Please spread the word about our new spot and time!
It’s time for Summer Speed at Stewart Park with a new warmup start time of 6:00 PM. We’ll meet at the bocce pits near the big pavilion—there’s lots of nearby parking and a nearby covered porch at the pavilion if it’s wet.
Since we’re no longer at Cornell and covered by their waiver, I need everyone to sign the FLRC Training Programs waiver once for 2025. It will take only a minute.
As always, all are welcome, although you should be running enough that a distance of 3–4 miles isn’t a problem. It’s fine to check out the workouts for a few weeks, but if you plan to attend regularly, you’ll need to be an FLRC member.
Because of the Ithaca Youth Bureau track program, we’re pausing our little kid workouts until we’re back in Barton in November. Big thanks to Kate McCormick and Lizzy Rayle for making them happen! There may be some parent-organized opportunities for kids at the park during the workouts—I’ll share more if it happens.
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 5-10 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:
- 6:00–6:15: Arrive, change, mill around, chat with your friends.
- 6:15–6:20: We do lunges and leg swings to start the warmup and end with introductions.
- 6:20–6:30: 10 minutes of jogging for the rest of the warmup.
- 6:30–whenever: Meet at the starting point to go over the workout, break into pace groups, and run the workout. After completing the workout, take a few minutes to jog and cool down.
- ~7:15: 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.
- ~7:30: Chat with your friends, get changed, make dinner plans
See you Tuesday!
Resources
- Administration: You must be an FLRC member and sign the FLRC Training Programs waiver once for 2025.
- Location: Stewart Park in downtown Ithaca, which has lots of free parking
- Warmup: Lunge Matrix and Leg Swings, then 10 minutes of jogging
- Cooldown: A few minutes of jogging, then Strength and Mobility
- Pace Calculator: Jack Daniels’ VDOT Running Calculator
- FLRC Calendar: (Download and import this ICS file for most calendar apps; subscribe to fingerlakesrunners@gmail.com if you use Google Calendar.)