Trails

       Finding the perfect trail can be a very rewarding and satisfying accomplishment; an accomplishment that can be used as an effective and motivational training tool. I personally love running on the trail in my neighborhood, and my team runs on it very frequently.

     
 As for using trails as a good motivational tool goes, their beauty and calmness can be quite enticing to many. Running when you are surrounded by trees that seem to tower over you with little bunny rabbits that scamper across the trail in front of you can make it seem as if you are immersed in nature. This aspect can make running seem like less of a chore, and more like you are out on a stroll enjoying the outdoors. When running with friends, being surrounded by cars zooming past you when running on a sidewalk is far noisier and, to me at least, less comfortable. I sometimes feel as if I am being watched by my neighbors or people driving by in cars, even though I know that they are preoccupied with their own lives and are not worried about spying on the girls running by them.

       Trails can also be used as effective training tools. Trails provide one with a place to run in which they know the distances exactly and can therefor better judge their pace from the start, allowing them to run with a more even tempo. In addition, there is truly no place to run that is better suited for a long run than a trail. On a street, you run in stoplights or cross walks where you have to stop and wait to pass through, but on a trail, you have miles of free track with probably nothing that will get in your way. This makes trails a great tool to use when trying to build up cardiovascular strength and endurance, because (according to my coach) stopping for more than 30 seconds during a run drops your heartrate which alters the chemistry of you blood, essentially making the run easier and allowing your heart to rest to a point where the benefits it had been receiving from the run start over. Though I do not know if I, or the scientific community, believe that stopping affects your heart substantially, your heart will thank you if you run on a trail, because this can all be avoided! To read more about the specific effects of stopping mid run, please visit www.runnersconnect.net.

Pump Up Music

      Music can be an important part to helping people get in the mood emotionally to workout. Listening to songs with an upbeat rhythm and cheerful or intense tone helps set people in the right mindset to get some work done and strive for results. Music helps get you out of your mind and into the beat of the drums and the bars of the lyrics so that you can escape from your present situation or mood and into the world as seen by the artist or band blaring though your headphones.

        You know those times when you are listening to music in the background at a party or a restaurant and all of a sudden a song comes on that you know and like and a wave of uncontrollable urge come over you to get up and dance? Whether you succumb to the urge or not, the song has definitely gotten you pumped up. Music just seems to have this effect on us at times, given that it is the right song or genre, and it can be a very useful tool to help wake us up when we are in a funk and get us ready to tackle the next workout or task ahead of us. Listening to “Eye of the Tiger” almost never fails to make me want to stop what I am doing and go run for president of the United States (or you know, some other seemingly impossible task that has about a .0007% chance of actually happening). 

      "Eye of the Tiger" is not for everyone however, and different people can be pumped up by a multitude of different genres. When the concept of “before game” or “pump up” music comes up, the commonly thought of genres are the ones with a low base and fast beat, such as pop, and rock that cause peoples heart to race, which is ideal before a race or practice and help people warm up. However, many people prefer to listen to Taylor Swift or the break up station on Pandora before their workout. This helps them feel ready to go simply from the fact that they enjoy that music and get excited by the fact that they can sing along. They will blare that Whitney Huston song proudly as they zoom down the interstate (*sassy finger snap*)! Whatever works for you is the right music! Some people swear off music while they are working out, and others, like me, never seem to think about listening to some hard rock before they head out for a run, but I have recently come to see that benefits of music. So give it a try, or don’t, but even if you don’t enjoy the music before a workout, it certainly does make life more fun listening to Maroon 5 more often!

Cold Weather

       It is that time of year again, the time of year when the temperature drops and the squirrels disappear in their burrows to hibernate the cold away. Unfortunately, we as runners can’t just hibernate in the winter and hope to pop out in the spring as a conditioned and fit athlete. However, it is hard to find the motivation to run in the winter. The cold temperature, the ice on the sidewalks, the dark of the night that seems to fall at 5:00, these are several common excuses that runners have, and there are certainly many more, and they are valid, but how can we push ourselves to overcome these obstacles? 

