Thursday Track Report: A Pun-ishing Workout

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Written by Bwana Bwana

April 9, 2015

It was drab and cool, barely over 45, after the 60s early in the week. That’s April for you. The cruelest month. But not too cruel to keep a pretty big Crew from getting to the track. Tom Cali, Bob Cornwall, Judd Michael, Lance Bland, Mike Casper,Costas Maranas, George Lesieutre, Marty Klanchar, Andrew Webb, Mike Renz, Andy Maguire, Mike Martin, John Wilcock, Mark Lee, Mike Zimmerman, Alex Wouden, Seth Senior, Carole Dudukovich, Sara Noss, Dana Todd, Jim Laudermilch, John Ake, Rich Harter, Dan Mangieri, Adam Ilgen, David Lloyd, and Marty Mazur all made the workout.

Bwana decided to be Cruella DeVil to the Crew and give them a Devil of a workout. One that would test their ability to take puns and punishment. The Fortitude Workout. Actually, even though it is a tough workout, it seems to be a lot of people’s favorite. A little variety in distance, a few gear changes. Run 400 pretty hard (5K+ race pace), take a short, 100m jogging rest, then rip into a 200 at race kick pace. You’re still recovering from that 400, so the last 50 meters of the 200 is pretty hard! Take a generous (for Bwana) rest of 500 meters so you can start at the same spot on the track. This also allows you to recover enough for some quality reps. Do the 400-200 combo 4 times!

Spring 5K season is on us fast and furious. There will probably be 100 of them between now and Memorial Day. That and all the Spring marathons. As the lawns green up, the horrid Winter will quickly become a hazy memory. Enjoy the prime running time!

Thursday Track Report: Play Nice!

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Written by Bwana Bwana

March 27, 2015

It used to be we’d get at least one 70 degree day before the end of the month of March. But these last two winters have been long and cold, and so a “nice” day at the tail end of March is one where it’s cloudy with temperatures around 50 (even though the forecast calls for flurries before April finally gets here!) And because it was so “nice”, a good-sized crew of John Domico, Judd Michael, Ken Davis, Marty Klanchar, Andy Maguire, John Wilcock, Mark Lee, Jeff Welsh, Dan Mangieri, Rob Peterson, Alex Wouden, Mike Renz, Mike Martin, Mike Zimmerman, Rich Harter, Adam Ilgen, Dana Todd, David Lloyd, Sara Noss, and Marty Mazur showed up at the track.

For this week’s workout, Bwana gave 6 X 1 Lap progressive. It starts out nice and ends up about as nasty as you want to make it. Start in Lane 2 and run a lap at a 5K race pace or maybe a little slower. This will seem like a slow start. But after a half-lap rest, you move out to Lane 3 and run a lap in the same time or faster than your first. Continue this out to Lane 7. Each lap is 8+ yards longer than the last, so by Lane 7, you’re running about 50 yards farther than you were in Lane 2. The time for each lap should be the same or better than your last, and the rest is short, so play nice or you’ll be in serious trouble by Lane 7!

Looking ahead on the long-range forecast, April looks nice…and rainy! The first forecast 70 degree day may have to wait until May…May 8^th that is. Hopefully, things will pan out nicer than that!

Thursday Track Report: Last Man Standing

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Written by Bwana Bwana

April 2, 2015

Thursday Track has been going on close to a quarter century and most of the original Thursday Track Crew is still running, though in various states of disability. Bwana got word today from Jim Myers that Mike Dooris, one of the “Original Originals”, is retiring from Penn State. Mike was one of the first people Bwana ran with when he moved to town 27 years ago. And Mike was the first of the original Thursday Trackers to finally have to hang up his running shoes due to an old, non-running knee energy. But every time Bwana runs into Mike on campus or downtown, he looks to be in marvelous shape, keeping himself so with a pretty good gym regimen. Mike will be keeping himself busy, as all retirees should, playing bass with the Second Winds, a jazz group that was the subject of a recent CDT article on the cover of their Active Life feature. Mike looks to be the kid in that group. You can catch them around town, particularly at Otto’s.

