Champions are Made in the Off Season

Happy Holidays Hawks Family!

I hope you're feeling well and enjoying the holiday break. I also hope you're staying active, doing some fun activities, and letting your bodies grow and heal after a hard cross country season.

January, my friends, is right around the corner. And you all worked too hard all Fall to let that fitness and strength just slip away.  Sitting around and doing nothing active all Winter will force you to start all over again in March when track season rolls around - and you don't want to go through that again!

They say that "champions are made in the off season." With respect to running, the truth is closer to "champions are  people who train easy through the off season to maintain fitness, enabling them to build from a higher foundation the next season." In other words, we only want you to stay active and do some easy running until we start building into track. The hard stuff can wait.  But you DO need to do something over the next couple of months. The work you've done so far is a base from which you can build to higher heights and faster times in the next season, if you don't let it slip away.

Starting in January, try to get 2 to 3 easy runs in per week. We will make it easy on you, as we plan to do weekly team meet-ups each Saturday morning at 9am at McKinley Park in East Sac.  Come run with teammates and coaches and knock out one of the runs you need to fit in. That means you just have to do another jog or two sometime during the week to maintain your fitness - take your dog, or meet up with a friend, or run away from your brother - whatever it takes to get a few miles on your legs.

In the first week in February, coaches will start up a second weekly team meet-up on Mondays at the Boathouse. That means, if you also join us on Saturday, you'll have at least two runs a week with us and only have to run once or twice on your own.

Finally, we plan to do team meet-ups for easy runs three days a week starting in March.  Monday and Thursday evenings at the Boathouse, and Saturday morning at McKinley. These aren't actual practices, we will just do some easy miles together and maybe some strength and stretching afterwards.

We are also running as a team in the Shamrock'n 5K on Saturday, March 11th, Coach Erin sent out a discount code on the team app. This may be another way to motivate you to keep running - sometimes having a 5K in your future keeps you going!

If anyone wants personalized workout schedules, let me know. I can email you a spreadsheet with a weekly proposed workout that you can print to keep track of your runs by the week.

We want you all to be fit and healthy when we start track practice on Monday, March 27th. But that means you have to be active this off season.  We are counting on you to get out there and keep some of that fitness that all your incredible work developed during cross country.  I'm looking forward to a successful, fast track season for you all!

Who Flies!

Coach Eric