Intervals During Base Phase

Ci-a-bola Bumpity Bumpity Bump

Don't focus on writing an in-depth plan. Let your runners relax by keeping the workouts simple. Teach them to feel tempo pace(e.g. if their legs feel an intense burn, ease the pace), not to run at specific paces. This will also help them pace their actual races.

CoachB, I think you may be overthinking your training. SOM is the standard recommendation of LetsRun. SOM may not take into account that today's kids are simply not as strong physically as kids that grew up pre 1990's.

Building overall strength during base period is the main goal. Let's take a male freshman as an example. Goal 35 mi a week w/Sunday off. Two of the runs are done on challenging hills. Saturday is long run, building up to 8/9 mi.

I believe in doing strength exercises 6 days a week. Pretty straight forward and very effective.

CoachB wrote:

Ci-a-bola Bumpity Bumpity Bump

Nice Stephen King reference.

for what it's worth wrote:

CoachB, I think you may be overthinking your training. SOM is the standard recommendation of LetsRun. SOM may not take into account that today's kids are simply not as strong physically as kids that grew up pre 1990's.

Building overall strength during base period is the main goal. Let's take a male freshman as an example. Goal 35 mi a week w/Sunday off. Two of the runs are done on challenging hills. Saturday is long run, building up to 8/9 mi.

I believe in doing strength exercises 6 days a week. Pretty straight forward and very effective.

I understand SOM is a standard letsrun recomendation, but I've attended a couple conferences and the presenters have pretty much been in agreement that some of the runs during the week need to present some aerobic challenges. If we had long hills (or any hills) around here, I'd probably just say, "ok, moderate 7 miler today, surge and crest each hill". That's not an option around here. One of our rivals adopted SOM, lock stock and barrel 2 years ago and has really jumped forward in their team performance level. They were already pretty good, but they definately got better after adopting a specific plan.

We are doing strength stuff each day we meet (3 days per week). At a minium we do 2 exercises for each of the following: Anterior Chain, Posterior Chain, Lateral Stability, Mobility (through games and different drills). Our younger kids who aren't running much yet do a whole bunch more lunges, burpies, bleachers, etc...Sometimes we'll play a game with the whole team. I highly recommend ultimate with a med ball.

The whole team is not doing intervals. The beginner types are hitting a total of 1.5 - 2 miles when we get together to practice, the rest of the time is spent doing extensive core and drills to develop overall athletic ability.

Today was our "long day". It was really hot so our biggest group only went 8.3 miles. Most of the rest of our projected varsity guys went about 6. We had a pretty solid tempo day yesterday on our cross country course, which has multiple short loops. As kids were starting to blow up, they could step out for anywhere between 200-600m and jump back in as the group came back around. The pack covered 6k in 24:48, pretty slow, but it's still June. I told them that I'd like to see the pack covering 6k in 24:00 by the end of august without people having to step out.

for what it's worth wrote:

SOM may not take into account that today's kids are simply not as strong physically as kids that grew up pre 1990's.

I've had it in my head lately that the main difference between many of the kids that grew up in my era and the kids that grow up now is that the kids that many of the kids that grow up now have what I've come to call, "managed child syndrome".

I coach a ton of kids that are great kids, hard working, do what you tell them when they are at practice but take very little initiative to do stuff on their own. My personal hypothesis, which may be worth nothing more than a hill of beans, is that kids are shuttled to play dates, piano practice, U6 soccer practice, writing camp, etc.... and grow up making very few decisions about their own leisure activity time. The idea of taking off on their bikes and not coming back until dinner time is totally foreign to them. So, when I say..."guys, I need you out running, on your own, every day or nearly every day" I may as well be asking them to go to the moon. It's weird, but that is the feeling that I get from most of my kids who are high achievers. At the same time, if we meet and spend our practice time together just putting in miles, then the kids often think, "well, this is dumb. I could just as easily be putting these miles in on my own". Then they seldom do.

So the rationale behind having a well planned out summer schedule, with each day we meet addressing a specific purpose, is to build value in kids minds and give them a reason to show up to practice. When we meet up 3 days a week, there seems to be more follow through in the kids running the days we don't meet.

The years that our practices have been, just meet up and do a run, some core, and some strides, the attendance at summer practice has been poor. and total team mileage (which I track based on self reporting) has also been poor. Lately, summer attendance has been much better as has the kids' follow through on running the days we don't meet.

Back to the orignial point of the thread:

I think that instead of having our once a week track days alternate between long slow intervals and short reps, I will try to touch on something that creates an aerobic challenge each time we hit the track, but I will keep the intervals pretty short so that the mental stress of the session is not overly tough. As far as addressing the biomechanical efficiency that running at paces faster than 1600 pace goes, I will try to address that with more drills/strides and maybe a few 200s at the end of the session.

