Funny what a team can do with a close and immediate goal. This morning we challenged them to run from the hotel to the top of 'A' mountain. For every guy under 20:00, we'd shave 100 yards off this evening's 6,300-6,900 yard recovery practice. For every guy under 18:00, we'd take off 150 (I was 19:00). The guys welcomed the possible respite, but didn't have exceedingly high hopes that they'd take too much off the workout (in their defense, I told them they had to walk the first 3:00 and walk another 1:00 about 1/2 through, plus the mountain does look much farther than the 1.75 miles it is from the hotel and much higher than the 280' of elevation climb).
Then we added another incentive - if EVERYONE made it up in under 18:00, we'd turn around, load up the vans and come right back to the hotel. Hmmmmm, immediate incentive, immediate response and the guys wound up slicing 3600 (24 guys x 150 yards) off of this afternoon with the last guy reaching the summit in 17:56.
Oh, and one final thing that was kind of cool - as we were going up, the club team here was headed back down. They must have had a good workout and trip because when one of their girls was yakking on the side of the trail I hear a coach yell, "How many is that? We'll have to check the log book to see how many pukes we've had..."
No puking for us, here's the route.