El Dorado’s cross country program is in the middle of its longest break of the season. The teams competed well in the Lakeside Invitational last Tuesday and will have more than 10 days off before running Saturday in the Chile Pepper XC Festival in Fayetteville.
The Lady Wildcats finished second and the Wildcats fifth at Hot Springs. Coach John Koonce said the workouts during the time off will change.
“We kind of shift gears in practice. You spend all summer building volume. The months of August and into September are the introduction to speed work,” he explained. “Now you’re getting to the point where more of the practice is going to include speed work to where you’re slowly training that system to get faster and faster.”
The objective in cross country is for athletes to run their fastest at the end of the season. Koonce believes his runners are on the right path.
“I do think there’s a ton of room for growth. I believe there’s a lot to work on. That’s what I told the kids,” he said. “You do have a lot to be proud of but you better not think we’re where we need to be because there’s just so much potential there that I think we can still get a lot better than what we are right now. That’s not because the kids haven’t been working hard. I just think there’s more in there.”
As for the 10 days off, El Dorado won’t be resting.
“It’s good for us. This next meet we have coming up, there’s no team we’re focused on except for us. We’re going to spend probably four of the practices between now and then hammering on this pace is where you need to be,” Koonce said last week. “This pace is where you need to be. Not faster. Not slower. Hit your pace. Hit your pace. They’re going to get sick and tired of hitting that same pace over and over and over and over again. The goal at the Chile Pepper is let’s hit our splits. Let's try to go out at a split at the beginning of the race to see if we can race that way at this point of the season. The next two and a half weeks are like that and then we’ll start seeing teams again that we’re focused on. And then, now we’re racing this team. Now I need you to run in a pack against this team. But right now it’s all about us. We need to get a little bit better so let's make those paces faster in practice and see if we can match that at the meet.”