First Week of Track 2021

DAY ONE

On Saturday April 3rd I set my alarm for 6:30, woke up, showered, drank a quart of water and a cup of coffee and headed to our 10th Annual Fast Cat 5K-10K. Last year it was virtual, this year, amazingly, it was live and in-person. Fast Cat was the brainchild of me and Coach Derks as a way to raise funds without forcing kids to go begging for money, door to door. Or, even worse, requiring our athletes to sell candy to classmates. Coach Derks did all the work and I cheered him on. For the past two years, we’ve passed the torch to a parent, Jocelyn Young, who has taken Fast Cat to a new level. The magnitude of volunteerism is outstanding in our program, especially with the culture Andy Derks has created with the distance parents. 

From 7:30 until 10:30, I took over 2000 pictures with my trusty Canon 7D Mark II with a Canon EF 350mm 1.8 lens. I finished selecting and editing those pictures at 3:30 that afternoon. My lunch consisted of two Olive Garden salads left over from the race. I had the house to myself as my wife, Jill, traveled over two hours to Hoopeston, IL, to get her second dose of Pfizer. Jill dropped me off at school and I walked home from the race because we have only one car. If you want to check out the pictures from Fast Cat, here you go: Fast Cat Pictures. 

DAY TWO

After 40 years of coaching (over 78 football, basketball, and track seasons), I should not be nervously preoccupied on the eve of the first practice. I spent the day texting my guys about registrations and physicals. One good thing about the pandemic, our district is waiting until the end of the season to charge our athletes the $130 sports participation fee. This year, I don’t have to play the role of a debt collector. 

It was a beautiful day, so I tried to quiet my mind by reading. I’m engrossed in the book, “In Search of a Kingdom” about Sir Francis Drake. I’m interested in Elizabethan England after reading Ken Follett’s “Columns of Fire”. When I was in London 18 months ago, I boarded and toured “The Golden Hind”, the ship Sir Francis Drake captained when he circumnavigated the world.

I checked my weather app at least 20 times. 

DAY THREE

Our first official practice started at 3:00. 17 sprinters showed up. We have between 15-30 football players who will join our sprint group in exactly three weeks (April 26) when our six game football season concludes. 

Our distance group sometimes practices at the same time as sprints, sometimes not. They are a separate kingdom. Coach Derks is the governor of the distance crew. Andy presently has 38 on his roster. I just checked his attendance sheet. His worst day of the first week still had 34 of 38 in attendance.  #Culture

Speaking of attendance, accurate record keeping is pretty strict this year. If someone tests positive for covid, the entire group in attendance will face a 14-day quarantine. This is another reason that we want to keep our groups separated. If a sprinter tests positive tomorrow, only the sprint group will be shut down. 

There’s a mask mandate for all our coaches and athletes throughout practice, even when our kids are running, even if the coaches have been vaccinated. I’m not an anti-masker, not an anti-vaxxer, and I believe in science. Friday night I wore a mask at a football game (PN vs Lincoln-Way Central). I would estimate 25% of the crowd went without a mask. Many ignored the distancing requirement and sat in groups. We went to Cemeno’s Pizza on the way home and saw a high school pom squad sit at a long table, together. Those 20 unvaccinated kids can sit together indoors but vaccinated coaches have to wear a mask at an outdoor practice? My athletes have to wear a mask outdoors as they gasp for air during workouts? Sheesh!

Our first practice of the year was a “sprint capacity” workout. I feel bad that I did a new workout after putting out my most recent course Programming: The Practice Plan where I did not mention sprint capacity workouts. For those interested, it’s still a red day, even though it’s not a lactate workout. 

I often say that the offseason is the time to get fast and powerful. The track season is the time to learn how to sprint farther and sprint more often. Surviving this is tricky. Sprint capacity workouts train our sprinters to sprint more often. For those of you who train sprint capacity in the offseason: you are stunting the growth of your fastest athletes. Sprint capacity does not create speed, but speed creates sprint capacity. 

A sprint capacity workout is simply doing a lot of sprinting but not getting acidic. We sprinted 10 x 40m fly with a continuous walk back, get back in line, start when the guy in front of you is finishing. That means each guy gets around 80 seconds (16 guys x 5 seconds) of rest between fly 40m sprints. We put start and finish Freelap cones 40m apart. We put a hurdle at 10m prior to the start cone. The hardest thing for me was recording 170 times in 14 minutes. Our guys were instructed to sprint at a speed they could sprint 10 times with 80 seconds rest. My fastest two guys, who both have top speeds at nearly 23 mph, ran an average velocity of 20.4 and 20.2 mph. Speed creates sprint capacity! Our fastest 40m flys were 4.45 and 4.46 (approximately 21 mph). For more, see the spreadsheet and the tab at the bottom. 

We also did the “handoff drill”. With my fastest two guys, Lavell Patterson and Mason Eskridge, being new to track, this is going to a priority. Hard to imagine two super fast seniors who have never run a 4×1.

