The Four Seasons and Optional Track Practice!

Title: The Four Seasons and Optional Track Practice!

Optional practice is vital to our track program.  Unless you’ve been heavily overtraining, taking a week off is a really bad idea.  To encourage the students to come out we have different days such as cookie day, zombie day, art day, and (everyone’s favorite) ice cream day!!  Traditionally, the weather for practice is grim most of the days and this year was no exception.  I told one student, “After you train through this, no meet this year will scare you.  You’ll hear other teams whining about the weather and you’ll think, ‘This isn’t so bad!’

Winter (Monday) – On Saturday we had beautiful weather to the point where slathering on the suntan lotion.  On Monday the distance run started at 1:45 and while on the course we got hit with winds from 30 to 40 miles an hour!  As short distance showed up snow began to swirl around us.  No one needed suntan lotion!  I expected no one to show up and I was pleasantly surprised when a decent size group braved the day!  Modified students were there (I love it, they are the future) and asked me what to do.  “Mr. Baker will be here tomorrow, so why don’t you jog a mile on the course and then hit your field events?”  Field events????  In winds gusting up to 40 mph??  Sure:)  Dylan wanted to do his speed work so I had him match up with Leland while the hurdle unit warmed up.  (Warming up is a very relative term when training in a Winter Wonderland!)  Dylan’s 400 repeats were extremely difficult with winds that one had to battle through.  After he was done I was heading over to hurdles when I noticed a modified high jumper had returned from his mile run.  I helped him pull out the standards and then put up a bungee for him.  I’m not a high jump coach but I know a few drills and when they get good enough some my pole vault knowledge can be helpful.  “Have you ever done a scissor kick drill?” I asked him.  He had.  “Okay, do this low height.”  He did.  “Great!  Now, just move up the bungee very slowly and see how high you can get.”  Off I jogged to hurdles.  I only imagined he would work on that for a little bit and then do jumping.  He worked on that drill for over 30 minutes!

One nice thing about optional practice is that you can give special attention to athletes that need it.  Lance has a lot of skill from the hurdle program he came from but he’s a four stepper.  He asked me the previous Friday to work with him and I promised I would.  Here was a golden opportunity!  The wind was even in our favor!  At first it didn’t go that well.  Lance and I tried different things and he three stepped but it was ugly.  Then we tried the jogging drill I do with the girls AND Lance three stepped perfectly!  He liked it!  All we have to do is add speed to that and he will do MUCH better!

Throwing Coach Duck was there and helped first Loren and then Autumn for awhile.  Despite the horrible wind Autumn was hitting 80s!  Coach Laurens worked with his jumping crew and I even had Leland uncover the pole vault pits during a lull in the wind.  That was a waste of time as the strong wind returned just as we started.  It is almost impossible to vault in cross wind that strong!  We covered it back up and called it a day.  Into the building we went to a table filled with cookies!  What a great day!

Spring (Tuesday)  Rain.  Ugg!  It was cold and rainy!  Still it wasn’t a driving rain.  One kid asked, “Can we do the zombie game instead of practice.”  “Nope,” I replied.  “If we could become a championship level team by playing games I would be all over that but I have yet to figure that out.  BUT if we get our work done then we can play the game and not worry about how much we run during it!”  Pink, Dezie, Brock, and Leland did 400 repeats with me, while Coach Laurens pushed short distance.  Because it was so cold we all did Coach Laurens speed, ply drills and when we got done everyone’s muscles were warm enough to train.  Autumn spent the whole time doing pole vault jump drills but I already talked about that in a previous blog so we will leave it at that!  Modified did parachute drills with Mr. Baker, which I’m sure they enjoyed that!  Most kids love the parachutes the first few times they use them.  We then went inside to play zombies!  We had a big group which made it fun!  Leland brought a deck of cards and if you got the Ace of Spades you were the zombie.  Then we scattered through the building.  When I scream "GO!" the zombie become active.  The first zombie can run and act human.  Anyone they tag must make noises and walk.  Through the dark and light hallways kids run trying to avoid being tagged and getting boxed in by the growing swarm.  You can try to hide but sometimes if you are found you can’t escape.  I like to stay mobile and move from big area to big area trying to stay ahead of the swarm.  It is always a lot of fun and this year was no exception!

