Track and Field Blogs - Stephen Haas

Hello FloWorld, The 3rd week in Flagstaff just flew by. The past 3 weeks have been very good training for everyone in our group. Everyone is running really good miles and the workouts have been great on top of that. Life in Flag has also been good; we have been eating meals at the food court on campus. That makes life easier for me; I was cooking dinner for everyone the first week. The Center for High Altitude Training really helped us out with access to the food court. We also spent last Friday night down in Sedona. Paul Coover, a friend of mine from Indiana, came out for his spring break. He has a friend, Doug Napp, who invited our whole group to his house for dinner. It was a really good time. Doug spoiled us for a night with a great meal, plenty of wine, and some relaxing in the hot tub. Paul had a video camera and we have some really good footage we will try and put together when we get back to Indiana. Now to the good stuff the training!!

The week started with a 20 mile run down in Sedona, we had a large group going long. Jeff Powers, Peter Gilmore and I all went 10 miles out on this dirt road. When we turned around we had dropped some serious elevation, and had a 10 mile climb ahead of us. We were 64 minutes at 10 miles, and really picked it up on the return trip. Gilmore was really rolling up some of the big hills on the way back. I was hurting pretty good, but our Sunday runs are always solid, so I felt really good about it. Gilmore led us back in 58 minutes for a really nice negative split. That got the week off to a great start.

Tuesday we made another trip down to Sedona and Red Rock High School for 25x400. We were accompanied by Brianna Torres, Martin Fagan, and the Man of Flag Mike Smith. Mike joined us for the 400 reps and took us to the Vortex for an ice bath, and positive energy after the workout. Fife, Scott, and Itay were doing a steeple workout which consisted of running a flat 800 then an 800 with hurdles. They did 8x800 total and had a really good workout. Powers, Braden, Overall, Smith and I did sets of 5x400 with 200 jog recovery. The workout is supposed to be a continuous jog with a 400 after each set of 5x400s. The guys did 4 sets cutting the pace down a little on the last few. I added another set getting 25x400 in. The pace was nothing special just a way to adapt to faster running without killing yourself. I was running 72 seconds down to 64 seconds with 200 jog.

Friday we drove to Camp Verde again to run on the road loop at 3100ft. The workout this day was 4x2miles with 5 minutes rest. Another large crew came down to Camp Verde to workout, and made for a real good environment. This was a workout that Coach Chapman wanted us to get after a little bit. He wanted the last 2 reps to start to hurt and have us work through it. The course was on the roads and the first 2 miles was slight down hill with the wind to our backs. The return trip was slight up hill with the wind in our faces. Everyone in the group had the same workout today; just less reps for the guys who are getting fit or lower mileage guys. The first rep was a controlled 9:51 going through the mile in 5 flat. The rest on the first rep was 5 minutes and it seemed really long. On the return trip we over ran the first mile thinking it would be a lot slower. Our mile split was 4:45 and we finished in 9:44. We took 5 minutes again on the rest before the 3rd rep. Derek Scott did 2 reps and took some cool video of the 3rd rep out the window of the van. The 3rd rep was solid, it was Fife’s last rep and he is very fit. He led us to a 9:30 and he was a few seconds faster then the rest of us. For the last rep we took 6 minutes rest and started the last rep into a strong head wind. I was running right with Overall and we were really running hard, 4:32 for the first mile. I knew it was a little fast and when we made the turn home the wind was really strong. Overall was a little ahead of me but I stayed relaxed and got beside him the last 800 and we ran 9:22 for the last rep. Everyone had a good workout and we really had a great night hanging with Doug in Sedona.

Flagstaff has just been nothing but great so far. It seems time is flying by, but I know we are all getting very fit. I hope people like hearing about the workouts, besides that life in Flag is kind of tame. The day is filled with lots of naps (not Overall), long hours in the food court, and a variety of movies every night. Keep an eye out for the video footage, it should be pretty funny.

HAAS
Here is a short video D. Scott made, more to come!!!