Calvin's season

My decision to run for Davis was a fairly simple one after comparing it to other schools - the team was best suited to my interests and ability, the school itself is well-known for it's Biosci programs, which I would like to major in, and the freshman recruiting class. So after a fairly successful postseason, winning the NCS-Redwood Empire in 9:25 and finishing 6th to Joey at NCS, I embarked on my summer training. During high school, my peak mileage was about 45, but I had stayed well under 40 for the majority of my training. So after talking with Coach Puppione, I moved up my peak mileage to 50 and moved up to 50 very slowly, progressing with 25, 30, 30, 35, 35, 45, 50, 50, 40, 45. The training went without a hitch, luckily, and I was feeling pretty good about my fitness. At this point I found out that I had made the UC Davis cross country team, and I went to the summer training camp, where I met David Buscho, Andy Peabody, and Jonathan Peterson, along with the rest of the team. At that point, my peak mileage quickly jumped to 60, where it hovered for the rest of the season, with slight drops in mileage every fourth week or so.


After a fun week of training for the first time with the Davis team, I traveled up to compete in the Chico Invite. I was chosen to race along with 4 other Davis runners to see who would go to Sundodger the following week. I went through the first mile fairly quickly, just doing my best to stick with the other Davis guys. I have no recollection of any splits, just a vague strategy of how to work the hills. On the third loop over the big hill, I gave it all I got, remembering all of the runs I had done over the summer in hilly Annadel Park in Santa Rosa. I eventually caught one of our runners to come in 3rd out of the 5 guys, in 27:58, averaging about 5:30 a mile. Not at all spectacular, but considering the week of training beforehand, not bad.

Returning to Davis, I was truly introduced to the training grounds I would frequent the coming months. Known as the levees, this flat stretch of gravel road takes a runner south of campus, past the highways and railways. For me, this flatland running was unnerving, especially coming from hilly Sonoma County. But I quickly came to appreciate the advantages of pancake-flat running, especially with the mile-markers on the levees. With three different loops that could take me from 7 to 10 miles, I had a pretty good range of training runs at my disposal.

On top of the mileage difference, the pace of college running quickened dramatically, from base runs to intervals. I especially noticed the difference on the base runs, as I shifted from running 7:00 pace in high school to routinely running 6:00 to 6:30 pace on our easy days. It was difficult to adjust to at first, and my workouts suffered dramatically as a result. But once I got into a groove, I was able to perform well in the workouts again.


After Chico was the Stanford Invite, which was a pretty incredible experience. I had a huge breakfast but then almost nothing before the race, so I was a little worried, especially since I was tired on top of it all. But after going out fairly conservatively, I started to work up on guys with about 2k left, just picked up the tempo enough to pass people as they went into their painful death march to the finish. I eventually came through in 26:15, good enough for 6th on my team! However, this was a decidedly off day for Davis XC, and I was one of the few guys to actually run well. Regardless, I was happy with a new PR.



Resuming training, our team as a whole was fairly disheartened, and I think we all got too involved in our own, individual training rather than thinking about what we could do together as a team. At this point, I was still getting used to college running, and another one of the runs that really gave me confidence was a 10 miler that began at 7:00 pace and dropped steadily until we were running 5:45-5:35 over the last four miles! Pretty cool considering how far I had come since high school.

A breakthrough workout came after our disappointing performance at the Santa Clara Invite. We did 2x800, 3 mile tempo, 2x800. All of the 800s were in the low 2:20s for me, which felt good, but the true inspiration was the 3 mile. Our team really worked together, talking and encouraging each other the whole way. I went through the first mile around 5:10 and then held strong, despite my body crying out for me to slow down. I stuck with Himmelberger and was able to gut out a 15:27. The awesome part was how much easier the third mile was after the grueling second mile, just putting one foot in front of the other, fairly quickly... Everyone really performed well, and our team felt good going into Big West.

From here on out, I started slowly winding down my season. After not making the Big West squad, I decided to go down with some teammates to cheer on the team. Stopping in Isla Vista on the Friday night before Halloween was a wild time, there were thousands of people going crazy. The next day, we painted ourselves up, yelled like crazy people, and waved around a UC Davis flag, cheering on the guys and the ladies, which was a lot of fun.

After that, I knew I was not going to make the West Regionals squad, so I just focused on performing in the remaining workouts before taking my time off.

The final workout of the season was a great send off. After a two-mile warm-up, we launched into a 6 mile tempo. The first five miles we were supposed to keep the pace around 5:25 to 5:20, which we did superbly with 5:22, 5:17, 5:24, 5:22, and 5:18. What I want to emphasize here is how incredibly easy this felt. I just focused on staying on my Ben's shoulder and I just felt like I was cruising. A truly awesome feeling, especially considering how previous tempos had ended with me dropping off at the last couple miles. After executing the first 5 miles perfectly, we then launched into the last mile, which was supposed to be sub-5:00 at the minimum. We really hammered this last mile and came through in 4:45!! This tempo, which had felt positively easy the first 5 miles, was almost good enough for a 8k PR, and I wasn't even racing! This workout left me confident and enthusiastic about what I'll be able to do this spring and next cross country season!!