For tomorrow, I'm thinking the workout will go something like this

2mwu with last 800 progressng toward tempo pace

Extensive drills

3 laps of stride the turns, jog the straight

4 x 600 @ 5k pace with full recovery

3 x 200 @ mile pace with full recovery

1 mile CD.

The 600s should be long enough for the kids heart rates to come up to near maximum but not so long that they will be blowing up. I am really looking for a workout where the kids that are projecting as our 5-8 runners can hang in with the top 4 without too much trouble. I think the group that I have will be more able to handle short aerobic intervals together than long slow aerobic intervals. The overall volume of the workout is only 3k, which I'm fine with as we are in a period of trying to build training volume.

I'll post the results of the workout

CoachB, SOM is only as successful as kids "do" the workouts. Malmo emphasizes not running the paces too fast. So what you are pointing out is the hard part, getting kids to train consistently week after week and keep them engaged.

My personal opinion on the specific workout that you have posted is that you run the risk of peaking them too early in their season. It is really hard to fix that problem halfway into the season. I have no problem with 200's/ 300's run on incline, at moderate pace with full recovery during base buildup. Everything else should be building easy mileage, long run and then adding LT paced efforts. My son ran for top college XC program and that is pretty much what they do.

The hard part, as you stated, is getting them to train consistently. Thanks for your post, good stuff!

Thanks for posting, Coach. I love this stuff, as you know!

Start with longer reps such as 1200's & 1k's at whatever pace is appropriate then drop distances and recoveries but keep the pace the same. Our interval workout last week;

2 x 1200. 3 min rec

2 x 1000 2:30 rec

6 x 800 2 min rec

6 x 400 90 sec

Pace was reasonable for those kids and not too fast that they couldn't recover. The idea is that they are training for a faster road pace as they handle the volume with decreasing recovery. What usually happens is they start to realise that the faster pace is mental at the longer distances and that they can really crank it up on the 400's with very little recovery which proves my point. The result is that their road threshold runs are improved as well as their easy pace. Especially the beginners.

Wait, thats well over 10k worth of intervals. That's way beyond anything I'd give my kids at this time.

It's still June. XC goes until December. You are not working with college/professionals in their 20's. These are adolescents with 1-2 years experience.

Now that is out there... Why? What is the purpose of doing intervals in this part of the season. What benefit will they have toward your goal of running fast in November.

You need to be your best for one race on one day. Not be in shape year round. There's a difference.

The Animal Within wrote:

Now that is out there... Why? What is the purpose of doing intervals in this part of the season.

Go back and reread what he wrote above about kids not showing up for practice.

Workout today for my varsity crew, bearing in mind as stated above that we aren't trying to run fast until the end of October-Late November:

2-3 mile warm up (depending on the kid)

15 minute dynamic warm up that we developed during track, fairly aerobic.

3 laps of stride the straight, jog the turn

4 x 600, averaging around 2:09-2:10 (I told them we were aiming for 18min 5k pace), 1 lap jog recovery at about 2:00-2:15

At this point I had planned to do some 200s at mile pace with full recovery, but I instead chose an agility course that might be done in football or soccer with sprinting, changing direction, backpedaling. Each rep of the circuit took about 25-30 seconds and we did 4 reps. Physiologically it was probably similar to 200s but we were working the joints in different planes than normal with the idea being to build strength in the auxillary muscles and prevent injury. This was a major point of a number of presenters at a clinic I went to last winter.

We then did about 15 min of core exercises, working the anterior, posterior, and lateral chains about equally.

After a team break with the beginners and then some stretching and jabbering, the whole session took about 1:40.

well,. wrote:

The Animal Within wrote:

Now that is out there... Why? What is the purpose of doing intervals in this part of the season.

Go back and reread what he wrote above about kids not showing up for practice.

I was responding to the original post. Thanks.

So why? How will this fit into getting kid to run their best late in the season?

1. Teach them to love running and love the team.

2. Plenty of things you can do besides track work in June.

The Animal Within wrote:

1. Teach them to love running and love the team.

2. Plenty of things you can do besides track work in June.

Agreed on both.

#1 has been a constant point of emphasis for me for the 21 total years of my coaching career. How do you teach love? That is a great question and one that I'm always struggling to answer then always reconsidering and refining. Summer trips to run in the hills/at the lake? Done. Trips to the beach with a run in the Redwoods first (even though its 2.5 hours each way)? Done. Team BBQ, Team Movie Night, Run to coaches house for BBQ.....all done, abandoned, and re-adopted at least once. My most recent brain child has been to really twist the arms of a couple of alumni to organize group runs on non practice days which include some out of town trips and dips in a lake post run. I'm leaning on alumni and captains to get this done because if I do it, it's just ol' coach making the kids run again. If the run is rounded up by team members and alums, then its something that they own.

