John Darmody's XC/Track & Field Blog - 2009-10

St. Ambrose sophomore All-American John Darmody will be writing a blog to give SAU XC and Track & Field fans a look inside the 2009-10 season.

November 8, 2009 - Championships

 Yesterday was the Midwest Collegiate Conference Cross Country Championship meet hosted by William Penn in Oskaloosa, Iowa. We had already raced here once before, earlier in the season, at the preview meet. At that time the weather was cold and there was snow on the ground. This time around the sky was clear blue, the temperature was near 70 and the course was firm and dry. It was really the perfect day, in my mind, for a cross country race. Coach Beth from the sidelines and me from the race both had to yell at Dan Vaughn at the beginning because for some reason he decided to take the lead for the first 200m of the race. I just yelled, "Dan, you need to calm down."

It eventually settled in to the lead pack that I anticipated for the most part, that being Mike Miroux from Mount Mercy, Kennedy Kiprop from Iowa Wesleyan, Bichok Deng of Grandview, Kevin Randle and myself. The only unknown of the meet was Viterbo because we had only raced them once this year and it was at Notre Dame and in a meet of that size it is difficult to determine how you stack up head to head. There were a couple of Viterbo runners up in the lead pack for about a mile and a half or so, along with Andrew Drinkall of Ashford but we eventually pulled away from them.

Kevin ran a genius of a race. For the first half he and I were content to just sit behind Miroux and Kennedy and let them break the wind for us, but I began to notice that every so often Kevin would pull out to Kennedy's shoulder for a little while and then tuck back in behind. I asked him about it after the race and he explained it to me. He said that at those times he felt that the pace of the race was too slow and he wanted to go faster, but he didn't want to lead, so he just pressured the leaders to push the pace and then got in behind them again. It was a fantastic strategy.

At the approximate half-way point in the race, 2.5 miles in, the runners cross the road to run a large loop around a wide open grass soccer complex. At this point in the race Coach Z yelled at me to put in a surge, but it was Miroux who took off, most likely in an attempt to counter my surge before it even started. He took off and I covered the move right on his heels. It was at this point that we separated from Kevin and Kennedy because they didn't have the foot-speed to match the pace. I sat waiting on Miroux and the moment that he slowed the pace back down I put in my real move and drove past him and built a quick lead.

As I came through the 4 mile mark with a mile to go in the race I started checking behind me to see what my lead was and determine who was behind me and I got a pleasant surprise. No longer was I running away from Miroux, but rather Kevin was stride for stride with Bichok and was running me down. I kicked up a notch and started to check my corners a little more often. Once I got a quarter-mile from the finish I just sprinted in, especially when I turned the corner to the finish and saw that the clock was still under 26:00. I broke the tape as Conference Champion in 25:50, a new course record (breaking the one I set in the snow a month previous) and the first time I have run under 26. I turned around to see Kevin coming in right behind me for a 1-2 Ambrose finish and a huge PR for him as he ran 26:08. At this point I was ecstatic, for myself, for Kevin and the rest of my teammates as I was pretty sure that such a performance would wrap up the Conference Team Title as well and it did.

We outscored second place 29 - 64 for the fourth straight Conference Championship on the men's side. Thus qualifying the men's team for the NAIA XC National Championships. The men's top seven will run at Fort Vancouver, WA on the 21st of November. The women's team also performed well, but were a little disappointed with a 3rd place team finish. They will send two individual representatives to Nationals, Captains Lauren Cleary and Brooke Ashcraft. This season was a success overall for most of the athletes. Many of them achieved and exceeded their goals and expectations for the season, some of them were left wanting, but doing your best on any given day is all that you can ask for. For many of the freshman, this first season of cross country at the collegiate level was a whole new world of experience for them. They will come back next year fully prepared for what to expect and will do even better.
 

October 20, 2009 - Reflections

As the season nears its conclusion I am going to take this opportunity to reflect a little on the year especially with relation to last year. We have but one meet remaining before the Conference Championships and it is at home. There should be a lot of support for the team with a lot of students and family members planning on attending.

