Aircraft and Intervals

Wednesday, July 15, 2015 · Mike Davis

Good morning! Grab your biggest mug, fill it up and pull up a chair. Nice to be almost half way through the week and I am surely looking forward to the weekend. Things are even busier than ever for me this week with a site visit in for the KC-46 aircraft preparation. I have been entrusted with responsibility of ensuring we will be able to support all the logistical requirements that come with this state of the art air refueling jet. The tricky part is that we will be going from 8 aircraft to 12 so space is also a huge concern from the logistic standpoint. Because we won’t start receiving any jets until the end of 2017, I will not be around, but the scope of planning required is tremendous and I guess my 100 years in the Air Force has some value. Kind of challenging and fun, but definitely consumes much of my time. This week we are in full swing with 3 NFLR training groups. Stonewall Kitchen and the Dover spring/summer training continue along and most of the participants will be running the York Days 5K, while our latest moved into week 2 with the Advanced 10K training. Last night we were at the Dover track for the Advanced 10K group and we introduced them to the NFLR version of a track workout. Right off we gave them 2 options: one they could keep their watches on if they agreed not to use them or if the temptation was too great they could go with option two and take it off and leave it with us. It was funny because some were definitely attached to using their watch. Our goal is to help our runners understand pace by feel, sound and effort instead of a device. We most definitely feel that runners that have the freedom to ‘feel’ their pace are better runners and enjoy that freedom. The goal isn’t to take their watches away from them completely but instead help them understand pace through things like breathing, foot sound, perceived effort, cadence and propulsion. Using a watch can often lead to inconsistent pacing and spurts of effort that often detract from running a smart race or even an enjoyable one. Lew and I kept the interval times for all the runners and the only thing they were to focus on was the perceived effort to improve each interval. This week we will email them their interval splits and let them see what they actually did versus what they may have thought. Pretty cool way of helping runners grow as runners. Well I have to get on out of here and go build a plane. Hope you have a great week and we’ll chat again Friday! God Bless! Mike