so frustrated.
why can’t the health center figure out why i have been sick since the 2nd week of school??
tommorow apparently is going to be repeat 800’s for time… kill me now. being sick SUCKS.
my weekend has been pretty good though, saw my friend at trinity which was nice 
no workout of any kind, obviously.
got a solid night’s sleep which felt EXCELLENT. 8 or 9 hours- i wore an eye mask which actually did a lot to help block out light from my roommate, and weirdly it made me notice noise less… or maybe i was just really tired.
anyway, woke up this morning still with a sore throat which migrated down so that I was coughing slightly, but nothing too bad. I was worried that the cold air would irritate and i’d be coughing more, but it seems to be alright.
-10-15 minute run, then drills and dynamics. there is a lot less mobility and drills from what i am used to, and a much longer warmup run.
-then a circuit outside on grass: 6 cones were set up outlining a 400m course. At each cone we’d do a different exercise, including pushups, crunches, toe raises, squat jumps, etc etc x25 for each, then sprint in between the cones. at the end, tag your partner and they do the circuit. as soon as they’re done, you run a straight 400 as fast as possible. rest while they run theirs, then start the circuit again as soon as they finish. the exercises for each cones changed with each repetition - we did the entire set (circuit plus 400 run) 3 times.
-CD run, prob 8-10 min.
it hurt at the end, but was manageable. it felt really good just to be working out and moving and getting in shape again. coach yelled out that i had great form and he liked it, which was reassuring.
tommorow is 6x800 cutdowns in 6 minute sets- so if i start out running for 4 i’ll rest for 2 then start again and go to 3:45… I have no idea what kind of times he wants us to start out, but regardless it will hurt… a lot. can’t wait 
That sounds tough especially the 400 at the end LOL!!
frustrated that i am not BETTER YET :mad:
might have to go to the doctor tommorow… again.
in the interest of desperately trying to care for my health and also because my roommate has been waking me up at ungodly hours of the morning, I have rediscovered the joys of breakfast- namely oatmeal with blueberries, or eggs and fruit. I went this morning and it made me feel so much better at work. I had been having a banana or yogurt or cereal in my room, always rushed, and now i remember why i LOVED my wheat bread, p.b. and banana in the mornings every day last year.
anyway, set the tone for the day- got a lot done, and had good meals and remembered to take my vitamins +supps. my throat and whatnot are still not 100%, but I feel better than I did this morning already.
workout today was actually not that bad: We were broken into groups of repeat 800’s, repeat 600’s, and repeat 400’s for people really out of shape or very short distance focus exclusively. I assumed that my coach would want me doing the 8’s because of the multi and because he is very much NOT a “less is more” type, but when I asked he said it made more sense to do the 6’s. The multi won’t happen for kind of a long time, and running 4’s and 8’s probably won’t be my focus until then.
SO:
-6x600 on grass (ending in the pitch DARK!) in 6 minute intervals- so every 6 minutes we would go. If it took 3 min, you’d take 3 of rest… etc.
-we took the first two a little too slow, at 2:41 and 2:39.
-I took control and took the pace down to 2:32, 2:30, 2:31, 2:24.
they were meant to be cutdowns, so that last one MORE than made up for the weak one on rep 5. Once I finished I felt like I had more in me and it really wasn’t that hard. The last two didn’t feel great, but I think if we had pushed harder during the first two it would have been more appropriate.
so all in all a success- this whole grass thing is masking the fact that my shoes are beyond dead… i am just WAITING for thanksgiving. We got a new lifting program to look over and start tommorow, but I had to model so I haven’t seen it yet…
and i ALMOST FORGOT- i got free samples of the ZMA nightcap from SNAC and I plan on trying one tonight- I have heard really good things so i am psyched. maybe i will actually get a solid night of sleep and get completely healthy. I’m going to get some courage and ask my roommate to not work in here when she gets up at 3 or 4 to do work because it has woken me up 4 or 5 times in the past week and then i can’t get back to sleep.
Good stuff, glad to hear you are eating better keep it up
Cheers,
Chris
had an awesome breakfast after 9 hours of sleep
I did talk to my roommate… I kind of cheated because she was sleeping when I wanted to go to sleep so I left her a note instead. I woke up briefly when she was moving around, but she took her stuff out of the room and I had some peace.