It is strange to think that we have been training and going to school for over two months now. It seems like not so long ago we were all arriving back from the summer to greet old friends and make new ones when suddenly our new friends are now our old ones and our family has just grown. It is wonderful to have such close-knit ties between teammates because it makes everything easier and more fun. Not only does it help to get along with the people you train with and compete with, but more than that. You always have someone in the cafeteria to eat with, or you have at least one person you know in your classes for you to sit by. The family-like friendships that are wrought through team sports provide a solid support system for everyone.

I have come a long way since I started competing at the college level over a year ago. Back then I was the new guy, just one of the freshmen, in the exact same position as the freshmen of this year's team. It was a definite challenge adapting myself to life as a collegiate student-athlete and so I find it easy to relate to the situation of the current freshmen. It definitely isn't easy, not just from the athletic standpoint, but every aspect of college life. They are thrust into a world of sudden and broad freedom where they must make their own decisions about most aspects of their lives. This is something that many new college students have never experienced before and may not be prepared for. Sometimes it is difficult to get out of bed in the morning and go to class when you don't have anyone forcing you to. There is no one telling you to stop playing video games and do your homework. Suddenly, young people are forced to make mature and important decisions, some of which may impact the rest of their lives.

In athletics, especially cross country, it is much the same way. The race distance at college is almost twice the length of high school. Therefore the training level and volume is much greater as well. It is a struggle for new college runners to adapt to such a drastic change in atmosphere. Their bodies aren't used to the level of recovery needed to handle the greater stresses of college training and racing and they don't always realize just how much more taxing it is. It can be frustrating for them to not see significant improvement in performance throughout the season, or even see what seems to be a decline in performance. It can be a discouraging thing for a young person to not meet the goals and standards they set for themselves simply because the atmosphere wasn't what they were expecting. It is important to put such things in perspective of the whole year and your whole career in order to see success and failure on a grander stage.

At this time last year I was just as frustrated as any of the freshmen are right now, if not more. I had run my fastest time of the year at our third meet, which was Loyola, at 27:09. I was expecting to just keep getting faster and drop under 27 no problem. Unfortunately that didn't happen. I started going slower and slower. On top of it all, whenever we raced our conference opponents I would be soundly beaten by them. Our team was ranked 3rd in the conference and there weren't too high of hopes for improvement. Suddenly, at the conference meet, everything came together. The whole team ran phenomenal races and I beat people whom I hadn't beaten all year to finish second. It wasn't my fastest race of the year, but it was the best performance on the right day to get the job done. We won the conference title and went to the National Championships as a team.

This year the landscape is different. We are heavy favorites in the conference and a lot of our runners are running pretty consistently throughout the season. We know from last year that we can't be complacent, we always have to go out and attack or we will be the team to be ranked first and lose when it matters. Many of the freshmen are probably staking their expectations from the season off of the success of the team last year and that is good, it gives them something to aim for. It is important, however, that they work for everything and feel entitled to nothing. That will keep them focused on the right things. We will be a successful team this year and farther into the future because we have a strong team bond, great coaching and leadership and a sense of purpose and dedication. From the beginning of the year every year Coach Z hammers the four core values of the program into our head: Trust, Commitment, Respect, Tradition. Our team is our family, we have a special relationship that forms a deep trust. We are committed to working hard and achieving our goals, we keep the focus on the right things. We have respect for each other as well as our opponents, there is no dishonor in defeat. And we are rooted in a strong tradition that we are entrusted with carrying on and passing forward to future generations. It is all of these things that forge the St. Ambrose Cross Country team and define its success. And it is the reason it will continue to succeed into the future.

October 12, 2009 - Conference Preview

This past Saturday was the William Penn Invitational out in Oskaloosa, IA. This meet was serving as a preview of the Conference Championships which will be held at the same course in less than a month. Most of the schools in the conference were in attendance with the exception of Viterbo and Clarke and so it showed a pretty accurate gauge of how the championships may unfold. It was another early morning trip for us, the bus left at 6 am and the first race was the women at 10 am.

  The first surprise came about half-way through the trip when we noticed something strange happening outside the bus. A fine white powder was swirling through the air. Yes indeed, the first snow of the year came in the second week in October. At some points it was quite heavy and there was notable accumulation. We arrived at the course to find it completely covered in a layer of snow. We all got a chuckle out of the reaction of Derick Singleton who is from Texas (we actually just call him Tex) and has never run in snow or even temperatures below 50º.

