Sunday, October 30, 2005

TOTAL DOMINATION

The Big 10 Cross County meet was in town today and if you haven’t heard, the Wisconsin Badgers (rank 2nd in the nation) totally dominated the meet.

  • They scored 16 points (15 is a perfect score).

  • Each team runs up to 9 guys. Of the first 9 guys across the line, 8 of them were Badgers. Their 9th guy finished a “lowly” 25th place.

  • They’re young. Their top-7 look like this Senior, Junior, Freshman, Freshman, Senior, Freshman, Junior.

  • For 8K, their top-5 averaged 24:01 (the next closest team was 25:06), top-7 averaged 24:08, top-9 averaged 24:18.

  • Word is they held 2 guys out from this meet that they run at Regionals.
I’m speechless; 8 of the top 9 guys in the entire conference. Just think about that in terms of another sport. For example, in basketball, their 2nd team would win the Big 10 conference title. Wow.

Ever see the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is “even-Steven”? He loses $20 and then finds $20 in a coat he hasn’t worn in awhile. That was me at the meet Sunday. I put my car key in my jacket pocket but forgot to zip it up. 2 hours later while standing around waiting for the awards I realize I lost my key. I tell the guys I’m with and they say that 20 minutes ago they announced that someone found a Subaru key. I go up to claim it and sure enough it’s mine. What luck!?

After 3 days in a row, I took yesterday off. Today kicked off the first full week of my new training program. You can look at this program in one of two ways; 1) I have 7 weeks to get my miles up before following Lydiard’s “standard” 12-week conditioning phase, before adding hill, anaerobic, sharpening, etc. or 2) I have a 19-week conditioning phase before adding that other stuff. I’m not sure there’s really a difference between the two. Anyway, I managed to hop on the treadmill at 8 PM and get in 7 miles.

          4 comments:

          Mike said...

          Zeke, I envy the timeframe you have given yourself. I like the idea of separating the first 7 weeks from the next 12, it just mentally breaks it up more and might help keep you from running too fast while building miles. So how was lunch with Nobby?

          Chad said...

          Yeah, I like the idea of using the first 7 weeks to increase my mileage. Actually I'll probably need more than 7 weeks to get where I'd like to go. Then I'll add some stronger aerobic runs during whatever is left of the conditioning phase.

          Lunch was good. Nothing like spending 90 minutes talking about running, especially when you only get a 30 minute lunch break - oops. Sounds the Nobby is making progress with the foundation.

          E-Speed said...

          wow talk about kicking some cross butt.

          That is amazing

          D said...

          Go Badgers!