Thursday Track Report: Getting It In Early
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- Written by Bwana Bwana
September 19, 2013
What a nice day! And a nice turnout: Jim Myers, Tom Cali, Meira Minard, Allison Machnicki, Bob Cornwall, Judd Michael, Lance Bland, Andrew Webb, Randy Jepson, Costas Maranas, Marty Klanchar, Michael Goldfine, Mark Fedkin, Mike Martin, Kevin Becker, Dana Todd, Jim Laudermilch, Kim Nelson, David Lloyd, Aisling Ryan, Torrie Raisch, Sara Noss, and Marty Mazur showed their faces at the track. People were getting ready for Fall by wearing their summer colors! Mike Casper showed up to give an announcement about the Discovery Runs wearing Bermuda shorts! Costas wore a gold NVRC shirt. And Meir-cougar was even wearing her birthday pants!
Bwana continued a string of letting other people call the workout. Today was Sara's turn. Sara is such a sweetie. She went easy on the group by calling the old Whitman Sampler, a downward ladder of 1K to 200m in 200m decrements. Start at 5K+ pace and work yourself down to something short of a sprint on the 200. Yes, it's supposed to be a challenge to run each step at a faster pace, but somehow the "downward" part wins out, at least psychologically, and the workout seems easy, at least compared to other workouts.
Bwana continued his two-a-day prep for the mOUnTaiNBACK by running nearly 6 miles in Rothrock. So did quite a few of today's trackers. It's great to get some late Summer and Fall runs in now. Do it while you can! The almanacs and entrail readers are all calling for a hard Winter!
Thursday Track Report: NextGen Trackers
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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!
Thursday Track Report: Welcome To The Fold Of The Old!
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- Written by Bwana Bwana
August 29, 2013
It was warm and humid as Tom Cali, Judd Michael, Lance Bland, Randy Jepson, George Lesieutre, Andy Maguire, Dean Capone, Meira Minard, Torrie Raisch, Mike Martin, Kevin Becker, Rob Peterson, Jeff Welsh, Dana Todd, Aisling Ryan, David Lloyd, Sara Noss, and Marty Mazur headed for the track. Bwana must have been hallucinating. (Old guys and heat don't mix well.) First, as usual, there were a lot of old guys at the track today, but they were nearly matched by all the young ladies. Well, all the young ladies and Meir-cougar. That's another reason Bwana thought he was hallucinating. Meira not only ran to the track, but did the workout with relish (and pickles), and made like she was turning a new leaf in her old age! And she really started messing with Bwana's mind by mentioning how Bwana was "lookin' good". Maybe she was the one hallucinating!
In a bow to the average age that Bwana and most of the men were helping to inflate, Bwana, at the suggestion of old guy Randy, gave a variant of the "Old Guy Workout". A downward ladder of 1 mile - 1/2 mile - 2 X 1/4 mile. The mile is at about 5K race pace and each succeeding rep should get a little faster. It's a tough workout in the heat, though it gets a little easier as you go down the ladder. Still, old guy George was cussing the heat (though in not quite the sailorly fashion he was doing it back in July). Yep. Summer's getting old. Time to pass the torch to Fall!
Some of the runners, including Bwana, were doing the track workout as the first of a two-a-day, the second half of which was a variant of the mOUnTaiNBACK Discovery Run. After about 3 weeks of doing that, it really starts to pay off. And it's a good simulation of running multiple Legs. Bwana thinks it's great that old guy Mike Casper has been scheduling the Discovery Runs on Thursday nights from the beginning! Track and mOUnTaiNBACK, a great pairing!
Thursday Track Report: Some People Just Can't Stop Running!
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- Written by Bwana Bwana
September 5, 2013
A dramatic change in the weather since the marathon brought a good crowd to the track, including Jim Myers, Tom Cali, Lance Bland, George Lesieutre, Costas Maranas, John Sheakoski, Dean Capone, Kevin Becker, Charlie Vassey, Kim Nelson, Aisling Ryan, Dana Todd, Rich Harter, David Lloyd, Rob Peterson, Marty Mazur, and a quintet of Mikes: Mike Renz, Mike Martin, Mike Weyant, newcomer Mike Zimmerman, and Michael Goldfine. Of that group, 4 had run Sunday's big race and several had run many miles of it in support of other runners. Not a bad recovery!
Bwana usually starts a regimen of workouts with long reps about this time of year, but not just yet. It's been a while since 300s. So NX3X300 was the call. It's a lo recovery workout (100m between each 300 in a set) with the 300s run at nearly mile race pace ("5K++"). Do the first in a set at 5K pace and make the next two successively faster. And try to maintain the pace across sets with a 500 meter rest between sets. It's a tough indoor favorite that we do outdoors at least a few times a year.
Congratulations to all who completed (or even tried!) the Mt. Nittany Marathon. You're to be not only congratulated but commended! It was a tough race on a very tough day!
Thursday Track Report: Setting The Bar
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- Written by Bwana Bwana
Auguast 22, 2013
There's always an excuse not to come to track, but Bwana can see through all of them. We're getting into the season of mOUnTaiNBACK training, and the Discovery Series runs "conflict" with Track. I put "conflict" in quotes because the Discovery Series runs start more than 4 hours after Thursday Track is over. So where's the conflict? And considering that most people will be running two or more Legs of the mOUnTaiNBACK, occasional two-a-days are excellent preparation! Yet among today's Crew of Tom Cali, Bob Cornwall, Judd Michael, Lance Bland, John Pringle, Mike Martin, Kevin Becker, Rob Peterson, John Wilcock and his daughter Emma, Charlie Vassey, Joel Niemann, Dana Todd, Jim Laudermilch, David Lloyd, and Marty Mazur, only Cali, Jubb, David Lloyd, and Bwana were at both workouts. (Bwana knows that several of today's Trackers are signed up for the mOUnTaiNBACK and several of this evening's Discovery Series runners are "regular" Trackers.)
Bwana confounded expectations today by giving a long interval workout despite the conditions: warm and humid. But these "conditions" are really the last throes of summer and are nothing compared to what we had 5 weeks ago. So the workout was 3X1K at 5K+ pace with 400m rests. Bwana only did 2X1K, since he wanted to survive all 3 workouts he planned today (there was a morning weight session). But David Lloyd did all three and came to the Discovery Run, as did Cali and Jubb.
So, the lessen here is, can the excuses. Set the bar high at the beginning of mOUnTaiNBACK training. It'll get easier and there will be payoffs.