About Hometown Hopefuls Hometown Hopefuls follows Atlanta Track Club Elite Team members Abe Alvarado, Brandon Lasater, Keturah Orji, Yolanda Ngarambe, Jarryd Wallace and Allie Wilson as they continue their journey toward Olympic glory. Be there every step of the way from training camp to the Olympic Trials and to Tokyo with every workout, every split, athlete reflections and coaches' comments too. Six athletes. Six months. Six shots.
Ngarambe reflects on her training period between March 8-21 in this post. To learn more about Ngarambeclick here.
Workouts for the Week: March 8-14
Monday:
6 miles easy + ART treatment with Ena
Tuesday:
AM: Warmup. 500m-300m-2 miles-400m-200m. 3-5min rest between intervals. All reps at 800m race pace except for the 2 mile tempo at 5.30 pace. + Lift.
PM: 40 minutes bike.
500: 75”, 300: 45”, 2 mile: 10.59, 400: 61” and 200m: 29”. My achilles has been a bit sore since last week, so I decided to stay in flats for the whole workout instead of switching to spikes. I was a bit nervous about hitting pace in flats, but I did and it actually felt pretty smooth. Two weeks I literally ran 58” for my 400 all-out in spikes, and today I split 59” en-route for my 500m rep. I love seeing the progress! My hip only bothered me in the 2 mile rep, which I kind of expected since longer reps at tempo pace have been doing that. That 2 mile was really a beast of it’s own after the two fast reps, so it was a mental win to execute that one. Definitely a hard day at practice, but with that good feeling of accomplishment!
Wednesday:
60 minutes bike + hurdle drills
Thursday:
Warmup, 3 x 1mile on trail with 3min jog + treatment with Donna
This is a secondary workout so that’s when I just try to execute the workout as smoothly as possible without using that last gear. We were aiming for a 5:25 average, so we ran 5:30, 5:23, 5:22.
Friday:
6 miles + strides.
Legs felt really heavy today but felt good to open up with some strides.
Saturday:
AM: 3 x (600m-400m-300m-200m) *get 1 second faster every set and switch to spikes for 3rd set + Lift
PM: 40 minutes bike
Splits: 1st set: (1:41, 66 , 48, 31); 2nd set: (1:40 , 66, 47, 31), 3rd set: (1.39, 64, 47, 29). That was a killer one! It got really hot today so I don’t know if it was the workout or the heat that made me feel lightheaded going into the third set, but I had a moment where I was like “am I gonna be able to do this?” HAHA. I’m really happy with the workout though; it might be the fastest 600m breakdown that I’ve ever completed. I’m not the one to rip the fast stuff on the track at practice, but it’s getting easier and easier for me to run race pace at practice, so that feels good. My achilles was also good enough for spikes today, so that was a win! My hip wasn’t great today, but it’s a work in progress.
Sunday:
OFF
Commentary and Reflection of the Week: March 8-14
The coaches are really making us work right now and it’s making me feel like practice is way harder than racing and I LOVE that feeling. It builds my confidence towards racing. I definitely didn’t have that feeling in the weeks leading up to my races in 2020, so I’m really grateful for the way we have been able to prepare this year. My achilles felt way better by the end of the week and it reminded me that being smart goes a long way in our sport. Sometimes it’s easier mentally to ignore a flare up, and just power through so that you can follow “the plan”. Part of me wanted to do that, but I’ve gone down that road before with my achilles and it didn’t end well. Instead, I try to put any nervous energy into rehab or prehab, which is a more productive coping mechanism haha.
Commentary and Reflection From Coaches Amy and Andrew Begley on the Week: March 8-14
Yolanda keeps getting better! She has never looked this smooth at this stage in training. You can see the work she has done in the weight room on the track. She is running tall. She is controlled. She is confident.
Yolanda has an extremely long season, so we have to make sure she is not on the same path as everyone else. She doesn’t have a Trials race in June, so we don’t want her to be as sharp at that point. She is doing a great job of being patient. She does great at focusing on herself, and the task at hand during workouts.
Tuesday, she was able to do the 800m paced work, and looked smooth. She grinds the entire 800m, so she starts off behind and closes the gap on each repeat. This is the first year that she has a group of women around her, so her preparation is going to be much better when we start racing.
The women’s team was a little off on their pacing on Thursday, but they still looked easy. Their average was still in the range, but they are still working on being able to feel the different paces. As a coach, you like to have some things to work on!
