Help a new coach out: does this plan look okay?

Cycle looks fine to me. Maybe some 800 specific work on Friday, something like fast 300s or fast 200s to get the lactic acid moving?

Working on speed and 800 specific stuff is super important for developing high schoolers. You'll see a big difference between a program that does none of it and a program that does enough of it.

We can't give any advice until you tell us the background of the athletes. Your schedule could be too much or too little.

Check out trackandfieldcoach.com That site has a some examples of what a week would look like with distance runners. It does depend on your athletes and their backgrounds. I have kids who are brand new but also a bunch who are coming off an indoor track season. I coach sprinters so I’m not a whole lot of help.

Good luck.

Overall, I think it's a decent outline for a group of beginner athletes.

For speed stuff:

I like to do speed stuff the day before threshold/tempo work. The reason I like this is they're totally opposite energy systems. So you might be a bit fried from the speed work, but it shouldn't be so bad that it seriously impacts your tempo work. Your athletes might be pretty sore for the first few weeks but after that, speed day should largely be a non-event.

My personal speed day is something like this:
- Warmup jog
- Dynamic stretching drills and lunges and walks and stuff like that
- Plyometric drills. QUALITY over quantity. A few seconds of super high quality jumps is better than 2 minutes of low quality jumps.
- 4xflying 30m w/ full recovery. I typically just walk around for 3–4 minutes
- Cooldown jog
- Weights

Thanks. Could you give any examples?

Some are new- so they’ll do way less volume.

The best and oldest boys run 40 mpw and girls 30 mpw.

Best boy PR 4:41 1600 (no one does the 2 mile on boys’ side) and best girl PR 11:39 2 mile.

And thanks DJ Jan and speed stuff- both helpful and will look into it

On week 2 move the Thursday easy run to Friday and on Thursday do some speed development work - something such as 8 x 200 or 10 x 150 around 800m pace.

Looks great. Without knowing what point you’re at in the season, I’d recommend some shorter intervals close to race pace on that Friday. Maybe something like 2x5x400 at mile pace. A good rule of thumb would be to aim for 1 threshold/tempo/cv workout per week, 1 faster VO2 max or faster interval workout per week and a long run. If you understand these basics which it seems that you do, you’ll be able to build a successful plan and it’ll just be a matter of figuring out the X’s and O’s over time.

I generally like your plan. Nice work!

For the above poster- there's no point in administering a speed specific workout unless you've done the pre-requisite work to ensure kids actually know how to sprint. Atomic speed or other 10m acceleration measures have almost no validity for most high school distance runners.

150m builds after workouts can be a nice way to build turnover, but intensive sprinting work will not take in their bodies.

I wholeheartedly disagree. With beginner athletes they need to develop all around athleticism. Start sprinting, start jumping, get coordinated and strong, full stop. Obviously ease into it a bit, you don't have to copy that workout exactly as it is and administer it like that on day 1.

Thanks- now I have an idea of what to do that Friday for them! We just got a new weightroom at school too so they can get in strength with the weight trainer.

Does anyone else have any training tips for HS milers and two milers??

Anything helps.