It was partly cloudy and mild as Jim Myers, John Domico, Judd Michael, Lance Bland, Mike Casper, Ron Cunfer, Meira Minard, Esther Prins, Andy Maguire, Mike Renz, Mike Zimmerman, Mike Martin, Rob Peterson, newcomer Kyle, Alex Wouden, Adam Ilgen, David Lloyd, and Marty Mazur headed for the track. Of this group, Myers is the senior in age and one of the “Original Originals”. Jim’s been having knee trouble, but still found it in him to run 12+ miles as part of a Ragnar Relay in Florida last month. Domico, another long timer, is now known as The Bionic Man and spends much of his track workout doing PT for his titanium hips. Judd and Lance have no replacement parts that Bwana is aware of, but both have had their share of time off due to injury. Ditto Casper and Bwana himself. Only Ron Cunfer of those present over 50 has so far escaped a major lay-over. A couple of notable Originals not present today were Tom Cali (lately laid up with upper spine problems, but probably running Boston in a couple of weeks) and Bob Cornwall, who seems to have taken over Cali’s spot at the Fountain of Youth spigot.

But enough of this “Last Man Standing” talk. What about the women? Our regular Crew does not contain any over-50 gals, but a few have been with us a long time. Meira made it today. Meirkat is an iron lady who regularly takes nasty tumbles on rocky trails. A regular trail race champ, she’s edging to also take Most Battered Runner honors. And Esther has already had to fight back from disability.

So that is what you youngsters have to look forward to, especially if you’re as crazy and relentless as Renz, Zimmerman, Martin, Machnicki, Murray, Ilgen,….

Bwana gave a workout today that was a gift from one of our regulars from the 90s (Bwana wonders if she’s still running…) 200s on the minute. Well, that’s how we used to do it, anyway. 12 (or 16) 200s, each started at the start of a minute. However long it takes you to run the 200, you have to the start of the next minute to rest for your next. The workout is over fast, but it’s one of the toughest ones we do. Seems easy at the beginning, but fatigue builds quickly. The main problem for us now is that most of us can barely do 200m in much inside a minute anymore, so Bwana has stretched the workout to 200s on the 70 (seconds).

Thursday Track Report: Dead Horse - Flogged

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Written by Bwana Bwana

March 19, 2015

On the last full day of Spring, Old Man Winter was threatening one more go-around the next day. But for the moment, it was a nice day on Bwana’s Birthday: sunny, cool (mid-30s), and mild breezes uncharacteristic of mid-March. A light crew of Judd Michael, Lance Bland, Marty Klanchar, Meira Minard, Jeff Welch and newcomer Dan, Rich Harter, David Lloyd, Sara Noss, and Marty Mazur headed for the track.

Bwana’s Birthday always involves an age related theme. A couple of years ago, Bwana called a group run (despite popular misconception, his birthday is not always on a Thursday): Run Bwana’s age in furlongs. A nice 7-mile (56 furlong) run on an even more wintery day (there was still a lot of snow on the ground). This year, with the Egg Hill race just a few days off, Bwana didn’t want to tax anyone with too long a workout. Bwana is old-school, having run his high-school track career at distances measured in yards and miles. It turns out, if you do the math, that running one lap plus a straight-away in Lane 5 of a 400 m track will give you a distance of 580 yards, give or take 58 Angstroms. So, the workout was 5X580 (yds) at mile race pace with ¾-lap rest between reps. It’s a tough little workout, though some people wanted to extend it to 10X580! Maybe we’ll do a similar thing next year, though we’ll have to move out a lane to get 590 yards.

After flogging the age theme through the meat of the workout, a few people stayed to help Bwana complete his birthday run, jogging in the outside lane for a total distance of 5.8 miles.