HIGH SCHOOL COACHES: Post your distance team's practice schedule here.

citius5000 wrote:

This is my favorite thread going right now.

Sorry Flagpole i was referring to the mid week dual meets to compete on saturday. In my state we do not do this or have JV meets aside from an end of the season freshman meet which is fun and another meet for none conference/state qualifiers in my conference. All meets are for everyone no matter how slow or fast. Isnt that the great part about track?

How do you get an unlimited number of kids to run in a Saturday track meet? On my son's team, there are currently 20+ guys who run 800, 1600, or 3200. Meets take 2 MAX per event and then 4 for the relays of course. If no one doubles up, that's 10 distance guys who get to run, and usually the best guys might at double, especially at league meet time to try to win.

My kids have a meet on Saturday, and there are like 19 teams there. You HAVE to put limits on the entries when that is the case.

Part of our difference in training might be the fact that I work with boys. I do think the injury risk / performance improvement risk-benefit analysis with girls is not as favorable to doing high volume as it is with boys. We get some injuries, but they are almost always "manageable" ones. I do not work with our school's girls program, but I do know they don't do a ton of volume and still wind up with a lot of stress fractures or bad shin splints that you can't really "work through" the same way you can with a sore Achilles. The injuries we get are usually from NOT running (over the winter or summer).

Is your "specialty" more 800/1600 versus 3200? I'd be interested to see a typical week from when your team is doing 25-ish miles a week.

Someone mentioned speedwork beyond strides - even with our high-volume team, I like doing sessions like 12-16x200m with a 200m jog, starting a bit slower than mile pace and working down to a second or two faster. I do have to be on the lookout for "workout heroes" those days though...blasting the last few in sub-30 is (I believe) counterproductive and turns it into a "hard" workout, which it really should not be at all. We don't do any true sprint work, but reading Magness' book has made me think maybe we should. Any success with this?

Something else I'd like to hear some input on is endurance work for 800 meter types. We have not had a lot of success in the past doing traditional LT work with them. I read some Coach Canova stuff this winter and he talks about speeds slower than 80% of race pace not being relevant training for athletes. I've had my 800m guys doing a relatively high volume of 400-600m repeats at 1.1-1.2x their 800 pace, with maybe 2-3min recovery. Seems to be having a good effect so far, but hard to tell. Anyone else had success with non-traditional ways of building endurance in true middle-distance types?

Coach JB wrote:

"but 3x800 @ 90-95% PR speed for 800"

Is this a typo?

Looks like you do assimilate a lot of speed into your week but just put it on top of their mileage instead of substituting it for mileage. With your top 5 guys and girls, what would you say their average improvement (in minutes) is from the second week of the season compared to their state meet? Do you see a flatline in terms of performance later in the season, or are they still responsive to speed when you back out the mileage?

No, it wasn't a typo. It was our first truly hard workout of the season. I realize that when I write workouts, it looks like a lot of speed, but much of the fast stuff is run pretty relaxed with lots of rest and are tacked on as part of warm ups or cool downs. There is something for neuromuscular adaptation just about every day. The interval workouts are run at a very comfortable pace. I've had very few kids blow up this year when we do stuff on the track. Mostly I believe this is due to the fact that I've slowed the interval paces down quite a bit. For instance, with the distance kids, We've been doing our longer intervals slower than 5k pace. For the ones who don't have a solid 5k time, we are going 8-10 seconds slower per lap than best 3200 time. 11 min 2 mile kids are running miles on the track in the mid 5:50. We are seeing very good aerobic adaptation from this so far.

As far as the 3 x 800 @ 90-95% best speed. Those numbers aren't as bad as they seem. For example, I have a decent sized chunk of guys who are in the low 2:1x range (2:10-2:13). 2:10 = 130 seconds. 10% of 130 = 13. Add 13 seconds to 2:10 and you get 2:23. Most of that group ran between 2:25 and 2:18 for the workout. They got full recovery (15 min between reps) jogging, stretching, drinking water. The kids thought it was hard, but not unbearable. Almost all of my runners completed the workout correctly, within their goal time range, which I consider pretty good, since It's pretty near impossible to get 100% correct completion of a workout with 30 something high school kids. Even more impressive for me about the workout was the fact that the wind was screaming that day, we have a dirt track, and only a few kids wore spikes.

