Ready to Roll

One week from tomorrow, I'll be lining up with about 300 other masters guys for the national club cross country championships in Lexington, KY. Our team, Second Sole Rocky River, will be competing against clubs from all over the country, including running hotspots like Southern California and Boulder, Colorado. What I like about cross country is that racing 10K (6.2 miles) over hill and dale is a perfect middle ground for 5K specialists moving up and the half-marathon/marathon types moving down in distance. Kentucky in December isn't all that pleasant either so cold, windy weather and/or snow/rain definitely adds to the mix. A true hardcore runner's championship race.

I'm feeling really good heading into the race. The 5K race on Thanksgiving was a nice sharpener, which I definitely didn't taper for (71 miles the week before the race) and now that I've backed down a little I feel really good. On Monday, I did my favorite workout, which is a ladder of mile - 1200 - mile - 800 - mile - 400 with 400 jogs between each rep. The miles are done at 10K race effort, while the 1200 is at 5K effort, the 800 at 3K and the 400 at mile race effort. The workout teaches patience because if you hit the miles too hard, you're toast for the faster segments and a 400 meter jog isn't a hell of a lot of recovery. On Thursday I did some short hill repeats for a last shot of power.