Last Saturday was the first opportunity I had to see if everyone who's been training with Amber and I have been making any progress with their running. Needless to say I was very happy with everyone's result. We started a 5 mile indoor treadmill running series on January 7th and every three weeks we do another race. The first race was the 'Threshold Test and Sufferfest' and you basically run as hard as you can at 2% for 5 miles. Everyone was really complaining how tough an effort like that was, especially immediately after the off-season. I expected everyone to hurt in January and I told them all that it's okay and too be expected to be out of shape this time of year, it's not important right now. What I didn't expect was that everyone would whip themselves into shape in 9 short weeks!
We had 8 racers show up, one who hadn't done any races before and all 7 of them finished with a faster time, amazing. The time improvements were anywhere from 0.19% better to 8% better. I told them all at the beginning to think about a pace they could sustain for the full 5 miles and hold on to it. They all are not only getting fitter but are learning how to race better, I saw some people have a much lower heart rate but still drop their time just by sustaining a better pace.
The next race is March 31st and it's the toughest one; 1 mile at 2%, 1 mile at 4%, 1 mile at 6%, 1 mile at 4%, and the final mile at 2%. It'll be exciting to see everyone in a couple weeks tackle this one again. I got some 'choice words' thrown at me for coming up with this race...
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