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Summer Training Blog: McDonogh School's Dalton Hengst

Dalton Hengst is one of the top returning cross country runners in the nation. And he has an interesting story! The rising senior at McDonogh (Maryland) School actually resides in York, Pennsylvania, but during the school year he boards on campus at McDonogh. Hengst, who finished the spring track and field season with national-caliber performances in the 1500m (3:54.90) and 3200m (8:56.96), has been ripping off superb performances in cross country since 2014 and a year ago placed 21st at Foot Locker Nationals. His season best 5K from 2016 was 15:11.20. This year, Hengst is looking to hit under 15. Check out his weekly training blog as he prepares for his final high school season before college. 
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WEEK 5 (August 14-20)

This week I'm going to run another 60-plus miles. I'm going on my team's preseason trip up to Connecticut and the plan is that we can have a good time and get some solid running in. I'll do my last long hill workout for the summer, some mile repeats and a solid long run to finish the week out. 

Monday: 13 miles total -- 7 miles at 6:55-7:10 pace + 6 miles in the evening
AM -- I went back to the 1.2 mile long hill that I did in week three on the summer training blog. Instead of three repeats on it, I did four. The first three were all ‪around 7:10‬ and on the fourth one I dipped under 7 minutes to run ‪6:55,‬ which I was happy about. The rest was around 2:30-3 minutes.  

PM -- I went to the weight room, followed by 6 miles with my high school team. 

Tuesday: Easy 6 miles with 4x200mstrides. 

Wednesday: 8 miles (workout below)
This was a workout day. We did 1.5 miles at 6 min pace + 1 mile at ‪5:40‬ + 1 mile at 5:23‬ + 1 mile at ‪5:11‬. The rest between the repeats was 90 seconds. After the mile repeats, I did 4x300m on a hill. 

Thursday: OFF

Friday: 10 miles
We traveled to Van Cortlandt Park in New York with my team. The workout was 5x1200m repeats on the back loop of the course. I averaged ‪around 3:40‬ for the 1200s. The rest was around 4 minutes, as I jogged the rest of the loop back to the start. I finished the workout by running the last 900m of the course fast. After we finished up at Van Cortlandt, my team and I traveled to Connecticut. 


Saturday: 13 miles 
AM -- I did eight miles with the No. 2 runner on my team, on a great trail in Connecticut. On the first half, we ran ‪around 7:10‬ pace and on the way back dropped down to 6:30s. 

PM -- We ran at Steep Rock State Park in Connecticut. We started with a half mile warmup followed by a monstrous climb of .83 mile to the highest point in the park. My coach had everyone push it up the hill for the hard effort for the day. Afterward, I did 3.5 more miles followed by 4x200m strides. We did about five miles in total in the evening. 

Sunday12-mile long run around Van Cortlandt Park.
This was a solid run to end a very good week of training. 

Total Mileage: 62 miles

Overview: This was a very tough and good week of training. I was happy to be able to run 62 miles off of six days of training and I feel like I have become even more comfortable on the Van Cortlandt course, which is the Northeast regional course for Foot Locker.