Even though practice only lasted 65 minutes, my work continued with record, rank, and publish. I’m efficient but it still took well over an hour. It’s a labor of love.

If there’s not a tweet about a workout, did it even happen?

DAY FOUR

Practice at 11:30 am. 

For those of you who understand FTC programming, a red day is usually followed by a green day (off). The alternative to a green day is an X-Factor day (yellow) and vice versa. 

I talked to all my kids one on one, checking on their health and how to pronounce their last name. I’m getting better at pronouncing Vanichtheeranont and Sobieszcyk. Last year I just called them by their first names, Ray and Frank. This year, I’m going to do better. 

Health-wise, everyone was really sore. In the before-mentioned past 390 days, we had only done a total of two red workouts (two 23-Second Drills). I immediately wished I had given them Tuesday off. Think fast! What can we do that will set up a speed day tomorrow?

I decided to teach handoffs. We had done handoff drill the day before, so on this day I would teach the “Bang Step”. We worked on it without batons. I’ve found that without batons, kids will focus better on the other fundamentals, like the Bang Step. Having another summer-like day made it perfect. After around 30 minutes of work, we did some “bleacher drills” as a short X-Factor workout, encouraged sleep, and called it a day. 

I was super worried about one of our fastest kids missing practice. No text. He finally returned my inquiry late that night saying he’d gotten in trouble at home and was grounded, with his phone taken away. That was a relief. 

My day didn’t end when practice was over. I ordered 220 team t-shirts. Half of the t-shirts will be gray with our indoor records on the back, the other half will be black with our outdoor records. I ordered our coaches a full-zip sweatshirt with a cool logo. I ordered 43 sets of black team warm ups. Here are some important things I’ve learned about warm ups: 1) black ages well, 2) black always matches black, 3) and, if you have your track team purchase their warm ups, you won’t have to collect them at the end of the season and store them for eight months! Without Fast Cat funds, none of these purchases would be possible. 

Since practice was in the morning, I had a chance to sit outside and read. I ended up starting a second book, “John Prine: One Song at a Time”. My wife and I also planted a raised bed garden. 

DAY FIVE

Practice at 7:00 pm. Yep, the first three practice times were 3:00, 11:30, and 7:00. It was pretty dark when we finished practice at 7:40.

My wife needed the car to go pick up Marlowe in Arlington Heights. Marlowe is five weeks old and our fourth grandchild. We gave her parents a 24-hour break and kept Marlowe overnight. See pic below. 

Marlowe and Me

It was another beautiful night so I rode my bike to practice. I live one mile from Plainfield North. Taking the bulky Freelap case with me on my bike complicated things. Sure enough, it got tangled up when I tried to go off the sidewalk to avoid some walkers. The bike didn’t turn and I went down. Hard. As I laid on the sidewalk, my brain went through an injury assessment. For a 62-year 215-pound man to crash on a sidewalk without blood loss or broken bones is quite a feat of athleticism. As Dylan said, “I can’t help it if I’m lucky”. Two old women came to my aid and asked if I was ok. I said I was fine, but pretty embarrassed. They got out of my way, and I pedaled onward to practice. 

My guys were still pretty sore, so we did a short speed workout (color code, yellow). We did two 15y starts into a 10y fly. I like to work on acceleration by simply limiting the run-in. Doing this encourages sprinters to be “big and strong” in their acceleration and never rush. We then did a 100m fly on the curve with a 10m run-in. We put two start cones on the inside of lane four and the outside of lane five. We used one finish cone splitting lane four and five. Times weren’t great but we had practiced for three straight days for the first time in over a year. (Best times: 10.73, 10.82, 10.83, and 11.02)

DAY SIX

At 10:22 am I sent my sprint group this text…

We are canceling today. Three reasons: 1) Potential rain with no access to the field house at 3:00, 2) For the first time in almost 400 days, we have practiced three days in a row. A day of rest will make us better tomorrow. 3) Tomorrow’s workout is VERY IMPORTANT!! Bring your A-GAME tomorrow!! 

Let’s just say, stuff like this never happened when I was an athlete. No pain, no gain. Toughness. Practice isn’t supposed to be fun! 

“Feed the Cats” is revolutionary. 

Unlike my athletes, I never take a day off. My morning was spent babysitting my new granddaughter. Then, I took my bike-wrecked body to MPG Fitness and rode the exercise bike for 30 minutes while I listened to a great podcast. If you don’t follow Joseph Guarascio (FAU S&C), you need to!

We took Marlowe back to Arlington Heights in the evening and ate at Quibos, in downtown Naperville, on the way home. 

DAY SEVEN

The day started off bad. I noticed that my website (pntrack.com) didn’t match my practice schedule I had sent my sprinters. One said 3:00, the other said 1:00. Damn. I hate making mistakes like that. So, I settled on 3:00 and sent notifications to everyone by text. I also announced the cancelation of practice Saturday.

