"A Captains Letter To Their Team!!"

In keeping with the theme of creating some new traditions for the team we have decided to start the summer with a letter to the team from your captains!!

Dear Foxy Friends,

               The phrase they save the best for last truly does apply to the group of girls I’m about to be lucky enough to close out my running career with. The potential amongst every individual is unfathomable and the strength that we pertain as a whole is undeniable. You guys have shown so much heart for both one another and your own training and thinking about it gives me goose bumps for the upcoming season.  With that being said, this summer I hope you focus on two things: dedicating yourself to being a component of our team’s success and remembering who YOU are as a runner. Ask yourself each morning when you wake up what you can do that day to be a better team member. Whether its fitting in drills, remembering to stretch, or texting a teammate to have a good run, make everything you do something that will ultimately propel our team in the fall. The little things we do now will build for bigger successes in the future. This team making Marist history starts with each of you staying focused and healthy in the summer. EVERYONE’S training matters!

As for remembering who you are as a runner, I think the summer is the best time to re-engage yourself. Smile when training hurts, close your eyes and think of how running is closest we come to flying. Remember where you came from and the girls who have carried you to this point. Think of how you’ve felt at your best times, your lowest times. Dig deep and find solitude on long runs, have confidence in your capabilities on hot tempos. Fall even deeper in love with this sport (or take the time to remember why you do) because your team loves you as an athlete. So remember why you are proud to be able to call yourself one.  Love you guys cannot wait to train with you in August. Feel free to call me at anytime you need training pick me up, always here for each and every one of you.

-Mur

  

Hello, ladies!

Summer training has just begun! It is a long time before we all come together in August! It can seem daunting, but we are all doing it together. Use each other for motivation when you need it! I'm so stoked for cross-country to come so that we can put together a great team. Let's use this summer to train smart and healthily so that we come into cross fresh and ready to work. Use this time to create healthy eating habits. To give yourself the base you need. And to get ready to beat other teams! We will be training off of the roads come august, so stay off of the roads as much as you can this summer! Focus on putting the right fuel into your body, if you want to be great, you have to start with the nutrients your body is working with. Starting the habit of eating healthy foods is perfect over the summer, because you can put in extra time in trying new things and what works/doesn't work with you. 

To the freshmen, welcome to the team! Please ask any and all questions you may have. Good luck to everyone in their first and second weeks of training! 

~Jenna

To my teammates, best friends, and the best gals I know; happy summer training!!

Summer training is one of the best times of the years, and, when done right, really sets a great base for a successful cross country season. That being said, I know how easy it is to get overexcited about goals and push every run. The important thing to remember this summer is to train smart, and remember that recovery days are just as vital as workout days.

I recently came across a quote that stuck with me, and is a good reminder; “always keep in mind that ultimately we are training to race and not training to have impressive training logs”. This summer keep that in the back of your mind, because we need each and everyone of us healthy, so that we can be a strong unit and force to recon with come championship season! Remember, our main goal as a team is to be a top three team in the MAAC, and “what your mind can conceive you can achieve”. So let’s spend this summer training smart, and training for one another.

~Mariah

"Training Tip Tuesday - The Importance of Prehab"

THE IMPORTANCE OF PREHAB

Andrew LemoncelloArticles

The reason we run differs for each individual. It could be to run a certain time, lose weight, for the long-term health benefits or for pure enjoyment. The list is endless and it’s always a joy to help athletes to move steps closer to hitting those goals. Something that often gets in the way of that is injury and most runners will face some sort of setback during their time training. It’s just the nature of the sport, unfortunately. Our bodies can handle quite a bit of pounding but as you adapt and get fitter throughout the training process, you should be able to handle more training and faster training.

