Off Season Training. KISS

Keep it simple, Stupid!  That's what I've been telling myself when planning out this track season's off season training.  I know that in the past, I've been very prescriptive in the types of training that we should be doing during the off season, but really, it boils down to this....

To race well at any distance above 400m, you need to have a fair amonut of aerobic power.

So, with that in mind.  We will focus on developing aerobic power.  For the next 6-7 weeks, ALL athletes in the distance/mid distance groups should be working on putting in steady mileage.  We should run something hard 2-3 times a week.  One of those hard days should be a long run, totalling 20-25% of your weekly mileage.  Finally, sprint once a week.  That will be one of the other 3 hard days.  See details in the training plan linked below.

Distance and Mid-D off season training.

Training Plan for (Non Throw) Field Eventers.

The training types are listed in order of importance.  For you guys, aerobic endurance is the most important....this is the ability to run a high volume without getting tired.  Aerobic Power is second.  That is the ability to run fast without getting tired.  The other training emphases are of less importance, but they are still worked into the sample week.

When looking at the plan, bear in mind that the sample week is not a mandatory training plan.  For some of you, the sample week might be too easy.  For others, it might be too hard.  The purpose of the sample week at the bottom of the document is to show how you can put all of the training types we want to accomplish into one smooth week of training.

Enjoy your time off from school and enjoy running free during this break.

Coach B.

Pole Vault?...On a cross country site?

Well.....we do have a number of vaulters who ran cross this year:

Josue
Gillyan
Pia
Jazmine...

Check this out.

Mt. SAC International Pole Vault Camp

See if you guys can get a hold of Morgan, Hannah, and Clara.  This is an excellent opportunity to get a head start on our competition.

Sub Sections

This Saturday, we will run at the CIF SJS Sub Section Meet. This is the first "elimination round" of the cross country season.  I expect a large number of our athletes to move forward to the section meet next week.  Here are the criteria for moving on

Varsity Races You will qualify for the section meet if:

• Your team finishes in the top 10 teams 
• You finish as one of the top 15 individuals who is not on one of the top 10 teams.

JV and Frosh Soph Races You will qualify for the section meet if: 

• Your team finishes in the top 6 teams
• You finish as one of the top 10 individuals who is not on one of the top 6 teams.

Time Schedule

13 Varsity Boys - Div. 4 12:35 

14 Varsity Boys - Div. 5 12:55 

15 Varsity Boys - Div. 3 1:15 

16 Varsity Girls - Div. 4 1:35 

17 Varsity Girls - Div. 5 1:55 

18 Jr. Varsity Boys - Div. 3, 4, 5 2:30

19 Jr. Varsity Girls - Div. 3, 4, 5 2:50 

20 Frosh-Soph Girls - Div. 4, 5 3:05

21 Soph Boys - Div., 3, 4, 5 3:20 

22 Frosh-Soph Girls - Div. 3 3:35 

23 Frosh Boys - Div. 3, 4, 5 3:50 12 

Meet the bus at 9:00 for 9:10 departure.  

We will likely be home around 7:30 ish.

TVL Championships. Another Great Day for the Huskies

TVL Finals Photo Album

The "regular season" has come to an end with a resounding success for Hughson Cross Country! For the first time ever, we captured both the Varsity Boys title and Varsity Girls title on the same day. In the JV races, we saw tremendous improvements as well.  All in all, we had a great end to October and are ready for the big meets of November.

JV Girls Race

Jasmine and Kylee with less than 800 to go

Our JV Girls were first up.  This group had been beaten handily at the beginning of the season by Ripon, but had improved a ton over the last few weeks and were ready to make huge improvements.  As the gun sounded, Ripon jumped to an early team lead, running 1-4 at the 800m mark.  By the mile, our girls had closed in and the lead pack consisted of 3 Ripon and 3 Hughson (Jasmine Barrita, Kylee Sullivan, and Gaby Lopez).  Shortly after the mile, our 3 girls moved into the lead and began to pull away.  By the end of the race, Ripon was able to overtake Gaby, who ended up 7th, but Jasmine and Kylee went 1-2 in the race.  Team score wise, we finished 6 points behind Ripon in 2nd place, but far ahead of 3rd place Mountain House and the rest of the league.  Unfortunately, one of our top girls, Katelyn Gonzales, developed some knee pain the weekend before the meet, which prevented her from competing.  When we get her back, healthy for the post season, we should be looking very good.

JV Boys Race

John Cabral and Joseph Powers both broke 13 minuts for the first time.