#2 Track work can certainly be dull, dry, monotonous..... That's why we only did 2400m worth of intervals today, 3k if you count the laps of stride and jog. This is also the reason that I started the thread. I feel we could use a little bit of higher end aerobic work mixed into the training during the summer but I want to find the least mentally taxing way to get it done. Last week we got some fitness playing ultimate with a medicine ball. 2 weeks ago it was tag. Capture the flag is another favorite pre-season/early season conditioning game. The goal was to never repeat anything within a 2 week microcycle. I think I'm going to violate that goal and go with the malmo style tempo workout (which we do on our cross country course, rather than the track) for 2-3 wednesdays straight just because the kids really bought into it. I think I can get my projected varsity group finishing the run at the current pace (6:40 per mile) all together by the second week of July. We'll put that workout on the back burner for a few weeks while we do other stuff and hit our camp. When we come back to it in August, I think the pack will be able to do the whole thing together, more comfortably, and faster.

To answer your original question of "how will this help kids run fast later in the season?" I don't know. If I had a set formula for success then I wouldn't ever need to try new things.

For most of my coaching career, I've been pretty Lydiard oriented when it comes to the summer (or to the period between cross and track).....Most of my career has been spent telling kids to just get out and put in the miles and if they feel good go ahead and run them fast.

For most of my coaching career, I've also really struggled to get the kids to buy into a summer program. Most of the summer practices at Hughson have netted 6-10 kids on average. This year we are averaging about 17 kids per practice. I've always kept track of kids' summer miles. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the last couple of years, when the emphasis isn't solely on mileage, the kids total mileage has gone up.

I've posted links to my teams site plenty of times. This summers' mileage is posted up on the site. Team mileage is running about on par with the last 2 years, which coincidentally, have been years where summer practice has been more about "what is the purpose of today's practice" and less about "lets just go run and have fun".

So you know I'm with you... And am experiencing exactly what you are right now. I am not asking to be critical but it is a question I ask myself. How is this going to bennifit my kids and my program when it matters most?

Funny thing is for me, I just loved to run. I didn't have a coach or a plan or anything like it. I wish I had the guidance that the kids in our program have.

I don't have an answer how to promote the love of running. I am pretty simple. For the kids that show up we run a new trail or a team favorite Saturday and eat after.

I do get the interval thing though. Last season we had long runs on Saturday mornings we didn't have a race. Attendance was pathetic and I just about called them off. Instead I put intervals on Saturday mornings when it was cooler temperatures and the long run on Thursdays. Attendance was near 100%.

So I get it.

"kids are shuttled to play dates, piano practice, U6 soccer practice, writing camp, etc.... and grow up making very few decisions about their own leisure activity time"I grew up in the seventies and remember being in baseball, swim club, drum lessons, bowling lessons, ice skating, etc.Nothing has changed. You simply have gotten older and have the typical "my generation was superior" cr@p stuck in your head.And you coach kids....why?

Child of the 70s wrote:

"kids are shuttled to play dates, piano practice, U6 soccer practice, writing camp, etc.... and grow up making very few decisions about their own leisure activity time"

I grew up in the seventies and remember being in baseball, swim club, drum lessons, bowling lessons, ice skating, etc.

Nothing has changed. You simply have gotten older and have the typical "my generation was superior" cr@p stuck in your head.

And you coach kids....why?

[/quote]

I guess my childhood in the 70s was far different from yours. I played little league 1 year and got to practice on my bike. I played youth football 4 years and got to practice on my bike or on the city bus. I raced BMX as a kid and got myself to just about every one of my self imposed practice sessions on my bike with other like minded kids. I didn't mean to insinuate that kids now are worse than kids from my generation, only different in their motivation. Most of the kids I coach and teach are way better human beings than I was at the same age.

Animal.

This is what I hope to acomplish with intervals now. I hope that they will be comfortable running at a fast pace for extended periods of time later in the season. I think some easy interval sessions now will help bridge the gap between the mostly easy running we are doing now and the really hard stuff that they will be asked to do in September and October. I'm really trying to be aware of the workouts being too hard. I don't believe that intervals bring about an early peak, but that overall training load brings it around. If I had my 3 weekly practices all as hard 10 milers, my kids would be way more fried in november

I've kind of settled on picking a different workout that will address the same type of fitness once a week. The goal is to get the kids HR up and allow them to spend a little time working at something akin to race pace without the attendant fatigue or mental strain.....which is pretty much paraphrasing what Malmo wrote.

Yesterday, I sent 4 of my top 7 out (the ones who were at practice) for a little fartlek. Each guy got to pick the distance or time for 2 intervals during a 7 mile run. They ended with 8 total intervals of 2:00-2:30 in length. The overall time was pretty slow, because one of the guys had a pretty bad stitch, so they kept having to jog back and regroup after each fast segment.

a 5th kid, who could potentially make top 7 ran the same route and finished about a minute back, but he just was doing an easy run. He is coming back from an injury plagued track season and I just want to get easy miles on his legs.