Monday, Fun-day: 8/30 workout

Just like every Monday this summer I headed up to Red Bank Regional to workout with the boy cross country team. I usually try to get there early so I can get my training in before they arrive. I found over the years of coaching that training with the kids although fun and convenient is not always what's in the best interest of the kids or the program. I've also found the less you run with them the more they appreciate it when you do. With the team having their time trial today I wanted to get in some light strength work before practice and then I planned to head over to Hartshorne Woods to run some hills with a little bit of a twist. My morning strength work consisted of three super sets of bench (15), dips (10) and push offs (5) moving from exercise to exercise with as little rest as possible then taking two minutes between sets. Since I don't have access to a GHD machine I did 3 x 25 sit ups on the roman chair set up.


At 7:30 I briefed the team on how the time trial would be run and what my expectations were. At 7:35 they got their game faces on and got ready to bring their A-game. Although we had some promising things happen this morning it's very clear that we have our work cut out for us this fall if we intend to turn some heads. Win, lose or draw if the kids can work their butts off, give 100% everyday and understand the value of hard work, I will be a very happy individual at the end of the season.


After practice I headed over to Hartshorne Woods for a little hill training. Today's main workout came from the Crossfit Endurance site and consisted of a 1 mile weighted uphill run. If you've ever run at Hartshorne you know exactly where this run is headed!

Since I know longer have a Garmin 305 I decided I would run for 10 minutes just to be on the safe side and not miss any distance in the workout. Since I don't own a weight vest I decided to use my 26 lb. Suples Bulgarian Training Bag. I figured I can use it for everything else I might as well use it for my weighted hill run.

I did my normal 8-10 minute easy jog just to get a sweat going and then completed the warm up with a few form drills. Today's drills consisted of; skips, a-skips, b-skips, high knees and a few body squat with some stride outs after each set of squats. From there I grabbed my bag and headed to the start. Running on the hills at Hartshorne can be brutal enough but when you add 26 lbs. on top of that you're dealing with an entirely different animal. As I made my way up the climb I passed a few runners going in the opposite direction and the looks they gave my were priceless. Towards the end of the run all I could think about was the fact that I would have to run back to my car with the extra 26 lbs. on my shoulders. I knew the way back down would be easy running so I tried to focus on the discomfort and pushed through until my timer went off. I took 5 minutes dropped the bag and gathered my marbles for the run back down to the parking lot. After I dropped of the bag I continued on for another 10 minutes of easy running to cool down. After my cool down I did some light kb swings (25) and SDLHP (25) to finish up the days training.