After New Year's Run

2016's First Ascent of Rock River Road

Zach and Anthony finish a long climb up the hill.

In what has become an annual event for the Hughson distance crew,  Coach Kwietkauski and I will be taking anybody who is interested out to Rock River Road on Saturday, January 2.  If you want to go, meet at the school at 9:00 AM.

Make sure to eat a good breakfast before you come.  Bring a water bottle and $5.  I will buy food and we can have a picnic on top of the hill.

Rock River Road begins at Warnerville Road about half way between Roberts Ferry and Knights Ferry.  The run is 8.5 miles of either flat or uphill.   The total elevation gain on the run will be around 900 feet.

2010 cross country team after the first ever Rock River
hill run.

 The first team to run Rock River was 2010's cross country team. That year, we did not go all the way to the top of the hill, but stopped about 5.5 miles in after the majority of the climbing is done.  I can pick some of you up there if you don't think you can make the whole run.

Last year, Tristan made it to the top in 63 minutes (for 8.5 miles).  Can anybody beat that time?  If we get a boy under 60, or a girl under 68:30, I may have to make for him or her the first ever "Rock River Renegade" ultra, mega, awesome t-shirt to signify the accomplishment.

Pre-Season Training

Pre-Season Training (Begins Jan 5)
I've always said that if you want to get somewhere, you need to know how you are going to get there.  Random driving around almost never gets you where you want to go.  Random, unfocused running is better than no running, but nowhere near as good as training with a plan.

Tristan put in huge miles over the winter
and finished his senior year by qualifying
for divisionals.

You are hopefully enjoying your time off from school and getting some good runs in.  I hope that you are following the training guidelines I posted last week.  I'd like to share with you what our running will look like when we return from break. Bear in mind, we will be starting during P.E. class and you are under no obligation to stay after school.  Having put that out there, I also want you to know that the 45 minutes of P.E. class are likely not enough time for you to develop the pre-seaosn fitness that you need.

The next phase of our training, after the re-introduction phase you are currently in, is going to be what I call pre season.  This phase starts the day we return from break and continues until the first day of spring sport practice (Feb 8th).  Areas of emphasis for pre season (in order of importance):

1. Aerobic Endurance
2. General Fitness
3. Speed Power
4. Aerobic Power
5. Anaerobic Power

Aerobic Endurance - For both distance and mid-distance groups, this will be by far the most important part of your pre-season training.  During this phase, we will try for a 3 week block of training where your mileage is 5 miles per week higher than your highest achieved 3 week block leading up to cross country.  For instance.  Garrett had a block during the summer where he averaged 54 miles for a 3 week stretch.  During track pre season period, he will want to try and average 59 mpw.  The distance runs you are doing should be comfortable, but they should not be slow jogs.  If you feel good at the end of a run, feel free to pick up the pace to steady state effort.  The only guideline is that the pace should remain comfortable.  For our top boys, this might be in the low 6 minute range, for our top girls, steady state pace might be in the low 7 minute range.

Some of you may want to run doubles during this period.

Zach built up to 80mpw before opening his senior season with a
track record at Turlock's Joe Delby Stadium

General Fitness
General fitness will still make up only a small portion of your overall training volume, but it will become more important.  General fitness includes things such as: weights, fitness x, core laps, Mando style core, different types of games such as med ball, push ups, sit ups, etc.... You should try for a little bit of general fitness type of stuff after every run.

Speed Power - Speed Power refers to your ability to accelerate to top speed for short periods of time. To help develop Speed Power, you can do strides, ramps for form, ramps to top speed, or even full out 50m sprints on the grass. This type of training is not very specific to the demands of your events, so once we get into the actual season, we won't do a whole lot of this type of training.  During the pre season, you can do speed power stuff 1-3 times per week.