I’ve scheduled six practices per week. My favorite work week for sprinters is four days, five is the max. No way should we have a five day week after working out one out of every 16 days for the past year. Plus, big rain was forecasted on Saturday. Because of the rain, soccer games were moved to the morning and our practice time was moved to 7:00 am. No way. I used the cancelation of Saturday’s practice as more incentive to have a terrific Friday practice. 

At 2:30, I drank my Celsius (energy drink) and headed to practice, this time in my car. I started selling the workout immediately. I’m always authentic… “This will really be hard.” I told my guys they would be fine running the first 200m. The second will suck. The third will seem impossible. BUT, WE WILL MAN UP. WE WILL WIN THIS WORKOUT. I told them to run fast and loose. “Run like it’s the first 200 of the 4×4 at the state meet, fast but understanding you have another 200m to go!”. My cues, “FAST & LOOSE” and “MAKE IT LOOK EASY”. Superstars will run all three under 23. Don’t be the guy who runs 22-29-37. At this time in the year, someone running 25-25-25 has a chance to be all-state in June. 

My jumps coach, Nico Capezio, and I set up the workout working around the girls track team, two soccer teams on the turf, and our sophomore football team warming up for a game in the end zone. It’s a three ring circus. I did get a chance to talk to our star sophomore QB about coming out for track. Never miss an opportunity to help a kid!

We ran in lanes four and five. We ran two guys at a time. Two start cones, one inside of lane four, one outside of lane five, staggered at the start 200 marks. We ran with a 16 mph wind on the curve. Always run with the wind. 

I knew we were in trouble when Patterson and Eskridge ran like it was the 200m at the Olympic Trials. Patterson 22.62 and Eskridge 23.04. All 16 guys would have set a new personal record if they were running the 200m. I guess I over-sold it. Results of 4×4 Predictor.

All but one guy completed the workout (the same guy that didn’t quite finish Monday’s workout). I’m really excited about my hockey-playing Nik Clark. Nik is super fast ranking #4 in our present group. Nik got hamstring cramps in both legs after #2. Somehow Nik found a way to run #3. Nik Clark ran his first in 23.96, third in 33.98. He will eventually run better than 25-25-25. Our top five guys averaged 23.7 – 27.3 – 27.9. They will all run better than 25-25-25. Can’t wait. 

It’s important to note, the “predictor” part of this workout (25-25-25 predicts a 52.0), is not as important as the workout itself. We will learn to physiologically deal with the acidosis due to glycolysis. We will get “biochemically tough”. We will also learn how to run the 400. If you can run 18.6 mph for 400m, you can run 48.0. If a high school kid runs 21 mph for the first half of the 400, the remaining 200m will be a train wreck. Same with this workout. Lavell Patterson’s 19.8 mph on his first 200 was too fast, that’s why he ran 15.7 mph on his third. 

When you don’t “just run” in practice, you make discoveries. Freshman Trey Wilson won this workout running 24.0, 25.1, and 26.9. His predictor is 52.94 [(sum of three x .67) +2]. Nice debut. Trey, after this workout, seems the most likely guy to complete our 4×4… to go along with Ryan Maseman (48?), Jalyn Givan (48?), Lavell Patterson (50?). 

Since this practice ended “tryouts”, I had a talk with two great kids, giving them the option of moving to the distance group. One said yes, the other said he’d rather not. I tell kids that trying out for the sprint group is like trying out for singing parts in the school play, there’s not an infinite number of parts. If you don’t get a singing part, I’m sure there’s something else you could do if you still want to be a part of the play. Or you can choose to move on. 

I got home at 4:20, did my record, rank, publish work, showered at 4:50, left for the Plainfield North football game at 5:00. The past two Friday’s my wife and I had attended Andrew vs Lincoln-Way West (my son Quinn’s game) and Edwardsville vs East St. Louis (my son Alec’s game). Plainfield North was originally scheduled to play West Aurora, but West Aurora canceled due to a positive Covid test. Lincoln-Way West needed a game because Quinn’s team, Andrew, had a positive test. We are living through crazy times. 

On the way to the game, my wife “gave me a talking to” about “being present” and not “checking my phone every two minutes”, etc. I said ok and checked my phone one last time. 

We parked at the same time as the car next to us. I eventually found out the people in the car were Carlos Conley’s parents. Carlos ran for me (22.7 mph) as a sophomore. Carlos is the best basketball and football player I’ve seen this year. I told his parents how important Carlos would be to our team and vice versa. Carlos scored our only touchdown, a 65 yard punt return, his second return TD in the past two weeks. My work is never done. 

Carlos Conley!

We ate pizza at Cemeno’s on the way home.

And that wraps up my first week of track, 2021. 

I just found out both our freshmen and sophomore football teams have been shut down for the remainder of their season due to Covid. We had 1300 students start back in school on Wednesday (following Spring Break). I lost a sprinter today due to contact tracing. Sheesh. 

Let’s hope we make it through the spring. 

Good luck to all.