       The first and probably most important thing to do is dress warmly! This is quite obvious, but many people on my team, and I’m assuming around the world, use this as their number one excuse to skip out on training in the winter.  However, if one just steps in to their nearest Dick's Sporting Goods or Sears, the first thing they will probably see is a bunch of sweatshirts and running tights for their choosing. They come in many brands, from Nike to Under Armour, and are produced in about a million colors and styles. Choosing  a fashionable outfit the will let your body breath and keep in the heat is easier than you think, so fortunately, or unfortunately, you can knock that excuse off your list! The good people at your nearest sporting goods store have you covered.

      As far as the darkness goes, I would suggest trying to stick with a daily schedule where you run at the same time everyday so that you don’t get in the habit of procrastinating your run to the point where it is too dark. For me, I always try to run within 30 minutes of getting home from school, this ensures that I don’t put it off and I can keep a schedule that lets me get my run over with, allowing me to enjoy my night (or do four hours of homework, but you know, whatever).

        The ice is a more tricky issue to solve, because you don’t want to feel as if you are endanger on a run and quite frankly, getting injured is not worth the run that day. If you are someone who has access to a treadmill, the winter is when I get the most use out of mine, I would suggest turning to it when the outdoors just seems a little too uninviting. So whatever you decide to do on that formidable winter day, just remember that most winter issues can be combated, but the most important thing is that we all stay healthy, active, and safe this winter!

Fat Week

The Kennedy High school Womens' Cross Country Team has passed down a simple tradition for as long as I can remember, which is really only six years because that is when my sister was a Freshman and therefor the earliest that I can state knowing about this custom, but still! Now that the Cross Country season is officially over, the tradition, otherwise known as "Fat Week", can commence! You may be wondering what "Fat Week" is, and I’ll tell you right now that it does not have anything to do with the social construction of "fat people" or gaining weight. Fat Week is the week following ones last meet, whether that may be the conference meet, the state qualifying meet, or the state meet, in which one can feel free to eat as they please, for the most part, and enjoy a break from running. During Fat Week, all of the cross country runners enjoy the freedom of the off season and the fact that they do not have to be competition fit 24/7. Throughout the season most of us generally try to eat relatively healthy, especially the 3-2 days prior to a meet, in an attempt to better our performance during races. This is due to the fact that, as all of us can logically deduce and have come to know, it is a lot more fun and efficient to run without a bunch of junk food in your stomach. In other words, we try to fuel our bodies’ right!

When the season is over though, we do not have to worry quite as much about what we eat, and can indulge a little in the foods that we have been abstaining from for the past three or so months. That is what Fat Week is all about! Celebrating the end to a (hopefully) great season in which we put forth our personal best,  and enjoying what it is like to live a less restrictive life for the next three or so months until track season. That is not to say that my team only eats junk food for a week, but it just gives us an excuse to feel less guilty about grabbing that doughnut or cookie (or maybe both) because we feel like we have earned it! And after all of the time spent training during and before the season, it is certainly justified to indulge a little and take a break from running for a week or two to give our bodies a rest and heal up. However, it is important that one does not drag Fat Week on too long, because the next running season will be upon us before we know it. Getting back in the flow of regular training after a few weeks is a vital part to helping ensure that we as runners can have the best following season that we can possibly have! (But do enjoy your Fat Week!)

"Off Season"

The time has come. The time when you can finally go home after school and sleep in on Saturday mornings. The time when you don't have to feel as guilty about eating that doughnut. The time when cross country is over. After training all summer and into the end of October, it is finally time to relax and..... And what? What do we do now? Maybe we can go home after school and get a few extra minutes of sleep, but that can get a little old after a while. For me anyway, I begin to miss my teammates after a few weeks of not being forced to see them every day at practice. Even if your teammates are still your friends and you talk with them every once in a while at school, it is not the same as being with them 90 minutes a day for six days a week. So I guess you could say that the "off season" is a little bitter-sweet. 