  The women's race was actually abbreviated because of the weather. Apparently the race officials felt that a certain part of the course was too muddy or something like that and so they shortened the race by about a quarter mile. Therefore, instead of a 5k the women ran approximately 4,600m. Us guys didn't find this out until afterwards and were noting our surprise when the women were running amazing times. The men's race, however, remained 8 km.

  At race time it was probably between 20 and 30 degrees, but it had stopped snowing and the course was cleared for the most part by the gator truck driving ahead of us runners. This race was a lot different from our past races in that the size of the field didn't number in the hundreds. There were only five people in the lead pack, one each from Grand View, Mount Mercy and Iowa Wesleyan along with Kevin Randle and myself. It was kind of strange to be running along in silence and I was half tempted to start a conversation with one of the other runners. Eventually the mind-set shifted when we got to the middle stages of the race when everyone is more focused and is really racing.

  I felt good the whole time and was comfortable running in second for the first half of the race. With about two miles to go I pulled into the lead and never looked back (figuratively speaking). It got a little confusing at the end when I didn't realize how close I was to the finish-line and thought we had another mini-loop to run instead of going straight to the finish and so I wasn't really sprinting for the line until I only had about 100m to go. I was incredibly happy to win my first race in college cross country and set a PR and course record while doing it, running 26:10. The rest of the team finished equally impressively. A lot of the team ran their own personal records and as a team we came out on top, scoring 35 points.

  This all without Doug, our number 3 runner. This impressive showing makes us all very excited for the Conference meet. I think it was a significant boost for confidence ahead of the Fighting Bee Invite (our home meet) and the Conference Championships.

October 4, 2009 - Loyola

  This past weekend was the Lakefront Invitational hosted by Loyola University Chicago. It is a very scenic course right on Lake Michigan. This race was the largest we will have all year in terms of individual athletes, with over 400 participants in the men's race. It is an interesting course, particularly because of the hill that was basically built for the sake of the cross country course that is otherwise out of place amid soccer fields and baseball diamonds. For the men's 8k race, this hill must be scaled 5 times, which really takes it out of a runner.

  I personally had a very poor race, I might describe it as the worst race of my collegiate career, not necessarily based on time, but a combination of that and how I felt most of the race. I ran the race in 27:26 which is 17 seconds slower than I ran last year. Kevin Randle was second for the team once again and finished 9 seconds behind me. I don't really know what happened in the race that led to me running so much slower than I am capable of. We had a weekend off racing and so I hoped for a fast time from being well rested. Some contributing factors might have been the fact that we had to wake up at 5:30 to get on the bus that left at 6am in addition to our belief that we may have run the fartlek workout on Wednesday harder than we thought we did. I went through the first mile in a good time of 5:10 and felt good and relaxed, but after that the race sort of just fell apart for me. I lost focus and started getting passed by a lot of people. In hindsight I remember myself not really racing, but more just jogging along in my comfort zone. I tried to struggle back into it and compete at the end of the race, but felt physically and mentally drained. I definitely have some things to think about and focus on over the next few weeks to get myself back into the racing form I was in back at the beginning of the season.

  Nevertheless, I have been able to get over my performance at the meet and move on to the future. On saturday night Tommy, Doug, and I along with a few non-xc friends went to the movies and saw "The Informant" Matt Damon's new movie. It was very good and just hanging out was a lot of fun. There are a number of movies coming out in the near future that look really good that we want to see, such as the new Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. I look forward to team bonding experiences outside of actual cross country related activities because its a lot of fun to just chill out and relax. For instance, several members of the team are working on forming a sort of impromptu a cappella group and singing a few songs at the next St. Ambrose Open Mic Night. Doug is heading this effort and it is slowly, but surely progressing.

  Our next meet is the Conference Championship Preview meet. We are racing at William Penn in Oskaloosa, IA where the Conference meet will be held in a month. This preview is taking place this Saturday morning and most of our Conference opponents will likely be there so it will be a good place to plan our strategy for conference based on what happens and what we see at this meet. Hopefully my head will be back in the game for this meet, but if not I'm not worried yet because Conference is the meet that really matters and I trust coach to get us ready for that meet first and foremost.