I and the coaching staff have had the feeling that this group had been underperforming all year.  That underperformance changed at TVL finals.  All the athletes running on this day PRed by 1-2
minutes.....a huge feat!  I had made the decision to move up our top Sophomore, Austin Hoach, to the Varsity race for Finals, but the rest of our boys competed hard, bringing home a 4th place team finish and actually placing closer in the team scores than we had at TVL 2 where Austin won the JV race overall.  Sky Phillips had a massive improvement to lead the Huskies, so did top Hughson finishers: John Cabral, Lance Walton, David Brussow, and Joseph Powers.  This group is the future varsity squad, so it was great to see them finish the season so well.

Varsity Girls Race

Varsity Girls after scoring a very low 17 points

If you would have taken all of the seniors out of the 2015 state championship race, the Hughson Girls team would have been 9th.  Based on this information, and the fact that we added quality runners since last year's state meet, has had me and the rest of the staff treating this group like what we believe  they are: a  California Top 10 Team.  I was very sure going into the season that we would finish the TVL season on top of the league.  My big concern as a coach was to get our girls racing more aggressively from the gun, so that they would be ready for the huge/fast starts at the section meet and the state meet.  Our goal at TVL was to go out faster than goal pace, and try to hang on for a fast overall time.  Mission Accomplished. 6 of our top 7 girls notched PRs on the day (Kinsey was running sick, but was still within 20 seconds of her best time on the Legion Park course).  This gives me tremendous confidence for the VG squad moving forward.

Fife and Mitchell on the way to a 1-2 finish.

Our goal of running a fast early pace was helped out by a couple of runners from other schools who tried to win the race in the first 800m.  Our girls spotted them the early lead, but still went out in 18:30 5k pace.  By the 1 mile mark, we had all of our 5 scorers in the top 5, with Yajira Salinas of Escalon and Alondra Hernandez of Riverbank tucked in behind.  During the 2nd mile, Abigayle Mitchell and Emily Fife began to build a lead that would not be challenged the rest of the way.  They went on to finish 1-2 with relatively comfortable times of 19:42 and 19:43.  Elizette Ysias was 3rd overall with a huge PR of 20:33.  The only question for us now, was would we score the elusive 15 points?  The answer to that question was no.  Alondra Hernandez of RBK, Esmeralda Campos and Kinsey Langley all entered the finishing stretch together.  On this day, Alondra had the better kick and finished 2 seconds ahead of our girls who finished 5th and 6th overall with times of 20:40 and 20:41.  We tried for that 15 point total all year, and on each occasion, one girl from another school was up to the task of splitting our top 5.  No matter, our girls are running great and primed for the final month of the season.

Varsity Boys Race

VB squad, after capturing the 2016 league title.

Since our boys captured the league title in 2003, we have never been outside of the TVL top 3.  However, we have not actually WON the title since then either.  13 years of narrow misses finally came to an end this past Wednesday.  Despite having 3 boys sick and one slowed by a sore knee, we managed to squeak out a narrow victory over a resurgent Escalon squad 31-37.  TVL finals also saw a Hughson boy (Carson Boice) capture the individual title for the scond year in a row.

Calderon and Boice, just past halfway.

As the gun sounded, Escalon's Zach Gardner jumped to an early lead, followed by Eduardo Calderon.  The two passed the 800m mark in under 2:30 (about 15:30 5k pace).  Like the girls, our boys were trying to work on getting out fast and holding on, and our pack came through 800m in 2:31, right on the leaders heels.  By the mile mark, a leading group of 8 runners had formed, Calderon and Gardner of Escalon, Tim Cribbet and Luis Munoz of Ripon, and Carson Boice, Jaymie Jackson, Christian Lee, and Josue Esquivel from Hughson.  Calderon of Escalon continued to push the pace and only Carson was able to go with him.  By 2 miles, the 2 had a significant lead.  Just after the 2 mile point, Carson made his move going up a little hill and was never challenged for the rest of the race.  This is the point where the real drama began, though.  Escalon was ahead of us at the 2 mile point, but a strong late race surge by Josue Esquivel to take 2nd overall and Austin Hoach, who had been moved up from the JV team, brought the championship to HHS!

The boys had also been trying to score a perfect 15 points all year.  With the illness and injury we faced at TVL finals, we were happy to simply escape with a narrow, hard fought victory.  For this group, it is time to get healthy and look at doing big things at the section meet.

