Today dawned cold. The mercury read 15 degrees, but the "feels like" temperature was 3. The chill was wicked. I drove down to Hyannis Port and met former Barnstable High School star Matt Clark for a repeat hill circuit on some of the plowed roads. Clark graduated 5 years after me but we know each other by reputation and try to get together during the holidays for runs. Clark was a 4:30 miler as a schoolboy junior, but was thrown off the cross country team his senior year for hazing. Instead of giving up, he went out training on his own. He would run 18 holes of a golf course hammering each "pin to hole". It was old school. He then returned to the track that spring and turned heads across Massachusetts by running a 4:16 mile. He went to Clemson and got super good. He posted a 3:47 for 1500 and a 28:49 for the 10k. With that type of range, he was recruited to run professionally for McMillan Elite in Flagstaff, AZ. Now a bona fide pro, Clark is hoping to lower his bests from 10k on down next year.
Together we shuffled out of his house and began our warm-up. We looped around the (in)famous Kennedy Compound and ran along the beaches of Hyannis Port. The wind and cold froze our mouths and, at times, we struggled to speak. After 35 minutes we jumped into our workout without pealing off any layers. The workout had us coasting 100m, shuffling for 15 seconds and then attacking a long (45 sec?) hill. We would shuffle at the top of the hill for another 15 seconds and then coast 100 more meters. We'd then turn and do the exact same thing but this time push the downhill ~ something I definitely need to work on. We did 8 of these .70 mile out-and-backs. The workout wasn't too tough, but the rest was minimal, so by rep # 7 and 8 I started to feel a little worked. It felt good to move fast on such a cold day. After the workout we cooled down for 30+ minutes.
14 for the day.
The Route
http://www.mcmillanelite.com/mattclark.htm
PHOTO - the frozen pier at the Hyannis Port Yacht Club
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