Saturday was Yolanda’s best session of 600m breakdowns. She has run comparable times for 2 sets, but never for three sets and never this early in the season. She looked strong and smooth. The leg bothered her a little bit, but that is part of the process. We have to transfer the strength we built in the weightroom onto the track. She has already made huge strides, but has more work to do.
We are excited to see Yolanda race. She is ready to run fast, and should be in PR shape within the first 3-4 weeks of the season. She is in a good place.
To learn more about the coaches click here.
Workouts for the Week: March 15-21
Monday:
8mi easy
Ran easy with the girls at the River, felt pretty heavy in the legs. Training has been tough lately, so I’m not really that surprised!
Tuesday:
AM: 16 x 300m with 100m jog + Lift
PM: 40 minutes bike
Compared to the most recent workouts, this one felt “easy”. Don’t get me wrong, it was hard with 16 reps, but it wasn’t a “go to the well” workout. We were told to stick to pace and keep it aerobic, so that’s what we did. Felt kinda weird being back on the Active Oval at Piedmont Park, it’s not a very fast surface, but I like that it makes us work! Splits between 55-57 sec.
Wednesday:
6 miles easy + hurdle drills + treatment by Ena
Nothing exciting more than a slow run.
Thursday:
6 miles easy with strides + treatment with Donna
Ran with Janel and felt pretty bad. This is why I like interval workouts more than recovery days, because these easy runs just seem to exist in order to flush out the toxins in our legs. That usually means they are slow but feel hard, and in a sense boring HAHA. I’d rather just go hurt on the track in a more entertaining fashion. Just my two cents! :P
Friday:
AM: 1600m-1200m-800m-600m-400m-300m-200m, recovery starting at 3 minutes jog, then 2 minutes jog and then 90 seconds before the last rep. Switched to spikes after 800m + hurdle drills + Lift.
PM: 40 minutes elliptical
Today was a rough day at the track. It was cold and windy, but pretty much the whole team had an off day which makes me think we were all really tired from the past weeks of training. I didn’t hit any of my goal paces, but my splits were: 4.59, 3.45, 2.23, 1.42, 67, 50, 31. I don’t like having bad workouts, but I know it can happen and the best thing is just to see if there’s anything to learn from it, and then move on.
Saturday:
60 minutes bike
Tired today, and glad I could recover my legs with cross-training instead of a run. In the morning I walked 3 miles around Piedmont park with Rachael and Megan to stand in solidarity with the Asian American community, who are enduring a surge of hate crimes ever since the pandemic started, but also racism in general (separate from the pandemic). The walk/run was organized by Social Fitness Atlanta and Run Atlanta, and they did a great job.
Sunday:
12 miles easy pace + massage by Robin
REALLY tired today. Okay the all caps is for dramatic effect, but today I hit my peak in feeling tired while running haha. Post-run I took a two hour nap before I ventured to see one of our massage therapists Robin. Recovery is keeeeey.
Commentary and Reflection of the Week: March 15-21
Looking back at the week I can see now that I definitely was a bit more tired than usual. Being tired and feeling fatigue is something that is relatively normal in professional running depending on what part of the year you are in, but you want to make sure you’re always recovering and not burning out. I’m far from burning out, but I think it’s still a good reminder to keep focusing on recovery, both mental and physical. I’ll actually be racing at Texas Relays next week, and I'm SO excited. Not only to race the 1500m but also to get a break from crazy workouts haha. PERFECT TIMING!
Commentary and Reflection From Coaches Amy and Andrew Begley on the Week: March 15-21
Yolanda had another solid week of training! Everyone likes to focus on the amazing workouts when they talk about training, but it is really work like this that make an athlete good. It’s easy to run fast when you feel good, the weather is warm and the fitness levels are high. It’s the weeks of grinding out the solid workouts that really pay off at the end of the season.
It’s ironic, but Yolanda wears the most clothes at practice when it’s cold. You would think an athlete from Sweden would like the cold. Yolanda claims that the constant exposure to the cold makes them smarter about how they dress, and she was bundled up all week!
She made the 300’s look easy. She felt her hip a little bit, but that is expected with cold temperatures and tired legs. She had some extra repeats, so she had to do the last few on her own. She ran strong throughout, so mission accomplished!
Yolanda pushed hard on Friday. She pushed the paces on the long intervals, just as we talked about. The times weren’t as fast as she wanted them to be, but it’s tough to compare times from days with good weather with cold and windy conditions. We were happy with the effort, as she fought through and ran well. She felt her leg a bit, but she had a great strength training session after so you can see the gains being made.
To learn more about the coaches click here.
