This is our new reality, as we're out of school - and organized high school sports - until at least May 4th. I'm going to use this website as a form of communication with the Taunton HS Distance athletes, and might also incorporate some Problems of the Day for my Friedman 7th grade Math students.
So, to my high school runners, a quick update. The MIAA met on Monday that if schools resume on May 4th, they would extend the traditional high school spring season with an "end date" of June 27, not the original date of June 20. I'll address some frequently asked questions regarding this.
1) Would that mean that we'd only have 2-3 weeks before Hocks and 3-4 before EMass?
Probably not. The postseason tournaments for the ball sports are usually the ones that go deeper into June. My educated guess would be they'd try to push back the postseason meets to later in June to give athletes more time to train. Ball sports would only have an 8-12 game regular season, as opposed to their usual 20.
On that note, if you're training for a (potential) spring season, that's still 33 days away until practice (potentially) start, so no need to do speedwork yet.
2) If schools don't come back May 4th, will they have a spring season?
Highly doubtful. I'd estimate that a week or two before May 4th, the Governor will announce whether or not we're sticking with the May 4th deadline, or if they have to close them for longer or altogether until the 2020-21 academic year.
How To Effectively Train While Maintaining Social Distancing
Who - just you, run alone!
Where - if you're running in your neighborhood, maintain basic safety precautions. Stay on sidewalks, if you have no sidewalk or have to leave the sidewalk, hopefully you're against traffic.I mention "having to leave a sidewalk" because nowadays it's a little trickier. When I run in my neighborhood, there are some routes I can do that stay entirely on sidewalks. However, if I'm passing people now, I'll step onto the edge of the road (if it's safe) when passing them to make sure they have at least 6 feet of distance from me - which is harder to do if you stay on the sidewalk.
When - So, there's a Rail Trail a few minutes drive away from where I live. It's quite wide (14 feet), but also can get a decent amount of foot traffic. When if I'm running on it, I'll try to go early in the morning, when there's fewer people on it. The trail runs for several miles, the most congested part has a downtown parking lot nearby. Today, I chose to park in a more remote lot about 1.3 miles up the trail, and avoided the more heavily used section.
Okay, Math Problem of the Day for the middle school students. This morning, I did a 6 mile run on the aforementioned trail (3 miles out, 3 miles back). On the way out, I passed 1 bicyclist, 1 jogger, and 7 walkers. On the way back, I passed 2 bicyclists, 1 jogger, and 17 walkers.
2-part question.
1) What was the unit rate of people passed per mile?
2) What was the unit rate of yards per person passed? (1760 yards per mile)
Way back at the first school I coached at, I had a blog like this and allow the THS runners to post comments, etc. If there's enough interest, I'll allow comments on future posts. Obviously I can't make any training mandatory since we're in the off-season, but if people want to post what they've been doing, they can feel free to do so.
Stay safe!
Coach Kelley