September 26, 2009 - Time off

This weekend we do not have a meet. We have a week to rest and recover before our next test of competition. A lot of the freshmen are discovering how differently the body reacts to racing 8 kilometers instead of 5 like they did in high school.

The races at the collegiate level take a lot more out of a person, both physically and mentally. Many of them were very disappointed in their performances at Notre Dame, but we more experience runners have been explaining to them that they need to relax, and don't worry because they have to let their body get used to the longer, more intense season. They also just need to trust that Coach Z knows what he is doing and will get them ready for the most important races. All of the races before Conference are really just like workouts because performance doesn't mean anything until the Championships.

We are about a month into the school year now, so we have all settled into the academic routine for the most part. Classes for me are going very well, I enjoy most of them a lot. Naturally there are some classes that I find less interesting that others, but that is just how it goes. I am a particular fan of my guitar class. I am learning a lot and having a lot of fun. My favorite class of the more traditional, academic variety is probably Political Science 101: US Government I. I am very interested in politics, government and law and I find the class fascinating. On the topic of politics, the Student Government Elections are this week for the upcoming school-year. I am running for the position of Senator of the College of Arts and Sciences. There are four openings and only one other person running to my knowledge and so I am pretty confident that I will get my desired position. I am very excited to sit on the SGA Senate and have a say in the goings on of the University on a more direct level.

September 21, 2009 - Notre Dame

Last week was the prestigious National Catholic XC Championships hosted by the University of Notre Dame. The top nine runners on both the men's and women's teams attended. This meet provides an unique opportunity for team bonding at a more intimate level. We left on Thursday at noon and the bus ride to South Bend, IN is about 6 hours including the time change from Central to Eastern Time. We had plenty of movies to help occupy the time and some people chose to nap or listen to music or other such things to distract them from the long ride. We got to the University in the early evening and took a nice scenic walking tour of the campus, passing the football stadium and walking through their indoor track facility. Our travels ended at the book store which is enormous. It is probably comparable in size to the Rogalski Center. We shopped there for a short time and then went to our hotel.

Dinner that evening was the endless pasta bowl at Olive Garden. I was only able to eat two servings, but some people on the team were apparently much hungrier. Austin made his way through five bowls. After dinner we returned to the hotel for the night's entertainment. It is tradition on the team for the freshmen at the Notre Dame meet to entertain the upper class. I was included in the freshmen's group because I fell asleep in my room last year and missed it. The girls sang a Spice Girls song while one of their number attempted to juggle apples. The guys told an interesting narrative about their adventures on Tyler Norby's birthday. I chose to perform my impression of a television skit about the Loch Ness Monster, which all of the men found absolutely hilarious but prompted blank stares from the women. Most of the guys stayed down in the lobby and played a long game of poker before heading off to bed.

The race started in the mid-afternoon on Friday. We stopped for lunch at a grocery/deli around noon before driving to the race location. The course winds its way around the Notre Dame Golf Course and so it is very well groomed and maintained. Eric Mock competed in the open race, where both men and women race simultaneously, first. We were able to follow him around the course cheering the whole way. The next race was the women's varsity followed by our race. It was a very hot day and the half-hour leading up to the race we were all dousing our heads and bodies in ice water to keep cool. The race started fast, I hit about 5:00 for the first mile and then I slowed down considerably. I was right near a conference opponent for the first half of the race and that helped keep me focused. I finished strong, passing 4 or 5 people in the last quarter-mile, but overall I was slightly disappointed with my performance, running quite a bit slower that the previous week. Everyone else seemed equally frustrated by the race, running marginally slower than previously except for Keith who ran much faster.

We beat the conference opponents who were also at the meet and so that was counted as a success. The bus ride back was pretty similar to the outward trip, watching movies, listening to music or sleeping. We have this weekend off from racing and our next meet isn't until October 3rd at Loyola University, Chicago. I ran my fastest time of the year before nationals there last year so I am very hopeful for a good time there again.
 

