My Mondays begin earlier than most people’s do, because I wake up early to run at 6:45. Despite this fact, I had one of my favorite Mondays this week. It started with practice at the track, which was fun because instead of just running in circles for an hour, I ran in straight lines while jumping over things. For those of you who have a little bit of knowledge about track, I’m referring to hurdling. I had my first hurdling practice, and even though I was a little rusty, it was a very encouraging practice. It wasn’t just because of what I was doing that made it a good practice, however. At a track practice there are a lot of different things going on because everyone runs something different. And then there’s field, but that’s a whole different story.
On this particular morning, we had the distance runners running a long interval workout, which made them kind of like the rhythm behind the whole show. Every so often, I’d hear my teammates cheering, and I’d look up to see them urging the distance crew on, or the distance crew urging the rest of us on as they passed. Then we had the sprinters, who I had joined for the day, doing a variety of different drills. My favorite one was when we practiced relay handoffs. The handoff is the most important part of the relay: if your teammate doesn’t get the baton, the whole thing falls apart (as we know all too well from the 2008 Olympics)
source: sfgate.com
It’s a fun thing to do in practice because there is less pressure, but also because you get to hang out with your teammates a little more; it’s like the communal part of track. Despite the fact that we were in the middle of the track passing a stick around, we weren’t the loudest group by far. That award went to my coach, who had joined in with the mid distance runners on the last part of their workout. Near the end of a workout, if it hasn’t been too grueling, trackies like to have some fun and do what we do best—race. My coach decided that he not only wanted to join in on the last few reps, but also narrate the whole 100 meter “race” for the rest of the team to hear. It ended up coming out pretty breathless, since my teammates were giving him a run for his money, they even beat him on the last rep, a ruling that held, despite his claims that they false started.
This isn’t where track ends, however. Later in the day, we had a lift, which my coach decided would be fun. Unfortunately, my coach’s definition of fun is playing pass with weighted med balls. Trackies aren’t known for their superior aim. The lift, while being successful in making my quads very sore as I’m writing this, also succeeded in creating one of the funniest scenes all week. Just picture 25 rather clumsy women with not the best arm strength in the world trying not only to throw a 20 pound ball to each other, but also catch the wayward tosses from their teammates. It was as much of an exercise in teambuilding as is was for our bodies, and both came out stronger—just in time for Championships.
source: athletics.brynmawr.edu