St. Olaf - the Pre Nationals Meet

This past weekend the St. Scholastica cross country team traveled to the St. Olaf invitational in Northfield Minnesota. This meet is a highly competitive meet with about 35 teams and 300 to 400 runners. The course is relatively flat, but has a few challenging hills. It is very wide and is only one loop. This year the course is also the host of the NCAA regional race, and the NCAA national championships – so lots of good teams were present to get course experience.

I started out the race at a 5:18 pace. I was about 8 seconds slower that I would have liked, but with the number of runners on the course it was hard for me to get around the pack. This was a good wake up call for the Griak in two weeks though, at big races I need to go out fast! At the 5K mark I came by in 16:28. Still a little slow, but not bad. Just past the 6K mark I made a strong move up a 200 meter long shallow hill. I moved ahead of a group of about 6 runners and was able to sustain the surge most of the rest of the race.

In the end I race a 27:40, which moved me up to 7^th on the St. Scholastica all time XC performance list. I was also first on our team, which placed 20^th overall. We took down some large schools outside of our conference, and beat all of the schools from our conference as well. I think it was a good individual race performance, though I still have more left in me.

This coming week is a high intensity training week, and then I have a medium volume week going into Griak which should leave me in good shape of the second half of the season. But i’m especially looking forward to Pine Hill and Oshkosh because they are first-class courses – and at these races moving up to the top 5 or even 3 on the CSS all time XC performance list is a distinct possibility.

Images from the race:

The UMD Meet

The week leading up to the UMD meet was another hard week for me. The plan was/is to push me at a higher intensity for the week of August 27 and September 3, then the week of September 10 would be a high volume week followed be an easy week going into the U of M Griak meet.

On September 4, I did one of my ANT workouts for the week. I ran 6x10 minute ANT repeats. It was hard, but I felt really strong at the end of the session. My heart rate during the repeats ranged between 170 to 183 beats per minute. I also had my blood lactic acid concentration measured during the workout. After the first repeat I was at 3.4 mm of lactic acid, and I was up to 6.0 mm after my 6^th. This is exactly the kind of build up of lactic acid that I was looking for in this workout. This kind of long ANT workout is designed to help your body adjust to having lactic acid in your system for longer periods of times – like races. In total, my Tuesday workout saw me run 14 miles, with about 11 of those mile being at ANT pace. This was a swell training day!

On Friday September 7^th, I tried a new pre race workout. I ran 5 x 800m at race pace. The first two were at the low end of my race pace zone, the next two were at the high end of my zone, and the last one was back at the low end again. The idea was that a bit of running at race pace the day before competition would help prep my legs and mind for competition.

Saturday, September 8^th was the day of the UMD meet. The day was unusually calm and cool for this time of year. The temperature was only in the 60’s. As I lined up at the starting line I felt really good, I was ready to pop a good race today. As the race started I settled into pace and was running near the front of the lead pack. I went through the first mile in 5:15, and the three miles in 16:21.

At this point in the race, the pack should have turned to take another lap, but instead was directed to take the finish loop. Despite knowing that this was the wrong way, I could not be the only one on the course going the correct way – so I followed. I ended up finishing the race in 10^th with a 21:15 four mile time. Despite these results I can’t help but be disappointed in the shortened race. I was on pace to break 27:20 and possibly place in the top 6 or 8. But the fact remains that I placed well, and ran an excellent race.

The coming week will be another supreme week of training, and my next race at St. Olaf is on a fast course so I think another good performance is highly likely.

Tom Berry Invite

The first cross country meet of the season came at the end of a fairly hard week, but that did not seem to slow me down much at all. The meet was Tom Berry Invite hosted by St. Norbert’s college in Green Bay. The course is a good one – two laps of a public park at the edge of the city. A few rolling hills dot the course, but not much for elevation change. The temperature was nearly 90, so times were slower than one might expect for the course. At the start of the race, I went out conservatively coming to the mile marker in 5:25. With my exceptional early season fitness I began to pick people off in the next miles and moved up the pack.

The four mile race seemed short to me, not only because longer distances are my strong suit, but because the race was only four miles as opposed to the normal five miles. I finished in 21:56, which was good for 6 place out of 120 runners. I felt very strong, and even had energy left at the end of the race. I think I could have gone out the first mile in 5:15 and still been fine for the rest of the race. But, I think it was a good first race of the season for me. Finishing in the top ten while feeling that I had more to give is a good place to be at this point in the season.

Summer Training Ends

As you can tell, for the last few weeks I have failed to keep up with my postings. School has once again started and so I have to deal with the normal pains associated with such a transition. (Class schedule changes, moving in, club meetings, and of course practice) I will now attempt to recap the past few weeks and first two cross country races of the 2007-2008 season in a series of posts.

August brought me 2 high volume weeks followed by a recovery week and finally a high intensity week to start off the cross country season. The first week in August I ran 80 miles and trained a total of 11 hours. The second week in August saw me run 70 miles and do 15:00 hours of training. During this second week I did a lot of cross training in addition to my running to increase my total training volume. Most of this cross training was roller skiing, but I also had several long bike rides, including a very enjoyable 50 miler.

The third week in August brought me to my Cross Country pre-season camp in northern Minnesota. Overall the week of training was not the most difficult I have had all summer, but I did have a hard ANT interval session on the second day of camp. I did 10 mile repeats at ANT (or anaerobic threshold pace – commonly called tempo) pace. For me this pace was around 5:45 per mile at the time.

As August came to a close, I had an intense week of training. The team had a time trial at the beginning of the week, I had my fall lactic threshold test in the middle of the week, and the season’s first meet was on Saturday.

My lactic threshold test results were a big source of confidence for me. The test measures the accumulation of lactic acid in your muscles over a period of time. For those of you who have never experienced one of these tests, they involve running on a treadmill at increasing speeds and taking blood samples every few minutes. The results show you how hard you should be training during different workouts and allows for much more exact and scientific training. My results showed a huge improvement from the spring. I was able to run at a 6:00 per mile pace and only accumulate 1.7 mm of lactic acid! At a 5:45 per mile pace I was still at just 2.7 mm!! In short the results were phenomenal. These test results were a great way to close my summer training.