Now you may be asking yourselves, 'Why the parenthesis around off season'?  Well I will tell you why. It's because there really isn't an off season. Yes there is a period of time in which you don't have meets or practices for a few months, but it doesn't mean you should just be "off" your game that entire time. You do not have to train as often, or at the same intensity and level as you do during the season, but you should remember to run at least a few times a week to keep you fitness at a decent level. This will make you a better runner from the start when the next season comes around, because you are already in somewhat good shape and you can start building from where you are at now, rather than having to start from the bare beginning after not running for four months. As my coach once said, “The really good runners, they are 11 month runners, meaning that they train 11 out of the 12 months in a year. They take at most a two week break after the cross country season, and a two week break after track, but then they are right back at it again.” So take it easy and enjoy the off season, but just don let yourself turn into too big of a couch potato. 

Guilt

There are some days in life when going for a run just isn't an option. Most high school runners plan to train six days a week, usually taking Sunday off. Our coaches encourage this and most tend to be a little disappointed (this is usually an understatement seeing as my coach gets more than "a little disappointed")  when we can’t make it to every practice. However, things come up that can prevent this goal from happening every week, especially for the high school student. High schoolers these days seem to have broken the click based social system depicted often in the 1980 cult movies, including but not limited to my favorites: "The Breakfast Club", "16 Candles", and "Pretty in Pink". While this concept is generally beneficial to many, it can create a much busier life for the average high school student.  With the absence of the pressure to conform to fit one group of people, students are commonly involved heavily in the arts, academics, and athletics. Take me for example. I am a junior in high school and in addition to running cross country and track, I am apart of one of the show choirs at my school, take several advanced classes, and have a part time job.  I am also not an oddity and several of my friends have equally busy lives. So what is my point? My point is that people are busy, and running is often not the most important part of our lives. On occasions it is normal and sometimes unavoidable that you might need to skip a run. 

While bowing out on a run every once in a while because you have another commitment might be necessary, it doesn't mean that the guilt goes away; the guilt that seems to consume you when you can’t get in a workout that day. You feel as if you are cheating yourself and wrecking your training. The world seems to be mocking you and you know that because you didn’t run today your time at the next race will automatically be 45 second worse and the earth will be sucked up into a black hole completely devoid of light. While this is clearly an extreme exaggeration, skipping a run that you know other people on your team got in that day can be very stressful. For most people, or at least me anyways, it makes us feel like we are getting behind in our training and will be worse or less fit runners. While this may be ever so slightly true on a minor level, there is so much more that goes into being a good runner, and skipping one workout will not affect you that much. Think about it this way, when you are toeing the line at the state cross country meet or any other big meet that has been the ultimate goal of all of your training thus far, you will not be thinking, “Wow! I am going to do awful today because I couldn’t make it to practice on the 18th of the month!.”  You will be thinking about the race and concentrating on staying mentally tough, and that practice will most likely have zero effect on your race. So give yourself a break and don’t let the guilt consume you so much!

Carbs

There seems to be a stigma in the general public when it comes to carbs. But as everyone knows, carbs taste good; and as every runner knows, carbs are good for you too. Carbs provide energy for you to get through the day and are especially important for people who spend a great deal of time doing prolonged physical activity, such as running. Eating an excess amount of carbs for a less active person can seem to weigh them down and make them feel a little bloated, but carbs should not be taken out altogether of anyone’s diet. Carbs are the first thing that your body uses up as energy, so they provide that boost that one needs when they are about 5 miles into a long run and seem to have hit a wall, or when you have one final surge left in you as you cross the finish line of a race. Carbs are important for runners, and they taste good too!

