Practice Begins Tomorrow at 8:00AM

Meet in the back parking lot.  Make sure you have your physical paperwork up to date.

Fitness = Racing Options

Watching the Olympic 10ks it was obvious to me that the best prepared athlets are the ones who medaled.  This was especially true of women's gold medalist Tirunesh Dibaba.  She had the best closing speed in the field AND she was the most fit.  As the race progressed and the lead pack dwindled from 15+ to 8 to 6 then to 4, Dibaba sat comfortably in 3rd or 4th position.  With about 550m to go, she decided that she was ready and simply ran away from the field.

Normally, great kickers need to rely on a slow pace and runners without a great kick need to rely on a fast pace.  The non kickers hope to tire out or completely break the kickers before the end of the race comes around.  Dibaba, because of her fantastic fitness, could have run away from the field at any point during the final 5 kilometers of the Olympic final.  She could have won from the front, won with surges to break the field, or won the way she did, with a 25th lap of 62 seconds.

So, how can we apply this idea to our own racing?  Simply, we must become as fit as possible and prepare to race using as many different tactics as possible.  Each race and each course calls for a sligthly different strategy.  Do we go out hard and try to break our competitors?  Do we run a steady, even race and try to catch our competitors as they die in front of us? The answer is simple, we prepare to do WHATEVER IT TAKES!

As a team, we have had the best summer of training we've ever had.  Now is the time to start taking those miles we've run and using them to prepare us for the stresses of the racing season that lies ahead.  We have the potential to have great success at every level this year: Boys, Girls, JV, Varsity.  I am excited for the possilities presented by this season and hope to inspire all of you to achieve great things.

Let's have a great season, Huskies!

Camp Video

I can't quite top the Katie Parody.....I just don't have the pipes nor the editing skills.  Hope you guys  enjoy the little video we made at camp.

IF this doesn't make you want to run, then.....

Katie Perry is wishing she wrote this.

Camp was Great, now its time to get ready for the season

We had a wonderful camp this year at Henry Cowell State Park.  This camp and this summer has been the best pre-season that we have ever had as a team.  I cannot wait to see the results when you guys start racing in a month.  I took a bunch of video while we were there and will post a link to youtube once I'm done editing it.

Now.  There are a couple of things we all need to do before practice starts on August 6th.

Get Your Physicals.  You will not be allowed to work out with the team until you have a physical and turn in the paper work.  Pick up the required documents from the office if you don't already have them.

Volunteer to Recruit at Freshman Roundup. This should be the most important day of the year for our cross country program.  The more solid, dependable kids we can get into the program on day one, the better we will be in the future.  Freshman round up is August 9th.  We will talk to the freshmen after our morning practice.

Sign up for the Fundraiser.  We will be doing a new fundraiser this year and I will need everyone to participate.  Through the month of August, we will be washing windows for 3 bucks a pop.  I expect that everyone will sign up for at least 2 shifts of 4 hours.

Another Oldie But Goddie

On Monday, we had probably our best practice of the summer...2 x 2 miles at tempo effort.  I'm going to post a workout done by Arcadia High School during their 2010 pre-season camp.  You will notice that they are also doing 2 x 2 miles (top guys doing 3).  This Arcadia team went on to twice break the team time course record at Woodward Park.  Based on those two performances, they should be considered one of the best teams in the history of the western United States.

http://www.flotrack.org/video/360636-WOW-with-Arcadia-High-School

You will notice on this some similarities to The Woodlands High School workout

Similarities

1. Good team unity and cohesion....athletes supporting each other
2. Solid work ethic.  The athletes seemed positive about what they were doing.
3. Although it isn't stated in the video, the Arcadia team was also in a heavy mileage/base phase when the video was shot.

Differences

1. I noticed Amar Moussa (one of the top runners in the country that year) encouraging his teammates not to over run the workout, not to go too deeply into difficulty
2. The coach controlled the workout, making sure that the pace was not too difficult.
3. I didn't notice any of the top runners falling apart in this workout, as happened in The Woodlands workout.

Bear in mind that we only saw one workout in an entire season from each team and that we don't really know what these teams did on all of their other days.  Both teams have a great record of success, so I can't really criticize either program.  However, I have to say that I like the feel of what I see from the Arcadia team a little more than what I see from The Woodlands team.

I don't post these videos so that you can see how far away from the top of the mountain you are.  I post them so that you can get an idea what the top of the mountain looks like, then strive to get yourselves there.  You guys should be happy to know that we do a lot of the same stuff as the top teams do.  We have been doing 2 mile tempo intervals for years.  If we really want to break through to the top levels at the state meet (which I believe is very possible over the next 3 seasons) we need to begin to develop the other traits you see in these videos.

1. Team unity, the ability for the team to come together as a unit and work toward a common goal, realizing that as new runners improve, they are not a threat to the more established runners, but an asset that can make the whole team better.
2. Priorities.  Our younger group is doing a great job of getting their miles in.  As a team, we are 1500 miles ahead of where we were at this point last summer.  We need to continue this and build upon it.  Keep the summer mileage up, keep the tempos going.  Encourage ALL of your teammates to get out there and run.

Oldie but Goodie.

I posted this video a couple of years back and it has been sitting on our video archive page.  I don't know if you younger guys have seen it, so I'm bumping it back up on the main page here.  The Woodlands High School, along with York High School (in Illinois) consistantly produces some of the top cross country teams in the nation.  They do it through hard work and dedication, building their athletes from the time they are in junior high.

http://www.flotrack.org/speaker/6486-juris-green/video/319098-wow-with-the-woodlands

I'd like to make a couple of comments for you guys, especially you freshmen and sophomores looking to develop over your next 3-4 years at HHS.

The Good Stuff

1. The athletes are at school ready to run before the sun is up, and heading out on their 6 mile cool down as the school busses are getting ready to go and pick up the students for the rest of the high school.
2. You see the athletes taking careful notes on their training after the workout is finished
3. The athletes are (mostly) able to run even splits for the workout.
4. The Woodlands regularly has over 20 boys run sub 10 for 2 miles every year!

The Bad Stuff

1. I don't really like to see athletes blowing up like Tom and a few other kids did in such early season workouts.
2. The Woodlands has been criticized for the fact that many of their star athletes fail to improve once they get too college, the main criticism is that the kids are pretty much burned out or injured by the time they finish high school.  I don't know if this is due to the fact that their high school training was so good that they more or less reached their potential as runners before graduating, or that they were truly burned out by the time they finished high school running.
3. I like high volumes of training, so long that you athletes can handle it, however, I'm not a huge fan of saying, "Group 1 has to get 84 miles this week".  I feel that we need to have flexibility in our training in order to avoid injuries and keep improving.

I feel that this is an excellent video at capturing a slice of how hard the elite high school programs in the U.S. train.  I think that you guys can learn from this video.  I think that you younger runners, with the mileage you are currently running, will see tremendous improvements like the runners at The Woodlands.  You are currently finding out that increased mileage = increased running strength.  Keep gradually building and see how far your hard work can take you.