Homecoming 2016

Coach S Manning the Waffle Iron

October 21 was a pretty fun day for members (and coaches) of the Hughson Cross Country Team.  Here in Hughson, homecoming day is a non-school day. When homecoming comes around, I usually take the opportunity to work our kids pretty hard.  This year, after the hard work, we had a whole host of activities, including: Team Breakfast, Parade Ride, and Raffle Ticket Sales at the game.  To make things extra cool for the CC team, Sophomore, Emily Fife was chosen as the JV Homecoming Queen!  A fantastic day for everyone and a nice diversion from the constant thinking about training and racing.

Showing up Bright and Early and Ready to Run!

Warming up for the Workout

Team Breakfast

On the Parade Route

Looking Good on the Float.  

Emily, The Homecoming Queen!!!

Volunteer Opportunities

I'm going to try and post a sign up list online here.  Let's see if this works.

10/15/16 Hughson Supercross Invitational
Supercross Jobs

• Open the link above.
• See which jobs you might be interested in.
• Type your name in next to the job you would like to do.

So far, I have two parents: Stacey Bargas and Julie Castro.  It takes a village to raise this meet.

10/21/16 Snackbar at Homecoming Game
We have two shifts available. I need 13 people per shift, so feel free to sign up for both :).  Unfortunately, we cannot have kids working in the snack bar.

• Early shift 4:45-7:30
• Late shift 7:30 - Close.

Here is a link to another sign up sheet.  This technology stuff will be pretty cool if it works.

Snack Bar Sign Up

Race Recaps

Lowell Invitational, 9/10/16:
The trip to San Francisco and cooler, cleaner air is always a highlight of our season.  This year was no different.

Smiling for the camera at Ocean Beach

The varsity girls took a big step toward's establishing themselves as one of the top small school programs in Northern California.  Our team is still a work in progress and we are no where near as good as we need to be or can by by the end of the season.  In San Francisco, running without 2 of our potential top 7 girls, we were still able to place tied for 3rd in a very strong field of mostly large school teams from the Central Coast Section and North Coast Section.  Abbi Mitchell led the way for us, as she has done so far this season, however, this time, the rest of our pack finished within 53 seconds of Abbi's lead.  A team grouping of less than 60 seconds is critical as the bigger, more important meets come around at the end of the season.  This was a huge step in the right direction for us.

Carson, Josue, and Jaymie approach the 2 mile point togehter

The varsity boys squad was also running without 2 of it's top guys.  Nonetheless, we were able to place 16th in a field of pretty strong teams. Carson Boice led the way for us a second time this year, with his strong finish.  Carson was joined under 17 minutes by Josue Esquivel and Jaymie Jackson.  A very nice development for us was Sean Harcrow, running in the JV race.  It was Sean's first ever cross country meet, and I didn't want to throw him to the wolves right away.  He placed a strong 10th in the JV field and was actually our 4th fastest boy on the day.  Inserting Sean and Christian into the varsity mix would have probably moved us up into the top 8-9 schools in our race.

The FS groups were a bit intimidated and should learn a lot from the experience of racing against fast
kids from all over the northern half of our state.  Of that group, only Jasmine Barrita really ran unafraid.  Learning to be fearless and race hard may take a while for the younger group, but it is something they will all get.




Josh Ruff Memorial Invitational 9/17/16:
If the meet in San Francisco was all about the varsity athletes, then this meet in Folsom was our younger group's chance to shine.  The course at Willow Hills Reservoir serves as the championship site for the Sac Joaquin Section.  As such, it is important for all of our kids to get experience on the hot, dusty, rocky, hilly circuit.  Mission accomplished.

Some of the varsity kids got the day off and did a training run on the route before the meet started.  Our younger kids got to race on the course for the first time.

Austin running in the top 10 overall!

FSG Pack about 1 mile into the race.

Probalby the biggest improvement of the week came from our Frosh/Soph boys group.  This is mostly the same group that placed dead last in their heat in San Francisco.  This week, led by Austin Hoach's 10th place finish, our boys improved to 9th out of 13 teams.  More importantly, they got out and pushed hard.  For many of them, it was the first time in a race that they had felt the actual pain of racing.  Contrats to the FSB squad for their much improved effort.


We also got another solid effort from the frosh soph girls' squad.   This race might not have been quite as good for us as the Lowell Invitational, but we did start to develop the pack mentality that is shared by almost all good teams.  Our pack kind of fell apart toward the last 800 of the race and we will work on pushing eachother and pushing ourselves not to give up when the race gets tough, but overall, this was a B or B+ effort from the young ladies of Hughson Cross Country.





Lowell Invite Photo Album