Predict my athletes 5k based on 1 x 5k

I really like tempo interval's 3 x 2000s with fast 400 on the end of 2000s 5:35/5:40 pace. 3 min. between intervals. My opinion on your 3/26 tempo, too much volume on the end of tempo. I would consider his 10/11 mi. easy days sufficient long run. I really like how you ran the two days before he raced 1600 on 3/29.

for what it's worth wrote:

Coach B, I have not read entire posts, after looking at some of your training you've shared I believe your athlete will not run his best at end of season. I do not know how you taper for

big meets, but I think some of your paces are too fast. You might be leaving his best races in his workouts.

How do you come to that conclusion?

Is your question sincere or do you just disagree. Went on your website, like how you share what your doing. Looks like your athletes are doing well under your guidance. Nice work!

It was a sincere question. I looked at the workouts and actually thought there should have been a few faster workouts in there, especially since it is track season. A lot of the training I give my kids revolves around race pace work at the 8, 16, and 32 which is actually quite quick during a standard workout. As a mileage hog in high school, I looked back and realized that the ability to run desired race pace was highly lacking in my training which led to some stagnation.

I have formed some ideas from the likes of Coe, Horwill, Verhuel, Igloi, Gagliano and Vigil which all include quicker work. I've noticed a few things about training over the past few years which have also helped shape my philosophy. One is that kids seem to improve regardless of volume of training as long as they trained consistently. Not to say my kids never run longer runs etc., but I have a 4:16 miler and a 1:56 800 runner who are both sophomores who have never averaged more than 25-30 miles a week each of their years of running, starting with 8th grade. I also noticed that for young runners, racing is almost as important as training because rarely will a kid give the same effort for a workout than a race. The more a kid races when young (obviously within reason), the more he will improve because he is learning how to push himself.

I had two kids run the junior high mile at New Balance indoors this year and will probably be running the JH mile at NBON too. Neither were amazing runners when they started but I laid down a solid foundation of aerobic power workouts to bring them along in their fitness. Many people may argue over Vo2 and if it matters, etc. It doesn't matter to me, but what I've noticed is consistent training at paces around Vo2 produce some solid time.

Nice discussion developing here.

You two guys certainly have two distinct philosophies going on. I tend to lean more toward the mileage side of the equation, but also have an 800m kid who this season is hardly doing any continuous runs of over 2 miles. He has had a myriad of injuries, but when we run fast he doesn't get injured. He has only had 2 races so far this year, as he was coming off of an injury right at the beginning of the season (IT band issue, likely due to mileage). He ran a 50.3 on a relay split and a 2:00.62 for 800. His PR is 1:58.2, which was achieved during our pre-season last year, off of steady distance runs followed by strides, or short intervals at pretty relaxed paces. That type of training has consistently brought him to good levels of fitness, but has also left him injured. So, we are completely altering the training paradigm with him this year. We will see if it works. He was supposed to get into a pretty good 800 this past weekend, but that was rained out (yes, we split our team among 2 different meets last weekend).

Back to the point. The guy in the thread title performs well off of mileage and when we start to run a lot of stuff at race pace or faster tends to break down. Perhaps if we ran less mileage, he could hit paces in workouts without breaking down, but this is his senior year and I'm not terribly interested in getting him to hit paces in workouts simply for the sake of hitting paces in workouts. I could do that during my competitive days, but consistently raced like poo. One of the things that constantly amazes me about this kid is that he can look totally maxed out in a workout trying to run a 600 or an 800 at 72 pace, but when the chips are on the table in a race, can go 9:37 (this was the exact situation going into the final meet of the year last season, but is by no means unusual for him.

As it turns out, this guy's good buddy also decided to bump up his mileage. Last season, he ran 11:06 for 3200 as a junior. Over the summer he started experimenting with 50 mile weeks and ran mostly 45 mpw during cross. Over the winter he took his mileage up again and hit a few 65 mile weeks. His training weeks have been mostly between 55-60. In his first race of the season, he dropped his 1600 PR from 5:09 to 4:54. Second race dropped the 3200 PR to 10:20. On the 29th, he dropped his PR at 3200 to 10:06, a full minute improvement from last May. So, I have some kids who really thrive on big miles and other who break down. The key is, how do you get kids into the right group?

