Marie has been struggling with her hip and her running, in general. She is without a coach at Purdue and we agreed that I’d take over for the remainder of the summer and try to have her ready to go for fall cross country. I stopped by her place on my bike to take her out on a long ride and to find out more about her injury status and mental health. I could tell from the conversation that she was discouraged with her running, physical therapy and the coaching situation. In her head, she was not ready to run at the highly competitive level of NCAA Division I cross country...which began in four weeks. We rode for almost two hours and after she cleaned up, stopped at my place to write up something I hoped would buoy her spirits and have her somewhat ready.
“I want to be able to run six days in a row by the time I leave for Purdue,” she said.
I had a blank schedule in front of me and was filling in the days of the next four weeks with what I wanted her to do on each and every day. I was mixing some strength runs...1,000 meter repeats at cruise pace (a formula of pace based on her 5K speed at that moment)...with easy, but progressively longer, trail runs. Mixed in were days of cycling with one interval workout on the bike with me. When we had finished, we’d put together a solid plan of gradual progression that should have her stronger and healthy by the beginning of the season. She would need most of the regular season to get into racing shape...something I’d normally prepare her for over the course of the summer, but that was out of the question in her case. Running successfully at this level is all about making adjustments to meet the demands of the individual. If you’re not ready to make those adjustments, you won’t succeed.
I warned Marie that the cycling intervals would not be easy. She wasn’t used to them and hadn’t been doing that much cycling. I was going to have her doing 2-2.5 minute repeats on gradual uphills and trying to drive her heart rate to about 90% of her maximum. These are the bread and butter workouts that, when running, prepares the athlete to run faster, longer. We needed to duplicate that feeling on the bike...where her hip wouldn’t have to sustain the extra pounding but her energy system would garner the benefit.
“You’re going to want to puke when we’re doing them, but if you get through four weeks of it, I think you’ll be much better for it when you arrive at Purdue,” I said.
She’s hard as nails so she’ll handle the pain. She’s driven to be good and by the time we’d finished our planning, I believe her head was back in the game. Believing that what you’re doing will make a difference is the key to your training plan succeeding.
Bike Duration: 1 hour 50 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 120 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 2300.
No comments:
Post a Comment