For me anyways, I seem to be able to eat a never ending supply of pasta and bread if I wanted to. Now this would not be such a great choice on a normal basis, but “overloading” on carbs can be ok the day before a race to make sure your energy tanks are all at 100%. Don’t go overboard though, because you don’t want to feel heavy right before the race because you have pasta in your stomach. So as a runner, just remember that you are using up the carbs you eat on a regular basis, and they are not always the enemy. Carbs can help you feel stronger, happier, and less fatigued during a run.

For more information on the effects of carbs for runner, please go to http://www.runnersworld.com/rt-web-exclusive/fueling-the-runner-carbohydrates-battling-a-bad-reputation.

Stress

 So picture this, you are currently in the middle of having the worst day ever, you know the day. The day you woke up too late and had to get ready for school in 5 minutes so you basically look like a tornado swept through your hair and turned it to a rats nest. You are also wearing those sweatpants that are the baggy ones you promised you would never wear again because they make you look like you gained 10 pounds over night. To make matters worse, you walk into first period 10 minutes late and discover that you have a test today that you forgot about. Your teacher lets you take the test, but you have to get it done by the end of the period like everyone, so you have 15 less minutes to take it. You know you failed the test, or at best got a C-. *For those of you out of school, pick something to imagine that is equally terrifying and horrible, because believe it or not, your morning was just the beginning of the worst day ever. So what do you do? You could sit on the couch with a carton of Ben and Jerry's and sulk, or you could go outside and get some fresh air during a run.
 Running can honestly be a great stress reliever. Going outside and sweating a little gets your body in a state that makes everything else in your life seem to fade away. You are pushing your body to the limit and physically letting off some steam in a way that is more productive in the long run and feel much better than that time you almost broke your leg because you were trying to take out your anger on a tree. You don’t have to worry about anything when you are on a run but the birds chirping in the trees and remembering to put one foot in front of the other. All around you is a world that is moving and pulsing with life, life that moves on even though you have had a crappy day. It reminds you that although you have had a bad day, or week, or month, time will move on and things will get better, even if your crush saw you looking like a bum and your grade in Algebra went from an A- to a B. So next time you are having a sub-par day, consider hitting the pavement. Even if Ben and Jerry seem like much more comforting companions than your running shoes at the time, I promise, going for that 30 minute jog can be a life saver. 

Hills

Hills. They often seem like the devil's work when you are toward the end of a practice or race and you discover that you now have to make your way up an incline, no matter how steep it is. Those few degrees of incline can seem like they require 20 times more effort to travel the same distance than on flat ground, and it does require a little more energy. Hills can burn your calf muscles and make your lungs gasp for breath. But there are a few tricks I have learned from various coaches that I am going to share with you. But be warned, they do not magically make running hills suddenly feel like floating on a cloud; they just offer a new way to think about and take on hills. 

My coach has told us for years to "Maintain our effort up the hills, and push past people on the way down." This means that one should attempt to keep using the same amount of energy up a hill as they have been throughout the race, and not try to keep the same pace, because attempting to maintain the same speed up a hill as on flat ground will zap all of your energy. By maintaining effort, you are essentially working the same amount, and thereby slowing down a little, but you then have more energy at the top of the hill that you can use to take on the people ahead of you who are now exhausted. 

To put it another way, when I went to a camp at Wartburg College in Iowa during the summer before my freshman and sophomore years, the head coach of the successful men and women’s Cross Country teams, Steve Johnson, gave us the short quote “crest don’t rest.” This basically is saying that at the top of a hill, or the crest, you should push through toward the bottom and use the momentum of the hill, and not rest because you wasted so much energy chugging up the hill that now you have to slug down it to regain your energy for a few seconds. So just remember that hills are hard for everyone and as long as you don’t empty your tank on the way up, you should use the decline to your advantage to take on the people ahead of you. Just because the hill is behind you, doesn’t mean you are done with the race, you have just completed one of the many obstacles on the cross country course.

