Tuesday, September 20, 2016

OWU and a week off going into Williams

Our week leading into Ohio Wesleyan was less than ideal.  We had a lighter workout prescribed for Tuesday that ended up being a really tough one that I ended up cutting short due to some warm temperatures.   I think that workout took a lot more out of us that anticipatied.  Thursday was more of the same.  The problem is we don't want to sacrifice a short term, early season, inconsequential race for long term goals.  So we suffered through.  We had a handful of kids that competed well, several being freshman which is always a huge plus.  We even had a few PR's, but the majority of the results were a little disappointing, so we got back to work and the next day we were on the trails in the Rocky River Reservation for a long run.

Last week we turned a major corner.  We have been together for 5 weeks and things are starting to click.  We had a big time workout Tuesday morning under the lights on the track.  Everyone ran better than their prescribed times and looked good doing it.  They made a difficult workout look easy.  They had great energy in the weight room later that afternoon as well.  All in all a great day.  Friday we followed up Tuesday's workout and lift with another solid effort. I was pleased by the fact that we were able to bounce back from a tough week and a bad race with two solid workouts.

This Saturday we will find out what we are really made of.  Friday we are loading up the bus to head to Williamstown, Massachusetts for the Purple Valley Invite.  We will be racing against 11 regionally ranked women's  teams and 13 regionally ranked men's  team, with 10 from each gender being nationally ranked.  This will be a big time eye opening meet for our young group.  This is a group that has the potential to be successful at a high level down the road so we want them to be exposed to what running at a national level is like now.  Hopefully down the road we will be going to these types of meets to pick up at large points.  It is always a little nerve wracking taking a young group like this but we feel they are ready for this kind of experience and need it now.

We have a light tempo session today, a medium long run Wednesday and a very light workout Thursday leading into the race at Williams Saturday.  I am excited to see our progress not only Saturday but moving forward.  Hopefully last week was an indication of what is to come.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Wooster

We are very thankful for Wooster putting on this event.  The course is well manicured, well marked, our kids have fun with it.  It is a great way to open up our season and allowed us to come in a few days early for camp.

Overall we were very pleased with how last night went.  Internally I struggle with taking our team to a race and not racing, but using the this meet as a longer effort or workout just makes more sense in my head with what we are trying to accomplish long term.  Yesterdays efforts were an extension of what we did last Friday and something we can build upon.

We were able to check all the boxes we wanted to accomplish yesterday.  Our freshman learned our travel routine for meets, they learned how we operate, warm up, cool down etc at meets.  We got out some race jitters and broke the rust.

Overall we have come a very long ways in one year.  The culture is building and our freshman and returners carried themselves well.  We looked a lot more like a team, more organized with the small things, there was no hand holding.  We feel very good about where we are and where we are heading.

Until next time!  RUN HARD!

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Early season thoughts and our first "meet"

Becky and Me hanging out with Larry
As always summer went by way too fast.  The highlight had to be the CAVS winning the NBA championship.  Becky and I went to all three of the home finals games, we went down town for game 7, our coaching staff went to the team arrival at the airport and we all went to the parade (but who didn't, holy cow there were a lot of people in the Land that day).  Now its September Camp is over and we have our first meet tonight.  More on that later.

















It is always a little nerve wracking bringing in a group of freshman.  Did we get the right kids?  Will they mesh well with our current kids?  There are always a few question marks.  We been very fortunate so far.  We have an amazing group and we had an awesome camp!  The group has come together very well, they have raised the bar on expectations and set some high goals for the year.  The kids came back on Aug 16th and the freshman went right into the week of welcome.  We had our time trial, We watched one of our assistant coaches win a gold medal at the Olympics in the pole vault!  We had several team meetings.  We had a Brown v Gold inter team competitions, which were fun, and a lot of early morning practices.


Pizza at our house
Kat wins GOLD in Women's PV!

Watching the Men's 1500 at our house
Heated game of Rock Paper Scissor

















Cooling down after long run on the Tow Path
White Pines Lodge at CVEEC

Crystal Lake
Friday after the first week of class we got to go CVEEC in the CVNP for our over night camp, which we didn't get to do because of Week Of Welcome.  The CVNP is my favorite place to run in the country, so to be able to stay in the park and get a few runs in there was awesome.  We went to Crystal Lake on Saturday afternoon to swim, kayak, play volleyball, fish and paddle boat.  It was a great first weekend of the year.  Getting to spend it with our team was great.  Its always good to start the year off with a lot of team bonding time. 

We open up our season tonight at Wooster.  Similar to last year we will enter our team in both races, 4k and 5k for women and 5k and 4 mile for men.  We will use the meet to practice a lot of race day situations, get our freshman accustomed to how we operate on race day.  We will run the races as a long extended workout and build off what we did last week.  I am excited to see how they handle the day.


Last thought for the day.  I have always loved looking at Pre Season polls and polls in general.  Very rarely do they mean much.  Its way to early to see how much work everyone put in over the summer, who will emerge as a rising star, how the freshman transition into college and the team etc... Either way they are fun to look at and see what the pollsters think.  The OAC polls came out not long ago.  I finally took a peak at them this morning.  Our women were picked 6th and our men were picked 5th.  Probably a fair assessment of our team right now, but I am excited to see how things play out on Oct 29th in Columbus!  Until next time.... RUN HARD!