We want to keep adapting so that we can be the best version of ourselves and achieve better results. Then we get greedy. We feel the gains and start pushing harder knowing how good it feels to reach new peaks. Boom, an injury curtails your progress. This isn’t how it always happens but it’s a very common injury story. Why did the injury happen when you were fitter and stronger than ever? The stress/rest cycle was out of balance and you were pushing too hard for the amount of recovery you were giving yourself or it was a freak accident (like twisting your ankle or stubbing your toe on a curb). Option 2 we can’t control but making sure that we are helping our body to recover adequately is something we can do a lot about and on a regular basis.

PREHAB NOT REHAB

Prehab is the process of helping yourself stay away from preventable injuries by taking care of the weaknesses ahead of time and not allowing them to evolve into something that will stop you from running. Running is what we love doing so it’s easy to do but prehab? For many of us, not so much. For the vast majority it seems like an inconvenience or you may believe you don’t have the time for it. But once injury hits, the regret sets in and you wish you’d spent that extra 15 minutes a day doing those little things to help your body get back to neutral (a term I use for your pre-workout state).

One of the things that sets apart successful athletes from others is that they can train consistently for long periods of time without any interruptions. They do the little things that help their body to stay in great condition year round and they do those things regularly. The best runners in the world are known for how diligent they are in making sure they are at their best all the time. Why not learn from them? It’s easy to do and it doesn’t take much time or effort. Here are some of the things you can be doing to help you reduce the risk of injury and keep you feeling good on a regular basis.

MASSAGE

The easiest way to do this is to pay an expert to get into your muscles and work them out for you. That’s a more expensive, but a very worthwhile version of massage as they can feel for knots in your body and work them out through a series of movements and manipulations. A much cheaper way to use massage is by using a foam roller or massage stick. You can pinpoint areas on yourself where you feel tightness and make passes over those areas and ease them out yourself.

There is lots of evidence for and against massage but almost every top athlete gets massage so they must do it for a reason right? I heard a great analogy recently about why massage is so good for the muscles. Think of your muscles as hair and the foam roller/massage stick/masseur as a hairbrush. If you don’t brush your hair for a while, it will get knotted up and eventually break. The hairbrush (massage) keeps the hair in good condition and moving naturally.

STRETCHING

Everyone has an opinion about stretching and whether it works for them. A lot of athletes feel it doesn’t make much of a difference but that’s because they’ve never done it for a period long enough to see true results. It takes around 210 days for your muscles and tendons to adapt to stretching and for the flexibility to really kick in so just like endurance running, it’s a long term process.

The key to flexibility isn’t about being able to move in larger ranges of motion but to be able to use those new ranges combined with extra strength. This is the difference between flexibility and mobility. We want mobility otherwise you can’t put that newly found flexibility to good use. Personally, I have found that active isolated stretching to be very useful in recovery and making my legs feels better before big efforts and after runs. This is the process of stretching your muscles to their end range, holding for a couple of seconds and then loosening off and repeating a few times. Within a few minutes and with minimal effort, you can feel unbound and ready to flow through your training. Our muscles shorten while we run so doing this after runs can be very helpful as you re-lengthen the muscles to their pre-run state which allows them to be in good condition for your next round of training.

CORE TRAINING

I see core training as a form of prehab. Making sure that we constantly work on our back, abdominal, hip and glute strength not only allows us to be more fluid and efficient but it allows us to be stronger and more able to stand up to the rigors of running. It doesn’t have to take long either.

Greg devised a core routine that you can fit into your day conveniently and that you can do anywhere. That means no extra time traveling to the gym, working out and then traveling home again. You can finish your run and move straight into your core work. Many of us think of a strong core as a rock solid 6-pack but it’s much more than that. It’s your whole mid-section so the work you do has to encompass activating all the muscles in that area. If you haven’t done it before you will be tender the first few times but that goes away as your muscles get used to working in this new way. That tenderness actually tells you that you have work to do. This type of work will also help with your posture, which allows you to keep the rest of your body in good shape by not putting extra strain through your musculature. If you can get into a good routine of working on your core two to three times a week then you’ll be well on your way to reducing your risk of injury.

