COACHES...When does your team hit peak mileage and how long do they mantain it?

drop in mileage =premature peak

In successful programs I've seen the mileage maintained throughout the summer at a strenuous but "comfortable" level. When the season get's rolling, the intensity is increased and the mileage is usually dropped a bit. About 3/4 of the way through the season the mileage is dropped again and during the post-season phase begins the tapering.

When the season starts we down cycle back to 90% for 3 weeks. Then we down cycle again to 80% for another 3 weeks. Finally we down cycle to 55-60% for the final 2 weeks of the season

I think of a pyramid... the base is built with a lot of sturdy miles pieced together, the middle is less pieces of the same miles with more care then the peak is made up of even less blocks with more fine tuning to make a perfect pinnacle at the top.

This can be done by miles miles miles in the base, speed work and lower miles in the middle then all race pace in the peak.

This allows the runner to only run and workout at race performance so when they actually go on race day they only know that pace and they'll be very well rested.

Overall intensity of running should peak, not necessarily mileage.

This advice is seriously flawed. I know because I spent 15 years thinking this was the right way. However, after attending the National Distance Running Summit, I have changed my approach. I figured since my end of season results were not consistent enough, what did I have to lose by trying a new approac?. Again, the Pyramid approach does not work.

Please read "Take the Lead" by Will Freeman and Scott Simmons. First get your coaching ego under control and get ready to learn new methods as they evolve. Look to those who get consistent, quality results and start asking a lot of questions. The Diamond Approach in combination with Jack Daniels Formula has been nothing but a Godsend for our distance runners. I have taken average kids and helped them consistently challenge for top state honors every year for the last 10 years. While adopting this structure, I've also employed the tapering suggestions of Joe Vigil who also presented at the clinic.

The kids I'm working with today are not any more talented than those I had started with 25 years ago. The difference has been my change in approach to working with young people and their willingness to work with me because they know I care more about them than the results they produce.

My main goal is getting them to the starting line of the most important race of their season(s) healthy and as ready as possible. I'm still learning where that line in the sand is when it comes to how hard and long I can push them without jeapardizing the opportunity to perform to their best. Otherwise, I am doing them a disservice. This goes for leaving room for improvement when they leave my program as well and move onto better opportunities with better training groups and coaches as they physically, mentally and emotionally mature.

Care to elaborate on your philosophy? When does your team heat peak mileage and how long do they maintain it?

Is the Diamond approach the pyramid approach with a gradual, pre-base build up of ow quality mileage? If so that is what is currently done in late winter.

Than you for the book recommendation. I will honestly look into it. I like to read about running philosophies.

Observerer wrote:

Is the Diamond approach the pyramid approach with a gradual, pre-base build up of pure, low amounts of quality mileage? If so that is what is currently done in late winter.

fixed

I'd like to hear more, too....particularly about daily pace during base phase when there aren't any "hard" workouts going on.

Like I said, I'm still learning but this seems to be what works for our program.

First, understand that there are 4 characteristics in an athlete that which we can control only a couple of. 1. Genetics 2. Environment: defined a lot of ways. Weather, altitude, seasons, teamwork, facilities, etc... 3. Motivation; intrinsic & extrinsic. 5. The plan created by the coach.

As a high school coach, I can control the plan, some of the motivation, some of the environment and none of the genetics. I feel fortunate about my physical environment and access to stimulating training facilities and locations but am subjected to four seasons which is a good thing when it comes to the yearly training cycle for kids learning about personal health and preparation for competition phases. I try my best to make sure I protect the younger kids no matter how talented they are and bring them along through a 4 year plan. Again, I want them ready when it counts the most each season. This seems to be a most progressive and sustainable approach developmentally.

