Nate is Back!

Nate will be at Captain's practice this week. Will you? We are down to three weeks of summer training before practice starts. It's time to get serious.

If you are not attending the Tuesday / Thursday AM practices, you should be doing some sort of quicker running twice a week (in addition to continuing to lengthen your long run each week). The quicker running does not have to be at repetition pace (mile race pace) or interval pace (5K race pace), but there are many ways to add some faster running:
- tempo runs: start with 10-12 minutes (or less for younger runners) and work up to as much as 3 miles at tempo pace, which is 25-30 seconds per mile slower than 5K race pace.
- enter a race: it's not wise to race too often during the summer, but you should not enter the season without knowing your current 5K race pace, either. There are still many fun races to choose from this summer.
- fartlek runs: the options here are innumerable. You can run hard / easy for a set period of time, a set distance, or some other trigger (4 mailboxes or 3 telephone poles). The times and distances can be the same, or they can vary with each iteration. If you are running with others, you can take turn leading for a few minutes of mixing up the pace.
- cruise intervals: these are traditional intervals (can be as short as 400m, or as long as a mile), but you run them slower (i.e. tempo pace), with much less recovery (perhaps 60-90 seconds after a mile, down to 15-30 seconds after a 400).

Those of you that are attending the running camp are getting samples of many of these items.

Many runners on the team are putting the work in now, that will pay big dividends during the season. If you have not started, that's not ideal, but it's not too late. Getting out the door is the hardest part - don't let that be what stops you!