Return to School

Well, the last four or five days have been hectic--significantly more hectic than the return to school should be. First, on Sunday, I received an email from my Athletic Director informing me (and the rest of the student-athlete body) that Montreat College is reviewing a move to NCAA Division III. The buzz around school is crazy, nobody is really too pleased about it. The move effectively cripples coaches' opportunities to recruit athletes. There are many more details, but I don't know that they are appropriate to share here. The basics are, however, like I said: Montreat College is looking into a move to NCAA Division III. Even if that move doesn't happen, the Board of Trustees has elected to eliminate athletic scholarships, beginning with the incoming freshman class in August, 2010.

Last night, after getting to school, I was informed by fellow marathoner and teammate Ben Hall that the NAIA has reduced the marathon A standard to 1:14:00--a full 60 second reduction. That was kind of irritating, but it just means that I will need to train that much harder. This is a minor problem which is certainly overcomable.

As far as training, it's gone really well recently. Sunday I did a nice little hill/strength run, which ended up being about 55 minutes long, including three times up Rocky Face Mountain, a mountain which is a ten minute run from my front door (5:27, 5:47, 5:40) and one time up Oak Ridge--the road near my house which is just straight up hill (2:08). I've never recorded my times up Rocky Face Mountain, but if I recall correctly, sub-6 is historically a very good time for going up that sucker--and I did that thrice. It is a pretty legit mountain, too. I measured it on Google Maps/GMap Pedometer once, and it is something like 850 meters long, so as you can see it is a pretty difficult climb. Also, the fastest I've ever run up Oak Ridge (roughly 500m long) was 2:04 (and that was with fresh legs!), so all-in-all that was a very encouraging run.

Monday I was supposed to run with former HS teammate Matt Coniglio, but he ended up having something come up, and we were unable to meet. I dispatched a text message to Patrick Hall--my coach for the fall of my senior year of HS and also a graduate of both my high school and my conference rival, Covenant College--and he and I met at the Chattanooga Nature Center for a fartlek--1 minute on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off, 3 on, 5 off, repeat--over the hilly trails of the CNC. I would be lying if I said I felt awesome; while I did feel very good, I also felt fatigue in my legs from the hills the day before, so while it was still a good run, it was pretty difficult.

Tuesday was a light fartlek/recovery run with Luke Copeland after I got back to Montreat. He and I just ran around campus for an hour and threw in 8x60s light pickups. It felt very good. Today he and I modified the assigned 4xMile workout, instead opting to go a straight 2 miles around "Lake Susan" here on campus, with the intention of just going around 6 minute pace. A light workout, but there is a reason for that--I will get to it. The road around Lake Susan is pretty up-and-down, about 750 meters, so we just went 4 laps and called it close enough. Actually, Luke went 4 laps, while I dropped out after 3 because I decided I had had enough, after going hard Sunday and Monday, it wasn't necessary to push myself to that point today as well. I covered the 3 laps/2,250m in 8:20, which is just about six minute pace. Perfectly paced run!

The reason we slowed the pace of the workout down to six minutes and the reason that I bailed after three laps are one and the same: on Friday, we have a 1 mile time trial as a team. This time trial will give Coach Larios a good idea of our current level of fitness (after 6+ weeks away from campus, it's the best way for him to figure that out) and give him a good idea for our individual workouts, and also a good idea of what races to throw us into in the near future. He has asked us to leave plenty in the tank for this time trial, so, treating it like a race, Luke and I opted to go slower for the workout today--which could be better termed a tempo--so that we would be sharp on Friday.

We're back at school, classes started today, and our first "race" is Friday afternoon! I'm excited, I didn't think I would get an opportunity to race a mile this year. Last year I opened up track season with a low-key "rust-buster" 5:01 1600, the last 800 of which were solo, and the first 800 were paced by someone else (I didn't want to take the lead) and we went through in 2:32. I don't think it's too unreasonable to hope for quicker than that on Friday, considering it will be fairly competitive and I won't have to worry about running alone. We shall see how it goes.