I was not very impressed with the ZMA nightcap - I tried the appleberry flavor which made me want to vomit, and while I do think I slept a bit deeper, I woke up this morning still with some lingering sickness and not exactly ready to leap out of bed. Part of the problem might have been that I may have still had food in my stomach, and also that the window of opportunity is very unclear. The packet itself said to take it an hour before bed, but i have read everything from an hour to half an hour to directly before you will be sleeping on this site, so I waited probably 25 minutes until I got really drowsy then went. My heart was pouding for a while, but then I think I fell asleep a little faster than usual.
So bottom line- I’ll wait to take the second one a little more carefully before judging. They also keep the dorms really warm and the blanket on my bed is made for the freakin arctic because sometimes I wake up just because I am sweating and too hot.
another day of good food… lately i have been eating bigger breakfasts which I think makes a big difference, a pretty small lunch, and usually a big dinner since I am always starving after practice. In theory I would like to shift things so that lunch is my larger meal and dinner is smaller, but given the structure of practices I don’t know if that is feasible.
VERY easy day today:
-5 min. run, 5 min. walk, 15 min. run (included a couple hills) our coach warned us that this will never happen again
-8x50m easy strides
-stretching
-upper lift: I had to cut it short because I needed to get to work, but it was only four lifts to begin with.
-did the bench and pull-up pairing section which i judged to be more important than the others
modeled for two hours, and was asked if I model privately… so i guess I am a good model after all
will wait to take the other ZMA packet probably until tommorow because I have a lot of work tonight, and tommorow is a long, hard fartlek and a lower leg lift. thursday will be our off-day this week. normally our off-day will be mondays, with sunday being pool practice. smart coach- who goes drinking on sunday nights? actually a lot of people, but most of us on track aren’t alcoholics.
i am kind of getting into this whole food thing since I have the excuse that I’m training hard, but I’m hoping i’m not taking it too far. I’m alright with breakfast and lunch being fair-sized, but again these are big meals relative to what I am used to, so I don’t actually know if they are appropriate. I still want to work a little bit more on my dinners (smaller) but its coming along. Adding in the real breakfast has made a big difference in my wakefulness and energy during the day, and also has cut down on my urges to snack, esp on unhealthy stuff. yay
-did a really hard fartlek on a golf course: we alternated sprinting and jogging between tee and green for the entire thing- some very long running periods! it felt kind of crappy for however long it turned out to be- between 3 and 4 miles I think, between 20 and 30 min.
-medball ab circuit
day off lifting today. day off running tommorow, but we’re supposed to do our lower lift. Now that i talked to my roommate I feel like I have been sleeping better, and while I am coughing a bit still, the groggy sick feeling only gets me in the mornings now until I eat.
ugh… we always eat directly after our workouts, it is SO early- usually 5:30 and I can’t gauge my appetite… I always end up feeling really full/fat and I want to do more stuff, kind of like right NOW.
I am scared for the time after college when I won’t have track to structure my life around the way i do here. It honestly changes my whole life- I am eating well, sleeping a lot more, focusing much better on studies, being a more attentive tutor, and I am generally much happier now that i was for the entire fall.
I go through major ups and downs with my mood whether or not I am in season, so I could just be riding out an up period… the time right before track started was VERY low. But the lows don’t tend to be so low when I am training.
Anyway, no running practice today, just a lower lift which I LOVED:
-snatches 5x6 @25k (i’ve never done these so I didn’t go crazy with the weight, but having done soooo many cleans I picked it up immediately)
-back squats to the ground, 1x10, 3x8 @45k (more weight probably would have been appropriate here to, as I was front-squatting 50k in super-sets)
-squats paired with 1- 1/4 leg curls- just one curl and then a 1/4 curl was one rep- 4x8 @30lbs… these start out easy and then BURN
-calf raises 3x12 @50lbs
tommorow is hills on sore legs… yessssssss
-ran a mile (maybe 1.25, but whatever) to infamous ‘bee hill’
-ran a mile UP bee hill- 30s on, 30s off, but the offs were standing so that we actually had to run the whole mile
-ran back down bee hill and back to campus- 2+ miles
-hurdle mobility
-then played with little kids for 3.5 hours to get some of my service hours in to earn spring break… that was exhausting.
My body is shot and we are doing turnover 300’s in the morning YES
Good stuff Kras, keep it up
Where you have a demanding practice during the afternoon and cannot eat a big lunch look at having a protein shake in addition to what you are eating now for lunch.
