Week of April 8

Hi, Everyone,
 
Wow! What a wild and wonderful weekend it was for our Cavaliers! I can’t wait to cheer them onto the championship tomorrow night.
 
I’ve enclosed, for your reading enjoyment, a really pertinent message that my son Adrian wrote and sent to his Albemarle track and cross-country athletes this past week. He and I share so many similar philosophies in our coaching and his message aligns perfectly with my often said “you need to keep a balance to your training” and “comfortably fit your running into your lifestyle, not the other way around” and “recovery is the key” mantras. He kindly gave me permission to share it with you.


Please take a few extra minutes to read it (maybe at halftime tomorrow night).
 
-I’ve written some workouts for those of you racing the Masters Mile on April 20th. Contact Alec (alec@raggedmountainrunning.com) if you’re interested in racing this fun event at UVa’s biggest home track meet of the season.
 
-I could use about 10 more volunteers for this Saturday’s Run for Autism. Please text me at 434-962-1694 if you can lend a hand. Thanks! (You can also sign up online for volunteer slots!)
 
***And speaking of communicating with Coach, if you need to talk about your training, want to shift your training around, need advice on the proper cross training regimen, have a new pain or anything else relating to you running, please give me a shout. I’d love to help.
 
-Sneak preview: Most of next Saturday’s (4/20) workouts will revolve around some variation of the BBBS races over the beautiful course on that 1600 acre Chapel Springs Farm in Free Union.  
 
 Big Happy Birthdays to Jamie M. (yesterday…oops, sorry!)  and Bill A. (Thursday)!
 
I hope to see you all this Wednesday!
Coach Mark
434-293-3367 (day phone)
434-962-1694 (text only)   
 
WEEK of APRIL 8
*Speedsters:
-Those racing the Park to Park = ~30-35 miles
-Those racing 5K’s this spring = ~20-30 miles
-Those racing the Masters Mile = ~20-25 miles
 
MONDAY April 8
*Speedsters = 4-6 miles at 75% of 10 miler pace with 6 x 12 second hill surges  
 
WEDNESDAY April 10
**Please join me at the UVa track at 5:30am for the following workouts:
 
*Speedsters Half marathon and 5K folks = Spartan!
-1600 on the track at 98-100% of 10 miler pace
-800 off the track at 90-93% of 10 miler pace
-1200 on at 102-103%
-800 off at 93%
-800 on at 104-105%
-800 off at 93%
-400 on at a fast but relaxed pace (~107-109%)
 
-Masters Mile crew = 12 x 200 in three sets of four. Run the first set at your targeted mile pace and then pick up the pace with each set. Take a brief and active rolling 100 recovery in between each 200 and a slow jog 200 recovery in between the sets.   
 
SATURDAY April 13
*Speedsters racing Park to Park = 15-17 miles at 75-80% of HMP  
 
*Run for Autism 5K!
 
*Speedsters racing the Masters Mile = 7 miles total as follows:
-4 miles at a relaxed pace
-2 miles as a fartlek of 20 seconds fast (faster than mile pace) followed by 40 seconds slow
-1 mile cooldown     
 
SUNDAY
Please join us for 4-5 slow and relaxed recovery miles at 6:45am at Greenberry’s
 
