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Written by Bwana Bwana

September 12, 2013

Summer left us a day after the Mt Nittany Marathon, but started creeping back early this week. Something like Mt. Nittany Marathon weather returned, hopefully for its swan song, as Tom Cali, Lance Bland, Judd Michael, George Lesieutre, Costas Maranas, Randy Jepson, Dana Todd, Jim Laudermilch, Meira Minard, Allison Machnicki, Amy Blake, Aisling Ryan, Mike Renz, John Sheakoski, Mike Martin, Rich Harter, David Lloyd, Joel Niemann, newcomer Phil, John Pringle, and Marty Mazur headed for the track under hazy skies, warm temperatures, and sapping humidity.

DCR Commissioner John Sheakoski is always good for a challenging workout suggestion. Since the "R" in DCR stands for relay, it stands to reason one of his favorites is a relay workout. Today at John's suggestion, Bwana called the workout: 6X400 in teams of two. Each team is roughly evenly matched so neither runner is giving the other too short (or too long) a rest. Your rest is the time it takes your partner to do his or her 400. It's not *supposed* to be a race. You're *supposed* to run everything at 5K+ pace. But the relay element keeps teams honestly on pace and a little faster ("Hey, I know we're slow, but I don't want to get lapped by the fast guys!")

Newcomer Phil has some track cred. He could have run on a team of one, running one lap hard and one lap "jogging", and still have beaten most of our duos. It got Bwana thinking that *that* was the typical speed of the Fredericks, the Cali, hell, even the Bwana, of the halcyon days of yore. Our Track Crew has gotten slower, but has thereby attracted more modest-paced runners to the fold. So now it's coming full circle. As Bwana gasps to complete his 95 second 400s, and even Cali and Meirkat run theirs in times Bwana could have easily run 15 years ago, we need to start recruiting the next generation of 70-75 second 400 runners to keep Phil company!