Ran with Zach at Schenley Park before, during and after nate's first college XC race.
Had to leave EA at 5am to make sure we made it down to Pittsburgh for the start. And we didn't get into EA until 11:20 last night.
Zach and I ran the first half of the course before the race (3 miles total), and we are taking credit for one mile during the race. After the race, we ran down to the CMU campus and then back up via the road past the golf course, adding 1/2 mile more than intended.
nate's college debut was solid, despite the quick start (which I tried to warn him about before the race). He came through the 2-mile in 10:48 and managed to hang on for 6:00 pace for the last 3 to run 28:48. The course at Schenley is plenty challenging, so that was a nice race to start things off. I see that one "Ricky Looby" from Canisius was just a bit ahead of nate - I wonder if that could have provided some extra incentive, assuming this is the Rick Looby from Irondequoit.
After the Open race at the Dash in the Dark, there was a gap where the JV girls race was supposed to be, so I headed out for a 30 minute run: 12 min w/up, followed by 6 x 2 min hard, with 1 min recovery. The hard sections started out at tempo pace and moved to interval pace and slightly faster. Chris had pizza and boneless wings in the parking lot when I finished.
The other 4 miles is a conservative estimate of running during the races. The open race was 2 laps, and Luke was in it, so I ran a fair amount. Each of the other 3 races was 3 legs x 2 laps, for a grand total of 20 laps of going back and forth around the course. Legs were pretty fried by the end of the night. But the team did well.
Running during XC practice at Schroeder. Since yesterday was slightly shortened due to the heat, and we have to go easy tomorrow with the race on Thursday, we just did a mild fartlek workout. The added challenge was the real feel temp was 94 degrees, and the new policy requires mandatory water breaks every 15 minutes. So, half the team did 15 min w/up, 8 x 1 min w/ 1 min recovery and 15 min w/dn. I only had time for 10 min of w/up. The other half of the team did 10 min before and after a 15 min period that included 6 pickups of about a minute.
4 x "feet" intervals with the Blue, Red and Green groups, which boils down to the folks that have a shot at beating me on multiple intervals. The Brown, Orange, Yellow and White groups did 3x400, 4xhills, 3x400.
I had planned to make it 5 intervals, but the conditions brought the new State "Heat Index Procedures" into play. Since the "Real Feel" temperature was 88 degrees, we were into the "Heat Index Watch" (it takes 95RF to cancel practice). So, not only did I cut it to 4, but after 2, I had them take extra time to jog to a spicket for a water break.
I ran 4:39, 4:41, 4:36, 4:27, which turns out to be 6 seconds slower on average than last year. The heat played a part, as did my cautious start. Zach was in another group and went 4:35 on #3, so I imagined him just ahead of me on the last one and ran hard, especially after the top of the hill, but he went ~4:23.
11:13 w/up to the trail
about 7 min jog between intervals
13:00 w/dn back