Our calendar year starts in June just after release from school. We meet weekdays in the morning for 2 hours. This follows a 3 to 4 week down period of casual running and exercise for those not competing in the state track meet. Runners of all abilities are welcomed and begin the process of learning the importance of being consistent. It's pretty amazing the confiedence kids gain by the end of the 3rd week let alone by the end of the summer. Phase 1 is easy mileage except for one day a week where we do interval work at a reasonable pace. Varsity guys are at 40-45 miles/week and 10k worth of interval work once a week on the track. I break it up several ways throughout June and the first half of July starting with 25 x 400's with 2 min recovery. Everybody is capable of running one 400 at a time. The pace is relative to where each group is based on their track 3200 times or I start the new guys in a group where I think they can fit in. I move them around accordingly until I find the right group. Non-varsity does 8k & 6k worth of interval work. Beginners do what they can. One advantage to doing this on the track is that they know where they are at all times and they only have to focus on pace, not hills, uneven surfaces etc... Water & shade close by as well. We hit the weights 2 days a week, do sprints after short runs, one long run a week and push-ups & abs two days a week. Popsicles, old t-shirts, games etc... keep things interesting. Look forward to a road race in mid to late July to check fitness and have fun in a competitive atmoshphere with no risks.

Phase 2 July to the week before practice starts in mid-August we gradually increase mileage to roughly 60 for varsity guys. 2nd half of July, we start to transition our interval work to the grass at a park or local college cross country course. I repeat the workouts done on the track and try to get them to hit the same times. Only a couple grade changes and a hill. Grass is sometimes wet but they have to get used to it and I like to keep them off the hard surfaces as much as possible. They don't mind the shade on a hot, humid morning. Again, bathrooms and water nearby. Increase the length of our long run every 2 weeks. Start running one fartlek workout per week. Keep the same strength program but continue to make things interesting and challenging. Have team camp in the woods the week before our official practice begins which is our 2nd recovery week. Great opportunity to have their attention, teach the sport and set goals. Really brings the team together. Great way to get the freshman to meet new people and have some older friends prior to the start of school.

Once official practice begins (pre-competition phase), we have a couple days before starting school but the guys are ready to take on classes, walk the halls etc.. which is a new routine so managing that along with increased mileage is probably our toughest session of the cross season. Varsity guys are around 60-70 miles at the very most. It's not easy and getting enough rest while maintaining in the classroom is very challenging. This is the line I fear crossing. Only a few kids I've ever coached were ever able to do this. They had to be in the program for 4 years and I played it by ear every day to make sure they weren't over training. This is where Jack Daniels came in for me. On the easy days, I had to make sure they knew what that meant or they would be running too fast thinking they were getting better but in reality, they were running their race on Wednesday instead of Saturday for example. Having a 2 mile time trial in the park the 2nd week of practice to get a data point on all of the runners on our team. 2 miles gets an honest effort in a practice session. Anyway, that number helps me get their threshold pace, interval pace, sprint pace, easy pace etc... Then I start to employ that full diamond approach to continue developing each system. The mileage is already there but we hadn't really focused much on race pace etc... up to that point. The interval work was done at about 70-80% of race pace up to this phase.

September is the competition phase so we have to back off the mileage some to allow the guys to freshen up for racing efforts even though they aren't that important. But to a kid that has trained all summer, they want to test themsleves so you have to give them a chance. Racing well and winning gives the guys a lot of confidence that their preparation has put them in a good position to have a successful season. We drop back to 50-60 miles as a recovery week and allow for one race about every week to 10 days. I've cut back our varsity efforts to about 5 races prior to conference, districts and state. However, we are on the course or in the park more (twice a week) hitting longer intervals one day and shorter/hills the other. Our long runs are on Saturdays at around 10-12 miles. I hold this until the 2nd week of October: Championship season. Conference is always an important meet to try to do our best and a good practice race for the effort it will take to qualify for state the next week. Very intense!!! Then Districts has to be our best race of the season to extend our season another week since there aren't any gaurantees. Our taper starts mid week before the conference meet then carries through to the state meet. Our long run is around 8-10 miles. I have the guys run a 1 1/2 mile time trial then finish with 8-12 400's. before conference and districts. The Monday before state, we do a 2 mile at goal pace then a 2 mile all out. Wednesday we do 12 x 400's. This routine has worked well for us the last several years. The kids know the routine, they have previous years' times to beat and confidence in it and they seem to continue to be ready for their best performance of the season at State. The recovery runs in this phase are still progessively faster than they were in the pre-competition phase but the guys really appreciate them and how they feel before the next hard effort.

