Boys' meet with Christian League Champs, The girls
The boys gave it their best shot against Christian but came up two points short. Two points in a dual meet means that if one of our varsity were to have passed one of their varsity the score would have been tied and the winner would have been the team with the best 6th finisher. In this case it would have been Coronado. Christian has a good DUAL MEET team because they have three runners who were up front. They were hoping for a 1-2-3 finish so their top two were hanging back in hopes of getting their 3rd runner across in 3rd place. In a dual cross country meet this locks the meet so the other team can't win. This season there are 4 teams in contention for league champs, Christian seems to have the best dual meet team because of their 3 front runners and I wouldn't be surprised if they won all 5 of their matchups. We, because of our depth, have the best multi-school team because of our depth. In fact here is last Thursday's meet with all schools combined. Since the league finals will involve the same schools this could be how that race plays out. Madison seems to have the 3rd best team for both dual meets and multi-meets with Clairemont 4th in both categories. Crawford didn't field a full team but they have one decent runner who won't figure in the team scoring unless they bring 5 to the finals. If they do it's better for us. At this point it appears that the coaches have elected to determine final league ranking as follows:

* Each team will be ranked according to their win/loss record with 6 points going to the best record and 1 point to the worst. Ties will be broken by head-to-head matchups. I think Christian will wind-up 5-0 and we'll wind-up 4-1. This would give us 5 point and them 6 points. If they were to lose a meet it'd still be them 6 us 5 because they won the dual meet with us.

* Each team will be awarded points from 6 to 1 according to how they finished in the finals. If the finals go as shown in the link above we'll get 6 and Christian will get 5.

* The two scores will be added to determine the final rankings. If things go as speculated above both Christian and Coronado will wind-up with 11 points and tie for the league championship. However the coaches are toying with the idea of the tie-breaker being the overall finish at the finals. If that's done we'd be the league champs.

However there are a lot of "ifs" here. We need to win the rest of our meets as well as the league finals for this to happen. Christian is in the shaky position of relying on three front runners so they're one injury or illness away from losing their front-running position. Whatever happens it should be an interesting month.

The girls:
There is only one team for us to worry about for league and that's (in case you haven't been paying attention) Clairemont. Last week they basically jogged through their meet with Madison yet still took the top 10 places…. Actually this was more of a statement of Madison's strength than Clairemont's. With both us and them healthy we're probably the best team. However, with Meg, Sadie and Nicole not at 100% this could be a close contest. If we lose we may have to go to the league finals to determine the league championship.

Training Log
Here's a PDF of the Training Log that Bill Davies put together for this season.
This is much more than just a training log as there is a wealth of information in the front.

Core Strength
Here are a couple of core routines by Jay Johnson:
The Pedestal Routine shows three poses you should do after every workout.
For a more comprehensive workout see his Plank Exercises

There are several Core Exersises in Alberto Salazar's "Master The Shift" videos below.
You'll also find great info on Running form and Base Building.

Alberto Salazar's "Master The Shift" Running Pages
Master the Shift has been offering free training videos from the "masters" but they don't seem
to last for more than a few weeks. When Alberto Salazar's pages were up I downloaded them all
to make a DVD (which I have if anyone wants one).
His series is no longer on their site as it's been replaced by a marathon series featuring Ryan Hall.
I couldn't find a link to it that worked so I uploaded the series here for our team to access.
It's not on the main page for two reasons:
1. There may be copyright issues so I don't want to make it public.
2. If it became known they are available here I think the traffic on my sever would become an issue.
These videos aren't at the same resolution as the originals, but they're better then youtube.
There's a lot of good info on these videos, take some time and watch them all.

Here's a PDF of Salazar's Core Training Plan from Master The Shift.

ALBERTO SALAZAR knows a thing or two about his sport. A former world-record holder in the marathon, and three-time winner of the New York City event, Salazar was the face of American distance running's last golden age, which peaked during the Reagan administration. Salazar also learned his lessons the hard way: The famously competitive runner's body broke down at age 27, as a result of years of superhuman, 150-mile training weeks; last summer, he survived a near-fatal heart attack. Now fully recovered, the 49-year-old coach of Nike's Oregon Project is pairing cutting-edge technology with meticulous workouts to shape the most promising crop of American running hopefuls in a generation. This is a man who has almost given his life to the sport on multiple occasions—he was once read his last rites after crossing a finish line with a 108-degree fever—and he's lived to share a few pieces of essential wisdom.

1. BE CONSISTENT Find a training plan that you can stick to long-term. If you can run four days a week, every week, you are going to get 90 percent of the benefits of training seven days a week.

2. TAKE RECOVERY DAYS SERIOUSLY The day after a tough workout, the most you want to do is jog lightly or do some form of cross-training, like cycling. You need a recovery day after
a hard day. No exceptions.

3. INCREASE MILEAGE GRADUALLY Do not increase your weekly mileage by more than 10 percent every month. No matter how good you feel, be very gradual. You won't know until it's too late that you're overdoing it.

4. STAY ON THE TRAIL Pavement damages joints, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. The more you can run on grass, wood chips, or dirt, the better off you are. My athletes run 90 percent of their workouts on soft surfaces.

5. RUN FASTER It's hard to race faster than you train. However fast you want to run a race, you've got to do some shorter intervals—what we call speed work—at least that fast.

6. STRENGTHEN YOUR WHOLE BODY Good runners condition their whole bodies. The arms drive the legs. Keep your upper body and core toned with a lot of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and back raises (don't forget that the back is part of the core). Stay away from machine weights and stick to Pilates, climbing, and dynamic flexibility work like yoga.

7. WEAR THE RIGHT SHOES The second-most-common cause of injuries, next to running too much on hard surfaces, is foot pronation and shoe instability. The more you run, the more support your foot needs.

8. PERFECT YOUR FORM Every motion your body makes should propel you directly forward. If your arms are crossing or you are overstriding, you're losing force. Your posture should be straight, and your striding foot should land directly underneath you.

9. TACKLE DOUBT HEAD-ON At some point you're going to push yourself harder, you're going to enter into a gray area that can be painful, and you're going to doubt yourself. Push through it. Never think you are mentally weak.

10. EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY If you don't have enough knowledge behind what you're doing, you're not going to run well or you're going to injure yourself. With the Internet, GPS phones, advanced heart-rate monitors, and even your iPod, you now can be coached individually, even while you run. I have an antigravity treadmill in my garage. Use the knowledge and tools that are out there.

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