Great Oak Workout Week Day One

NXN, I think, puts us in an uncomfortable spot because we're just not used to it. Last year they were learning, this year they're wanting to show what they can do. On the boys' side, you know, we won it in 2015, we've been 6th the last 2 years, and I don't think that has met our expectations of how good our teams were.

This year we're definitely searching for redemption.

We just want to get up there and do the best we can.

For Group 1 today, we are heading down to our sand repeats, which we've never done before. And the whole ultimate goal with that is to just get used to running in soft terrain. Obviously, NXN is in a lot of mud, and that was a request by a lot of the boys last year that came off and said, we don't ever see terrain like this, right? So we need to practice it a little bit and we're going to do instead of doing 5 times 1,000, we're going to do 4 times 1,000. In the sand and just see how it goes. It may be the craziest workout we've ever done. It may go well, I don't know, but we're gonna give it a try. So we, we left from Great Oak High School, ran about 3 miles over here to Paula Park, and it's a good, good location to access the sand. We've got a big sand gulch over here that we can jump in and utilize, so we're just gonna finish our warm-up and do our HIIT real quick. Runner sit, go! They're doing 15-15 for 2 minutes today, and then we're gonna jump in and do 4 times 1,000 in the sand, just try to get a little NXN style work in, get our kids used to doing some different style of terrain, which we haven't done in the past, so this is new to us. We don't know I don't know how it'll look, but we're gonna give it a go. I have a feeling we'll have some kids looking at me like, why are we doing this? This is crazy. But that's, you know, that's part of coaching is trying different things out and seeing if something is a fit or something is gonna help us out a little bit later in the season. So we'll give it a try and see how they like it. Now for the workout today, we're gonna go right down in here. All right guys, so what I want you to do is let's do this. Let's just do this shooting out in groups of 4. You guys are going to have 4-minute rest in between. Okay, a little bit longer because we're doing a different style workout, so we're going to go a little longer on the rest. You've got 4 reps unless I've told you to do something differently. So I want you to get in groups of 4 to 6, just line up in groups and we'll just shoot out and go. You'll come back on your own and I'll just time the top group. Now remember, what we're doing today, guys, is a focus on style and form. It's not a race. I expect to see nobody racing this workout. Okay, we're looking probably 88% effort. Okay, so it's more than your tempo pace at 80%. It's more than your basic VO2 pace. It's a little bit faster. I want to see you guys pushing it, but I don't want to see us hammering the first one and walking the last one, right? We want to make sure We're very consistent around 88% effort. Now, just like a hill, 88% effort is going to be different in the sand than 88% effort on flat ground, right? We ready for this? Here we go. Runners set, go! Set, go! Oh yeah! Set, go! Set, go!

Coming off of NXN right after the race, we were kind of disappointed in ourselves. We definitely had the goal of winning. The goal here at Great Oak is always to strive to be the best and win at the best level. So, you know, we were just disappointed after, but I think really it just came down that we weren't prepared for the mud. We were out of our norm. So, I mean, we could make tons of excuses, but I think really last year we just kind of gave up and it just wasn't our day. And we did have some guys that ran amazing, but overall I think just the bottom half of us just kind of gave up. All the way back, guys.

4:18, 4:19, 4:20. Good job, guys. About 4 minutes in between each one.

Today's workout is definitely challenging, you know, kind of trying to mimic the NXN course, which is never easy. I would definitely say it was harder than NXN course, but it's always nice to kind of go out there and It's better to make it harder than make it easier, you know? You want to go out there prepared and ready to go race a really difficult course, so kind of going out there and just mimicking it to the best of our ability is kind of the goal. Woo!

Alright, let's get ready.

One in and they're already ready to quit, so we'll see how it goes. Mental toughness, that's what I'm looking for. Here we go, runners set, go! Start on your own when you're ready. All right, ladies, let's go.

I think the best way to go into a meet is prepared. So, you know, just having this type of workout before going into a course, you know, it just prepares you. You know, it's like for a test, Sol's always says, like, if you're testing, you know the criteria, you go into the test prepared, you're not scared to take that test. So it's kind of the same thing with racing, you know, you go in prepared, you're not scared to race that course. It's kind of a mental workout more than it is physical, and NXN is definitely a mental course. Mud and sand contributing to your workout, like, it's always gonna go in the back of your mind, like, this is so much harder than it would be if this wasn't here.

It feels exactly the same as the last 2 miles, you know, first mile NXN It's pretty fast, you're feeling good, and then all of a sudden you hit that uphill and mud starts to pick up, pace starts to pick up, and feels exactly like it. So definitely the mental toughness of it.

4:17, 4:18, 4:19, 4:23, 4:24, 4:25, 4:30, 4:31. Christopher, this is all about getting you out of your comfort zone, which I think is a good thing. 4 minutes, we go again. Last year at NXN, it didn't go exactly how we wanted it to go. We think the pieces will be there on the girls' side at the end of this season. And, you know, there's some tough teams to try to beat on the boys' side this year, but we're going to have a very deep team and a lot of options. And we're hoping that we get to nationals and all of our boys will run their best race. If that doesn't win, then it is what it is. But we at least want to try to put our best race out there.

Last year at NXN, you know, our team didn't perform like the way we wanted to, but I definitely think like it was more of a learning thing. Going off of just kind of coming off of the course, you know, I think we are all a little down on ourselves. You know, we all could have done a little bit better, and I think that kind of just has been in the back of our mind the entire year, and I think that's what's going to fuel our fire to go into this next year.

So today's workout, um, we've never done it before. It was sand 1000s. Definitely a mental workout. We would try to find like the best footing and everything, kind of resembling NXN. That's the whole goal of this workout. And at the end of the day, it was definitely smart work, but it also was hard work, just trying to find the best footing, stay mentally positive. And so we're really just working on strengthening ourselves and finding that rhythm.

This year we're definitely searching for redemption because, you know, 8th at NXN, like, I'm not gonna say it's bad because, you know, it's just good to go to the meet, but, you know, definitely for our standards, like, we've— at least podium, I think, is our goal, but we definitely want to contribute to kind of getting up there and maybe winning the whole thing.

In terms of redemption, I think really we just want to get up there and really do the best we can. I think this year we have an amazing team. The main 4 that were at NXN last year, we know what to expect and we know what we want to do when we get up there. And the rest of the guys, they just want to follow and be the best they can for us.

I think when, when people watch this series, I'm hoping that they'll see that, you know, it's the consistency factor of what we do. We're very diligent in what we do. The kids are very dialed into what's going on. We try to hit every component consistently, so there's not a lot of weaknesses. There's there's not a lot of pieces that we haven't touched so that when we line up in a race, we're, you know, a lot of people say, "Oh, they're like Terminators. They just come in and just destroy everybody." And, you know, I think when you look behind the curtain, you realize it's just a lot of hard work, and we have a lot of fun. The kids are relaxed, but they're extremely focused on what they need to get done. So I think more than anything, it's just seeing that the kids have bought into their goals and that they're working hard, and we as coaches are just trying to guide them to the level they want to be at.