SCVAL Championship
Post season is here! We have a meet sheet for the SCVAL Championship meet next Tuesday. Please take a look to know when you are running.
Parents, there will be an admission fee for this meet. This goes directly to cover the league’s cost in running the meet. You will need to purchase tickets on your phone…you can do this now or anytime before the meet starts on GoFans.
This is a wonderful meet and a great experience for all of us. To get the most out of the meet, please take care of yourself this weekend–plenty of sleep, eat well, hydrate. You don’t need to do anything extreme. You want to feel good on Tuesday so take care of your body. And for your mind…think about all the miles you ran these last three months. You are so much stronger than you were when we started in August. So, be focused, and committed, and work to get all you can out of that training. It really does not matter where you finish, what matters is that you get as much out of your training and your experience as you can. And don’t forget…the best performance enhancer is fun!
“It takes a while for new runners to understand that the competition is not the other fellow. The real competition is against the little voice in your head that wants you to quit.”–George Sheehan
Basic Nutrition Presentation
What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes.–John Parker
Thank you to everyone for your attention to our presentation on nutrition yesterday. The slides are attached below. I am sorry these slides are not prettier–I broke all the rules I believe in for snappy and engaging presentations–these are quite wordy slides!
Here is the thing–there are no secrets to nutrition. I can’t tell you that the secret is eating more blueberries the night before a race and you will run faster. I wish it were that easy, I’d buy a blueberry farm.
But we can look at this another way–hey, great, the good news is that there are no secrets to nutrition! (Try changing the emphasis in your head; see what I did there? haha.) If I can eat a little less junk food and some more vegetables, it will help my health and it will help my running performance and I will feel a little bit better. You don’t have to be perfect…it’s OK to eat a cookie or have some ice cream or enjoy some fries with a burger.
Just like running, there are no quick fixes with nutrition. With both running and nutrition there is nothing to replace consistent, long term effort. I really like the quote from John Parker at the start of this section. With running, there is nothing to replace miles you run over long periods of time. With nutrition, you can’t replace good habits with a pill (or a bowl of blueberries). You can’t cram a new language into your brain, you need to learn the vocabulary word by word. We want shortcuts, but often there is no replacement for making good choices, consistent effort, recurring practice, running the miles, removing molecules of rubber off the bottom of our shoes as we run down the trails of Cupertino.
And you don’t have to do everything that crazed internet influencer says to get results (Okay besties, BREAKING NEWS: the new superfood is sea moss. No, forget that—turns out it’s lion’s mane! And if you’re still eating avocados, you’re LIVING IN THE PAST. 2025 is all about air-fried jackfruit bark and sun-activated spirulina foam.The new antioxidant king? Fermented cactus water. Don’t ask, just drink it!).
Don’t hesitate to talk to your doctor, coach, or parents about nutrition, and anything you are considering putting in your body.