Track and Field Blogs - Stephen Haas

Hello Floworld, we have finished our first week here in beautiful Flagstaff, AZ. Our first week at altitude went very well; the adjustment has been very smooth. When we arrived in Flagstaff the ground was covered in snow. Since then, the weather has been sunny and warm everyday. We even got a little sun burnt while working out in Sedona this week. To help adjust to running at 7000ft, we broke the first few runs into doubles. Typically we only do 2 or 3 doubles a week, but this week we ran twice almost everyday. My mileage the first week at altitude was a little lower, even with more doubles. We got to Flag on Tuesday and waited until Friday to do our first workout. The workout was 15x200 in the Skydome. The Skydome is the indoor track, football, and basketball complex here at NAU. The workout was just supposed to get us running faster, but not be a hard session. We took it nice and easy just running 31, 32 seconds a 200 and jogging 400 in between reps.
The typical pattern we follow for workouts is Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday with Sunday always being a solid long run. This past Sunday we went down to Sedona and ran on Beaver Creek Road. Beaver Creek is a really nice rolling, dirt road that you could run forever on. I went 20 miles with Mike Smith and Rob Kara, we did 10 miles out then turned around. Our average pace for 20 miles was 6:10 pace going 6:22 on the way out and about 5:55 on the way back. It’s more uphill on the way out and some nice down hill sections coming back. The weather for the run was great, mid 60s and bright sun the whole run. I think everyone in the group enjoyed rolling a good clip on the dirt road. After the run we had a huge breakfast at Mike and Ronda’s. That’s a little dump of a diner here in Flagstaff, but it’s a great place for a post long run meal. They have a “Hungry Man Special”, which consist of three eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and pancakes.
For Tuesday’s workout we drove down to Sedona again, and worked out on a really cool dirt track at Red Rock High School. About a year ago Craig Mottram said he ran a sub 4 mile on this track. The workout we were doing was a threshold session, were we were trying to run a lot of K reps without killing the pace. The track, at Red Rock High School, sits about 4500ft so you still feel the altitude on workouts like this one. I did 3x5x1k with 90 seconds recovery and 4 minutes between sets. It was a very good workout for me, I seem to never feel that good during the recovery here, but can always run the reps fine. This workout was more about volume, not intensity. We stopped on the way back to ice in the river, and shop at an Indian jewelry store. The trip was pretty fun even packed 8 deep in the mini van.
Tonight Mike Smith, Fasil, and Martin Fagan hosted a nice dinner at their house. It was cool hanging out with everyone and getting out of the house for a little bit. Our house is great, but there is only so much Halo and Mario Kart you can play in one day. I will put a few pictures up so you can see how nice it is running up here. I also have some videos I will be posting soon as well. Big thanks to Dan Green at New Balance for the shoes, one day I’ll learn to pack everything I need.
HAAS