Here Comes the Sun!

Today was awesome because we had two different training groups:
Early Risers were treated to cooler temps and the afternoon duo had some heat (but probably better tan lines tomorrow).

The flavor of the day was 4×4 minutes hill bounding. We started the session by watching a super cool (I think so!) Russian Video of their current National Team doing a similar workout. We placed emphasis on their athletic position, strong hip drive and “floating” rather than “tempo.”

After that we jog through the woods on a soft trail, through two streams, over the mossy side of a field (why can’t we run on the tundra more often!!??) to the Number Nine Hill. They then ski walked the hill one time with emphasis on dynamic hips and pushing with the arms. While they were doing that I set up a quick agility sequence in the sand — you can check it out below — that we ran through 5 times trying to be light and quiet (the kids held a pole level at chest level to show twisting or bobbing). The sequence is also supposed to wake up the muscles and recruit some fast twitch muscles.

Bounding Warm-Up

The goal with the intervals was to strive for strong technique and maintain pacing throughout the workout — a workout that will tax your capacity no matter how you slice it. The third and fourth interval usually end hunched over your poles and Heidi described a “blinding” sensation. You recover walking and then joggin back to the base of the hill, repeat, half-way there, oh boy 3’s gonna hurt, and it does, one left! Give it your all on the last minute and you get icy cold water!

Morning session: Sinclair, Grald, Hans Halvorsen, Fitzgerald, Beckwith and Rafter

Afternoon session: Heidi Halvorsen, Danny Kuzio

The writing in the sand.

We’ve been tracking a lot of our workouts with a GPS watch. Really cool tool: today the intervals were 4 minutes long and the kids did feet of elevation gain in miles.