November is a down month with casual running and a couple trail races/Turkey trot for fun to keep their interest. December is phase one of the track season, January Phase 2, we start practice 2nd week of Feb. so it's a gradual increase in mileage again, consistent weight training in the winter months, then we start the competitive phase through the month of March. Sharpen in April, taper in May and start the process over again.

Hope this helps some.

How good do you want your athletes to be?

Average- reduce mileage when you get into the season, progressively

Good- follow a Daniels type plan, but remember how many Olympians he has coached.

Great- hit peak mileage in August with a down week every 3rd or 4th weak but maintain high mileage and high intensity into the season.

The best- Wetmore's modified Lydiard. Goucher, Torres, Ritz, lady Goucher. Nough said.

Interesting responses. 25 x 400 during the summer seems pretty aggressive. I guess if the pace is right, it could be OK, but I've never had my kids do anything like that.

We generally hit peak mileage in late July/early August running in the mornings or evenings. Once school starts (2nd week of August) we drop the mileage down because running in the afternoon in CA's central valley in August is pretty brutal. Plus, after a summer of ramping up mileage, it is nice to take a little down period to let kids bodies catch up.

I've always had a hard time getting bringing my teams mileage back up because the heat is so oppressive (Usually mid 90's or above until late September). We try to build back to a second mileage peak in early October and hold it until close to our league finals meet (last week of October.) From this point, we have 4.5 weeks until the state meet so we begin tapering down from there.

I've never had a lot of luck trying to get kids to double on their own, and as a result, between the heat and the not doubling, our mileage usually hovers in the mid 30's - low 40's for much of August and September. We do lots of cruise intervals in lieu of tempo runs during this time. I've als experimented with having my athletes do two shorter runs back to back, returning to the school for a water break in between. I've got a very experienced group this year and my try to get them to meet for some AM runs. They understand that their mileage should be higher if they want to run faster, so I think I can convince them to meet 2-3 times per week in the morning once school starts.

Again, I still have a lot to learn but I don't know many Olympians coming out of high school either.

Wetmore's plan is great for the athletes that you mentioned, not high school kids in the early stages of development.

I would say your description of "Great" is a darned good summary of what I was trying to communicate in detail. I wish I was smarter. This is where our kids are; On the start line in the meets that count the most getting great results and not broken down and frustrated wishing they had a better coach,a better plan and doubting their running future after high school.

Your mileage is too low to ever produce truly great results. 60-70mpw is not enough. My kids peak usually at 90mpw in early Oct and then we begin tapering. The result is they go into the championship races super strong. I certainly don't have my kids hit peak mileage in the summer. We start our mileag build-up at the end of August. We essentially do the same thing in OT. The results speak for themselves with 12 State x-c championships.

I can relate to what you are saying about your environment. My first coaching assignment out of college was in Southeast Arizona. I started their cross country program. It was a culture change for that community while trying to get the program to be competitive with the Native American schools in the 4 corners area that we would have to compete with at the state meet.

The first task was to educate the athletes as to what was a good performance, daily and at the state meet. Secondly, I had to teach them how to compete rather than just survive the conditions and the distance. Once I got them to understand the concept of consistent, progressive training with planned recoveries produces positive results, it was a matter of taking the right steps forward each season to improve the overall program.

Luckily, as coaches, we have track in the spring to get more kids involved and get in more consistent training around the calendar. Once that was fun enough, the mindset turned toward the hot summer months. Mornings are awesome in the dessert. I couldn't get the kids to buy into it as much as I would have liked before I left the state but I did get a few kids to take advantage of those hours and it paid off bigtime. We ran after sunset in the evenings during the summer and they liked that because it was unusual for anyone in that town to be out running anyway so if their freinds saw them they thought it was cool to be seen excelling at something that took some discipline and spending time that their peers weren't willing to do. Once school started, we just ran after school and adjusted intensities and duration and just prayed for the Monsoon season to bring in the afternoon clouds. Early season meets were well paced needless to say. Winter months were easier to just run after school and on weekends. Took a couple guys to some half marathons in Tucson. They got a real kick out of running at talking pace for 13 miles and finishing in the top 10% of the field. I really miss those fall hot, steamy afternoon workouts though. It was really different that what we get here in the midwest. Hotter than Hades until about mid-September, then a few weeks of primo conditions and then the possiblity of freezing rain by the state meet. The last couple years here were in drought and well above normal temps so the state meets were run in pretty ideal conditions with a firm surface and produced a lot of fast times.

