Hey everyone, I’m Brandon and I’m a senior at The Blake School.
This has been a fun Championship season for us as a team, although both our teams just missed the podium at State with fourth place finishes (our team goal was to win State). Both teams should return to State next year, along with my teammate Clare Flanagan who will be defending her individual title.
At the beginning of the year, one of my main individual goals was to qualify for the Nike Cross Nationals. I am happy Josh made it as well, as he has already provided me with a lot of insight and tips about Nationals.
My training goal for the period leading up to the Nationals race is to stay fresh and keep my mileage consistent although I dropped my mileage a bit the week leading up to the Nike Heartland Race. Until Nationals I’ll be doing a couple aerobic speed workouts a week; I had a great workout this past Saturday with Josh Thorson, we ran a 4 mile progressive run where we were supposed to drop 10 seconds per mile but we may have dropped a bit too much on a couple of them. It was fun to run a new route and am hoping we can train together a few more times this winter.
I ran fartleks today (total mileage 8 miles) and will be doing a couple of race pace type track workouts this Sunday (8-9 400’s) and the following Wednesday (4-6 200’s progressively faster starting at a few seconds faster than race pace). I am hoping to run those workouts with my winter workout partners (Chanhassen team – Spencer Mertes, Austin Miller, Alec Olson, and Kieran Kelly; Blake team – Owen Duncan, Quinn Coyle, and Matt McFarland).
I’ll be running the Turkey Day 5k downtown for the 10th consecutive year with my dad and a few teammates. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Josh Thorson and Brandon Clark at Joe Ross Invitational in Fall 2006 - Josh Thorson and Brandon Clark on the podium at the 2011 Nike Cross Nationals Heartland Regional Race.