two weeks for a hand operation.
I got back and drank some Gatorade and headed back out to make sure Andy and Mary were OK. I met them about a couple blocks from school and was surprised to see that they were running. We all ran back together until, decidedly not surprisingly, Mary sprinted off when we reached the driveway in front of the school.
A few minutes later, as we all sat around in a daze, my dad and Vicki pulled up without Chelsea, Colleen and Patrick, whom I had told him to pick up. Matt, whom I hadn't seen since the Jaffa, emerged making wretching sounds into a styrofoam cup. I was alarmed and I asked my dad why he didn't have the other three with him. He said they had told him that they wanted to finish. We walked around to the front of the school and just moments later Colleen came in and a couple of minutes after that Chelsea and Patrick materialized out of the haze.
Chelsea seemed unhappy, but I couldn't tell if it was frustration at finishing so far behind the others or if she was angry that we had asked them to run so far in such conditions. I assume it's the former, because she had been offered a ride back at three miles and refused it.
In retrospect, I would have only sent Scott, Pat, Tim, Andy and Mary out for the five miler. I would have had all of the others, even the ones that did manage to finish, on a three miler. I will say this, though: yesterday was as unpleasant as running conditions get around here and, had we not had practice, I would not have run at that time of day. Nonetheless, I was impressed with the determination of Colleen, Chelsea, Patrick and Andy, all of whom are running cross country for the first time and none of whom have run that far in those conditions in their lives. I don't know if you can really extrapolate any predictions about how they will perform in a race situation from how they did yesterday, but I hope they take some pride in how tough they were and draw on that experience in other situations.
I was just glad it was over.
It had been rainy and cool for the first half of the week, and Thursday's workout (which I was absent from for reasons detailed in a previous post) was completed just before a torrential downpour, which announced itself with frequent flashes of lightning that were so close that the thunder which followed occurred almost simultaneously. Sitting at my desk at work, looking out the window, I thought, "There's no way they got their workout done today." But they did.
The storm seemed to be the grand finale to several days of persistent gloom and soaking rain, but was in fact just the end of Act I of this week's unpleasant weather. The clouds and rain disappeared offstage Thursday night and on Friday the curtains rose to reveal a new leading cast: the sun and the humidity.
Since Friday was the first day we had seen the sun in what seemed like a week, Mia and I decided to make a lemonade stand. Or rather, Mia begged me to have a lemonade stand and I acquiesced.
If we had used our business model as an MBA project, I'm sure we would have failed. First, it was a weekday, which meant that most people were at work. Second, even people who were at home because of retirement, disablility, faking disability, being a housewife or homemaker (I don't what the preferred nomenclature is these days) , being a kid for whom school has not started, or self-employment (legal or not), were most likely indoors retreating from the heat. Thus, despite our bright yellow construction paper sign which hung from a metal pole conspicuously placed at the edge of the yard, and the high quality of our product, we had no customers.
Just as we were setting up, two little girls from next door came out and we gave them some lemonade, gratis (free samples are good PR; we should get some credit for that), and then my daughter brought nearly every plastic toy in our house onto the front porch.
As I sat and read a book about going to grad school, the front door opened and closed repeatedly as more toys emigrated from the living room to the porch. Eventually, the porch began to look like a yard sale and I told her that she had brought enough toys outside and that I would be quite shocked if any were still inside at all.
She replied, "Ok, I just wanted to bring out a few more. Now we have enough."
I resumed reading and then a few minutes later she came out with more toys. I asked (not because I didn't know, but because asking a question both you and your child already know the answer to is a rhetorical device parents are required by federal law to deploy in these situations) , "Didn't I just tell you not to bring out any more toys?"
Once again, she answered, "I just wanted to bring out a few more. Now we have enough." I said, "That's what you just told me!" She then just kind of stood there and looked at me, knowing that I wasn't going to force her to take them back in, but understanding that she had a statutory obligation to look at me apologetically while I returned an also federally-required look of stern displeasure and uttered a final, "No more," and then, "I mean it," as if to resolve an unasked question about whether I meant it or was just joking, before both of us could return to our respective activities.