I actually have 3 training groups on my team: "long sprints" for the 400-800 kids, "mid distance" for the 800-1600 types, and "distance" for kids like the kid I've been writing about and his buddy who has been so hot lately. Each one of those 3 groups is broken down into 3 different ability levels. This means that every week, I'm writing 9 sets of workouts. It gets to be a bit much, but the success we are having this year so far has made the extra work seem pretty worth while.

Cool story coming up here. My most exciting moment at a meet this year was when one of my freshman kids, who had started in cross running only 18 min for 2 miles and managed to barely get his time under 15 by the end of cross country season popped a 12:21 for 3200 2 weeks ago. I told him at the start of the race to just hang with the back of the group and maybe he might run 13:30 and not get last (I didn't use those words). As the race progressed, he kept passing people and moving up. He ended up mid pack somewhere, but the look of surprise and satisfaction on his face and on his dads face after the race gave me my coaching fuel for the rest of the season

VPA, do you also train for XC ? How are your 3200 runners doing. Very impressive 1600/ 800 times.

We have had success in xc. We are just a small school (around 350 in high school) so the numbers won't wow you but the boys averaged near 16 flat this year for 3 miles. We were state champs as well. During XC we don't drop down to 800 pace though. Mostly 1600-3200-5k paces.

Well, my guy found out today that his 9:42 didn't get him into Arcadia. So, he went out and crushed a workout (since our dual meet was rained out due to our track being flooded.

Week so far

3/31: 10 miles progression in the rain

4/1: 11 miles easy + weights

4/2: AM 4 easy, PM 4 easy + 4 x 150 stride

4/3: AM 4 easy, PM 2.5 warm up, 15x400 on cross country loop avg 70 seconds with 50 second recovery. 1.5 cd

So, he just averaged close to his 1600 PR pace for 15 quarters with only 50 seconds in between. I told him to just try and run 74s. He was doing the workout on his own while I worked with our long sprinters and our other distance coach worked with the rest of the distance and mid distance kids, and by the time I got over there, he was already 12 in. I told him he could stop at that point, thinking he had already extended himself a little too far, but he looked at me like I was crazy and said he was feeling great.

Well, my guy ran 9:41 for 3200 this past week. On paper it looks like he has progressed a grand total of 1 second this season (after his 9:42 opener) or that he has even regressed a bit (after his 9:37 PR from last year's masters meet).

I actually think that this season has been far superior to last season. He is in one of those modes right now where things are going well, but he has not popped a big race yet. The average of his top 5 races this year is far quicker than the average of his top 5 last year. And he has been faster at every benchmark this year, 2013 season vs. 2014 season.

This past week, he was 3rd in our divisional meet with his 9:41. The meet was run earlier in the day than normal and the day was pretty hot. When the gun went off, temps were probably still in the very high 80s. To make things a little more difficult for fast times, my guy got stuck on the front end of the lead pack, with 4 other guys (including the clear favorite, who had a PR of 9:15) sitting on his shoulder for 6 laps. It was a little windy also, but not too bad (sprinters were getting wind aided marks).

He looked really good for about 2k, he was 4:45 at the 1600 and 5:58 at the 2k. He started to struggle with the heat on lap 6, but the rest of the field was content to let the pace slide. On lap 7, the 4 other guys from the lead pack surged around him and he started to fall back. He was about 7-8 yards off of the lead pack with 600 to go. As the lead pack strung out, my guy managed to rally a bit and catch 2 of them over the last 400, finishing 4th. He was 5th in 9:49 at this same meet last year before running his 9:37 at Masters. I feel like his fitness is really good, and if he can just sit in on a fast field, he should be able to go sub 9:30. If he gets a really good race, he could get on the podium (top 6). Qualifying times from the other divisional meets were not super impressive, even though they were run later at night in cooler weather.

His last week looks like this

5/22: meet, 9:41

5/23: active rest, ultimate frisbee

5/24: 7 Easy

5/25: 1 mile wu, 4 miles temp with splits of 5:46 (stopped to tie shoe), 5:36, 5:34, 5:30. I was timing him but not giving splits. He was running totally by feel. + 3 x 400 @ 68.