September 13, 2009 - First True Race

Friday was our second meet of the season. We left at 2 PM on a charter bus for Detweiller Park in Peoria for the Bradley University XC Invite. This would be our first true competitive test as a team. Not only would we be running our true race distance of 8 kilometers (5 miles), but we would also be in a much larger field of teams as compared to the Augustana meet where there we only two other teams. At this meet we faced 16 other teams with almost 200 individual runners.

Like most of the courses we will run on this season the park was relatively flat which resulted in some fast times. We finished 7th as a team in the "College" division which essentially was all of the schools that weren't NCAA D-I.

I thought the race went very well. At the team meeting the day before the coaching staff pointed out that Monmouth College is very comparable to our own team when it comes to times and so we should stick with their runners. This plan helped me out a lot. About a mile or so into the race a couple of Monmouth guys came up on me and I just stuck with them the rest of the race. It makes it easier to keep yourself motivated throughout a race of this length when you have a goal like that in mind, not to mention it is easier to follow someone else and let them set a pace than to go at it alone. I ran with the top Monmouth runner for about 3.5 miles and then passed him in the last half mile to finish just ahead of him. Not only did I achieve the goal of beating the Monmouth athlete, but I also ran a personal best for the 8km, running 26:14 which is 9 seconds better than my previous fastest that I ran at NAIA XC Nationals last fall.

The performance of the rest of the team was equally, if not more so, impressive. Freshman Kevin Randle continues to improve and show a lot of promise coming in as our number 2 runner again and just missing the elite sub-27 club, running 27:03. All of our top 5 finished with times under 28 minutes which is a phenomenal showing. There is also a lot of depth to the team since the 3rd through 7th runners on the team were separated by less than one minute and there were two freshmen in the top 5, Randle and then Ryan Buchanan gave a solid effort and got the number 3 spot for the team. Overall it was a great race and it shows a lot of promise for the rest of the season. We are hopeful that we will get a little more recognition on the national level for it.

We next run at the University of Notre Dame's National Catholic Championships this coming Friday. Only the top nine from the men and women will make the trip, however. The race is run on the University's golf course and so it has a perfectly maintained surface and is nearly completely flat. It is my favorite course to run on and the level of competition always provides for fast times, considering that half of the teams running are NCAA Division I. I am confident that the freshman will find the experience as a whole quite enjoyable. For this particular meet I almost think the experience of everything outside of the race itself is more important. It is a more intimate team bonding experience, it is the first meet of the year where we will stay the night in a hotel and it is experiences like this that make the team better through a more close bond between teammates.

September 10, 2009 -- Labor Day Weekend adventures

This Labor Day weekend was quite exciting and eventful. It started on Saturday with a morning practice. Then after brunch Doug, Keith, Jay Whitmore, Dan Vaughn and I packed up and drove about 45 minutes north to Maquoketa to go spelunking. There are a bunch of caves and caverns up in that area open for people to explore. The first one we went in was called "Wye Cave." We had to climb straight down a sinkhole about 10' to enter it. It was pretty challenging at some points, even forcing us to slide on our stomachs through a foot high opening and mud several inches thick. After that opening most of the rest of the way we could stand up, or stoop at the worst. Most of the ground was covered in thick, sticky mud that was a bit of a pain, especially when our clothes were completely covered in it. After we explored that cave to its extent and climbed out we really needed a wash. Luckily there is a high pressure hose for exactly that purpose near the cave entrance. We spent the rest of the day shirtless while they were drying on Doug's car.

Most of the rest of the caves we explored weren't like Wye and we could just walk through them, or were short enough that a little careful climbing was all that was needed.

 Our final expedition of the day was into the Steel Gate Passage which contains around 900 feet of passageways. This cave involved a lot more crawling and scrambling around rock formations and things of that nature. I was pretty excited when I discovered a side passage near the end of the cave that none of my companions had seen before. I got a little panicked on the way out when I turned the wrong way, but I was soon corrected by everyone else. We made it out still within our time schedule. We needed to get back to school before the cafeteria closed so that we could eat dinner. We ended up getting to the cafeteria at 6:12 pm when it closes at 6 on weekends, but luckily they were nice enough to let us in anyways. It would have been very unfortunate to have gone without eating after all of the energy spent through the afternoon.