A few minutes later the girls from next door had to leave and, before they did, they let out their cat, Binks. Most people bring their animals in when they leave the house; these people let theirs out. Binks likes to kill moles and leave them on the sidewalk or porch and gets into hair-raising cat fights late at night. Binks proceeded to plop down amidst my daughter's toys and I shooed him away annoyedly. He's an outdoor cat; I don't know what nasty stuff he's carrying around.
It was too hot to be sitting outside anyway -- or at least we have been too spoiled by air-conditioning to find any good reason to sit outside in uncomfortable heat and humidity for very long -- so we went inside, cranked up the AC and played Loot and Would You Rather? on the coffee table until my wife woke up.
Our practice was at 4PM, so it hadn't really gotten any cooler by the time we started running. The plan was to do the Boyer run, which is five miles long and is relatively flat. The only hill is early in the run, but it is at least a 1/4 mile in length.
I knew from the start some of the kids wouldn't be able to finish. I suggested to my dad that we encourage some of them to turn around after a mile and a half or two miles or to ride back with him after he stopped to give us water.
At the bottom of 17th street, which was only a mile or so into the run, Pat, Scott, Andy and Tim were in a group about fifty feet ahead of me and Mary was about a hundred feet behind me, but I couldn't even see Andy, Megan, Patrick, Colleen, Chelsea or Matt. As we passed a bank sign displaying the temperature, it read 100 degrees.
My dad was standing at the next corner and he asked me to tell the kids in the front group to stop at the Jaffa so that we could regroup and get some water. I don't know why he didn't tell them himself since they had just passed him about fifteen seconds earlier, but I was already a little addled from the heat, so that thought didn't occur to me at the time. By that point they had gotten about seventy-five yards ahead of me, so I had to pick it up in order to catch them. The pace wasn't fast to begin with, but the fairly modest increase in pace felt significantly harder than what I had been running.
Vicki was at the next corner and I saw Andy take of his t-shirt and toss it to Vicki; I thought it was kind of funny because it looked more like he was throwing it at her than throwing it to her. When I reached her I asked if she had her camera on her. She said she did and I told her she ought to go back to the bank and take a picture of the temperature display at the bank.
It took me another block to catch Tim and Andy, who had fallen off the pace Scott and Pat were setting. I gave them the message about regrouping and yelled it to the other two, who didn't seem to hear, so I caught up to them and told them. Then I slowed down again. I was hurting from just three blocks of running that, on a cool day, would have been no more than tempo pace.
When we reached the Jaffa, Pat asked me, "Are we just supposed to wait here?" I told him they were and then I turned around and headed back to check on the kids behind me.
I passed Mary about a block back and she said she was doing well. Then Andy (a different one), Colleen, then Chelsea and Patrick. They were alright, but I had my doubts about their finishing. When I got within eyesight of my dad's car, I saw them getting in, so I turned around and headed back to the Jaffa. They got there just as I did and gave the kids water. I told the kids again that if they didn't feel well to stop and walk and, if need be, wait for a ride.
Pat, Scott, Tim and Andy took off and I stayed behind to explain the rest of the route to Patrick, who got lost on a run last week. Patrick is a heck of a nice kid, the seventh of eight kids in his family, including a sister who was on my cross country team in high school. He runs with his back hunched over and his shoulders held high. While he runs slower than most of the team, his turnover is incredibly fast, which gives one the impression that if he straightened his back and opened up his stride he would suddenly glide down the road at five-minute pace.
After I was sure Patrick would be able to find his way back, I went on ahead and passed Colleen and Chelsea, both of whom were already struggling even though we had just stopped for water less than half a mile earlier. I was sure they wouldn't finish and I told them to walk if they needed to and to get a ride with my dad at the next water stop, which would be at Mansion park, another half-mile away.
I caught Andy and Mary a few minutes later. They both seemed to be doing well, although Mary joked that it must be nice for me to be bald since her hair traps the heat from her head. Eventually, I pulled away from them until the crossing at Sixth Avenue, where they caught up and we had to wait several minutes before it was safe to cross. Just before we reached Mansion Park, Andy stumbled on a curb but, fortunately, didn't hurt anything.