Today: Should be 6-7 easy

5/27: 5 easy + 3 x 150 fast

5/28: 4-5 easy

5/29: 3 easy + drills and strides

5/30: race.

somewhere between 14:00 and 19:00 you really need to post more relevant workout information like how fast he did 12x200 for us to give you a good 5k prediction.

Stupid Belligerent Drunk wrote:

somewhere between 14:00 and 19:00 you really need to post more relevant workout information like how fast he did 12x200 for us to give you a good 5k prediction.

You're right. I'll bear that in mind ;)

Any update(s)?

He ran 9:41 again. The pace accelerated during the 4th lap and the pack kind of broke apart. He was 6-8 yards behind a couple of other guys who also got split off of the pack. He kind of fell asleep there for about 3 laps.

He was holding the same distance behind them, and I guess he thought he was doing pretty good because they weren't pulling away. In reality, they were slowing down and he was slowing down with them. when he decided to pick it up on the last lap, he was able to move past 3 guys pretty easily and didn't look that wiped out.

Really disappointing end to the hs career for him. The middle of the season really dragged. I think he was a little mentally drained after not getting into Arcadia. He told me after the race that he just felt tired and unmotivated for most of the season, right up until league finals.

On the bright side, he ran under 10 min 7 times this season (with an 8th effort at 10:01). A sub 10 used to be a superior effort for him, now he is able to do it fairly easily. Even his bad races this year were still 9:59 and 10:01 (hot days, no competition). He is super strong now and is ready to make a leap to the next level. His times have plateaued for the past 13 months, but his fitness is far superior to where it was.

He is taking a few days off right now. We'll decide tomorrow whether or not to enter Golden West.

He is going to try to walk on to the team in college (pac 12, major program). So he will have to have a pretty solid summer to have much of a chance at even being allowed to walk on. I really feel like the fitness is there for a high 9:2x right now. It is just a matter of getting it to happen.

So how was his first season in college?

He went to University of Arizona and didn't make the team. I don't think the coach was that interested in a 9:37/15:58 guy (he ran the 15:58 on the track during the summer after his senior year. At the time he ran that, he was building up to try and make the team in Arizona.

He was just home during Christmas break and ran with the team most of the time he was here, but he hasn't been running that much. Still strong as an Ox though. I encouraged him to get back into running more seriously, even if it wasn't for the college team. I think he could run a really solid 10k / HM if he took some time to train up for it. He kind of fell into the freshman/first time away from home habit of staying up late and sleeping late. I guess some days his first class wasn't until 1 PM.

He is an engineering major and his grades are good, so I'm not worried about him flunking out of school, but I feel that running seriously would give him motivation to take a little better care of himself.

I have another kid that went from 11:05 to 10:06 during his senior year and is at Cornell right now. He's been training pretty hard and wants to try and walk on to the team. He has a long way to go, but having him at home, training with our guys during the off season was a real positive for my current team members.

I had a really fun/good group of seniors graduate in the class of 2014 and am thankful that many of my top 5 (4) are still running in one form or another and come back to share their experiences with my current team. It is stuff like that that helps high school kids to see running more as a way of life rather than just some thing that you do after school, during the school year, because coach tells you to.

I think his HS times were solid enough to have a shot at walking on at Arizona. If kids are going to go the walk-on route, they have to show up in good shape and show coach they're a committed runner. Most college freshmen do not have 9:00 min. 3200 HS credentials. My son is a walk-on. I can share how he walked on, if interested.

OK. I e-mailed coach Li about him a couple of times over the summer. I didn't get a reply. I don't think the kid ever showed up on Li's doorstep asking for a shot though.

We looked at the times of the kids on the team prior to him leaving for school and were pretty sure that he could have run with those guys.

My son was set to go to Big 12 school and was going to try to walk on there. We kept receiving literature from a college in Big Sky conference. Drove out to campus in late June and decided to apply. When he was accepted, he then contacted coach and based on 800/1600 times was told he would be able to tryout for track. We showed up in late July and continued to run base mileage. He ran unattached at first and second Xc meet. Based on his results of first two meets, he then was allowed to begin training with team.

If your athlete still wants to run and is set on continuing at Arizona, it is possible to make team. He will need to stick to a plan, if he works hard and develops, he still has a shot.