Autumn (Wednesday)  The day reminded me of an autumn day.  It was cold enough to wear a jacket but not by a lot.  Before practice the distance unit came in two hours early for a long run of roughly 8 miles.  The school wants me to find courses more off the beaten track (no pun intended) then the old ones and the back roads to Pink’s house meet that criteria.  I have named this course “The Pink Run” and I think we will be doing it long after Pink graduates:)  It was a lot of fun but I got quickly buried by Dylan and Pink.  I was in the last half mile to the turn around point when Dylan catches up to me.  (The confusing thing is that he was ahead of me and I didn’t pass him!!)  Turns out he took a long turn and added three hills and a mile to two miles extra distance onto the run!  Yipe!  I joked with him, “Eight miles wasn’t enough for you, eh?”  When we got back to school I filled up a trash can with water and ice and had Dylan stand in it for ten minutes.  Pink felt the water and frowned.  “That isn’t cold enough,” she complained.  “My swimming pool is that temperature all summer long!”  I got more ice.  Dylan commented, “I was okay with the water temp, Coach.”  Why do we ice bath at times?  In heavy training it is a way to avoid injury and to be ready to go hard again the next day.  When short distance showed up we worked mostly on skills.  Why did distance have a hard day, you wonder?  Oh, they didn’t.  A long run like that is an easy day for them.  Autumn saved art day.  I had a vague vision of what it would be (JT has a very good art program and a lot of very talented kids... several on the track team) but Autumn made it fun by bringing coloring pages for adult level people.  After much skill practice all went inside to color.    As I mentioned in the pirate flag post, Zoe and Lana made great strides in their hurdles, (again, no pun intended as the key to hurdling is bigger strides:) 

Summer (Thursday) -  I thought I had been lied to by the weatherman (or woman... whoever posts the internet forecast.)  When I arrived Mr. Baker shook his head looking up at the ominous clouds overhead and the taste of rain in the air.  “I was driving balls this morning and now this.  Rain wasn’t supposed to hit until later on tonight.”  I nodded.  On cue the rain started falling.  I had Autumn take two hits at pole vault they looked great!  She now loves her pirate pole!  Then we started to do speed work as a team, each unit helping the other with different objectives.  Two hundred short distance girls took turns racing our middle distance boys in the drill they were in to help them maintain their times.  Dezie got a ten second lead over the boys and Leland had 200 meters of hurdles set up again!  It was Dezie's first real hard day!  She has had others but she hit 32 in her first 200.  She had three more to go and only 30 - 40 seconds rest!  When we got to the end she didn't feel so good.  I told her that meant she was working hard and that the feeling would go away when we were done.  As we got done the sun came back out and summer was in full swing once more!  Autumn went down to help the modified vaulters and I went to get out the ice cream!  I began to get things around while the varsity were stretching down under Dylan’s leadership.  Loren Brown, who had been in more than once to throw this week was walking by.  “Loren, have some ice cream!” I said.  I served everyone and then yelled for the pole vaulters to get over here and eat some (very typical!  Vaulters are like drug addicts:)  What a great end to the week!!

In a fantasy story, the characters are more at the mercy of the weather than in other genres.  It's not that weather doesn't matter in other genres but it isn't as big of a factor.  Science fiction is about hi technology that can usually get humans through the elements easily... well... unless you have a gigantic space probe trying to talk to whales... then it can be an issue!  In romance genre the rain can be romantic or it can be a picture of despair in the relationship but it is rarely a plot problem.  It actually can become a help trapping the love interest together against their will or the love interest battling them to their one true love.  Then it can be something to be overcome stories about life.  In the Little House on the Prairie series, one of the coolest parts is when Almanzo Wilder takes Laura home on his sleigh in bad weather.  Or when the town is cut off from the outside world and Almanzo and another man risk their lives to get food in a break in the storm!  But these are small parts of the story.  In fantasy, a quest in it's very nature is a journey.  One that is not taken in a star ship or a car but on foot or on horse back for a great distance.  Weather than can play a significant role in the story.  Ancient armies had to find shelter as winter came on and that created problems for them.  Driving rain, summers heat, or swollen spring rivers, or swirling snow and cold can force heroes to take dangerous roads they might not have taken normally.  The snow drives the party into the mines of Moriah. In David Weber's "Safehold Series" (half science fiction/ half fantasy), the primitive armies struggle constantly with weather as war envelopes the nations.  When one is walking hundreds of miles on foot the weather and food become a big part of the story... or at least they should!  About the only other genre where weather plays a big role would be war genre.  As a track coach, battling the elements is a very big part of the job.  There is no other sport where you have so many athletes doing so many different things and are so vulnerable to the elements.  Well... I would say baseball and softball would be a close second!  Ironically we both share the volatile spring weather together:)

  *** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***

Book list

Fiction

Wolf Hunting – Action/suspense

Wolf Hunting 2: Trick Shot – Military action/ science fiction

American Fairytale – Colonial America/ Fairytale

Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games – Dystopian

Asylum Series (Tribulation genre meets CS Lewis meets lost)

Asylum

Killer Robots

Werewolves

Elf Princess

Zero Book – 666

C-3 Series (Pilgrim’s Progress meets Ender’s Game)

An Assumed Risk

Heavy Opposition

A Distant Boom

Two Hearts

The Magnificent Six

Don’t Pass Go!

Two Paths – Coming Soon!!