***All the best to our Rehoboth marathoners!   
 
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How to fuel your passionHey Everyone,
As I progress as a coach and teacher, I always am thinking about how I can keep getting better for myself and for my athletes.  Though this year has been my most enjoyable yet, it has also been maybe my most exhausting. I don’t think I have been more excited for a spring break and a time to relax and reboot.  I know that I give everything I have to my job, but to continue to do so at the best of my ability I know I need to make sure that I’m fresh and still excited. This break has been perfect for that.  Also, in perfect timing, the authors of one of my favorite books, Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success, came out with their second book, The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life.  Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg sure know how to make titles for books that are easy to roll your eyes at, but man, do I love the stuff they write about.
To say I have passion for coaching is an understatement.  It is the focus of my entire life and I don’t think I could love it more.  Which is why I was so excited to read a book about how I can channel that passion in a healthier, more sustainable way.  As I read the book, I obviously found many things that I could focus and work on, but more so, I kept thinking about how I can relay this information to all of you.  A lot of you are in a unique situation where running is becoming the thing you are most passionate about in your life and for a lot of you, it is quickly becoming the biggest passion you have had your entire life.  This is incredibly exciting but can also bring with it a lot of stress and anxiety. I know I can relate! I was my own worst enemy as a high school runner!
Before discussing how to approach passion in a healthy manner, the book discusses how passion can end up being a negative.  The book discusses how a person can tie their self worth to things out of their control or how a person’s passion can become very focused on an external result.  Another thing discussed is how unhealthy it is when passion is fueled by a fear of failure. As a runner it is so easy to tie your success as a runner, or even as a person, to your place or time in a race.  It’s so easy to do and can be so motivating, but it can also be stressful and exhausting. But more so, the drive to work hard and run well can be fueled by fear of having a bad race. Though very motivating, it also brings with it a lot of stress and anxiety.
So how do Magness and Stulberg suggest we avoid this?  They say “passion needs to be fueled by the joy of the pursuit itself.  When you train and compete, you should do so to get better, to master your body, not to win awards or improve rankings.”  Man, this sounds great to me but it can be so hard to do. As our teams continue to improve, I am always focused on improving our stats and our place in the state.  I have made it pretty clear that a goal of mine is to make our distance program consistently one of the best in the state and even one of the best in the country. It has fueled me but it has also been exhausting!  The next part of the book discusses steps and tips on how to achieve this type of healthy passion, which they called the mastery mind-set. It was very refreshing to read and reflect on.

We hear these things all the time, but it's nice to sit back and think about them.  They are that important.
 The mastery mind-set has six key principles:
 

1. Driven from within.
   

• I think a big thing to focus on here is the question, why do I love this sport?  Why am I excited for practice each day? There will be many different answers to this question.  The long runs. The feeling of being fit. Pushing myself as far as I can in workouts. Competing in races.  The team. And all these reasons are perfectly good reasons. The key is to build your passion around this excitement.  And work to improve that each day.
• As you stress about poor races or workouts or even the idea of competition, come back to the reason you love the sport and focus on why that excites you.  You can feel bad for a short time about poor races, etc but make sure to quickly bring the reason you love the sport back into focus.
  

1. Focus on the process.
   

• As a culture, we have a process that is detailed and specific.  We know it works and believe in it. This is a process that details what we do each day at practice, what we do on race day, and everywhere in between.  This process involves the physical things we do each day but it also involves the responsibilities that we strive to reach as a program.  When you judge yourself, judge yourself on how well you executed the process, not on where your finished in the race!
  
• Goals are still important but they “should serve more as a direction than a destination.”  The process is built around this goal and the focus on should be achieving the steps of the process and not the goal itself.  This is something we discussed a lot after our 3rd place finish in cross country.
  
• Your self worth is not attached to where you finished in a race but how well you followed the process leading up to the race and in the race itself.  
  

1. Don’t worry about being the best; worry about being the best at getting better.
   

• If you focus on the process than it is easy to focus on getting better.  One of my favorite quotes is, “The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday”
  
• It’s simple.  How do you improve on the process each day, and once again this is physical and mental?  How do we work on the responsibilities each day?
  

1. Embrace acute failure for chronic gains.
   

• This is simple.  Understanding that failure is a necessary step to getting better.  As a culture, we want to live for these moments and be excited to improve on them.  
  
• Know that when you fail it is not a reflection of you as a person.
  
• “The master has failed more times than the student has tried”
  

1. Be patient.
   

• This sport is all about patience, especially when you reach a high level.  It’s very addicting your first year because you see a lot of improvement but the better you get, the more you have to work and the longer you have to wait to see the same improvement.  
  
• “To learn anything significant, to make any lasting change in yourself, you must be willing to spend most of your time on the plateau.”
  
• Patience is a skill that needs to be practiced.
  
• A perfect example of this is one of our top boys right now.  He has not run a PR in the 3200m, his main event, in 11 months.  But what he has done is slowly continued to progress in overall fitness and as a leader.  6 months ago, we did a progression run at Dick Woods Road where this runner was our top runner and averaged his last 8 miles in 5:50 pace.  That was a huge day for him and the team as a whole. This past Saturday, this runner led four of our boys, who all averaged 5:47 or faster for these same 8 miles, with a 5:42 average.  I would bet that if you asked him, these are the days that his passion burns brightest, and I think that is an important thing to remember!
  

1. Be here now.
   

• Remove all distractions except the principles discussed above.  
  
• Keep telling yourself why you love the sport.
  
• Know you are a part of a program that is special and continue to do your best to take advantage of your time in the program.
  

 
Thanks for reading.  Love this group!


Coach Adrian Lorenzoni