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Written by Bwana Bwana

May 16, 2013

There was no threat of bad weather today, just some stiff breezes as Jim Myers, Lance Bland, Judd Michael, George Lesieutre, Ken Davis, Michael Goldfine, Aroline Hanson, Jaimie Wright, Esther Prins, newcomer Gina Torretti, Kevin Becker, Jeff Welsh, John Iceland, Dana Todd, Forrest Briscoe, Ron Cunfer, Sara Noss, and Marty Mazur headed for the track.

A pretty good crowd today, with one newcomer (Gina) and two returning lost sheep (Forrest and Aroline). Gina had come via Kevin Becker on a dare. Kevin gets a lot of recruits, particularly female ones, from his workplace, the Tavern, by all manner of subterfuge. But Gina may have gotten the better of him. Her side of the deal is that Kevin has to do sprints up Mt. Nittany with her! Gina is late of State High (2009) and wants to try to get on the PSU sprint team as a 200 meter runner. Our track workouts generally revolve around training for longer distances, but Gina is also getting some advice from Artie Gilkes, so she's in capable hands. Today's workout was a "lite" version of the Front-Loader: 1600-400-400-400 ("lite" because we only did 3X400 rather than 4X). The rest was very short (200m) so the key was to run an honest but not TOO fast 1600 at 5K+ pace, and then do your 400s successively faster while recovering from the 1600. Gina, though she'd never done a mile, acquitted herself well. In her 400s, she showed her 200 spirit, doing the front end of each pretty fast, then slowing down for the second 200. Everyone else showed themselves better able to deal with the short recovery than Bwana.

A big weekend of racing is coming up next weekend. Two of the longest-standing local races (33 years each!)  will be run. On Saturday, the Black Moshannon 5K and 10K will be run in Black Moshannon State Park. The 10K is the older race, the 5K only being added recently. The 5K is a real beginner's race: relatively flat and easy. The 10K is for the 'real' runners: mostly benign, but with a monster half-mile climb in Mile 3. And the *real* real runners do a Memorial Weekend double: Black Mo' on Saturday AND the Boalsburg Memorial Day Run, a tough little race of an oddball 3.8 mile distance, on Monday. Bwana will be out of town on Saturday, but is definitely on board for the Boalsburg Classic!