At the parking lot where my dad had parked we got water and I told him that he was going to need to pick up Colleen, Chelsea, and possibly Patrick. He had already picked up Megan, who had missed a week of practice while on vacation and wisely bagged the run since she was in no shape to run five miles in any conditions, let alone this oppressive and fairly dangerous heat.
I started running with Andy and Mary again and we took an alternate route down some well-shaded side streets behind Baker Mansion. When we turned onto Union Avenue there were some guys mowing the grass between the curb and the sidewalk. As we passed them a piece of bark or leaf flew into my mouth and stuck to the back of my throat and I spent the rest of the run trying to dislodge it and, in the process, no doubt making some nauseating noises.
The best indication of how brutal the conditions were came a few minutes later. Mary suddenly asked, "May I stop and walk?" I told her that she could stop whenever she needed to and that I encouraged her to do so given the heat. The reason this was significant is that Mary is extremely competitive and, though she's never said so, she can't stand for anyone in her general vicinity to be ahead of her. I've seen her sprint ahead of people at the end of a warm-up. She is often ahead of me on our distance runs, even though I'm pretty sure I would beat her by at least three minutes in a 5k. On one run in particular, she had been ahead of me the entire run but I began catching up to her toward the end. When she heard my footsteps approaching she would suddenly sprint until she was ten or fifteen meters ahead and then would slow down again. Once I'd started to catch up again and she would do the same thing once more.
When Mary stops to walk, you know it's bad.
I had to wait for a while to cross Union Ave because traffic was heavy. It was just after 5PM and it was Friday, so people were either just getting off work, heading to a bar or restaurant, or both. While I waited, Andy and Mary caught up to me again and we all crossed together, but it was clear that they were beat. As soon as I started running again, they dropped behind.
I wasn't going to have any problem finishing, but I wasn't feeling great. After the left turn at Pizza Hut, which is at about the four mile-mark of the run, you must cross about half a mile of blacktop parking lots for a hotel, Value City, Dunkin Donuts, a car dealership, a mattress warehouse, a Chinese buffet, an Army recruiting center, a Super Shoes and a car wash.
Once I got past Pizza Hut, which is shaded by some trees which stand on the bank of a small creek that runs behind it, the heat really hit me. With no shade from the sun and the with the pavement radiating heat from below, it felt like running inside someone's mouth. Soon, Mary and Andy were so far behind me I couldn't see them anymore.
In the last 1/4 mile of the run, I caught Andy (the other one, who had been running with Pat, Scott and Tim). I was surprised that he had been with them for so long. Yesterday was his first day back after being out for almost two weeks for a hand operation.
I got back and drank some Gatorade and headed back out to make sure Andy and Mary were OK. I met them about a couple blocks from school and was surprised to see that they were running. We all ran back together until, decidedly not surprisingly, Mary sprinted off when we reached the driveway in front of the school.
A few minutes later, as we all sat around in a daze, my dad and Vicki pulled up without Chelsea, Colleen and Patrick, whom I had told him to pick up. Matt, whom I hadn't seen since the Jaffa, emerged making wretching sounds into a styrofoam cup. I was alarmed and I asked my dad why he didn't have the other three with him. He said they had told him that they wanted to finish. We walked around to the front of the school and just moments later Colleen came in and a couple of minutes after that Chelsea and Patrick materialized out of the haze.
Chelsea seemed unhappy, but I couldn't tell if it was frustration at finishing so far behind the others or if she was angry that we had asked them to run so far in such conditions. I assume it's the former, because she had been offered a ride back at three miles and refused it.
In retrospect, I would have only sent Scott, Pat, Tim, Andy and Mary out for the five miler. I would have had all of the others, even the ones that did manage to finish, on a three miler. I will say this, though: yesterday was as unpleasant as running conditions get around here and, had we not had practice, I would not have run at that time of day. Nonetheless, I was impressed with the determination of Colleen, Chelsea, Patrick and Andy, all of whom are running cross country for the first time and none of whom have run that far in those conditions in their lives. I don't know if you can really extrapolate any predictions about how they will perform in a race situation from how they did yesterday, but I hope they take some pride in how tough they were and draw on that experience in other situations.