 The next adventure of the weekend occurred when I learned how to drive a manual transmission automobile. I was with Eric Mock on Monday morning and he was going to Taco Bell. His car is a stick-shift and he decided he was going to teach me to drive one because I had never done so before. It was a little rough going at first, like learning to drive all over again. But I eventually started to get the hang of it and we made it to Taco Bell and back without much trouble. I am pretty happy because I always wanted to learn to drive a stick, but had never had the opportunity previously.

 Tuesday was cross training day at practice and so I broke out my bicycle and went for a ride to Bettendorf with Robbie Pogue and Jay Whitmore. On the way back, however, I ran into trouble when one of my pedals came off. The pedal threading stripped the threads on the crankshaft somehow and so it was impossible to put it back on. Luckily Robbie had his cell phone with him and I called Coach Z who came and picked me up. Tuesday was also notable because it was my first Student Government Association (SGA) meeting. All candidates for office must attend two SGA meetings before being eligible to run. I am seeking the position of Senator for the College of Arts and Science. I found it very interesting and enlightening seeing a behind the scenes look at the workings of the school and feeling like I have inside information.

 Workout Wednesday was just as tough as the last few workouts we have had. We jogged out to Garfield Park and did a brutal set of intervals on the grass that is a variation on the "Michigan" workout run at the University of Michigan. There were three solid groups of runners which was impressive to see. I like not being the one way out in front because it means other people are right there with me and it makes it a lot easier. I am especially happy that Doug was feeling really good. He would take all of the intervals out strong, not letting me slack at all, and beat me on the last one. I am excited to see him run a race this Friday. Our first 8k (5 mile) race is at Detweiller Park in Peoria hosted by Bradley University. There should be a lot of good competition to help us run fast times with teams like North Central College and Indiana State present. We are really getting into the meat of the season, with Notre Dame next week and the Conference preview meet a few weeks later. It makes me really excited looking ahead to the rest of the season and all of the possibilities.

September 4, 2009 -- Wolfpack

-- The first meet of the season has come and gone in a flash of sweat and pain. We raced at the Augustana Early Season XC Opener run at Credit Island here in Davenport. It was only a 4 mile course for the men and a 4 kilometer course for the women so both races were shorter than the normal race distances to be run for the rest of the season. The pressure and expectations for this meet were not especially high considering that the only other teams running were Ashford College and Augustana's freshmen. It was also understandable for people to not run at their best considering that no one had run a cross country race for nine months or so and so the cobwebs and rust needed to be shaken off. A relaxed, low-key race like this one provided the perfect venue for it. Additionally it allowed the new freshmen to ease into collegiate racing without all the intensity and in a shorter distance.

With all of these factors contributing to pretty simple expectations: run your best, push yourself and compete well; the meet went pretty well for everyone. I was slightly disappointed in my own performance as I finished 3rd when I expected to win, but I have gotten over it and will face more pressing competition at the next meet and hope to significantly improve on Tuesday's showing. I was quite surprised with the accomplishments of many of my teammates, however. Particularly with the freshmen. Many of them did remarkably well in their first college race, placing themselves into varsity positions. Kevin Randle, Junior Captain Keith Randle's younger brother, finished 6th overall and 2nd on the team. He was later awarded the well earned and much deserved team top-performer award. In addition to Kevin, there were 4 other freshmen in the top 9 on the team: Ryan Buchanan, Tyler Norby, Robbie Pogue, and Jacob Rorem.

Finishing in the top 9 is notable because it was recently discovered that the entries for the National Catholic XC Championships at the University of Notre Dame are due in before our next meet. The top 9 runners on the men's and women's sides all compete at this prestigious meet, but the original plan was for the top 9 at the Bradley meet in Peoria this next Friday to be taken, but the coaching staff was forced to take the top 9 from this first meet. The upperclassmen who will also be gracing the campus of Notre Dame in addition to the aforementioned freshmen will be junior captains Austin Quinn and Keith Randle, sophomore Jacob Barker and myself. On the women's side it will be captains Lauren Cleary and Brooke Ashcraft, junior transfer Abby Parsons, sophomore Dana Maier and, similarly to the men, five freshmen: Katie Simones, Camille Mason, Chelsee Lisk, Lexie Ronconi and Tina Eden.

