As the Ohio cross-country teams prepare for the Mid-American Conference Championships on Saturday, they are hoping the often-used idiom “practice makes perfect” will hold true.
The MAC Championships will be only the Bobcats’ second meet in 29 days — a long time between races compared to the beginning of the season when the team competed in four meets within a span of only 20 days in September.
All the time off has allowed coaches Clay Calkins and Mitch Bentley to train the runners hard for the end-of-the-season meets, which they said are the most important ones of the season and the ones in which athletes should be in their best shape to race in.
“The way we design our training, we use a reverse-tapering schedule from the MAC Championships to the beginning of the season,” Calkins said. “This really allows our athletes to prepare and hit their peaks at the end of the season, while at the same time lessening the workload to keep fresh legs.”
Aside from the Pre-Nationals Invitational in Terre Haute, Ind. that Ohio raced in two weekends ago, Calkins says the upcoming race is the most important of the season.
To be prepared for the most important competitions, having extensive training and practice is key to success for any athlete, especially runners.
“The main reason we have had such a large amount of time off lately is because it isn’t very helpful for our athletes to race in a meet every weekend,” Calkins said. “We don’t like scheduling back-to-back meets, especially late in the season. We want to train up for the big meets and be the best possible.”
Bentley, the coach in charge of designing the weekly workouts, said the program the runners train by has great historical inspiration.
Bentley says he modeled his schedule based on many successful running coaches, most notably the late New Zealander Arthur Lydiard — a marathoner who is believed to have popularized the sport — and former Oregon coach Bill Bowerman, who inspired variations of intensity for daily workouts.
Dr. Jack Daniels is also an inspiration behind the training, as he was one of the first trainers to institute distance running for workouts.
During a regular week, Bobcat runners have three types of workouts.
Monday and Wednesday are hard days, which normally means 10 miles for men and eight for women. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are generally easy days, on which Bentley has the men run seven miles and the women run five miles.
Finally, on Sundays — or whatever day follows a race — the team does a long run of 12 to 14 miles to ease the muscles after races.
Aside from running, the team members do core and upper-body workouts twice a week, but because cross-country is mainly reliant on leg strength, runners often do not work on building upper-body strength.
The coaches also have runners participate in morning runs before classes each day as a way to keep the legs always moving. Those morning runs are mainly just for upperclassmen to keep freshmen from feeling overwhelmed.
As a runner, finding constant motivation for races can be hard to come by.
“I love running, of course, but sometimes I really have to motivate myself,” senior runner Chase Robinson said. “There are many factors, but it really comes down to looking at myself and my teammates and wanting to be successful, even if I’m feeling lazy.”
To avoid the runner’s leg muscles getting used to a weekly routine, Bentley also designs his seasonal workout schedule into three cycles.
At the beginning of the season, hills and sprint workouts are very long and extensive, but as the season goes on, the workload of sprints and training with hills shortens about every three weeks.
“I don’t think many people know how complex our in-season training program is,” Bentley said. “We put a lot of thought into designing a schedule that can allow our runners to compete at the highest level they physically can.”
While the practices and number of races are both winding down, both coaches hope that all of the recent time off will lead to final positions on the leaderboard lessening in number, as well.
cl027410@ohiou.edu