I was just glad it was over.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Every weekday but Thursday I leave the office at 4PM for practice. On Thursday, in order to make up the half-hour of work I miss by leaving early, I work from 8AM until 7PM. This actually works out well for me because the nature of my job is such that the early part of the week is slow and gradually picks up as the week goes on. By Thursday, I almost need a ten hour day in order to get everything caught up so that I don't start Friday behind and end up leaving with a pile of things on my desk that the back of my mind will think about all weekend.
Unfortunately, this means that in order to run I would need to either get up before work or run after I get home. Running before work was out of the question. I've been staying up far too late lately and needed to get a reasonable amount of sleep last night. I would have run at some point this evening, but after eating at my in-laws and not getting home until after 8PM, playing computer games with my daughter until 9PM, and driving to a video rental store twenty minutes away at 9:30 to exchange Big Brain Academy (which we rented) for Super Mario Party 8 (which we accidentally returned (does anyone remember hearing about the first seven Super Mario Party releases? I don't.)) because the woman that had rented Big Brain Academy only to open the case to find the latest in the Super Mario Party octology was leaving to go to a hospital in Pittsburgh the next day and really needed the game before she left. I don't know whether no one else would be available to rent the game for her kid while she was away or if they somehow set up their car or, more likely, SUV, so that their kid could play Wii on the trip. Whatever. If someone has to drive two hours to go to a hospital, the least I can do is make sure their kid has a game to play.
So I didn't run Thursday. No big deal. I had run six days straight, which is more consistent than I've been lately and those six days did include more hills and speed than I've been doing, so the zero was probably warranted.
Friday's run was a bit of a mess. The day before the team had run about two miles to a soccer field and then done striders and then had run back to the school. A couple were sore and tired since this was about five miles of running and some had probably never run that far in their young lives.
The plan, which I had no quarrel with, was for an easy day of about three miles. I would have like the senior guys to run more since three miles is enough for them. Turns out that the easy day included two of the biggest hills within the general vicinity of the school. Then, my dad's directions were not very clear on where the runners should go at one point and the faster runners disappeared into some woods. I had the two slower girls following me and I didn't know the path through the woods, so we took a slightly longer route. It was hot and they were already tired from the two hills and stopped and walked several times. They looked frustrated. I was frustrated, too, because most of the runners, along with the fittest ones, were going to run half a mile less than these two girls who were already dead after a little more than a mile from climbing two fairly steep, long hills.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group had finished long before because their shortcut through the woods made their run barely two miles. I'm not sure why my dad thought that the route was 3.1 miles long. It took me 25 minutes to finish and that was with backtracking occasionally to make sure the two girls were OK and that they knew where they were going.
On Sunday I talked with my dad about the training and the need to modify the schedule and he agreed to my suggestions. He had originally planned four workouts and one distance run, which would take place on Friday. I convinced him that there needed to be more plain-old boring distance runs for the sake of aerobic development and recovery. We settled on a plan for this week which included distance runs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; a hill workout Tuesday and tempo paced intervals on Thursday.
Today we ran the hill workout and it was tough.
We ran from the school to St. Mary's Cemetary -- which is a little over a mile -- to warm up.
The cemetary is directly across 10th street from some kind of juvenile detention home which is surrounded by tall chain-link fences topped by ominous loops of barbed wire. 10th street is a fairly steep hill which runs east to west if you're heading up it. St. Mary's is on the north side of the road. At the bottom of the cemetary, running perpindicular to 10th St. is a straight stretch of rutted dirt road about 150 yards long. At the north end of the dirt road it turns left and angles back toward tenth street in a winding manner; sometimes running briefly parallel to and other times roughly perpindicular to the dirt road.
We did three repeats on this windy portion, jogging down 10th St., turning left back onto the dirt road and then starting again at the far end of it. Then we did three repeats straight up 10th St. I hung with the two best guys on the team for all of the repeats, finishing a few seconds ahead or a few seconds behind on each one.
