Group Practice #9
9 miles on the schedule
Start time: 7:00 AM for walkers, 7:30 AM for runners

It was good to be back with my Team Challenge peeps after missing last weekend’s run/walk to move into a new house.  We did a split start for the first time this weekend, 7:00 AM for the walkers and 7:30 AM for the runners.  This actually works out pretty well so that people finish closer to the same times.  However, it makes it difficult to do any type of clinics.  I don’t know how my participants feel, but at this point I’m a little burnt out on the clinics and just want the team to be able to get moving.  As our mileage gets longer and longer, we take more time to get that done (obviously) so the nervous energy before starting is more abundant.  Plus, with a split start, I usually head out with the walkers leaving the other coaches to hang back and see the runners off.  Having clinics twice isn’t as effective.

So we had a mini-mini-clinic before the walkers started off.  I have no clue if this was actually passed on to the runners too!  But our clinic was about the importance of having a mantra to help pull you out of a funk and the inevitable rough patches in training.  Everyone has them, even the elites.  But if you talk negatively to yourself, it will be a lot harder to reverse that negativity.

My co-coach Jimmy is injured now, messed up achilles.  So he’s spending time on his bike during training now.  The plan was for him to see that the runners started off, then he was supposed to hop on his bike and head down to the turnaround 3 miles from our starting point to help direct the walkers as they arrived.  Well, most of the walkers made it down there before he did because he was chatting with the runners. LOL!

Our assistant coach Deb, wasn’t feeling that great either.  So she ran out the 1.5 miles in the opposite direction from our starting to direct people at the other turnaround we had.  My duty was to hang out in the middle sections and keep an eye on people.  I did have to chase down a couple people who made some wrong turns.  The path we ran on goes down along a wash.  There are sections of the path that go under the roads, to avoid having to dart across traffic.  The underpass sections though are usually a series of switch backs and a few people got mixed up on those and started heading the wrong directions.  I had a couple of good sprints to catch people!

Overall the group did really well this week.  We definitely have aches and pains.  I wish we had 2 extra weeks for the Las Vegas training season.  We have to cram it all into 14 weeks instead of 16 like we get for Napa.  I feel like that little bit of extra time lost makes a big difference in the earlier weeks so we can help them build a better base.

I did take a couple pictures… but I can’t find anything to connect my camera to a computer to retrieve the pics right now.  No cable or card reader.  Got to find the box where those things are, moving woes!

Update: Found my cable… for the few pictures I did take!
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