SORENESS

If you do end up getting sore from training, and you will, then there are a few easy ways to help you heal quicker than just leaving it alone. Note that if it’s a true injury then you should get treatment from an expert like a Physical Therapist or Sports Doctor. The three usual injury sites in runners are in the muscle, tendon or bone. As you increase your mileage and the length of your workouts your legs take a lot more force than they’re used to. That’s a good thing and it will produce a training response (breaking you down only to make you stronger). We enjoy this part because we know we are getting stronger every time we’re going out and working hard towards our goal. We just have to be careful not to cross the line where the stress/rest cycle comes out of balance.

Bone soreness: See a doctor. Remember that achiness and soreness are two different things. Achiness is fairly normal but if you have soreness in your leg bones then you may want to get a scan to make sure that you don’t have a stress fracture or the start of one. Best advice is see a doctor as soon as you can.

Muscle soreness: Again, fairly normal as running volume increases. Soothing the muscles with massage will help as will ice and Epsom salt baths. Ice baths allow the swelling in your legs to go down plus you get the added benefit of a great hormonal response producing more testosterone to help you recover. So even if you think ice baths don’t do anything for you, it does. Read more about ice baths. Epsom salt baths help you to absorb magnesium through your skin helping with muscle recovery and healing. It’s also very soothing to relax in a hot bath and I always take the opportunity of having thoroughly heated muscles to get some stretching in afterwards.

Tendon soreness: The common problem here is Achilles soreness. The world’s leading experts often say the same thing for healing the Achilles and that’s rest. Often times the soreness will go away after a few days and you can return to running again, or you can cross train by biking, going on the elliptical or best of all, do some pool running as there is no pressure on the area. Or, you may have to take some substantial time away from activity depending on the severity of the injury. To help with the healing of the tendon tissue, ice for the initial 24 hours and then use heat after that time to bring more blood flow to the area. Tendons heal through diffusion so the more blood you can get to the area, the more opportunity it has to heal. Contrasting between heat and cold can be good for the area too.

All of the tips above may seem like a lot to do but once you hit your goal having not had to take off any time from running, you’ll be glad you took that extra time to keep your body in good shape. Keep your focus on the end goal and what you can do today to make sure you can achieve success tomorrow.

"Announcing the 2017 XC Captains!"

  (Left-->Right) Mariah Christian, Jenna Robinson, Mara Schiffhauer

2017 Cross Country Captains!!

As is our team tradition the captain vote took place at our annual cross country meeting for returning student athletes on Monday May 8th! There was great energy at our meeting after a very successful year in which the women's track team set 12 school records combined during the indoor and outdoor track seasons!! It also marked the first time that Coach Erica Maker participated in our annual pre-summer team meeting after completing her first year as our assistant coach. Erica did an outstanding job working with our women this year and we all look forward to what Year 2 brings for this new coaching partnership! In addition we announced the addition of Nicki Nesi to our cross country staff as an assistant coach. Nicki just completed her 5th year of eligibility and will make an excellent coach after working closely with many of our underclassmen this year as a mentor! 

As we talked about the upcoming cross country season there was noticeable excitement about the group of returners we had that made huge strides in their development this year and a very talented incoming freshmen class. In order to truly maximize the potential of this team we believe that our number one priority is to become a truly great TEAM, one that puts the goals of the team above all else! In order to truly become a great team in any sport it involves great communication between the coaching staff and its athletes! To help ensure that the lines of communication are always open coaches rely on their captains to be that bridge. I am proud to say that this years 2017 XC captains are Seniors Mariah Christian, Jenna Robinson and Mara Schiffhauer!!! We have no doubt that these fine young women will do a tremendous job leading our team this fall and working closely with every team member in order to make sure that everyone is the best version of themselves as members of our program. For the past three years all of them, along with their classmates (Christine Gambell, Shannon Gildea & Roxy Novo) have done an excellent job of supporting their coaches and captains in order to prepare them for this season, their senior season!!! This is their time to lead and their chance to truly define what they feel it means to be a member of the Running Red Fox family!! 

#BeBetter #AllIn #MCXC2K17