Team Dynamics

Cross country and track are often thought of as, and sometimes seem, like individual rather than team sports. This line of thinking arises because when runners are out there racing on the course, they are not just competing against the people in the different colored jerseys. They are competing against everyone out there that day pushing their bodies to the limit alongside them. This includes their teammates. And one might think that teammates would not purposely try and compete against each other, given that their points all count together and it doesn’t matter to the team score who passes who in the last 100 meters of the race, but to the teammates involved, it is often not seen that way. To beat a teammate can selfishly bring one much more pride than passing the random person from a school 60 miles away whom they are most likely never going to see again until maybe the next year at the same course. This is because one knows what their teammates can do, they know what level their teammates are at, and when they beat them, it feels like a slightly bigger accomplishment.

But be clear in the message I am trying to send, it is perfectly acceptable to be proud of yourself after a race in which you finally got a long awaited record and passed the runner on your team who is always a few seconds ahead of you each race, but your main goal in the race should not just be to beat a teammate, it should be to beat yourself. The distinction comes in to play for instance if you beat a teammate, but you both didn’t have very good races and you didn’t put the 110% effort in, you just had a slightly less sucky race than your teammate. Don’t get me wrong, it is perfectly normal to have those off races, but in this case you should not rejoice in the fact that you beat your teammate, because you really didn’t do anything in that regard to be proud of. So to reiterate, I feel that it is a worthy strategy to use your teammates as goals in regard to measuring your growth as a runner, but it is important to understand that being ahead of someone is not always something you should be solely happy about in it of itself. 

What I am trying to get at, is that although your teammates are also your competition, you should be there to support each other and lift each other up when you have bad days. Teammates should work toward helping their friends get back on the track to reaching their goals and remind them that (I know this sounds extremely cheesy) they shouldn’t beat themselves up over a bad race because the important thing is to have fun and enjoy what they are doing. If no one is there to remind you of this when you need it, running can become a very dark topic for you, and practice can seem like a frustrating part of your day that you just want to get over with as soon as possible. This is clearly not how it should be, practices should be a safe place where you can hang out and train hard with your friends. Your sport should not be a source of sadness and disappointment, and teammates are there to help others realize this when they need it the most.

In addition to helping each other through the bad times, teammates should also celebrate with each other during the good times! When someone on the team gets a PR, it is something that they should be recognized and congratulated for, because they have reached a personal milestone for themselves. When running becomes solely a competition with your friends, it can muddy relationships and harm the confidence and perseverance of others. If a teammate that is normally behind you has an amazing race and beats you, it can be hard to feel happy for them in the moment, but you should never be mad at your teammate for passing you! You have a right to be upset, but not at them! They were just going out there to race and do their best, and the only person that one can be a little mad at in this situation is themselves, because they were not good enough that day. Use it as motivation to fuel your training in order to surpass your current level of fitness and to reach toward a new PR, and use the other person as a training buddy so that you guys can both push each other during races! But do not be angry with the other person, because you do not want to win just because they let you, you want to win because you had a better race that day, and it is not right to be mad at someone for trying their best.

So although team relationships can sometimes get a little tense in the wake of such a competitive sport, remember that you are all in the same boat and are there to support each other. After all, track and cross country are team sports, and teammates are around to be friends and help each other thrive to the best of their abilities. 

The Difference between a 4k and a 5k

In the state of Iowa, girls have been running 4,000 meters for a cross country race, while guys and girls in all states except 10 (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Oklahoma) run a 5k race. My freshman and sophomore year I always heard the boys complaining about how much harder 5ks were and how lucky girls were that they didn't have to race a 5K.

This all changed last year though, when the Iowa coaches association voted to change the distance for women to a 5k. Now I got to find out for myself how much harder 5Ks were than 4Ks. Though the extra .6 of a mile doesn't seem like it would make a huge difference, it can severely alter the strategy of the top runners and play into the hands of participants that are better conditioned or more adapt to longer races. The races are run quit differently from one another and involve different training, because as my coach says, any amount of racing until 15 minutes is anaerobic, and for a 4K that is the entire race, while a 5K lasts longer so it is more important to build up the aerobic system and endurance.

