Island of Monsters

I was driving today after practice and listening to a Jay Johnson podcast interview with Adam Goucher.  In the interview they were reliving some moments from their time at Colorado with coach Mark Wetmore.  One particular story they told revolved around a quote from coach Wetmore, "When you live on monster island, someone's breathing fire everyday."  It's sort of a strange quote, but Jay went on to unpack the idea.  On an island of dragons you never know who is going to be the one to be breathing fire, but someone always will.  And in the same way, training with a great group you do have guys who tend to lead, but on any given day any one on the team could be the one to dominate the workout.

This year the Phoenix are living on monster island.  For the first time in my time as the coach at North we have training groups that work as cohesivie units.  Watching workouts unfold on a regular basis flocks of Phoenix are working together towards a common goal of getting faster.  Gone are the days of individuals all running the same pace 20 meters apart, gone are days of someone dropping offthe back of the pack without being encouraged to rejoin the group, gone are the days of varsity being the only group that tries to stick together.  We have packs of runners across the board, and are starting to really see the benefits.