The annual cross country 800 workout was, as always, ridiculously hot and generally miserable. Weather on Monday was sweaty if nothing else, and though the goal was 6 reps, we had many unable to resist the effects of the rather nocuous climate. Choosing health over heat, many decided to end their workout at 4 or 5 reps instead.
The heat of Monday did remain, haunting our long run the day after like an angry spirit. Our only amelioration was in the water we chose to drown ourselves in. Taking advantage of our team’s connections, the girls found themselves in a family friend’s pool choosing to practice our diving skills in between our running segments.
Hills on Wednesday were utterly unenjoyable, as one may expect. 300 meters up the pavement incline in the still enduring heat twelve to sixteen times is not something one might consider fun. I will admit, high fives in passing from our lovely teammates did make it better, though even that was not enough to fully improve the day.
Thursday was, as Thursdays are, relatively average. We started with a course lap for warm up, and then two up-tempo laps of the Valhalla Rising course to understand and get the feel of it before the race the next day. It was painfully flat with a soft ground, and had maybe fifty meters of shade throughout the entirety of it. Awful in my opinion. Then, we did three starts up on the baseball field. After, we did a twenty minute cooldown.
Friday
Friday came quickly. Dressed in our new Mascenic Athletics shirts, the team, in pairs of two, ran against Monadnock, Derryfield, Hinsdale, and Conant, taking three laps each, running six in total. Monadnock had the first boys team in, and Mascenic had the first girls team in. Both the Mascenic girls and boys team won the Valhalla Rising meet and got what we can call wood plaques.
All in all, not a bad week, considering the conditions. How things will change by the end of October.
