How to Grow a Forest of Mighty Oaks

 OK guys, we've reached a nice place to take a break from organized training.  This does not mean that you should stop running entirely and if you are one of the small number of athletes that will get a complete break from running, you should not just sit on your buts and play xbox with your free time!

Mighty Oaks - You've done the work and can take a week to a week and a half completely off from running.  When you start back, only go to 50-60% peak mileage and make it a social event. 

The Mighty Oaks are: 

Owen, Joe, Tori, Melissa, Camille, Taylor, Nathan, Julie, Cailin, Jeff, Eric, Makenzie.

Saplings- You've done some good work, but have had enough interruptions to mean that you don't need to take a week fully off from running.  You guys should focus on the FUN of running.  Make your committment to your teammates also a social committment to get together and have a fun time running.  Do not stress about running, but don't forget about it either!  The saplings are:

Cole, Luis, Brian, Ezra, Hudson, Aden, Perla, Jocelyn, Luke, Hope, Diego, Rene, Javila, Janderson, Dominic, Silvano, Kyson, Maggie, Jayden, John, Adolfo, Emmanuel, Dominic, Jesse

Acorns- You are just starting to make progress and don't need to take any time of off from running, if anything, you need to start upping your training NOW! As with the saplings, make a commitment to get together and run with your teammates, but do it for the FUN of it.  You are probably not in good enough shape yet where any running will seem easy and fun, but the more you run, the easier it will get. The acorns are:

Zach, Jonathan, Avelino, Aiden B, Seth, Juan, Dylan, Octavio, Cesar, Omar, Isaiah, Dario, Anthony, Suki, Wren, Natalie, Bella, Valerie, Monica, Jacob, Tony, Israel, Mario, Jay, Sarah, Maria, Luis Y.

Please read the  Full Instructions For The Next 2 Months.  There will be a homework assignment due on Google Classroom based on this linked document. 

Hoka One One Recap

 10/23/2020

For a season that wasn't a season, the Hughson Cross Country teams finished off the 2020 fall campaign surprisingly well. We  competed in the Hoka One One virtual 2 mile competition.  The event allows teams to run a time trial and then submit their results to the meet organizers who will rank the teams from all across the nation.  Teams  have until the end of the month to submit results.  As of this writing, here is where we stand in the competition.

Boys 94th out of 268 teams  nationally

Girls 102nd out of 200 teams nationally

Link to Hoka One One Nationals Page

We are clearly not where I believe we can be and we need to bear in mind that we are competing against teams from other states that are running full blown cross country seasons right now.  In short, I'm satisfied that we are making progress toward our goal of being ready for the CIF season which kicks off in December.  

Girls Recap

Taylor Scheuber showed the results of a great off season of training and soloed her way to a PR of 12:48.  Taylor is running times now that indicate that she will be at least top 5 in the TVL and will threatend for an individual berth at the state meet.   

The rest of the girls team continues to make progress from where they were 2 months ago, but are nowhere near where they want to be nor where they can be.  Camille Haupt impressed by running her fastest time in 2 years after a long road back from injury and 6 of the 7 girls ran faster than they did at our 2 mile intrasquad meet at the beginning of October. 

Boys Recap

6 of the 7 boys we had in the varsity race ran PRs and Joe Lighthall impressed mightily with a 10:34 for 3200m, running splits of 5:34 / 5:00 en route.  the 5:00 for the second mile is, for Joe, a PR in and of itself. Owen Bullock also ran a fine race, demonstrating the fitness he's gained by running a 20 second PR over the PR he set 2 weeks ago and doing it on splits of 5:52 / 5:28. As a matter of fact, all of our boys ran significant negative splits on the evening, this shows that there is definetly plenty of improvement still to be had.   

HHS HOKA Time Trial Results

All in all, we've had a decent fall campaign despite all of the headwinds we've had: COVID 19 shut downs, frequent shut downs due to wildfire induced air quality, record heat that has lasted well into the fall, and the uncertainty of trying to train through all of this madness.  We're not where I'd hoped we'd be at this point when we finshed the season of 2019, but we are way ahead of where we otherwise would have been had our kids not borne down and gotten to work.  

I'm proud of our kids for what they've done and looking forward to see what they can do in the upcoming months.  

Hoka One One 2 mile Postal Meet

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away......

There was no internet, there were no national rankings or national meets.  The only way to determine if your team in California was better than someone else's team in Illinois was to run a 2 mile time trial on the track and then MAIL the results to a the manager of the "Postal National Championships".  That manager would then compile the results from around the country and at the end of the cross country season, announce who the best team in the USA was.

