We just finished week #8 at The Anderson School on the Upper West Side. We’ve had a busy program thus far.
In week #4 we focused on proper running form, which included a bean bag relay at the end of the session. In Week #5 we focused on heart rate education showing the kids how to count their heart rate and measure it after different types of running efforts. In week #6 we did some classroom work on proper nutrition for runners. In week #7 we focused on our universal theme – proper pacing.
Run SMART client John Robinson set another 5k PR this weekend winning the Bluffton 5k in 18:59 on Saturday in Bluffton, SC (full results). J Ro came to the Run S.M.A.R.T. Project just last year with a PR of 20:45. Since joining he has set eight PR’s in distances from 5k to the marathon. Robinson has worked with Run SMART coach Mike Smith since March 2009.
“John’s been able to race more frequent, shorter races this fall and it’s been a lot of fun. We were targeting a PR but hadn’t discussed the fact that he could get the win too, so that was just an added bonus. His training has been great and the frequent racing this fall has allowed him to really dial into these faster paces that we practice. He’s put it all together,” said Mike.
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At the 2010 DRC Half Marathon, Brian Schmidt took home the masters title finishing 9th overall in 1:15:19 (full results). Just last year in the same race, Brian was second masters finisher in a time of 1:17:10. Usually, when you hit the masters division it’s all about who can slow down the slowest but in Brian’s case, at 41 years old, he’s still improving. Just this past spring we reported his new 10k PR, a 10 second improvement from his previous best set at age 39.
Run SMART coach Mike Smith offered some great marathon recovery tips to NY Daily News’ Lauren Johnston. Lauren has done an amazing job documenting her first marathon training experience on her blog, Running Dialogue. It’s turned into an excellent resource for marathon beginners.
Run SMART client Ben Schippers won the 2010 Running With Heart 5k at Iowa St. University. The 29 year old Brooklyn resident dominated the field winning in a very impressive time of 16:12 – almost three minutes ahead of second place. Ben signed up for private coaching this past March and since then he’s become a completely new runner making incredible improvements over various distances. Check out his new personal bests after joining The Run SMART Project just six months ago:
At the ING New York City Marathon, Cathrine Wolden, set her second straight marathon PR since joining The Run SMART Project. Her time of 2:57:16 was just over a 2-minute PR placing her 53rd female overall (results). And from a coach’s perspective the best part was how she paced herself on a very challenging course. She came through halfway in 1:28:43 – an almost dead even pacing job throughout.
A couple of years ago I was looking through a schedule that Jack had sent me to prepare for the Carlsbad 5k. The schedule was similar in format to what you would find in his book, Daniels’ Running Formula, but very different in terms of content. While I was looking at the schedule I wondered if most runners knew how many different schedules Jack had written over the years. At the time almost every competitive runner in Flagstaff (along with countless visiting athletes) had received a schedule from Jack for one race or another and no two were the same.
Five days to go until the NYC Marathon! This morning I cracked up looking at my iCal forgetting that on Sunday, November 7th I wrote, “NYC Marathon Day – Pain!” As an a unabashed Rocky fan, all I could think about was Clubber Lang’s prediction in Rocky III…
