Recruiting – Women’s Track and Field Scholarships

Alan Versaw, girls coach at The Classical Academy, and Colorado editor of MileSplit.us, have collaborated on a series of posts dedicated to the college recruiting process. The first and second installment focus on what questions to ask the high school coach, while the third installment is Alan’s extremely helpful scholarship primer. The post below starts with Alan’s comments and ends with my comments, which are in italics.

What considerations are unique to the world of women’s track and field scholarships?

Having discussed track and field scholarships in general in the last in the previous installment, we now turn our attention to the topic of women’s track and field scholarships. Continue reading

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The Uncarved Block

I don’t know about you, but there are a few random words, words I was unfamiliar with before college, that I remember from my undergraduate education…and since there are only a handful of words I guess that means they cost a lot per word. Oh well.

One word is “Hundun” which in Taoist philosophy means “the uncarved block.” I found the following explaination at the Aisa for Educators site by Columbia University (where Joseph Campbell attended, ran on the track team and once experienced an epiphany).

For Daoists the philosophical equivalent to the pre-imperial primordium is a state of chaotic wholeness, sometimes called hundun, roughly translated as “chaos.” In that state, imagined as an uncarved block or as the beginning of life in the womb, nothing is lacking. Everything exists, everything is possible: before a stone is carved there is no limit to the designs that may be cut…

Last Friday was the fifth day of sanctioned high school cross country practice in the state of Colorado and it was also the first day of practice with my newest charge, Tyler McCandless. Those two items, coupled with Vern Gambetta’s post on how his friend, Kenyon College swimming coach Jim Steen starts each year from scratch, as if he knows nothing, as if the 31 straight DIII men’s swimming titles came from three decades of dumb luck, lead me to do the same. The concept of the Hundun was the obvious thought my squiggly (and hopefully pliable) synapses produced.

So this is the starting from scratch, pretending I know nothing (not that hard) and hoping this post is useful for the high school coaches officially starting their season.

My job as a post collegiate coach is as follows:

1. Keep the athlete healthy. A healthy runner can run more days in a week, more weeks in a month, more months in a year. This leads to consistency. Consistency in distance running may be the most important aspect of running. Related is the idea that an injury is a training error. Or to be blunt, if they get hurt it’s my fault.

2. We need to run hard. Intensity, quality, what ever you want to term it, is extremely important and the only way the athlete can realize their full athletic potential as a distance runner is to do a great deal of running hard. (Note: I’m not concerned with the exact physiological definition of this – percentage of VO2max, meters run at 5k pace or miles run at half marathon pace – but rather the simple concept that some running is hard and some running is easy and that we want to do a lot of running hard).

3. The balance of 1 and 2 is akin to making a killer salad, balancing salt and acidity, finding the right amount for each ingredient in that particular salad. When it’s done well it’s so good, so obvious that I deceive myself by thinking that I’ll get back to my kitchen be able to easily replicate that salad, yet I rarely can. When it goes wrong it’s often hard to find that exact spot where the act of combing the ingredients went wrong. This is the view from which I want to view previous year’s logs. Continue reading

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Running Times Circuits – Parts 1, 2 and 3

Circuits are a great way to address training needs for athletes who currently can’t handle a great deal of volume, such as athletes coming back from injury or high school athletes that are new to the sport. RunningTimes.com asked me to produce a series of circuit videos for them to help readers understand this type of training. Below are the three videos in the series. If you have time, please watch the rationale for the circuits before watching the videos below so you will understand not only the rationale behind these circuits, but also how the running portions and exercise portions of the circuit work together.

Obviously I’ll be happy to answer questions you have about this workout. I think circuits are a great way to get ready for a fall marathon or for high school athletes to gain fitness in the opening weeks of the cross country season (the “danger zone” as my college coach liked to say) and if I can be of help simply ask your question below.

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2010 Jim Ryun Running Camp

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Jim Ryun Running Camp this afternoon and it was a blast. Thanks to everyone for their energy and attention, especially Bill Lundberg, who gets me fired up every time I’m around him.

As I promised the campers, below are the resources I referenced in my talk and all of the exercises we did during the session outside. First are the slides from the presentation, then the videos follow. Continue reading

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Another Day, Another Beautiful Run

The title says it all and if you have 4 minutes the armchair runner in you will enjoy this.

…and some funny running attire too.

Thanks to Patrick for all of his hard work this week – he’s been a tremendous addition to the camp.

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Boulder Running Camps, 2010 – Week 1, Day 1, 2 and 3

I love camp. You work hard, you laugh a lot and you are immersed in running for five days. This group of 80+ kids was one of the best groups, if not the best, we’ve ever had. The counselors were fantastic and when you look at them as a whole, they were the best staff we’ve had in our eight years, and we’ve had some fantastic staffs in the past. Here a couple videos from the first week of camp.

If you’d like the video to play faster turn of the HD setting in the lower right corner of the video.

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Running Times Circuits – Rationale

I’m fortunate that Running Times has asked me to produce a series of circuit workouts for them. Below is the rationale for the circuits and if you have time I recommend you watch the video before you watch any of the circuit videos. The series won’t come out for a couple of weeks but I will be sharing a password with everyone who is signed on our email list, allowing them to watch the videos on Monday, July 12th. Once Running Times releases the workout I’ll share that video on this site as well. Finally, last spring I did a series of posts that explained how a circuit workout can fit into a training day. You can check out that series here.

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Is it hard to run easy?

Yes. It’s hard to run easy enough when you’re fit and not running 100+ miles a week, which is the level many high school and collegiate runners will find themselves in the summer months. You’re fit and you often feel good, so why not run a bit faster? Problem is the Kenyans don’t run this way on their recovery days and they’re pretty good; most elite runners training at altitude keep their easy days easy and some won’t even run a long run very fast for fear they’ll over-train.

Running easy on your easy days is a simple concept, yet many runners struggle with it.

Check out this podcast and forward to the 3:50 mark of the podcast where Brent Vaughn talks about running easy in college, when others did not. Continue reading

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