The TCS community was out in force on last Friday night at Austin's Zilker Relays. This is a huge event that temporarily draws the masses away from 6th street and on to the trail for one Friday night each year.
This year there were nearly 1000 participants - 12 of which were TCS athletes!
Each of the 4 members of each team (3 teams) had to run a 2.5ish mile leg of the relay. This may not sound like much, but when you are placed in a team environment and you're responsible for getting your job done to the best of your abilities --- aka. As Fast As Possible --- it leads to some all out work!
Why is this blog-worthy?
Well, first, we love the fact that our athletes take on new challenges outside of the gym. We strive to develop our athletes in a well-rounded, "swiss army knife" way so that they can take on any challenge, at any time.
Secondly, we don't necessarily train endurance as it's own special category or goal. Again, this goes back to the "swiss army knife" mentality/methodology. At TCS, our workouts focus primarily on building strength and performing high intensity tasks for relatively short durations. But, by placing these short, intense pieces back-to-back for an hour-long class.....the endurance and the ability to push through longer time domain is developed with out you even realizing it.
This step away from "Long, slow" training is becoming more and more popular in the endurance community. In fact, many of the top endurance athletes are now incorporating strength and power work in to their programs. It just goes to show that having a solid foundation of strength sets you up for success.....regardless of your specific goals or sport.
See ya in the gym!