Our next meet is going to be down in Peoria, IL at Bradley University. I have never personally run there in the past, so it will be a new experience, but a number of my teammates have competed there both in college and high school and I will be counting on their experience to help prepare me. It is apparently quite a flat course, as are most of the ones we will run on this season. Because of the lack of hills in the forthcoming races the training plan will likely focus slightly more on speed rather than strength when compared to last year when the conference meet was borderline mountainous. It is important, however, not to get ahead of one's self and think too far ahead. One of the keys to success, I believe, is to only focus on the race directly next in order to keep everything in perspective. We can't talk about repeating as Conference Champions until we have actually gotten the job done.

With regard to the focus on speed the team completed one of the most difficult workouts of the year today. It is called the Wolf-Pack. It is, in essence, a ladder-fartlek. For those of you who don't know farlek is a Swedish term meaning "speed play." Essentially runners mix different periods of high and low intensity running and pace changes. In this particular workout the team divides into groups and each of them runs intervals of 1, 2, 3, 2, 1 minutes of hard running with 1 minute of easy jogging rest between each period of fast stuff. We repeated this thrice. It was definitely challenging, as a workout should be, and I can't wait to see it paying dividends in the team's performance in the next few weeks. It is going to be an exciting season and I can't wait to see what this team can do if they keep exceeding expectations and shattering goals. The sky really is the limit.

August 29, 2009

-- I have been back at school for two weeks now. I spent a week and a half focusing only on cross country training and then for the last half of this week academics was thrown into the mix. Yes indeed, classes started on Wednesday much to everyone's dismay. I have what seems to be a pretty manageable schedule, however, and so far I am pretty happy with it. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I am only taking two classes: Statistics for the Social Sciences at 10 am and then U.S. Government I at 1 pm. I have two classes on Tuesday and Thursday: Eastern Religions at 8 am and Latin I at 10:50. I also am taking two night classes that each occur only once per week. Guitar lessons, for my creative art credit, are Tuesday nights and Ancient Philosophy is on Thursday nights. So far my favorite class is probably, and likely will continue to be, Religions of the East because it is taught by Fr. Joe DeFrancisco and he is my favorite professor so far. I suppose we will have to wait and see how the semester turns out to be sure though.

 In order to prepare myself for guitar lessons I purchased an acoustic guitar on eBay. It is quite a nice one and I like it a lot. A couple of friends and I went to Guitar Center the other day and I got a beginner's guide to playing guitar along with an "Eagles" song book. I have started getting a head start on guitar lessons and already have one song that I can play fairly well, "Walk, Don't Run" by the Ventures. It is good that I am getting ahead considering that I will have to miss my first class due to the fact that our first cross country meet is on Tuesday night, the same time as the class.

 Cross country is very exciting this year. There are more freshmen than all upperclassmen combined and it is pretty impressive. There are definitely several of them that will be top varsity contributors right away, and others may step up as the season progresses. There is one athlete in particular that has impressed me quite a bit. A freshman out of Whalert in Dubuque named Tyler Norby has shown a lot of promise. He even pushed me to my own aerobic boundaries on one particular run up Brady St. hill. He also isn't afraid of pushing the pace on a run if he feels good and I can tell that he is an intense competitor. I can't wait to see what he does in competition. He is by no means alone, however, with a freshmen class the size of ours any one of them could perform admirably on any given day.

 In a few short days we will really see what the team is made of when we make the short trip down to the river to compete at Augustana's Early Season Opener at Credit Island. We ran around the course today at practice and it doesn't get much flatter than Credit Island as far as cross country courses go, the only negative was the recent wet weather has left it muddy and water logged which was slightly upsetting as I am one for the dry, firm courses, as are most of my teammates, because it make for faster times. The race will only be 4 miles, a mile less than the normal 8k (5 mile) collegiate race. So it will get us into the mentality of racing without pushing us to the limit quite yet which will be good, especially for the freshmen. All I can say is, I can't wait.