First a PSA:
Not everyone on the team has some illness, but it feels like it, a bit. Since the first kid who was coughing and had a runny nose, various plagues have ripped through our team. It is probably inevitable to some extent when school starts but please consider some pro-social decisions:
- If you are ill or have any symptoms, PLEASE don’t get on the bus with the team to De La Salle on Saturday. If you are unsure if you are ill and want to try to run through it, please ask your parents to drive you.
- Keep your personal water bottle personal.
- Follow good practices with the shared green water bottles when available, and carry your own water bottles if you have any concern that you might be ill even if you are trying to run through it.
- Everyone needs to make their own health decisions, but I got my COVID and flu 2026-27 vaccinations this month.
I can’t tell you I have been perfect about this all my life, especially when I was your age or in my 20s, I’d suck it up and work through a lot of illness and discomfort. But the older I get and the more experience I have, I try to be more thoughtful about my community, and how I impact my community. It’s not just about what is convenient for me. I know it is a Monta Vista thing to show up and take a test no matter how sick you are, and others are going to come to school while ill so maybe there is nothing we can do, but maybe we all can think more about the trade-offs between what is convenient for us and what is best for our community.
And, PSA ends! Thank you for reading :). And now…
Tempo Runs!
Coach Ben Rosario and I share a lot of traits and beliefs, and one of our joint tenets is:
When in doubt, run a three-mile tempo.
Raising our lactate threshold (that is, being able to sustain a faster pace before lactate starts accumulating in our bodies) is one of the most reliable, well-supported ways to improve distance-race performance, because it lets you hold a faster pace before your body shifts into an unsustainable, rapidly-fatiguing zone. Aerobic capacity and running economy also matter (and we have workouts to focus on those areas). However, Ben and I, and Bob Larsen, and USATF coaching clinics, argue hard for prioritizing tempo runs and lactate threshold level effort for a lot of reasons; and I could write a whole article about our reasoning.
But, I already feel like I’m losing the thread of what I started to write; I want to write about how well you ran our Palm 3-Mile Tempo route yesterday! It is easy for a coach or an athlete to overcomplicate a tempo run, trying to figure out a perfect pace or level of effort. And, a tempo run is objectively hard; it is not easy for anyone, and particularly a high school runner, to maintain this level of effort for 20 minutes or more. Yet, a tempo run is also kind of simple; if you can maintain a somewhat uncomfortable level of effort for 20 to 30 minutes, your lactate threshold will be higher after your body adapts to this workout. That’s it; mission accomplished. Recover, and repeat at a later date. You’re welcome.
I’m constantly impressed by the willingness of MVXC26 to push themselves and help each other to do something hard. So many of you bunched up (or latched on to Coach Janne). At the end, a lot of you were high-fiving and cheering and encouraging each other. That support matters so much; a three-mile tempo run is objectively hard, but it is subjectively easier when we are part of a cooperative group and in a supportive situation. We–you guys–are a really tight team.
And we will all improve, if we stick with it! Check out these long-term workout heroics:
- Miranda was 1:21 quicker than last year.
- Caroline’s mark was 2:14 under last year’s run at Palm.
- Taylor was 3:04 faster than in 2025 (biggest drop that I found).
- Sam ran Palm 1:59 faster than last year, more than two minutes faster than as a freshman, and he went and added on another mile with teammates.
- Ritik knocked 1:43 off of last year’s mark, and more than five minutes off his freshman time.
One of the things that non-runners don’t get is that during a week of cross-country practice, not that much of it is uncomfortable. Most of the time, we are running at conversational pace–so, by definition, we are out having conversations with our teammates and friends. Yesterday, the goal was to be uncomfortable for 20 to 30 minutes. So many of you stepped up to the challenge.
Two of my positive psychology mentors, Carol Dweck and Marty Seligman, would say that many people interpret the discomfort of growth as a reason to stop. If you didn’t stop yesterday, you embraced growth! I am proud of you for reaching for growth, as individuals and as a group. Your effort will pay off.
I added some photos to a Band album.