Meet on Tuesday at 6 PM at the parking area in the bowl of the F. R. Newman Arboretum in the Cornell Botanic Gardens (Google Maps pin) and be ready to start the warm-up at 6:15 PM in the sculpture garden. Invite your friends and new grad students! There is plenty of parking, but if you arrive later, you may need to park further from the meeting spot.
Everyone is welcome, though you must sign the FLRC Training Programs waiver once for 2026, and, if you come regularly, be an FLRC member. You don’t have to run the PGXC series—the workouts are great social running on their own—but we’ll try to recruit you. Probably repeatedly.
For the workout, after dynamic warm-ups and 10 minutes of jogging, we’ll do surging grass loops in the Arbor Road field below where we meet (see the image below for the workout location and additional parking spots). We’ll reconvene at the top of the Arbor Road loop. I’ll assign everyone to one of two groups by rough pace/weekly mileage, and each group will start running around the loop.
I’ll start the workout by blowing a whistle. Group A will surge to 5K race pace, while Group B will continue to run at a conversational pace. After 15 to 60 seconds, I’ll blow the whistle again, at which point Group A drops to conversational pace and Group B surges to 5K pace. Every subsequent time I blow the whistle, the groups will swap paces. We’ll keep this up for 15-20 minutes or until it seems like people have had enough—the reps are short, so they shouldn’t be too taxing. But with lots of people on the relatively short loop (and plenty of places to cut short if you want—it’s about time, not distance), there should be some fun group chaos.
The goal of this workout is to help you learn how to run at different paces and to change gears as necessary in a race to pass someone on a turn, extend a lead on a straightaway, or kick into the finish. You never know when you’ll need to surge in a race, so the random nature of the timing will help your legs learn to respond as needed, rather than at a specified time or distance.
Any questions? See you Tuesday night!
Resources
- Administration: You must be an FLRC member and sign the waiver!
- Location: All XC workouts take place at the F. R. Newman Arboretum in the Cornell Botanic Gardens east of the Cornell Vet School
- 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
- FLRC Calendar: Subscribe to FLRC Races and Other Club Events