The word in the air amid the ISU women’s track and field team can be summed up with one word: consistency.

As winter break came to a close, track athletes headed back to the Lied Recreation Athletic Center to continue workouts the runners had been training with during the vacation.

“I call it the ‘naughty or nice’ workout because I get to see who has been naughty or nice over break,” said head coach Corey Ihmels.

After Thanksgiving break, athletes were sent out to do their own individual workouts. Coaches had confidence that the women would be up to par when coming back from break.

“We did an awful lot of lifting for the [throwers] group,” said redshirt junior thrower Danielle Frere. “Coach basically kicked our butts in the weight room just to make sure we came back nice and strong and didn’t lose anything.”

The amount of contact with coaches over break was solely up to each athlete, said assistant coach Travis Hartke.

“It depends on the person,” Hartke said. “We have a very individualized program, and some people are better at staying in contact, and some aren’t.”

Motivation was not something the coaches or the athletes were too worried about heading into the break because of an unusual circumstance.

“This winter was awesome because of the great weather,” Hartke said. “They’re highly motivated athletes and that’s why they’re on the team.”

When it boiled down to the beginning of the season this week, the team and coaches were focused on how they can be consistent this year and how they can make progress.

“We got back to the basics,” Hartke said. “We did a lot of hills, did a lot of fartlek kind of stuff. The big thing in our program is just making sure we get a lot of mileage and being consistent [during] a long period of time.”

Frere also spoke about how consistency will play a role in her performance this weekend along with the team’s performance.

“I’m just looking to be consistent,” Frere said. “I need to get consistent out around 55 feet in the shot; that way I can build off of that meet.”

The ISU men’s and women’s track teams will start their season at home this weekend with the Iowa State Open.