Again, the confidence really shot up when the kids realized that if they were willing to do what their competition wasn't, they would have a better chance. The 4 corners schools had altitude an cooler temps on their side, along with a harder way of life and tradition and in the case of the Hopi Indians, religion. So how do you beat a religion? You make running your religion. They pray for water for their crops, health for their people etc... but they are not unbeatable. And if you look at the past few years of boys 3200 times coming out of Arizona, you see kids from Yuma and Tuba City of all the God-Awful places to train, running well under 9:00. When you show others what is possible, it changes the game for everyone.

Thanks.

1. Are you speaking about your seniors, everyone on the team or varsity runners of all ages when you say 90 miles/week.

2. Have you always had your kids do this much mileage and how much of a problem is there with injuries such as stress fractures, tendonitis, nutrition imalances, etc...

3. Are your numbers high so that you have 2 teams that would challenge at a high level thereby having plenty of bodies to replace without losing much in your lineup? Are you in a highly populated area?

4. What does your week look like during school to get 90 miles covered? Does it include 7 days per week? I've always felt like Sundays off helped rather than hurt but would encourage kids to get a run in if they felt they were not too tired.

I agree with you about needing higher mileage but that's where I initially paused because I don't know where that line is that I don't want to cross and keep kids from participating. 10 years ago, we were DFL in our own conference meet two years in a row before I took over. Now we contend consistently but haven't gotten the job done and even though we've made pretty good program adjustments, I'm really starting to feel like I need to take it to another level. I'm not satisfied with just being a contender any longer. I've been a part of 16 state track champion teams with 5 runner-ups in the last 25 years and just a few days from potentially winning another one but it's getting personal with the CC title eluding me.

I don't think I will have too much trouble making that transition with the kids. I think I can get them to make the sacrifices but I want to do the right thing by not hurting them or burning them out. The top team in the state the past couple years has made that step and now it's obvious the rest of us better get with it or get left behind.

Thanks for any other input you can provide.

Old Fart Coach,

Thank you for sharing! I have only coached less than 10 years in XC and have always questioned my tapering period. When I started coaching I followed Jack Daniels pretty closely. I knew nothing about distance training, was handed his book, and went from there. It wasn't until the past few years that I realized I needed to find out which method worked for me. I never considered my environment, school size, number of potential athletes, and the time we had to train. It seems that at the end of every XC season our performances at the state meet and the state qualifying meet were never consistent with the rest of the season. Some kids ran big time PR's while the majority just ran consistent, and a few dropped off significantly. I always felt we tapered too much and were simply "hanging on" the last three weeks of the season. At the end of the season I HATE it when my kids get beat by a runner they have beat all season. Even worse, if a team we always beat nips us for a team trophy, I am sick to my stomach. It makes me want to throw up when I get home.

I like all of JD's training intensity definitions and concepts but I know I have never been confident with what we were doing as the year progressed. I think my runners noticed that I was not confident in our end of the year training and probably were not confident themselves. He is a good coach with great ideas, I am just not sure it works the best for HS kids, not to mention the fact that many of my varsity girls are 13-15 year olds.

I like everything you posted about kids feeling fresh and confident at their races. With 13-17 year old runners, they all WANT to run fast at every meet, plain and simple. Simmons and Brad Hudson have intrigued me since early June and we have implemented a lot of their training ideas into our summer training. Basically I am trying to blend a lot of Simmons stuff, with a little of Hudson concepts, and use a lot of JD's training tables. We are introducing Jay Johnson's strength routines to we can implement his full 8 week strength progression when the season starts. We have always done more core work than most teams but have failed to focus on hip mobility and individual leg strength.

