First practices August 23rd-25th

Pre-season practice begins this Thursday 3:15 PM at the high school. We meet at the high school by the "snack shack" between the field house and the track. The first couple days tend to take a little longer as we learn (or re-learn) the team warmup and get to know each other, but things should be wrapping up by 5:30 at the latest.

Please remember you have to be registered with an up to date physical (within the last 13 months) on file with the school nurse. More registration information can be found at

http://whs.wayland.k12.ma.us/athletics/registration/ 

You should bring the following to Thursday's practice:

• running shoes

• comfortable clothes in which to work out. You might also want to wear a hat. 

• sunscreen

• water bottle - very important item. Please bring a water bottle which you can use during breaks in practice and after practice has ended. It's best to bring your water bottle already filled.

• running log - if you were at the interest meeting in June you heard me speak about the importance of logging your training, be it running or some other cardiovascular activity. If your log is in writing on paper, please make a copy and bring it to practice. If you've stored your training log on your computer or online (preferred method on my end), please send me the file or the link to your online log.

• towel for drying off after aquajogging (Friday and Saturday)

• extra change of clothes if you'd like for after practice. I'm not 100% positive about the status of the locker rooms but they should be open, if not bathrooms will be available at the very least.

For the early season practices, everyone will at some point be meeting at the Town Beach which is at the end of Parkland Drive. Some will be running there from the school, others will meet there directly. The purpose of meeting at the Town Beach is to spend some time "aquajogging" in the water as a way to increase training time without putting extra pounding on joints and muscles. That being said no one will be forced to go in the water. If swimming in deep water is not something you want to do, let me know at practice on Friday and we'll make other plans.

Here's the training plan for the first three days of practice:

• Thursday 8/23 - brief introductions, distribution of watches, demonstration of warmup routine, followed by 20-25, 30-35, or 40-45 minutes of running out and back along the Weston aqueduct. Ideally the pace will pick up gradually towards the end of the running portion of the day. Today's run will end with 6x100 yard accelerations on the practice football field with a recovery jog back between each. The time it takes to complete these accels should be included in the length of your run. Anyone new to the cross country team should find out from me whether they'll be meeting at the school or the town beach tomorrow.

• Friday 8/24 - Either

• warmup routine, 40 or 50 minutes of running and 15 minutes of aquajogging. Those doing this workout will meet at the school at 3:15.

• wamup routine, 10 minutes of alternating 15 seconds faster running with 45 seconds easy jogging, then 15 minutes of aquajogging. Those doing this workout will meet at the town beach at 3:45.

• Saturday 8/25 - meet at Town Beach at 9 AM. 40, 50, 60, up to 70 minutes gradually picking up the pace the second half of the run. Following the run will be 10 minutes of aquajogging. Today's run will be an out and back mostly along the Hultman aqueduct, which we'll access where it meets Sycamore Road. There will be at least two water stops during the run.

Next week (the last week of August) we'll be meeting for practice Monday through Friday at 3:15. Going forward, once school starts in September practice will start just after 3 PM.