Before the beginning of this cross country season, my teammates and I were all really scared to run 5Ks and were rather annoyed, but a little excited, that the distance was changed. We did not know what to expect out of the extra 1,000 meter and were anxious when it came to the day of our first meet to finally discover the mysteries of the 5K. Our coach made the two distances seem very different, and this only added to the wonder, and frustration, at having to learn the strategy to a new race.

As it turns out though, the extra 1,000 meters did not seem to make as much of a difference as we thought! Sure it is a longer race and we may have to go an extra loop around the baseball diamond, but in the end, it feels pretty similar to racing a 4K when it comes down to it. Maybe I only feel that way because I can’t recall exactly what it felt like to race a 4K in the 7 months or so since I last ran one, but nonetheless it seems as if my teammates feel the same way. I have not heard anyone since the first meet mention anything about the new distance in regard to its added difficulty.

The major downfall to the switch in distance comes when one tries to compare their race times from year to year. I for one had never actually raced a 5K before this year and had no idea what sort of time to expect. It is hard for me to compare my times from this year to last year, so I don’t know if I am improving and growing as a runner or not! But in the end I suppose that is ok, because the goal is just to do ones best and strive to succeed.

A positive to the new distance is that many road races during the summer are 5Ks, and so it is a lot easier to get in a few good time trials before the season to see where you are at. Very few, if any road races are 4Ks, so it was always difficult to get a feel for how you would do at the first meet, because you had no opportunity to race a 4k since last year. With 5Ks, you could choose nearly any weekend you wanted to find a race and go see what you can do in a race like setting!

For more information and an interview on the topic with one of the elite women runners in the country, please visit http://espn.go.com/high-school/girl/story/_/id/7906220/in-10-states-girls-run-shorter-cross-country-races-boys-why. Keep in mind that it is slightly outdated seeing as Iowa has adopted the new distance. 

Having a Positive Attitude

        As with many things in life, it is important to try and keep a positive attitude about running. With all the pressure and the drive to success that comes with this sport, it can sometimes be hard to remember to take a step back and relax every once in a while. I mean in all reality, runners, or at least some of my teammates and I, and I am assuming many others around the world, tend to worry and stress about running. We worry about that fact that we had a bad practice. We worry that we didn’t get enough sleep and will run poorly at the next meet. We worry about who is on varsity. We worry too much. If all we do is worry and stress about running, then why do we do it? That is the million dollar question, because when running isn’t fun anymore, what is the point?

       That is what each individual needs to figure out for themselves - what is the point? In other words, why do they run? Sometimes just taking a few minutes to reflect on why you started running will help you to remember the simplicity of running and rejuvenate your passion for the sport, because it’s not all skidded knees and sore legs! Remember the simple times, the happy times. Like when you used to run with your dad in that one road race every year, or the time you realized that you could actually make a name for yourself as a runner, or the day you ran around the block for the first time in a new town, and you saw the sights, felt the wind blow by, and heard the inhale and exhale of your breath as you speed down the street, feeling fast and powerful. Those are the moments that are important to remember. Those moments are vital when you are stuck in the negative spiral that occurs when one capitalizes too much on the competitive, recorded, race aspect of running too much. Those moments can bring you back to the joy and the freedom that running can bring.

       Keeping a positive attitude will also make it easier for you to put the bad days behind you and work toward achieving your goals instead of sulking and being grumpy at practice the next day. It will also help you to enjoy the moment and be a happier, less stressed person. And if that is not enough, please keep in mind that although everyone may like to complain every once in a while about a difficult workout or a horrible race, no one likes the Negative Nelly that always has a frown on their face and can’t go five seconds without making a snarky comment about something or another. So don’t be a Negative Nelly, life is way too short to worry too much about the negatives in life, so concentrate on the good days, move forward from the bad, and always work toward becoming an even better, healthier version of yourself!