View Workout (Brandon Carreno)
3 Years Gone
May 7, 2015 (Night)
Exercise Type: Other
Comments:
Didn't do a postmortem yet for Junior year, but there's no time like the present. Not sure what I can really say. I tried, and didn't always get what I wanted. Let's try a new format this time around. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for cross, then track. (Feel free to not read if you have better things to do.)
-XC-
The Good:
- Really consistent summer. Hit my mileage goals just about every week, and kept the paces tight, not very much "sloppy" mileage. Even got some workouts in, hills starting in July, and some steady state stuff in August.
- Put up some better performances/Improvement. I'm not leading the team by any stretch of the imagination, but I dropped some time well. Ended up with season bests of a MLK 5 miler at 29:20, and an 8k PR of 29:54 at All-Ohio. I think I’ve started to get the hang of how to run 8ks, but nasty conditions at Oberlin didn’t want me to have a PR. Going by what Barnes said, knocking 20 seconds off my Oberlin time (29:59) would give a more indicative time based on performance, but that’s not what was on those numbers at the finish.
The Bad:
- Still ultra meh times. Getting better is nice, but it’s not the same as getting good. Lot of work to do in the future.
- Mileage fell off after camp. Something about the hills at camp completely shattered my confidence I had coming back to CLE, and I guess it just got really hard to try to hit 55-60 consistently. Especially later on in the season, where I dropped way down to 40ish. Getting sick didn’t help anything either. As well as a weird “injury” in mid September.
- Despite a good summer, didn’t do all I could have. Stretched consistently, but didn’t always do abs, and barely lifted. Also started workout type stuff far too late. Need to get hard efforts started earlier on, maybe hills in June, steady states in July.
The Ugly:
- Any race at the farm. Oh god, let’s just not ever go there again. Only redeemed by how fun all the stuff we do other than racing there is.
- Also the time trial. That was terrible.
-Track-
The Good:
- Again, very solid preseason. Did mileage all through November, so I wasn’t stupidly out of shape for the lidlifter. That was still kind of slow (5:05), but not bad for 30ish easy miles a week for a month. Did all the workouts as sent out by Graz through break, and even built up to a solid 48 mpw before coming back to CLE.
- Early performances were also ok. Had some dece workouts, and even managed 4:59 at Spartan-Tartan, which might be my best performance at that meet ever. Still not satisfied with it, but that felt pretty good.
There’s actually so much for these parts, it’s not worth the effort to separate.
The Bad/Ugly
- Weather. True, it’s an excuse, but this winter sucked real bad. Way too cold for way too long kept me inside for all of February, and made any day longer than 8 miles the worst thing ever. Lot of treadmilling. Really broke the spirit.
- Spring Break. This is a weird thing. Coming onto Spring Break, even though mileage had dropped because of CLE weather, I was still getting workouts in. Some of them were darn decent too. But most importantly, I had no idea where I was fitness-wise. What kind of times I could expect to put up. Then I went to Florida to SCUBA dive. That might have been one of the best dive experiences of my life, but I feel like I’m going to be carrying some baggage from that for a while. I brought running gear with me, with the intent of at least running every day, even if workouts weren’t feasible, but it just didn’t happen more than once. Such a busy schedule, and the exhausting nature of diving meant that I was personally drained by the time we filled up the tanks before lunch. So by the time I got back to CLE, I felt like I totally lost my edge. Like the season was blown, and I was back to zero. Looking back, this probably wasn’t the case. If I would have nutted up, and gone back to the practice schedule, I could have made up for that aberration. But, Coach L disappeared, I panicked, and figured I’d set my sights for XC. Little more on that in the next section.
- Availability of Competition. This is in no way blaming anyone, but more a recognition of the situation. We’ve got a big team, and I love that. But that means it’s really hard to get into meets as a back of the pack runner. Which is ok, I like getting better, but there were so few meets I could’ve gotten into, even running unattached. I guess coming back after Spring Break, I saw the schedule, and saw the hours of practice I’d have to take myself through for 1 or 2 meets, and just couldn’t bring myself to do that. At this point, I could write a whole bunch of ifs, and regrets, but that’s a waste of both my time, and anyone that’s actually reading this whole diatribe. I didn’t give all I had for track, especially outdoor, and that sucks hard. I like track.
I guess that’s Junior year. One year left to make it count. Looks like the biggest thing for me: don’t wimp out, or get psyched out. Just stay consistent, and stick with it, and things can come together.