The first week of practice is done and the coaching staff thinks things have gone pretty smoothly. First I am proud to announce 2 new additions to our coaching staff. Coach K and I will now be joined by Keith Bullock. Coach Bullock was hired at HHS to teach history and freshman state requirements. He formerly was coach of a league champion team in Coalinga. Also joining the staff is Jack Bland. Jack is in his 3rd year as a teacher at HHS, but is joining our staff for the first time. Jack is realatively new to running. His experiences as a new runner should really help to bring along or most novice athletes. Both coach Bullock and Coach Bland will be tasked with training the rookie crew that reports after school While Coach K and myself will work with the varsity crew.
Our first two days were very easy (only 5 mile runs for the top group) and designed to get the athletes used to running in the hottest part of the day again. Even though we have had a very mild summer, it was in the mid 90s for the first part of the week and the runners were really struggling. In addition, we hadn't started school yet so, despite my best efforts to make sure the team knew when we were working out, there were a few notable athletes missing from the group.
Wednesday we held the first of our two annual pre-season 2 mile time trials. The results were slow, as usual on the first wednesday of official workouts. Runners still weren't used to the heat and we haven't given an all out effort since last may. None the less we had some very good performances.
Ian finished in 11:29 on splits of 6:15 then 5:14
Zach made huge gains on his pre-season form from last year, improving his TT from 15:03 to 12:28
Becky, despite feeling slow and sluggish, was 13 seconds faster than last year, finishing in 12:22.
I will be putting full TT #1 results up on the results page later today.
Overall, the times were slower than I would have liked, considering the solid training that we have put in this summer. However, in comparison to other years, it was a very solid first effort. Our second time trial.
By the time Thursday had rolled around, the athletes were beginning to get into the rhythm of running in the afternoon and were doing the things (like hydrating and being smart about what they are eating) and training started to really click. The varsity runners totalled 9 miles and included a full set of drills and 6 x100m strides with a jog back recovery. We are working on a new schedule with the varsity athletes. They are starting their training day during 7th period. During that time, they are able to get in a 4-5 mile run. By the time they are done with that run, school is over and the rookie crew is ready to practice. At this point, we have the whole team do a quick set of stretching and then drills. After drills, we are able to send the varsity kids out for another 3-4 miles. The real bonus here, is that this schedule allows the faster rookies to keep up with the varsity runners on the varsity's second run.
Friday, we followed the same schedule as Thursday, but the second run of the day was a tempo effort on the 2.8 mile Hatch Tully Loop. Once again, it was hot and the kids were already a bit tired from the first run (which essentially served as a 4.4 mile warm up), but our whole varsity crew was able to finish in the 18-19 min range. Some of our better rookies also ran the same 2.8 mile tempo. Among those, Brigham looked the best finishing in 21:03
No comments:
Post a Comment