Friday's practice: Using Mother Nature as a training tool

Our 11 a.m. practice with the middle distance and long distance men today consisted of a tempo run and/or fartlek run on the Hudson Valley Rail Trail in Highland. Being Feb. 1, it was cold and windy. Emphasis on windy. The wind coming out of the west was strong and chilly. Because the trail runs east-west, this meant that going out our guys were running into a direct headwind. But coming back toward the Walkway bridge, it was a very distinct tailwind.

The small tempo group of Kenny, Datos and Big Man Moss basically turned the 5-mile tempo into a 5-mile progression run, based on the conditions. They got good benefit out of this workout, and they had splits worth bragging about. NICELY DONE. The Schanzinator fartlek (2 sets of 5-3-1) group got a great effort-based workout. And the middle distance group probably benefited the most from the tailwind conditions. They did a "Schanz" fartlek set of 5-3-1 (5-minutes hard, 4-minutes recovery; 3-minutes hard, 2-minutes recovery, 1-minute hard), followed by a full recovery, and then 5x1-minute very hard and 1-minute recovery.

The 5x1-1 was done with the wind at their back. This enabled them to go faster (obviously), but also to work on their turnover -- with great help from Mother Nature. Oftentimes, we will see athletes from other teams working with our Strength and Conditioning coach, Jon Clancy, on quick burst of speed with the aid of rubber tubing to accentuate the turnover and speed -- basically, pulling them to go even faster. Well, the wind did this for these guys, without any fancy strength equipment. Sometimes Mother Nature provides us with all that we need.