Your body will use the aminos digested before practice and actually start rebuiding/recovering during and immediately after the workout. (It’ll shorten your recovery window)
Then eat your regular big supper.
Cheers,
Chris
had GREAT workout:
-warm up: we do a WU i am really not used to here- we run for 10-15 minutes, so over a mile just jogging, then some drills and dynamics and strides… I suppose it gets me warm enough, I just always thought you were supposed to either be going fast or walking
-4x300, 70% first 100, then 80% then 90%, 3 min. in between
-4x150, 75-85-95%, 3 min. between
-then 30s x 5 core exercises, straight to 400m run, 1 min. rest, another 400m
We were going to do a set of those with 200’s and 100’s, but before our second 400 coach said that if everyone went all out and got significantly faster that we would stop the workout there… so everyone ran it really hard and collapsed and we were done.
-long CD and stretch
then upper lift, pretty easy:
-overhead press 5x6 @17.5 lbs (single arm) paired with
-DB external rotation- this one was kind of bizarre- 5x8 @10
-DB curls 5x8 @15 paired with
-decline bench close grip with 3-2-1 tempo- 5x8 @70
Poured my heart and soul into this workout, felt fantastic. Ate a solid lunch after then passed out for a while. Tommorow is pool workout in the afternoon, so I might make it out tonight 
I assume your team does a long-to-short program? How do you feel about the training you’re doing now vs previous training (maybe of the CFTS sort)?
What we’ve been doing is similar to what I did in the past in HS (long to short.) The biggest difference I have noticed is that the longer parts are much longer- one day we went out for just a straight run, and another day we did a fartlek that would be familiar to the XC team. A lot of 800m runners train as sprinters so some of the stuff is geared for them, but I know that we will get short and fast later in the season. The workout of 300’s and 150’s is more what I would have expected at this point in the season.
I feel like I am getting in good shape though- some of the longer stuff can function as tempo and help us lean up a bit, and since we are not competing until january we have enough time to get the base in.
pool practice today- did some drills, then played for a while, then a few laps and some flutter kicks just to give us an easy day and an idea of what he expects for pool workouts since we have to do some alone over break.
going home day after tommorow… def looking forward to it!
my quads are sore from the flutter kick intervals.
-did 3x 4x150 on the golf course, with 1 min. between 150’s and 4 min between sets. we were running on a slight incline, so that reps 2 and 4 of each set were uphill, but the workout was still pretty easy
-then we ran 4x4’s (only once) so I ran 1x400 at a pretty good pace, but definitely relaxed a lot on the first 200 and really picked it up hard only on the last 175 to pass the girl in front of me
then upper lift:
-bench 5x6 @80 paired with
-chin ups 5x4, last rep had an 8-second count at the top, half-way down, and 3/4 down
-45 incline powell raises… a truly bizarre lift, 4x8 each arm, paired with
-RR 1x8, 3x10 @55
I am distressed about my inability to do chinups. At the beginning of the fall I had lifted upper so much all summer that I could bench sets of 95 and max around 115, and do 7 pullups unassisted (from 0 at the beginning of the summer) and it is really depressing to have lost a lot of strength so quickly. I am NOT playing field hockey again. With upper lifts only a couple times a week compared to four during the summer, it could take a while to gain the strength back, if I ever do. I have already been thinking about the summer and how excited I am to just lift and basically spend the summer in the gym the way I did this past summer and just get ripped and lean up some more.
But first… must go through two seasons of track
coming home tommorow… wooooooooo time to load up on cold weather running gear and new shoes and maybe say hi to the parents somewhere in there
If you could do 5*4 with the last rep slowed down like you mentioned you could probably do one straight set of 7.
yes… but especially being paired with the bench i needed an assist- not on all of them, but a fair amount :mad:
-just did a short but intense core circuit on the floor in my room… and then remembered that I am probably doing a circuit tommorow morning with my coach since I am leaving in the early afternoon for home. goddamn.
practiced this morning early so that I could go home this afternoon.
-did a short circuit around the outer perimeter of the turf field: 25 reps of a core exercise at each corner and sprinting between corners for 3 laps
I actually was pretty pumped up and finished before all the guys I was practicing with, and my coach told me he’s been very pleased with my work. While I was running he turned and explained to someone who was with him that even though I’m only a freshman I’m going to be one of his stars 
it was very high praise from a coach who tends not to compliment us much.
now I am home
busy busy busy