Championship season

-
     It's Championship Season for Indoor Track and Field. So many young runners are racing their butts off trying to get to the next level of competition, while are others are setting PR's, finishing strong and otherwise helping their teams in what may be the final indoor race of their careers. It's a mixed bag as the season wraps up, so many emotions, so many opportunities. It happens every season, time and effort come down to a single race or event throw or jump and it can be a heart breaker or a dream maker.
     For most of the distance athletes, they will have outdoor track, then summer training, then fall cross country to plan for and stretch themselves to new goals. And of course it's only natural for these young athletes to always be thinking of how to train better, to get faster, to be their best. They are amazing performers, balancing so much with school, work, training, being away from home, I'm inspired by how hard they work and how much they attain in competition. They are faster and stonger at what they do than 99% of the population.
     Being so immersed in their life, I'm sure it's hard for them to realize how much they gain from the overall experience. A bad race can crush an athletes spirit, but it's only one race, one day. Runner's are headstrong and bounce back quickly, the same day for some during Championship season. A bad morning race can be forgotten with a great performance in an afternoon event. Yesterdays baggage is dropped at the door and and today is a chance to go for it and let the spikes fly!
     I'm too old for Championship season, but while race days are still out there for me, and goals are still a driving force in my training, it's the simple pleasure of a run with my wife or a training session with friends that remind me how blessed I am to be able to enjoy this sport. Championships are for the young, the strong, the fleet of foot, and while their seasons may end, their journey has just begun!     
    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turn, turn, turn

-
Image
PMB...Post Marathon Blues.  I'm sure it's a pretty common affliction, and for sure it's not limited to the marathon. It's caused by a training and racing season full of the very real psyco and phsio combinations that naturally occur due to the physical, mental and emotional elixir running delivers to the body, mind and soul. Whether the concoction is mixed for 5k speed or marathon endurance, it's an addictive potion that's hard to replace once the season is done.  You can't stay "in season" too long either. You need the dry spells, the recovery gaps that clean out the system and let the anguish of hill workouts, intervals and multiple-hour runs drain from your muscle memory, one easy run day after another. This slow leakage of the seasons workouts drips with scar tissue, mad sprints and long drives to the finish line. Natural blood doping at it's finest. It's not by chance our running seasons coincide with those provided by Mother N...
Read more

The metamorphosis is happening!

-
     The metamorphosis is happening, and I'm not sure what to think! It's something I see in others; the training they put in, be it miles, pitches or free-throws, and how one day it all starts to come together. I saw it on my son's basketball team that I help coach. Saturday the entire team played well, and they crushed a team that had beaten them three times straight over the past two seasons.      Now, I'm starting to see it in me.      Last week I put in 51 miles on six days of training, the most since last year when a month before the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon I had a 20 mile Sunday that put me over 50. The difference this year is the training foundation is so much more consistent. Sneaking up, week by week, to hit 51 miles was very manageable. The pace was easy ( finally got snow this week so our pace was hampered by dodging snow piles and ice overs ), the temps not bad and Sunday we bumped up to 16 for the day.  ...
Read more

Your pace or mine?

-
It's nice to have training partners. More than someone to run with once a week, a training partner keeps you honest all week long, and is usually headed for the same goal as you are. The trick is finding how to balance training efforts that fit into everyones pace calculator. It's tough!          My wife and I run together quite a bit, this year especially, and it was really enjoyable. We made it through most of the Minnesota winter outdoors ( only 83" of snow this past winter, ugh! ), and set our goal on the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in October. We trained with two other regulars during the winter that were also training for MTCM, and picked up another about mid July. Our goal times were all over the place. From three hours ( Bryan ) to 3:39 ( me ) to 3:50 ( Jeanette ) to "under four" ( Dave and Ben ) and finally, for Stan, "to finish". It was going to be the first for Dave, Ben and Stan.      Running as a group is such...
Read more