20-Time Post #3

This week has been exhausting! We have started to bike using the school's stationary bikes every other morning at 6:30am. I'm not a morning person at all so this has been extremely difficult for me. On the bright side, my coach made a comment to me about how he has noticed improvement in my running, so obviously the extra workout is helping! Sadly, he has a tendency to brush off my request of becoming more of a sprinter instead of a middle distance runner. I asked him if I could run the 200 meter dash at our meet last Tuesday in Saginaw, and what does he do? He puts me in the MILE. Sometimes it can be difficult to get permission to run different races, but he's already made a promise to me that I can run it at least once this season and I am going to hold him to that promise! Other than that, things have been going well and I am improving very quickly, we have a meet today at Midland High and I am running the sprint medley relay, that is a 100 meter dash x2, a 200 meter dash, and then a 400 meter dash, I am running the 400 part, so wish me luck!

20-Time Post #2

The first step to running well is improving your body, so this week I really wanted to focus on my health. I researched some good snacks that apparently are good for runners; one of them was almonds. Almonds are a good source of vitamin E, which is really good for active people, so I now pack a small bag of almonds everyday in my lunch. Whole-grain cereals are also very good for you, so instead of having a quick granola bar in the morning, I now make sure to wake up five minutes earlier every morning to save time to eat a real breakfast. The Special K cereals are delicious! I also used to go to Pizza Sams three times a week for lunch, but I made myself pack a lunch every day this week. My lunches have consisted of lunch meat (in a bag because I don't like sandwiches) almonds, a granola bar, fruit snacks, and a banana. Hopefully I can keep it up next week, it's so hard because I love junk food, but I just constantly remind myself that in order to become a stronger athlete, I must keep myself healthy. Another really cool thing that I learned was starting blocks! Only sprinters use starting blocks, so I had never been introduced to them. The other day my coach thought it would be funny to see how the long distance runners would do with them, and to his surprise (and mine) I got them on my first try! I guess I must just be a natural at sprinting ;) My coach also let me practice with the sprinters on Tuesday, it was super hard because he put me with the best group for my first time, I was so sore the next day I barely had feeling in my legs. It was very different from what we do for long distance practices. We sprinted the 100 meter dash six times, starting at 18 seconds and getting down to 14 on our last one. Harder than it sounds! Hopefully I will be able to have more opportunities to do these workouts in future practices.