Greetings!



Saturday was so much fun! Thank you all for the great meet and all the help from coaches and parents! Hopefully you now have a good idea of how a meet operates. A special thanks to all the Coaches, and to all the parents who help! We had plenty of volunteers to get everything set up and running! We will be ready for next week!!

I know this newsletter is a bit long, but it is important that you read ALL of it to stay informed and learn about the coaches strategy for races!

This Saturday will be our firsts official V.Y.C. League meet! It will be much bigger than last week. The girls and boys will run separate races per gender. I have added an approximate time schedule below. Please remember it may change some, as the meet will be on a rolling start!

It takes a lot of time to walk up to this course from the parking lot, so please get there early! We will all set up together near the purple team tents. Athletes need to be at the team tent at the warm up time!

This is a great course but the parking is bad. Please arrive early, if the lot is full you can park in the neighborhood. Please obey all parking rules and do not block neighbor's drive ways. They will tow or ticket your car. Please allow for extra time to walk up the 1/4 mile hill to the start line location!

We are the only organization that gets to use this park and we have worked very hard to keep it. The trails are not closed to hikers so we have to remember that they do not have to move off of them during the races. We need to be courteous at all time and have no altercations with the public. If you have any problems, please see me. The Pacers will host this meet, but we will still have volunteers duties. 

Meet Two Information -

Volunteers- This meet we will only need help with the team set up, and clean up and one timmer to help Alan at the finish.

Meet Volunteer needs this week :

Tent set up -7:00 - set up team tents -2 people 

Finish Line / Timers - Help start the timer for all races - 2 people

Races - Rabbits to lead the races( bike ok) Turtles parents to follow the last runners in each race ( parents will not be allowed to run on the course during the races with their children)

Clean up - 4 people, help clean up and load tents

Please sign up at practice or email the job you are able to do!

Athletes need to wear the full Storm uniform for all meets! Shorts must be plain black, NO soccer or basketball shorts.

Saturday's Race Schedule - All times are approximate, with a rolling start -  races may over-lap. Parking is very bad so get there early!

Please meet your coach under the tent at warm up time.

7:30 -arrive and pick up tag- older age groups can get there a little later, but parking will be worse if you choose to come later. Please meet your coach at warm up time at the team tent. Late athletes will not get a proper warm up!

8:00 - coaches meeting ( Gremlin Coaches do not have to attend)

Gremlins and Sub Gremlins 5/6 and 7/8

Race Time -8:30 - Girls -warm up 8:00

Race Time -8:50 - Boys - warm up 8:20

Bantams -9/10

Race Time- 9:15 - Girls warm up 8:45

Race Time -9:30- Boys - warm up 9:05

Juniors -11/12

Race Time -10:05- Girls - warm up 9:30

Race Time -10:30 -Boys - warm up 9:55

Youth and Intermediate 13/14 and15-18

Race Time -10:50 - girls - warm up - 10:15

Race Time -11:20 - Boys - warm up - 10:45

Practice Schedule for Sept. 7th-12th

Monday - NO PRACTICE - Labor Day- Run on your own

Tuesday - 6:00-7:15- Central Park 27150 Bouquet Can Rd. (meet near the stairs )-

Thursday - 6:00-7:15- Central Park 27150 Bouquet Can Rd. (meet near the stairs )

Saturday - 7:30 am -12:00 am League Meet - O'Melveny Park Granada Hills

Coaches Corner

Racing has begun!

We saw some great performances out there, and everything went very smoothly. For the newcomers, this was your first taste of an XC meet—it’s very exciting, if not a little nerve-wracking. You all did great, and I’m sure you’ll only continue to improve throughout the season.

Next meet, we head to O’Melveny!

It’s a fast course because it’s less hilly; however, it is a bit more technical, with some tight turns and tall grasses at the start. This is typically one of the hotter meets, so make sure you’re hydrating all week long (it’s supposed to be another hot week anyway). Let’s make this another great week of training and racing!

I also wanted to reiterate what I and the other coaches discussed this past Monday about outside coaching/training/etc. While getting some friendly advice about running is one thing, doing additional workouts—especially on a Storm workout day—is quite another.

None of the coaches want any of the athletes to perform poorly in races or get injured. We want you to succeed, which is why we work hard to create a comprehensive training plan that meets all of our athletes’ needs.

Recovery from a hard workout is almost as important as the workout itself.

Think of it this way: when you do a hard workout, you’re breaking your body down. Your body then responds to that stimulus and builds itself back up stronger—but this takes time, proper nutrition, hydration, sleep, etc.

If you do additional hard workouts during this crucial recovery period, you’re just breaking your body down further, which makes the recovery take longer. If this cycle continues, you’ll experience one (or both) of the following: overtraining and/or injury.

Injury is self-explanatory, but what is overtraining? It’s when you’ve broken your body down so much that it significantly affects your performance. You’ll feel sluggish and tired, and your times won’t be where you want them to be.

I’m a visual learner, so I’m including a graph to help you visualize this.



Coach Jonah

Click Here to download this note

Our Storm Store is now Closed All Items will be delivered to me hopefully by Thursday

https://www.jetblackchain.com/online-store/Santa-Clarita-Storm-c162594001

Parent Reflection for races

Congrats to all who competed on Saturday! From the seasoned pro’s to the first timers, We saw some amazing efforts all the way to the finish line. The improvement for returning athletes was amazing! We saw most athletes improve their time. Some improved over 10minutes from last year over the same course! Running is progressive with time and experience!

We don’t like to dwell too much on post-race review, but it is always beneficial to think about the good and bad after every race, and give immediate feedback!

The fact is, feedback is important for success and if channeled correctly will help every athlete improve. Here are a few tips as we kick off the racing season to guide you in this process. 

1. Post-race review should be a POSITIVE experience. This isn’t the time to point out all the things that went wrong, although there is always something to improve on. this should also not be done immediatly after a race. Let them cool down and have time to reflect on thir race.
2. Coaches will Break the race down in the following sections with some questions to ask:

A. Pre-Race: how was my: nutrition, sleep, morning of, and warmup

B. Race Start: did you go out fast enough, or too slow, were you ready for battle mentally?

C. Mid-Race: did I give up, did I work harder, did I drop my competition?

D.Finish: did I give my all, am I proud of myself, WAS IT FUN?

As parents we can often harshly critique and want to review too much.

 Choose just a couple questions, from different sections, mix it up. 

Then let your athlete share. Believe me, they’ll be hard on themselves if they could have done better.

Sometimes, you don’t need to bring up anything other than: Great Job, I’m proud of you! Our primary job as parents in this case is to encourage and cheer them on!

WAS IT FUN?

1. Battle is fun
2. Racing is fun
3. But both are exhausting mentally and emotionally, as well as physically.
4. Keep it all in a healthy perspective.

We still want to win! But most important for our athletes is the process, what you learned during the process, and to be a great teammate and competitor.

Coach Jeremy

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