This pleased me as an indicator of my own fitness, but then again, I tend to do better on hills than a lot of runners, most likely because of my short, stocky build. In a race, these two would still dust me pretty easily.
The rest of the team did admirably well. Tim, in his first year of cross country after giving up football, seems to get fitter every day. Mary is going to be good if we can just get her under control -- yesterday on our easy run she seemed to think I was trying to race her every time I caught up to her and she would sprint ahead fifteen or twenty yards. This instinct has its pros and cons: I imagine she's going to be capable of tearing off heads in a race situation, but I'm just concerned she'll be too tired to actually do it because she runs hard every day. If Sam stays on the team he has the potential to be our three or four runner, but like Pat he also plays soccer, and he quit last year a few weeks into the season.
I hope the time trial next week goes well and that it will get Pat and Sam excited enough about XC to ditch soccer and focus on running.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
First two days of practice.
Yesterday was the first day of official practice for our XC team. We have nine boys (possibly ten, as another is supposed to join tomorrow) and five girls. The range of experience and fitness in this group varies widely. Two of the boys are in good shape and are ready to do much more than the rest of the team; the remainder did little running over the summer and are getting by mostly on whatever raw talent they possess.
Monday was just a distance run of a little over two miles for the girls and any neophytes on the boys' side, while those that could handle it ran about four and a half. Some ran the entire distance, while others alternated walking and running. Several of the girls have never run before and may have walked more than they ran.
Today we did a light fartlek workout consisting of intervals of one minute controlled hard running followed by one minute of jogging (or walking, for the kids that aren't fit enough to run the entire time) and increasing the hard running by one minute each time until reaching four minutes. We then took a three minute break and did another set, starting at four minutes hard running and working our way back down.
Our two best runners ran within themselves and were able to complete the workout without difficulty. One boy tried to keep up with them but eventually, and to his credit, realized that they are fitter than he is, and backed off. My little speech before the workout about running under control appeared to have sunk in with him.
I had to tell one runner to cut the workout short since he was stopping to catch his breath and/or grab his knee. He refused initially and I explained to him that I wasn't merely making a suggestion and that he needed to end the workout for his own good, considering his asthma and knee. Not to mention, I explained, since I could see he was upset, that this was the second day of practice of a season that is over two months long and that there would be plenty of workouts to finish and, further, I didn't want to start digging him a hole he'd be too fatigued to dig his way out of.
This little speech did fall on deaf ears.
I jogged ahead in preparation for the next interval and as soon as it started, I turned around to see if he would listen, which, of course, he didn't. I jogged back to him and explained again that I meant what I had said and that I didn't want him to finish the workout and that I understood that he was upset but that I was doing it for his benefit.
One the one hand, I appreciated his determination, but on the other, the simple fact is that he apparently didn't run at all this summer and struggling to get into shape being unable to do the workout was the direct consequence of that. If he had that same dedication during the summer, there's no telling how much better he would be.
I think one of the challenges I'm going to have to overcome during this season is that my expectations about how much each kid should care about this sport are probably too high. I need to learn to accept each kid's level of enthusiasm (if any) and engagement and try to let things take their own course. There may be a few of them may not even last until the first meet.
Cross country is not for everyone. The aren't nearly as many spectators at the meets as there are at football and basketball games. At many meets, most of the spectators -- if not all of them -- are parents and maybe a few students who are already at the school for after-school activities such as band or some sort of academic club. These kids seem to be more likely to be friends with kids on the cross country team than, say, members of the football team would be. But even if your mom and dad and couple of kids from band show up to cheer you on, no one else really cares. And, if you do well, you're more likely to be ridiculed than congratulated.
At a school as small as ours, the chances are that the best athletes participate in other sports and that cross country gets the leftovers, the kids who tired of sitting the bench in basketball or football, or kids who have never done anything athletic and use cross country as an opportunity to do so. What you end up with then is a group of kids who end up in cross country not quite by default, but almost, and in large part because of and despite, their lack of athletic ability, which is not how most kids end up in a given sport.
