Three things.
First, thanks to the handful of you who have emailed me in the past two weeks to make sure everything is okay. Things are good, especially when people take the time to email you to check-in. I’m a lucky guy.
Second, I will be posting more in the coming weeks, though they might be short and more of a Call and Response. I’m obsessed with training theory and design and I look forward to your comments (also reading an older book about Chaos Theory and thinking it applies to coaching humans who want to race fast).
Third, I’ve been working hard as a coach. I am lucky to be working with James Hatch and Brent Vaughn. You can watch Brent’s best race to date here; you can watch James running well at this link (scroll down to Men’s 800m). I won’t be sharing as opening and frequently with Brent’s and James’s training as I have with Sara’s and Renee’s, yet I am happy to report they are both progressing nicely and my only concern is that this very sentence will somehow jinx the momentum and consistency that have marked the past weeks for both young men. Coach = Superstitious?
That said I will share two facts. James ran 17.1 for 150m last week (with a run-in); Brant ran 20+ miles both Tuesday and Wednesday. Neither of those stats are overly impressive, yet neither young man has been safely been done those types of things in the past in November. If we keep taking, as Coach Wetmore likes to say, “the next logical step” in their respective training journeys then
Tomorrow will be quite typical. LM, LL and MWD (Myrtl Wall Drills), 20 minutes of running, then the Aerobic Work WU. Then 12k of work for Brent and 8k of work for James (he’ll run parts of Brent’s workout…and he’ll likely curse me) then some light GS for Brent as this is a big mileage week and we want to be safe; James goes to the weight room following the workout. Both young men will get on Dr. Richey’s table following workout, then, God willing, both young men will double tomorrow night, with lots of skipping both before and after the run. Longer run on hills/trails Saturday for James; easy Saturday for Brent, but 18-19 on Sunday for Brent (though he’d likely like to do more).
…and because I feel a bit guilty not sharing anything else about their training, I will say that Greg Brock’s LetsRun interview is the most important training article I’ve read in 2009. As my exercises physiology instructor David Roth always said, “Lactate is not a dead-end metabolite.”