Aerobic Power

Back in the day, Alex
Guerrero ran consistant
50 mile weeks with at
least 1 aerobic power
session per week.
#8 3200 time in USA
Bronze Medal at USAJ 5k
Year 2000

No other factor will determine how well you race as will your aerobic power.  Aerobic Power simply refers to the ability to run at a very high intensity for a long period of time without becoming fatigued.  Because Aerobic  Power is so important to racing, we will start to do a little bit to develop it during our pre-season.  We will try to develop Aerobic Power with as little stressful training as possible.  Some low stress workouts for aerobic power might include:

• Hard surges of 2-5 minutes embedded into a distance run.
• 200m segments at race pace embedded into a steady state run
• Intervals of 600-100m at about 5k race pace with plenty of recovery

We will do no more than 1 Aerobic Power session per week during pre season

Anaerobic Power

Anaerobic Power refers to your ability to run VERY fast for a shorter period of time (up to 2 minutes).  This trait is more important for 400/800 runners, but all of us use Anaerobic Power in ANY track race.  Anaerobic Power does not take very much time to develop and therefore we will not need to work it very much during the pre-season.  The reasons for doing Anaerobic Power during the pre-season is that doing it in small amounts now will prepare us for the longer, tougher anaerobic power workouts later in the season.  Examples during the pre season:

• 5 x 200 at mile RP after a distance run
• 3 x 150 at 800m RP after a distance run

At this time of the year, Anaerobic Power work will only be done as a supplement to the rest of your training.  It should not be stressed pre season.

Conclusion

I decided to post this part of the training plan now, during break so that you can look ahead to what is coming.  If you see where you are going, you should be more motivated to do stuff NOW.  It is unrealistic that you will be able to build to a solid mileage peak in January if you have not run since November.  Remember, the phase we are in now, during break, is called re-introduction.  Make sure to re-introduce your bodies to solid mileage so that when we come back to school, you will be ready to roll.

Winter Training Guidelines

Hello Huskies! I feel guilty for never posting any write ups of the section or state meets. Coaches get tired too. Plus, StanCo. Distance was doing a pretty good job of covering the post season.

Anyway, I want to focus on rebuilding the fitness that you may have lost since the end of the season. Most of you have been back to training on a very basic level that emphasizes general fitness and now it is time to start ramping back up the running levels and getting ready for track season. Remember, we don't start official practice until February 8th and we don't race until the first weekend in March. We have almost as much time as the summer to put in a fantastic base of fitness before we set one foot into competition.

Whether you know it or not, our first phase of training for track has already begun....Coach K and I have termed this phase Reintroduction

Re-Introduction Phase 3 Weeks (December 14th to January 3rd)

Areas of Emphasis

1. Easy and Steady State Running
2. Relaxed Strides after runs
3. Core, general fitness type activities.

Easy and Steady Running

My only criteria for this portion of your fitness is that you attempt to build up to what your maximum mileage achieved during summer/fall was for the last week of break.  You should do most of this mileagae in easy runs.  Concentrate your efforts on doing runs of 1 hour.  For you experienced runners, you could be doing 4-6 one hour runs per week.  For the less experienced runners, it might only be 1 one hour run per week.  Don't worry about any tempo effort or formally scheduled hard running.  If you feel good, you might want to acclerate to steady state effort for the last 10 minutes of a run.  DO NOT force the pace on any of your runs.  Let the fast paces come naturally.  It is fine to run fast but relaxed during this phase.  Note: Those of you training more for 400/800 won't do as many 1 hour runs as the rest of the group and you probably want to do more runs where you finish fast.

Strides

Do strides once or twice a week after your runs.  Once again, the emphasis should be on running fast and relaxed on the strides.  Take plenty of time in between strides (I prefer a jog back to the start as a recovery)  you don't want to be winded prior to starting a stride out.  Distance of the stride outs should be from 60-100m.  Don't do more than 1000m worth of strides on any given day.  Those of you training for the 400/800 may want to place more emphasis on the strides.  Perhaps 3 days per week for you.

Core/General Fitness

We don't need to go crazy on the core right now.  The goal right now is to only maintain a base level of strength and general fitness as you ramp your running volume back up.  2 days of core per week is all that is required.  Please remember that CORE does not mean only ABS. Be sure to include exercises for your low back, glutes, hamstrings as well as stuff where you have to be stable laterally (such as side planks or reach unders). Feel free to do push ups, pull ups and lunges as well....just don't go crazy with them.

Record Your Activities

It is important for me to know that you are taking charge of your own success.  During this time, I am not going to be as strict about submitting mileage as I am during the summer.  I know that many of you will travel and be forced to miss a few days during this time.  I do, however, want you to write down your daily training.  Keep track of weekly mileage.  It is a huge confidence boost to see a calendar on the wall in your bedroom with big numbers written in for the days that you know most of your competitors are staying warm inside out of the rain.

Good luck this break.  See you all in 2016!!!!  

p.s. I'll be organizing a trip out to Rock River Road after New Years....probably on Saturday, 1/2/16.