But what you also get, at least most of the time, are kids without unjustified arrogance; kids who make good teammates because they know what it's like to be unsupported and ridiculed and don't intend to be the cause of that feeling in others; and sometimes you get kids who, like myself, suddenly realize that cross country is not just a sport they can participate in and feel good about, but that it can become a way of defining yourself; a way of delivering an emphatic and heartfelt FU to... well, when you're a teenager, nearly everyone: your asshole classmates who think you're weird, your parents for thinking you're normal and unexceptional, even your teammates who want you to succeed, just not as long as you aren't better than them, and even yourself, for whatever it is you hate yourself for when you're high school.
I guess I'd like to instill in just one of these kids the realization becoming a runner is not just fun (although if you get them thinking it's fun, that alone is a victory), but that it can become a serious pursuit in a way that is far, far more than just fun.
Monday was just a distance run of a little over two miles for the girls and any neophytes on the boys' side, while those that could handle it ran about four and a half. Some ran the entire distance, while others alternated walking and running. Several of the girls have never run before and may have walked more than they ran.
Today we did a light fartlek workout consisting of intervals of one minute controlled hard running followed by one minute of jogging (or walking, for the kids that aren't fit enough to run the entire time) and increasing the hard running by one minute each time until reaching four minutes. We then took a three minute break and did another set, starting at four minutes hard running and working our way back down.
Our two best runners ran within themselves and were able to complete the workout without difficulty. One boy tried to keep up with them but eventually, and to his credit, realized that they are fitter than he is, and backed off. My little speech before the workout about running under control appeared to have sunk in with him.
I had to tell one runner to cut the workout short since he was stopping to catch his breath and/or grab his knee. He refused initially and I explained to him that I wasn't merely making a suggestion and that he needed to end the workout for his own good, considering his asthma and knee. Not to mention, I explained, since I could see he was upset, that this was the second day of practice of a season that is over two months long and that there would be plenty of workouts to finish and, further, I didn't want to start digging him a hole he'd be too fatigued to dig his way out of.
This little speech did fall on deaf ears.
I jogged ahead in preparation for the next interval and as soon as it started, I turned around to see if he would listen, which, of course, he didn't. I jogged back to him and explained again that I meant what I had said and that I didn't want him to finish the workout and that I understood that he was upset but that I was doing it for his benefit.
One the one hand, I appreciated his determination, but on the other, the simple fact is that he apparently didn't run at all this summer and struggling to get into shape being unable to do the workout was the direct consequence of that. If he had that same dedication during the summer, there's no telling how much better he would be.
I think one of the challenges I'm going to have to overcome during this season is that my expectations about how much each kid should care about this sport are probably too high. I need to learn to accept each kid's level of enthusiasm (if any) and engagement and try to let things take their own course. There may be a few of them may not even last until the first meet.
Cross country is not for everyone. The aren't nearly as many spectators at the meets as there are at football and basketball games. At many meets, most of the spectators -- if not all of them -- are parents and maybe a few students who are already at the school for after-school activities such as band or some sort of academic club. These kids seem to be more likely to be friends with kids on the cross country team than, say, members of the football team would be. But even if your mom and dad and couple of kids from band show up to cheer you on, no one else really cares. And, if you do well, you're more likely to be ridiculed than congratulated.
At a school as small as ours, the chances are that the best athletes participate in other sports and that cross country gets the leftovers, the kids who tired of sitting the bench in basketball or football, or kids who have never done anything athletic and use cross country as an opportunity to do so. What you end up with then is a group of kids who end up in cross country not quite by default, but almost, and in large part because of and despite, their lack of athletic ability, which is not how most kids end up in a given sport.
But what you also get, at least most of the time, are kids without unjustified arrogance; kids who make good teammates because they know what it's like to be unsupported and ridiculed and don't intend to be the cause of that feeling in others; and sometimes you get kids who, like myself, suddenly realize that cross country is not just a sport they can participate in and feel good about, but that it can become a way of defining yourself; a way of delivering an emphatic and heartfelt FU to... well, when you're a teenager, nearly everyone: your asshole classmates who think you're weird, your parents for thinking you're normal and unexceptional, even your teammates who want you to succeed, just not as long as you aren't better than them, and even yourself, for whatever it is you hate yourself for when you're high school.
