Friday, August 31, 2007

Set your alarm

The bus will leave at 7:30 tomorrow for the race. Apparently they will leave you if you are late. This may sound early, but it gives the first runners a chance to warm up and wake up before the gun. Parents can sleep a bit longer but not a lot longer. The first race is at 9:45 and Parkside is farther south than you might think and it is a good four miles east of the freeway.

For those of you driving it is easiest to get off of I-94 at county E. The course is on the corner of E and 31 ( green bay). To park you want to go past Green bay on E to the next road ( JR) and take a left. You will see all of the buses parked on your right about a 1/4 mile before the course. There is a parking lot directly across from the course but it belongs to the petrified springs and you will get a ticket if you park there. The police usually have it blocked off anyway so there is little chance of making a mistake. This is a course that requires some walking if you want to see more than just the start and the finish. Plan on covering a good mile in long grass by the time everything is over. The weather should be great. Sunglasses and a fold up chair wouldn't be out of line. The link to the UW-P site is here:

http://www.uwp.edu/map/.

If anyone could bring a camera that would be great. Mine didn't survive the whole vacation and I haven't replaced it yet.

The boys' spaghetti dinner is at the Tyler's tonight.

Construction on the new track also starts tonight.

Cheers!

Something to think about

I am bumping this quote from the bottom of the page because it is so good.


" A lot of people work hard, put in the work, but feel like they are not ready to reach the next level or are not sure they can reach it. Well racing is a hugely mental thing. And if there is any doubt in your mind as to how you're going to do, when it starts to hurt, you'll start questioning yourself and that will be it. ... It's amazing how we all set mental barriers as to what we can do. Once they run a PR, a lot of people start running that time repeatedly."

Ask yourself every day at practice:

How bad do you want it?

How much pain can you handle?

Where you place on saturday is entirely a function of how you answer these two questions M-F.

Summer running








Do you have a favorite picture of yourself running on the beach, or carrying your grandmother up a sand dune? Send them in and I will post them during the season. You can e-mail me a jpeg file or give Andrew a disc.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Next race

Date: Saturday, September 1, 2007

Site:
University of Wisconsin Parkside

Format:
JV girls 4000m 9:45. Medals top 10
Feshman Boys 4000m 10:15. Medals top 10
Varsity Girls (8) 4000m 10:45. Medals top 25
Varsity Boys (8) 5000m 11:15. Medals top 25
JV Boys 5000m 11:45. Medals top 10

Open Race 12:15

Shirts will be sold for $9.00

Please park in the Parkside PE parking lot. The POLICE WILL TICKET!!


**The open race is just that, an open race for anyone who wants to run. In the past, several of the coaches, a few parents, and the odd younger siblings have run and placed well. So if you are in shape and would like to run the actual course that the girl's run... throw your gear in the car and plan to join us. It's free as far as I know and you can sign up at the start.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Parent Meeting

The parent's meeting will be tomorrow night Wednesday, 29Th at 6:00 pm in the SIS commons. If you are a new parent to the sport or if you have questions you will want to be at this meeting.

There will also be a sign-up sheet for the spaghetti dinners. If you would like to host and have a tight schedule you will want to come early so you can get your choice of dates.

See you there !

New season starts early

The season started last week while I was in North Carolina and Michigan. The opening race at Arrowhead sounds like it was a lot of fun, if you like running in the mud. I have no idea what the course actually looked like but it must have really been interesting for the second fastest course in the state to hold the field to 17:00 flat. If anyone wants to send me pictures in a digital format I will happily post them here. The results are up at PT Timing ( the link is over on the right)

Next up is the rebel invite at Parkside. For those of you who are new, this is the premiere course in the state and a course that we love to run. Because this is a permanent course that stays up year round it is the most consistent venue that we run. The weather is supposed to be perfect so it will be a good test of where everyone really is when they aren't swimming in mud. Last years' times can be found at http://www.wisconsinrunner.com/results/2006_rebel/index.htm. In case anyone wants to know.

Andrew modeled the new uniform last night. I was expecting worse. It will certainly be easy to see our runners in the crowd, and the contrast should make the pictures a bit more in focus.

See you all on Saturday!

Jenny Crain the "jogger"


I don't know how many of you know who Jenny Crain is or if you saw the news article about her accident last week But I thought I would bring it up for a few reasons.

The first is to reinforce the concept of traffic safety. We have all been told since birth to look both ways before crossing the road and to obey all traffic signals. However we all tend to J-walk when we are in a hurry. In particular, runners hate to stop in the middle of a work-out so we tend to try and keep going whenever possible. We all do. Which brings us to Jenny. Jenny is a world class runner who was a favorite to make the US olympic team for the Beijing olympics. She has been living and running locally for years and can be seen at the front of most of the big road races in the area. Despite what the paper said, she was not "jogging" she was out for a run. She has been running on these streets for 30 years and clearly knows what she is doing. When she got to the corner of Brady and farwell the sign said "don't walk" but like most seasoned runners, she glanced both ways, didn't see anyone and ran right in front of a car. She broke her jaw, her neck, her carotid artery, and any chance at the olympics. She is still in the hospital. That could have been me or any other runner trying to keep moving. It's not worth it. I know you guys are good about stopping for lights but as a parent I can't help but mention it when I see stories like this.

Secondly, she is still in the hospital and things don't look great. I am sure she could use our prayers and support if you are so inclined. Runners are a tight fraternity. We need to look out for each other.

Finally, and I know this sounds petty but it shows just how ignorant the staff writers at the journal are when they write that she was out "jogging". Olympic class runners don't jog. I am sure that the writer has no idea how insulting that is to a runner because they obviously know nothing about running. Just something to keep in mind when the journal finally writes an article about cross country this season and it reads like gibberish. It's not you it's them and they don't care.

Required reading for runners

Like any sport, runners have their own sub-culture and information portals. You will not see any serious discussion of running on ESPN or any other mainstream media outlet. Non-runners don't care. They can't fathom why runners run and they don't want to. The T-shirts that say " our sport is your sport's punishment" sums it up pretty succinctly. There is also a lack of interest because the sport is dominated at the moment by athletes from east Africa.

However runners do care and the amount of information on current events has never been greater or easier to access. I have tried to help by listing a number of the better running books that are still in print over on the right. If you click on the links it should take you right to the order screen. Also I have posted a number of links to web sites that collect news about running. The two best sites are Flocast and Lets Run.

Flocast posts daily video interviews with current runners and coaches that are incredible, you should book mark them. They also have an archive of famous races that is nothing short of stunning.

"Lets Run" is a pure news aggregator. They collect running news from all over the world and update the links and headlines daily. This is a fantastic resource. For example, they have a series of reports from the world championships being run in Japan this week. In particular there is an article about an Ethiopian girl (21) who won the 10,000m. She stopped half way and got a drink of water because of stomach cramps and then came back to win the race. She ran the last lap in 60 seconds. The link is here http://www.letsrun.com/2007/worlds/dibaba0825.php . You have to be a runner to truly appreciate how impossible that is which is why it's not on ESPN.

Finally, the local and national high school news is collected on Dyestat. There is a message board for Wisconsin runners that used to be pretty good. It has gotten pretty lame recently so I no longer recommend it except for results after major events like State.

Running is a great sport with a rich history... get reading.

Caption contest



Okay, I was told I can't actually do a caption contest for this picture, but I will give a gatorade to anyone who can correctly guess what this is a picture of.