So much has changed, but so much has stayed the same.  

These days, we can instantaneously get results from all over the country.  We might even get video of the race to give us an idea of how fast, or slow, the cross country course was where the races were run.....But without fully equal conditions, you still never know.  Is a 5k at Legion Park the same as a 5k at Woodward Park? No, it's not.  

2 years ago, Hoka One One revived the idea of the Postal meet so that every team (not just the ones who qualify for Nike Team Nationals) could have a chance to see where they stack up vis a vis the rest of the country.  With Covid wiping out competitive fall seasons in many states, this competition is the only one that some teams are doing.  

Entries for Hoka One One Postal meet:

OK, guys, here's the plan.  We will run 3 races on Friday night.  We'll start off with a JV race (boys and girls mixed) at 6:30 PM.  We'll follow that up with our Varsity Girls race at 6:55 PM and finish with our Varsity Boys at 7:00 PM.  Entries are posted on Athletic.net

Varsity and JV Entries

For those not running in the 2 mile time trial.  I want to run a 6 minute test at 6:00 PM.  If you run the test.  You are encouraged to stick around and cheer on your teammates who are running the time trial later in the evening.  

Athletes Running 6 Minute Test

Parents Welcome

For this event, now that our county numbers are down into the "Red" category, we can have parents attend our event.  We are asking parents to sit on the visitors side and maintain a responsible 6 feet physical distance from members of other families.  

Athletes, Please arrive at 5:30.  Varsity Boys top 7 meet under the Scoreboard.  Varsity Girls Top 7 Meet on the north side of the drainage basin by the gate to the track.  JV boys and girls meet on the south side of the drainage basin by Mr. Parker's room.  6 Minute Test runners.  Meet at the picnic tables by the snack bar.  

This will be our last meeting for 3 weeks.  Let's RUN FAST AND HAVE A GREAT TIME

Black and Gold Fall Practice Meet

 We finally did something normal yesterday!

We had our normal pre season practice meet about 6 weeks later than normal but still 2 months before the start of official practice.  Such is the life in the age of Covid restrictions.

See Results and Splits

See All Time Lists

See All Time Team Time Trial Comparisons

Some Encouraging Results

We had a few big PRs and some really big negative splits.  Joe dropped over a minute from his PR and Taylor moved to #6 on our all time list for the pre season meet! The PRs are an indication of big fitness gains. The negative splits are evidence of fitness that went unused in the race yesterday but is still there available for future use.  If  you PR'ed yesterday, good job! You can be proud of yourself.  If you ran a huge negative split, congrats, your fitness is better than you showed yesterday.

Some Lacking Fitness

Quite a few boys ran major positive splits.  This makes sense.  Your legs remember what it is like to run at race pace, but your hearts and lungs have lost the fitness to deliver enough oxygen to your legs to keep them actually going at race pace. If you ran a major positive split, your task is to gradually build up your mileage and the pace at which you can do tempo efforts over the next 3 months.  Long runs, short sprints, and tempo runs at 70%-80% vVO2 max need to be your office for the next 3 months and you need to punch that clock every day!

Some Wild Cards

We had a big number of athletes not run yesterday due to many reasons (inability to attend, severe lack of fitness, nervousness about a simulated competition).  Bringing the rest of our team  together and starting to re-develop that good feeling we've had for years is going to be of utmost importance.  There was a lot of talent sitting on the sidelines yesterday.

Another wild card is the fact that when we bring students back on campus finally, we'll have a chance to start talking to freshmen about our team.  Not only is bringing in new freshmen important for the future, but we often  have kids show up who can make an impact on our team's success right away.  The successful (or unsuccessful) recruitment of freshmen will have an impact on our team this year and for years to come, so let's make sure we're talking to those kids in our classes about how awesome it is being on this team!

Another Cool College Workout

 Hey team.  Check out the video from Duke University Cross Country.  Please note that they are doinge almost everything we do as well.  They're just doing more volume and at a faster pace. Those are both goals to work toward

• Warm Up Jog
• Mobility
• Drills
• Body of Workout
• Cool Down

You guys are doing the right stuff to reach high goals.  You just need to keep on grinding.  Consistency is th key

Joe Lighthall - Woodbridge Invitational White Division Sophomore Champion

 Yeah, that's right!  Joe won his division at Woodbridge and Owen was 4th.  I guess the only thing to do now is win it live when we can actually have real races again. 

Full Woodbridge Results