Clay's hill workout

I got up and ran over to Clay's house to meet him and Dale for their morning hill workout. It is exactly 2.5 miles from my house to his. There was a cool ring around the moon this morning. The temperatures were in the high 30s with no wind. PERFECT! We ran another mile before starting the hill workout. It is a set of 3 differnt hills but the last one is run twice and the first one is a warm up. I didn't know how my calf would hold up to the hills so I stayed with Clay to push him on his sets. He had a great workout. I ran home from there for a total of 8 miles in 64 minutes of varying speeds. I had to stop and stretch my calf between hill sets.

Thirsty Thursdays with Jack Daniels is on the transition from high school to college running. It made me think about my transition from running as a Senior at Green Valley High School to a Freshman at California Lutheran University. It was a tough one. I trained over the summer and ran a downhill road 10k before leaving for school in 36:36 (still my 10k PR). I had a tough transition to college running though and never ran under 30 minutes for 8k my first year. The jump from 5k to 8k was tough on me. I would typically go out too hard and fade in the middle. It is tough to run your own race when most of the guys can go out at 5:00 pace or under and hang on. I seem to remember usually going out around 5:30 pace but still running around 30min. I dealt with the worst case of shin splints I have ever had come championship races and ended the season on a poor note. In track our coached trained most of the distance crew for the 1500m and I gained a lot of speed. I remember doing a weekly workout that was 4 or 6 x 400m and I would be last on each rep running at 67 sec! I never ran farther than 3k that spring, mostly 1500m (around 4:36), but I did run in one 4x400m relay and the head coach clocked me at 54 seconds! I still don't know how accurate that was, I never ran faster than 57 seconds before or after that. I am guessing it was closer to 56. I think by the end of track season I had gained about 10 pounds as well which probably didn't help. I remember weighing about 165 at the end of high school and being somewhere in the 180s by the time my freshman year was over. All in all it was fun and that is what counts, but I remember it being a tough transition to balance school, running, social life etc.