Welcome to my new blog!  From today on, I'm keeping a daily account of my personal training and will hopefully share other training tips I've found.  My goal is to create a running, training community where competitors can come to get some of their athletic jitters out, without watching 3 hours of video on flotrack.  I guess to start out I'll share a little about myself:

I'm a competitive athlete in cross country running, Nordic skiing, and track.  In all three, my forte is distance and endurance, however I will also be working on improving my speed and skill.  In addition to sports, I love to bake, read, and spend time outside.  Hopefully I'll include a bit of each just to switch things up!  

As of now, my training consists mainly of track preparation.  I'm taking Sundays off, but today walked over 6 miles including some plyometrics.  Recently I've had a very tight right calf, which I'm assuming is from the meet I had on Thursday.  Though I only ran the mile, it was a 200 meter track, meaning the 1600 (the mile) required 8 laps on a tight loop, making my right leg work much harder than my left.  A coach of mine once told me to go "opposite ways opposite days" so I've looked into the matter.  There's not much at all on the impact of running repeatedly in the same direction on a track, but there is a lot about the impact and benefit of adding plyometrics into a training routine-- here's a quick recap of what I found!

http://www.slideshare.net/tracknfieldgear/track-and-field-injury-prevention-measures  This has to do specifically with plyometrics and their ability to prevent injury.  In general, stronger, more powerful muscles can support more activity without injury.  If the whole body is strong, it can effectively complete motions without undue stress on a certain area, helping prevent injury.  

http://comrades.runnersworld.co.za/plyometric-workout/  This provides a quick intro into what a plyo routine entails.  There are plenty of other ideas out there, these are just some from Runner's World!

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/1,7120,s6-238-263-266-7173-0,00.html   I thought this was interesting because of the Olympic aspect of the introduction.  I used to think the Olympic runners were so unattainable, but I've gotten to know a couple of true Olympic hopefuls who are just in it for the love of the sport and willing to selflessly coach us mere mortals.  They're dedicated and if plyometrics work for someone hoping to compete with the fastest runners in the world, they're good enough for me.  

Even if leaping like a ballerina isn't your thing, I think its worth it to try it out and see what happens.  Here's to jumping around in the hopes of staying injury free!