Our summer has looked like this for my older boys. We are only getting about 35-40 miles in per week, but most of my "older" boys are sophomores and I have bigger plans for them in the coming years. I have decent numbers for a smaller school, but the reality is I have 6-7 boys that will be varsity-ready and can't afford a summer injury.

Mondays... 1 goal for the summer was to build some strength. This summer we have done short hills sprints hard on Mondays in the middle of our 6 mile runs. We do a slow 3 mile warm-up, hammer 5X80 meter hills pretty hard with full recoveries, and then I let the kids run the remaining 3 miles at whatever pace they feel. Some of the older boys run 6:30 pace, while other run 9:00 pace depending on how they are feeling.

Tuesdays... are set aside for some structured fartlek work. Usually something like a 1-2-3-2-1 after a warm up (1 min hard, 1 min easy, 2 min hard, 2 min easy etc...) followed by a long cool down. We do Jay Johnson's lunge matrix before we head out on our run. If they looked good on their hill sprints they get to do the fartlek workout. If they didn't, I often have them do a long slow run.

Wednesdays... are Easy Runs with barefoot strides on the grass afterwards + some of Jay Johnson's work afterwards and abs.

Thursdays..are a long progression run of 6-7 miles with the last 10 minutes around their current 5K race pace or I tell them to try to get into a pace they think they could race a 5K at. Some kids have made such huge progressions simply from age from their last 5K and do not know their 5K pace. If a kid is sore, or if they missed Wednesday, they have to do an Easy run. Lunge matrix before the run and abs after.

Fridays... are another easy run followed by Mixed Drills (barefoot strides on the grass with push-ups and burpeess mixed in)

Then the weekend is theirs with the hope they get in a long run.

I don't know how this newer training will transfer into the Fall, but some of my veteran runners are seeing great improvements this summer. They feel like they are getting stronger and faster each week. The past summers have been dedicated to slow running and often times, I have kids skip summer runs probably due to boredom.

I am nervous, excited, scared to see where we will be in October. I won't be doing a big taper like past years I will likely keep up the intensity and continue progressing our fratlek work until it becomes very specific to the kids' 5K goals at the end of October. It may work or it may not. But I want to try something new. We are always on the verge of being a top program in our area and the state and it is up to me to mix things up and go out on a limb to try something new.

Keep posting Old Fart Coach because I like your philosophy on kids and training. I think we all need to continue to step out of the box and try new things.

What you are describing is what most everyone does, call it pyramid, diamond or what have you.

You are lucky to not have a slew of league meets so you can race every 10 days.

Your training is very similar to Vigil. I am curious though, a 2 mile at goal pace followed by 2 miles all out the Monday before state (and just two days after districts?) seems like a lot and dangerously close to running the race 5 days before the race. You have had success with this but I'm curious if you have any input on why this works for your guys.

Coaches think they're the smartest people in the world, and yet most of them wreck nearly all of their athletes. If you are not training your athletes to be their best when they are in their mid 20s, you are not doing your job. 90 miles a week, dude? Seriously? What are they going to do after high school? 150? Also, all of you except one guy seriously neglects speed. THE CHEIF LIMITING FACTOR FOR ALMOST EVERY ATHLETE IS THEIR SPEED. Do you guys watch track at all? Look what Salazar has done with Rupp, a guy with mediocre speed his whole career at every level; turned him into a 3:34 guy who can close 5ks in 52. You guys are producing good runners because it's not that hard to produce good runners, simple high mileage and long intervals designed to peak for the cross country state meet. But to make great runners, you need to have a more complete outlook on training (weights, core, drills, sprints, drills) and you need to be looking at how your athlete will be doing in 8-10 years, instead of 3 years.

I'm sure I'll get flamed ruthlessly for this post, and you'll all be trying to argue that you are somehow nearly as good at developing talent as the coach of the Olympic silver medalist. Maybe if you adopted his methods, you could be. But right now, you're too set in your ways (lazy.)