My sport is a daily system for me. Track and field doesn’t seem complicated at all from the eyes of a spectator, especially if the only thing a track athlete has to do is run in circles, but training in distance comes with its tedious elements. Personally for me, I have to incorporate coaching in this mix. Many of my assistant coaches know what types of volume that I am working with while others do not understand it due to what event they specialize in coaching. With that in mind, I must approach the correct coaches who know about my paces, times, and workouts whenever I have questions. This gets a little more difficult, however. One assistant coach, nicest man in the world, doesn’t always quite understand the workouts well. One reason is because he’s reaching his older years, but another reason is because our head coach doesn’t always make himself clear when writing out our workouts. Speaking of my head coach, speaking with him is hit or miss. Some days it is alright to approach him and ask questions, but at other times, he will bark at you for no reason at all. With three years under my belt, I have been able to sense his high and low waves of ongoing frustration toward me, so that I may avoid the blast zone nine times out of ten. Training is a huge part of the system. Each week we receive our own workouts along with our mileage quotas. When I have to clock in 80-90 miles a week, I must consider what appropriate distances I should travel each day in order to meet my weekend goal. The workouts are generally the same for everyone during cross country because we all run the same event, but when track season arrives, we tend to split ways with our teammates in order to specialize in our preferred events. For example, I run steeplechase because I enjoy torturing myself, but my workouts will always incorporate hurdles. The steeplechase is an event that’s 3000 meters in length which is seven and a half laps around a standard 400 meter track. Placed around the track are five obstacles- four barriers and one water pit barrier. Each are evenly spread 80 meters apart around the track. I must always pay attention to time, pace, stride, power, and form when going over these barriers while running. Just as I should be aware in training, every time I approach a barrier to hurdle over, I must be comfortable and relaxed with jumping over it with either leg. Failure to do so will result in stutter-stepping which wastes both time and energy. The water pit is another huge energy drainer, and if the proper amount of effort and form is not applied, then that will bring significant harm to my overall time/placement. I generally have to keep my 400m splits very consistent (78 sec per lap) but usually after a mile into the race I have to make some sort of grinding move (because this is generally where all athletes will speed up the pace) which brings me to about 76 sec per lap. It doesn’t seem like that huge of a difference, but if one considers the fact that this race requires you to jump 35 times without slowing down for 3000m, then we start to see where the exhaustion comes into play. Diet, mindset, pain/potential strain/injuries, and even what I plan to wear all have effects on this daily system of mine. By the time the weekend comes, I enter my game. Now we don’t call track meets “games” but what I am talking about is my mind game and my race game. Every race is different and every difference sways my mind differently. The object of my game is to know when I need to make moves, ignore the pain, and kick to the finish. Every runner’s fear is “no mans land.” This will occur if I am at the caboose of a line of runners and begin to fall off. This will also occur if I am at the front line of runners and begin to leave them to try and catch the lead pack of runners. Basically when one is all alone in the race, they are in no mans land. This land is population 1 and seems to spend double the amount of energy the more you are settled in it. The only time that this land has no effect when you are alone is if you are in the lead pack, and you begin to pull away from it. Your mind tells you “there is no one to catch” therefore you aren’t exhausting any energy. In some weird ways, one can gain energy because there is an insane confidence boost within yourself. Some may call it “the lift off” or “cruise control.” My favorite is “checking out” as in checking out of a hotel before anyone else. Everyone else is either still at the breakfast hall, or maybe even still in bed. But not you. You checked out. So that’s my daily system. This is generally what I think about every day.
-Grant Boyd