As LVC Cross Country nears the middle of the season, where the races begin to become increasingly more important as we draw closer and closer to the MAC Championships, we wanted to give you a little background on the opening stages of the year for us.  We began our season by trekking across the large majority of PA to arrive at our training week campsite located in Ohiopyle State Park.  Living rugged for a few days in cabins and walled tents, the LVC distance runners were able to spend the majority of their day either training on the various challenging trails located in the park or getting to know their teammates a little bit better. 

  The days were filled with two structured training sessions; the first bright and early at 8 AM which consisted of the main run for the day, the second at 3 PM which was a shakeout run followed by either plyometric drills or core workouts.  It was an excellent opportunity to get on some scenic trails and explore the park on foot.  The hills were tall, the footing rough, the runs long but the athletes would agree that the experience helped to mold the team right from the outset of the season.

  The afternoons were spent doing team activities which ranged from playing team volleyball and ‘extreme’ bocce ball at a local park to travelling to the Cucumber Falls and the Meadow Run natural waterslides.  Although the natural waterslides were not as smooth as advertised, the athletes still had a great time and it was more than amusing to watch them slip and slide down the stream as you can see for yourself in the pictures. 

   On a sour note our first team workout of the year was marred by a huge inconvenience when the parks cleanup crew assumed that our large collection of t-shirts, running gear, shoes and water bottles were garbage one morning while we were out on a tempo run.  The gear had collected on a large rock right next to our LVC vans so you’d think it would be quite obvious that we were coming back for them.  Apparently not.   Once we figured out that the items were not actually stolen, we had to wait roughly an hour and a half for their respective return.  Something to laugh about in retrospect but not at the time!  The team made the best of it by using the Yough river, adjacent to the rail trail, as an impromptu ice bath session and we were on our way soon enough. 

   Almost all returned uneaten by bears….I mean….all of the runners returned to LVC’s campus uneaten by bears, in better fitness, and ready to get the season underway.  The LVC XC team has come a long way since those first few days.  As the temperature continues to plunge and becomes the brisk autumn air that precedes the championship racing season, all will remember the warmth of the campfire in Ohiopyle and the great experiences that came along with it.

    The LVC distance runners had no meet this past weekend and instead completed a high end aerobic effort in the form of a tempo run on Friday afternoon.  Our program is really big on improving aerobic capacity and this is a good example of an early to mid season workout that we might do.  The exact workout was as follows; Men - 4 mile anaerobic threshold run directly into 1 mile uptempo on the track, Women - 3 mile anaerobic threshold run directly into 1 mile uptempo on the track. Below is the 3 mile loop around the town of Annville that we ran the tempo portion of our workout on.  Most of the loop was on the roads and the section towards the end veers off onto the sidewalk around the field hockey fields and ends directly next to our outdoor track and field facility. 

    The team, on the whole, performed really well but Junior Brad Sweigart stole the show by running his tempo segment in 22:51 (5:42 per mile) and dropping a smooth 4:59 mile running around traffic in lane two on the track to finish the workout in 27:50 (5:34 per mile).  Brad is rounding into form quite nicely and is looking to lower his lifetime best next Friday at the Brooks Paul Short Run hosted by Lehigh University.  If he runs a smart race this workout indicates that he is ready to take some time off of his 27:13 at this meet last season.  Junior Jenn Cronin was the top women's finisher, running her three mile tempo in 18:34 (6:11 per mile) and her  mile segment in 5:54 for a total of 24:28 (6:08 per mile).  Jenn will lead a strong women's contingency at the Paul Short meet as well in their first real fitness test of the year.  Nick DÁngelo, Alex Talarico, Patrick Tierney, Megan Long, Emily Devivo, Tiffany Frederick & Victoria Broderick all had tremendous workouts as well and will provide the depth we need going into our next few meets.  

    The main purpose of this workout was to get the athletes used to running strong but comfortably during the anaerobic threshold run of 3-4 miles.  This is roughly an 85-88% effort and should have the runners feeling pleasantly tired by the time they complete that section.  The last mile on the track was supposed to be a noticeable shift in pace but not an all out effort by any means.  If done correctly a workout like this should be a huge confidence booster for our athletes as they learn that they can pop a good pace after they are already sufficiently tired.  Full results from workout can be found below.

Full Results: 9-25 Tempo.doc (31.00 kb)