NAU and Mike Smith Training

Totally agreed. I think based on Smith's philosophy you are dead on. I'm just trying to figure out if and what they do for ANY sort of training faster than VO2 pace.

Yeah it would be interesting to know how fast they are.

Could it be whatever the individual athlete feels like?

Could it it be a mix bag? Like start at 5k pace and work down to mile pace for the last few.

Show Time wrote:

I'm just trying to figure out if and what they do for ANY sort of training faster than VO2 pace.

I'd be curious to know how fast the 1:00 on/off is, too. As for the question above, it looks like they do R pace/effort about once/week, with hill sprints in the summer and reps starting in mid September (9/19, 9/22, 9/26, 10/6, 10/10, 10/17, 10/24, 11/3, 11/7).

Yeah I think you both are right about what you are saying. So do we think that those days with the stuff at R pace are the fastest they do anything? I think R pace for those guys is probably somewhere around 31 seconds per 200 if I was guessing. So for guys that fit I wouldn't say that is very close to top end speed or anything. But I know Smith worked with Jack Daniels and he doesn't really prescribe going any faster than the R pace

Monday strides, thursday hill sprints during the season would seem to be it basically. At least in 2017/2018.

Remember, the goal is to run a good 10k, so stuff at 62 second pace, even for a 10k guy running 4:40 pace is at 110% of the race pace. Fast enough to make 10k pace feel easy, short enough to be able to do a lot of it. Even Canova says anything over 110% is basically purely used for economy purposes.

Yeah that makes sense. I think maybe I need to reframe the question to what are they doing for economy. Mainly the strides and hills like you said. That is probably enough for athletes focusing on the 10k I suppose. And the stuff at R pace would be for economy too. And for the record I’m only asking so many questions because I think smith is as good as any coach in the country. I think for me personally him and Rob Connor are my favorites.

Strides, Hill sprints, and weights are good enough for economy. Note that they seem to take the weight room seriously.

I think he’s a good coach too but remember Heins built that program to what it is. Now that they got knocked off the mountain we will see just how good Smith is.

I agree, coach. Also, thanks Hans for the training log. Its extremely interesting to see what the structure of the weeks looks like with their training.

Mark Few at Gonzaga was in a similar position. Dan Monson built the program. Few made it into a long-term juggernaut after Monson left early on an ill-fated "jump" to Minnesota. Heins built NAU but Smith brought two more titles in a row and a 2nd with four freshmen, so we can already see that he is a great coach himself and that the program will remain around this level for many years.

No arguments here. All the more reason for trying to understand the nuances of his training better.

Does anybody know the pace on those 8x1:00 on/off workouts? I assume they are some sort of race pace fartlek? also, is this training actually advisable for a collegiate runner who isn't at altitude?

Cruisin 4 Confusion wrote:

also, is this training actually advisable for a collegiate runner who isn't at altitude?

This is a great question. I wonder how the training would change if they were at sea level.

I would imagine this is comfortably hard for a minute.

Good question about the altitude but I don't think it would change the structure a whole lot

Are there more of these training spreadsheets in a thread somewhere? This is probably the best thing I have ever gotten off LetsRun

BYU is in here somewhere.

I have more and am working on more beyond those, but I haven't touched them in a while due to a busy schedule.I'm trying to find a good way to archive them that keeps me anonymous but also is easy for people to access. Any tips would be appreciated.

I have:

U Portland XC and Track (5k/10k)

Wisconsin XC

Colorado State XC

A little bit of Colorado XC

OK State XC/Track (5k/10k)

Villanova XC/Track (5k/10k)

Stanford XC (while Milt was there)

UNC XC 2019 w/ Milt there

Iowa State XC (a freshman's training)

Indiana XC

Ole Miss Track training (800/1500)

Ole Miss XC

A bit of Oregon's mid D training

University of Arizona's mid D training

Princeton Mid D under coach Vig

For High School:

Bozeman Boys NXN championship team XC

Wayzata Boys

Edina Girls

American Fork XC

Cooper Teare senior year track

Two other individual Footlocker top 10 finishers

Soren Knudsen's senior year track

Matthew Strangio junior track / senior xc

Southlake Carrol XC

Corner Canyon XC

Summit Girls XC

CBA XC

and some other random stuff.

I forgot to mention that I have:

Several more NXN qualifying teams

Two sub 4:10 milers (high school) from this past season.

A former 10:15 female 3200 runner

A former 2:11 female 800m runner

A former Sub 4:10 / 1:50 HS boy

Former footlocker top 3 female

Remember:

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Hey Han,

Google Docs is probably the best way to go in terms of accessibility. If you'd like to stay more anonymous you could create a throw away google account or you could even send them to me and I can post them on mine if it'd be easier.

Han Solo and Working Stiff, thank you both so much.

You could just post a separate message board thread that is the consolidated thread with all the google docs and just post them as you upload them.

Oh man Hans, you have some stuff in there that i would love to check out. Most notably the Portland stuff.