In the running world Sept.1 or Labour Day is really our new year’s day. It is the official start of cross country season and the start of all the plans, hopes and dreams for the coming year-both cross country and track.
And just like on New Year’s Day we often make promises about how much harder we are going to train and compete. The question is, are we going to follow up on our resolutions or let them slip away?
Following the New Year’s Day analogy, its better to make reasonable and achievable goals rather than extreme ones. If you ran 4 times a week last year-set a goal of 5. If your long run was 8k-set a goal of 10. For the older kids, lets run 80k a week up from 60.
But most important is the promise to yourself to train more consistently and not be sidetracked by other matters, including school! There is a large body of evidence that elite athletes are usually good students because they learn to manage their time efficiently.
My group is sick of hearing me say this, but I will say it again to the larger group; a school assignment is no excuse for missing practice! Practice must be put on the calendar as a non optional event. Eat, sleep, run, school, Each one is every bit as important as the other.
By now some of you might be thinking, “why is he sounding so hard on this? Surely he can’t really expect high school kids and younger to be so serious about sport.”
My only response is, Penny Oleksiak seemed to manage it all pretty well at age 16 ! We can too.
Toronto West Athletics Running Club 