Week 4 at GateWay

Whew! It's week four of base training with GateWay, and classes have begun for everyone!
This week is now drawing to a close and leaves only one more week until the start of my first competitive season as a collegiate coach.  It was a rather difficult and stressful week for some of the runners on the team, scrambling last minute to get their schedules right due to all sorts of SNAFUs that regularly occur in college settings.  I was proud of the team, however. They really know how to get their act together in a hurry.  Getting paperwork together can be stressful and a pain, but everyone seemed to get it done. That's the benefit of having a non-teeny-bopper team. 

My own running is coming along again.  I hopped into the mile repeats workout on Tuesday and did 3 of them. 5:38, 5:28, 5:27, all with 600m jog recoveries.  I wanted to do the last two, but it was time to put out fires with people's form. I ran 2 miles of a 5K race two weeks back just behind Daniel, too. I'm pretty sure that these guys will make me faster. 

The guys have fairly decent running form all-around.  Boone and Daniel, especially. The women's team is struggling with some minor inefficiencies due to the fact that most of them took the marathon training route when they started running, versus building up from the 5K.  The great thing is, when their efficiency increases due to their new-and-improved running form, their times are going to drop immensely.  With several women already posting some impressive pre-season times going in to the community college circuit, I certainly won't be complaining when the form change happens. 

The guys on the team have been pretty easy to get to know.  2-3 times a week, we imbibe some coffee after practice and talk about all things running, along with some good "guy talk." The men's team is truly united and the guys are a class act.  They razz the only traditional runner, Devin, because he's the youngest, but overall this is one of the tightest-knit men's teams I've ever come across.  As for talent, it's a mystery. Boone and Daniel have run some pretty fast times, but the rest of the team is an enigma at this point.  I really have no idea what to expect of my 3-6, so it's going to be great fun to watch them compete.
 
Things are really looking up, and the excitement makes me feel like a kid who's anticipating his first trip to Disneyland next week.