Aug 26, 2022

Joe Sapone enters the 2022 cross country season with high expectations. The senior from Holy Innocents' Episcopal School in Atlanta is the defending GHSA Class 1A Private champion in cross country and a fifth-place finisher in the silver race at the Garmin RunningLane Cross Country Championships, where he ran a 5K PR of 14:58.09 at John Hunt Park in Huntsville, Alabama. This outdoor season, Sapone also ran a PR of 1:52.69 for 800m and 4:09.64 for the full mile. Sapone will provide a training blog for MileSplit over the next four weeks.

Week 4

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Week 1 l Week 2 l Week 3 l Week 4

Week 4 (Sept. 4 - Sept. 9)

Sunday, September 4: 12 miles

Long run day. I ran a very flat 12 miles 6:07 pace. It was raining and no one was out. It was peaceful, but I didn't feel great.

Monday, September 5: 8 miles

Another longer run. I did an easy eight miles at 6:31 average pace. It was another peaceful run.

Tuesday, September 6: 6 miles

Workout day. We had a 10-minute easy warm-up. I ran a tempo 3,200m at 5:19 with my last lap coming in at around 74-seconds-ish. Then we did a 3,200 of 200m on, 200m off, with the 'ons' at 33-34 seconds and the offs are 49-51. Then, we finished with a 4:31 1,600. We had a cool-down of about a half-mile.

Wednesday, September 7: 8 miles

We call this the 'Coveted Core Day.' I got eight miles total, along with core. Then after the run, we did 4x200 at mile pace.

Thursday, September 8: 8 miles

This was a medium long run day. We did a 1-mile warm-up up to stretch with the team., then eight miles solo at 6:02 pace. I just found a rhythm and zoned out.

Friday, September 9: 7 miles

This was our second workout day of the week. We did a 10-minute warm-up, and then a 2K tempo at 5:22, then 5x800 -- starting at 2:23 for the half-mile and working down to 2:10, with the rest being whatever time you just ran. Plus, we had a 2-mile cool-down.

It was a solid week with fun workouts. Just trying to get better week by week. No race next week another week of similar runs.

Mileage Total ≈ 53

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Note: This is Sapone's last training blog of the four-week series. We want to thank Joe for all of his hard work and for insight into his training. We wish him the best!