Please spread the word about our new spot and time!
It’s time for Summer Speed at Stewart Park with a new meeting time of 6:15 PM. (I know I said 6:00 before; some people need a few more minutes to stop work.) We’ll meet at the bocce pits near the big pavilion—there’s plenty of parking and a covered porch at the pavilion if it’s wet.
If you have not signed the FLRC Training Programs waiver since November 2025, please sign now—it’s required by our insurance. I’ve removed the link to the Cornell waiver since that’s done until next November.
As always, all are welcome, though you should be running enough that 3–4 miles isn’t a problem. It’s fine to check out the workouts for a week or two, but if you attend regularly, you must join FLRC.
Because of the Ithaca Youth Bureau track program, we’re pausing our little kid workouts until we’re back in Barton in November.
For this week’s workout, we’ll do Single File Surges, a classic cross-country team workout common in high school programs. In a couple of groups, depending on how many people we have and the range of paces, we’ll do three or four loops of the roughly 1-mile circuit around Stewart Park, running on the Waterfront Trail’s paved surface or the grass next to it as desired.
After we regroup from the 10-minute warmup jog, each group will spread out into a single file with a few feet between each person, running at a comfortable, easy pace. The order of runners doesn’t matter. After everyone is in position, the person at the back of the line surges to the front, passing everyone in front of them on the left and then tucking into the head of the line after passing the last person. As soon as they’re in front, they yell “Go!,” the new person at the back surges to the front, and so on. The surge pace should be quick—somewhere in the R pace to I pace range (1 mile to 5K race pace)—because each surge will be short and the intervening pace will be easy.
For those who haven’t come to Stewart Park before, here’s how Summer Speed workouts go:
- 6:15–6:25: Arrive, change, mill around, chat with your friends.
- 6:25–6:30: We do lunges and leg swings to start the warmup and end with introductions and an explanation of the workout.
- 6:30–6:40: 10 minutes of jogging for the rest of the warmup.
- 6:40–whenever: Meet at the starting point to break into pace groups and run the workout. After completing the workout, take a few minutes to jog and cool down.
- ~7:30: Reassemble as a group to do strength and mobility exercises. A towel or yoga mat can be helpful if the ground is wet or uncomfortable.
- ~7:45: Chat with your friends, get changed, make dinner plans
See you Tuesday!
Resources
- ** * Administration: You must be an FLRC member and sign the waiver!
- Location: Stewart Park in downtown Ithaca, which has lots of free parking
- Warmup: Jay Johnson’s Lunge Matrix and Leg Swings, then 10 minutes of jogging
- Cooldown: 10 minutes of jogging, then Jay Johnson’s Strength and Mobility
- Pace Calculator: Jack Daniels’ VDOT Running Calculator
- FLRC Calendar: Subscribe to FLRC Races and Other Club Events