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A run is never a waste of time, Belber

November 8, 2016 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Ran 43-Stone Hill solo with a lap around campus added on. Coming to grips with two things these day:
1) My cross country season has ended. Five races, three of which were "good." A 23-second 8k PR on the Westfield course, a 13-second 5k PR on the Plansky course, and an XC 10k at Franklin Park in 35:41. Relatively modest improvements, but tokens of a greater overall fitness (at lower mileage, mind you), and far better adjustment to the Williams program. Even so, my poor performances in the other 8ks ran exhibited poor pacing to a 28:52 at Purple Valley, and then shooting myself in the foot training-wise in the week leading up to Little Threes (28:44).

2) Looks like I won't be on the track roster this season. Nobody panic. Several XC guys are in the same situation as I am, including David. So we are reinstituting the long-dormant Williams Track Club, planning to run open meets/road races, and quite serious about it. While we won't have the resources or the status of the actual team--for me, the most annoying part about this--we will have more freedom with scheduling, workouts, recovery days and meets. Through a few conversations with the coaches individually, and with this group, we've more or less decided that despite losing our badge, we'll probably be better off running as an independent group than floundering on the track team, having no priority in selection for meets. They offered us spots, but ultimately Pete was encouraging us to do our own thing. David and I agreed that the more adult decision here is to go through with the running club, rather than cling to the empty label of THE team. As long as this doesn't happen with cross country . . . that's what happens when they aggressively recruit 18 XC freshmen who all show up at Williams, AND the administration says it doesn't want to finance more than 70 people on track, AND the head track coach got his own recruiting spots as well.

A wise man once told me to run for myself, and this year--even this cross country season--I think I've finally been able to put such a maxim into practice. However this plays out, it looks like I will be running with David all the time, which isn't a bad end. The extent to which my daily life will change is unclear: Nick said that Pete breaks the rules all time, especially with recruits. We'd be on our own for Sunday long runs and workouts, but surely we could "happen to be going for a run at the same time." For my high school readership, think about training for the Nike Regional meet, but all the time; and there are multiple meets. I myself am going to run some chill distance for the rest of this week, attempt a long run with a progression on Sunday and then start some generally "fast" workouts, maybe make my solo 15x400m a tradition, in the hope of running some kind of road race during thanksgiving.