My team was practicing out at Steven's Canyon. The run that I and my teammates were doing was a 8.5 mile out and back run. On the way out, the road traveled gradually upward and on the way back, the road descended gently back to the start. I, a scrawny little kid with a 5:48 mile PR and a 2 mile best which was well slower than 12 minutes at the time, was hammering away back toward the finish of the run.
The instructions from our coach had been simple "Hard run to the log and back". Our coach wasn't really big on terms like tempo, VO2 max, or all of the different pace variations about which I try to teach you guys. It was very common for the workout sheet to read something to the effect of "10 miles, Hard". These runs formed the backbone of our hard training and in all likely hood, they were too hard for most of us. There are many times that I can recall that an 8, 9, or 10 mile run would start off at a pace that felt almost like 2 mile race pace. Coach would say "go", start the watch, and we'd all fly away from campus. Once we spread out, with the fastest runners up front and the stragglers hanging on toward the back, each of us would proceed to run just about as hard as we could for whichever course we had been assigned for that day. Each of our runs were timed: easy days, medium days, hard days. However on the hard days, nobody wanted to be beaten by someone who was "slower" than himself and everyone would generally try to beat the guys ahead. Essentially, the days that I'm describing were long, hard races.
I had been one of the last runners on this day to make the turnaround at the log. As a freshman, with a relatively slow PR for the mile, there weren't many people on my team I was expected to beat in practice. However, I was faster than Dan Bassoni. I would usually beat Dan on the training runs and in races. However, on this day, Dan was having the run of his life. 4.5 miles into a hard run, I could usually count on being at least 400 meters ahead of Dan. This day, Dan was right on my butt. We were going downhill now, and Bassoni's long legs ate up twice as much ground per stride as mine did. Down through Stevens Canyon we raced, far behind our teammates, a light rain falling on our heads. I would open up a little gap on Dan, then as the road would tilt steeper downward, he would catch and pass me. This continued until just before the finish line.
We rounded the bend, Dan and I, locked in a dual to the death. I began to kick towards the parking lot, where our cars were waiting to take us back to school. I had a 5 yard lead on Dan. I heard my coach yell, "Come on, Joel. You can do it." Just as Coach yelled his encouragement, I began to puke. The next words out of Coach's mouth were "Maybe not". I finished puking, jogged to the cars and sat down, exhausted.
The point of this story here is not for me to relive my glory. I certainly didn't experience much running glory for my first 2 years of high school. The point is this. Later that spring, despite the fact that my mile PR had only come down to 5:42, and my 2 mile best had only dropped to 11:57, I was able to run 39:20 for 10k. That is two 5ks of 19:40, back to back. Some of you, with far better PRs than me, will not be able to run 5k in 19:40 when we open our season in 2 months. Some of you, whose PR's suggest that they should be well under 18 minutes by our first race will be hovering in the mid 19:00 range. Why is that?
I have a hypothesis.
My coach's training probably wasn't the best. For the strongest and most talented, it was great. For those of us struggling to keep up with them, it was way too tough. But, what we (or at least I) learned from those long, hard training runs was this: I learned how to go out hard, to the point that I was hurting, and then hold on for a long, long, time without giving up.
I believe that some of you give up way too easily and that you could take a lesson from the training of Coach Vargas.
Here is my challenge to you: Pick a day, soon. Find a course for which you know the distance. Pick a fairly long route....7,8,9 miles. Run that route as hard as you can. Find a pace that you know you can keep, and keep it, no matter what. When you are hurting, imagine Dan Bassoni is chasing you and that he will catch you on the next downhill unless you run absolutely, positively as hard as you can. Force yourself to keep pushing, don't give up. Once you finish, record your time and write it down. 2 weeks later, repeat that run. After we return from camp, repeat it again. Check your progress. I can almost assure you that you will improve dramatically over the course of the summer. You will improve a little bit as your fitness increases, but mostly, you will improve because you will have developed some mental toughness.
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