Hey guys today I will talk about what I learnt and improvements I can do, from my race at Nationals and what I can apply to my next race to do better and achieve a better result. I will also discuss my next upcoming race in a couple of months time.
Following on from last week with Nationals Cross Country, placing 29th as said previously in my last article. Although pretty happy with myself and doing pretty well, I still had room for improvements. Being tactically, mentally or physically.
Firstly, the start of the race was very fast, for the first 200m, it was like we were racing a 400m race, it was tiring, but it separated the front runners from the back runners, by getting a good spot. What I found is I didn’t go fast enough, as I don’t have enough top end speed and I ended up mid pack getting squished. This made me work intensely, as I had to battle and barge my way through to catch up to the front runners. As it turned out I was running 5 seconds a kilometer faster than the front 4 runners, for the 1,2 kilometers. So to improve on this I believe I need to work on my top speed a little bit to get maximum pace, whilst using slightly more energy to get in front with the front runners. This will hopefully give me a better opportunity to place higher up.
Maybe now I can up my volume of training, so my body is more used to running so I can have better cardiovascular system strength, so my body can absorb more oxygen into my lungs and into the red blood cells. So I can run faster for longer.
Last improvement maybe is strengthen my muscles by doing more gym work. Focusing on the muscles used when running, to make them more stronger and more efficient. ‘Oh’ and how could I forget REST!!!
Well my next race is supposed to be the South Island championship before Nationals in August. It is in less than 5 days now, but this whole week I have been out sick with the Flu, and have been unable to train at all. I don’t think I’m going to be able to go unfortunately and this frustrates me as this year I wanted to win my age group after coming second 2 years ago.
I will most likely be going to Nationals though, so I’m looking forward to that. The running Coach taking me up to nationals with the boys, is Greg Lautenslager I believe. With a couple moths to train before the event, we hope to do well in the men’s U18 team, as well as placing high up as well for me, as I hope for top 15 in this race.
Thanks for reading and make you check out my other articles and next weeks one, (Hopefully I’ll be better).
Luke Clatworthy (Clatters Chatter)
view last weeks article below:
All Luke’s previous articles can be found here:
https://www.coachray.nz/category/client-stories/clatters-chatter/