I guess I'd like to instill in just one of these kids the realization becoming a runner is not just fun (although if you get them thinking it's fun, that alone is a victory), but that it can become a serious pursuit in a way that is far, far more than just fun.
Friday, August 10, 2007
The Old Man and the XC Team.
Yesterday I ran with three of the boys that will be on the BGXC team that I'll be assistant-coaching this fall. Two of them are hoping to qualify for states this year and seemed to be in pretty good shape. At least, it seemed that way to me, since I was struggling to keep up with them in the first two miles and was completely dropped during the second half of the run. Fortunately, one of the other runners also needed an easier pace so he and I alternated a few minutes of running with a few minutes of walking on the return trip.
We ran the roughly two miles from BG to the fountains in front of Lakemont park and back. It was incredibly muggy and I was drenched after just two miles. A couple of us dipped our heads into the fountain to cool off, which cooling benefit lasted mere seconds.
Three girls, all of whom are taller than me, also came to run, one of whom is new to running and who has a black belt in some specific form of karate whose name I probably couldn't pronounce even if I could remember it. From what they were saying, there's a possibility that we may end up with enough runners to field a girls' team, which is a boon, since initially it looked like we'd only have two.
They all seemed like nice kids. Even the boys who had been pushing the pace during the first half of the run (I was too far behind to tell how hard they ran on the second half) listened respectfully when I gave an unsolicited lecture on the importance of not running too hard on their easy days. I hope it sinks in, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't; at least not at first. The dynamic involved isn't favorable: the kid who's in better shape now and who has been running twice a day, was the slower runner last season. The kid who probably expected to be coming in as the best runner on the team now finds himself a possible second, but close enough to first that he's going to try to finish every run and every workout with the top guy. It's rarely a good idea to make someone else on your team the standard by which you judge your own runniner. I've been in both of those roles and each is a recipe for burnout.
However, I've been running for fifteen years and these guys have barely been alive much longer than that, so it would be unreasonable of me to expect the sort of maturity, restraint and discipline that I couldn't find in myself for most of my running career; and I was probably more serious about it than either of these guys. But I think that will be part of the fun of doing this: trying to use what knowledge I've gained to help these kids succeed and, maybe, learn to want to take it seriously.
We ran the roughly two miles from BG to the fountains in front of Lakemont park and back. It was incredibly muggy and I was drenched after just two miles. A couple of us dipped our heads into the fountain to cool off, which cooling benefit lasted mere seconds.
Three girls, all of whom are taller than me, also came to run, one of whom is new to running and who has a black belt in some specific form of karate whose name I probably couldn't pronounce even if I could remember it. From what they were saying, there's a possibility that we may end up with enough runners to field a girls' team, which is a boon, since initially it looked like we'd only have two.
They all seemed like nice kids. Even the boys who had been pushing the pace during the first half of the run (I was too far behind to tell how hard they ran on the second half) listened respectfully when I gave an unsolicited lecture on the importance of not running too hard on their easy days. I hope it sinks in, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't; at least not at first. The dynamic involved isn't favorable: the kid who's in better shape now and who has been running twice a day, was the slower runner last season. The kid who probably expected to be coming in as the best runner on the team now finds himself a possible second, but close enough to first that he's going to try to finish every run and every workout with the top guy. It's rarely a good idea to make someone else on your team the standard by which you judge your own runniner. I've been in both of those roles and each is a recipe for burnout.
However, I've been running for fifteen years and these guys have barely been alive much longer than that, so it would be unreasonable of me to expect the sort of maturity, restraint and discipline that I couldn't find in myself for most of my running career; and I was probably more serious about it than either of these guys. But I think that will be part of the fun of doing this: trying to use what knowledge I've gained to help these kids succeed and, maybe, learn to want to take it seriously.
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