As far as our progression. I usually don't bring in near maximal workouts until mid season. Most of the stuff we've done so far has been very relaxed (as mentioned above). During the early part of our season, the mid distance kids progressed from 6x600 @ 2 mile pace to 4 x 1k @ 2 mile pace, equal rest to run time. I won't bring in these types of near maximal efforts until the kids have had a long period of adaptation. The introduction of those workouts marks a shift in our training, which I usually try to make about 6 weeks out from key meets (which for us, will be league finals on May 14). Usually, when I bring the very hard, full recovery training sessions into the mix, we see PRs start to fall all over the place. I just can't put those sessions anywhere near a race.

It took us about 5 weeks to make the adaptation from 6 x 600 - 4 x 1k. Then, through a quirk in the schedule, we had 6 meets in 2 weeks.

None of my kids ran all of the meets, but they still raced a lot and did zero hard workouts, everything we did in training was pure maintainence. The week I posted above came at the beginning of a 2 week block with no races. Most of my kids had 3-4 really easy between their last race and the workout. A few of the kids had a week. It was a perfect time for us to really blow out a hard session. One of my kids, who has only run 2:15 so far this season, ran 2:16 for his last rep. He is looking to run low 4:30s for 1600 later in the season and I think the workout gave him a huge confidence boost. After opening his season well, (4:47 for a heat win at a distance carnival) he had a series of illness and injury that had kind of set him back. For him, the workout was huge.

Next week, we are on spring break and will only meet twice. The rest of their days are going to be unstructured, kind of like they are in the off season...just run by feel.

For more details on our progression, you can refer to our team page at athletic.net

http://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/EventRecords.aspx?SchoolID=866

You can click on an athletes name and get his or her season progressions for their career at Hughson.

To be more specific about the progression, if you look at the 2014 track season, I think you'll see that lots of kids ran fast early season then flatlined. Last year, I tried some stuff that was different from what I've done in the past. I've changed things this year to be more like past years and we will hopefully see some big improvements at the end of the season

I agree, much different with guys and girls. I feel I can get female milers to 95% of their ability (within 5-10 seconds) on 25-30 mpw and female 800m runners to their full potential. It's just not worth taking them to an edge and having half fall off the edge with injuries. You wouldn't get anywhere near 95% with a HS male miler with 30 I suspect that number for a mature male would be maybe 50 but you'd know better. **I also find the recruiters like it when the girls pull out their logs and show them a 25-30 mpw log rather than a 45 or even 50.

I don't know if my "specialty" is 800, 1600 but now that I pull out the books and compare with your times, I've had many more girls run under 2:20 than run under 5:00 and even less under 11:00. But I don't think those numbers are all equal in terms of quality, in other words to me a 2:20 is not nearly as impressive as a sub 11:00 2 miler. And again, my 3200 runners run the 3200 well but not the mile or 800 as well as they could. In other words they train for 3200 and not 800. They also run 30-40 MPW on single run days the last 8 weeks of the season.

Per your request, this week is actually a typical week with about 25 miles and here is what we are doing.

M- 60 mins at 7:30-9 minute pace (depending on girl).

T- 25 mins, striders, and yoga/core work

W- 15 WU, 4x600/60sec rest/150 fast on 5 mins rest between reps, 10 CD

Th- 35 mins, striders, upper body and core circuit

Fri- 25 mins, striders

Sat- Meet

I do think maybe we should be running more speed early on, my two concerns with this is 1. increase in injuries, and 2. Plateauing kids early in season and having them be discouraged that their times are not dropping. If they are winning races earlier though, this may be offset by being more motivated by early results.

Anyone have their kids running 4x200 or 4x150 alone for a workout in March or early April?

We experimented with running pure speed workouts early in the season. One per week. The result was that it took the place of an aerobic workout and resulted in the athletes running faster earlier in the season but not as fast later on. In other words, I think it had a negative effect on their final times at state meet.

Perhaps a hybrid would work as I've seen on here where kids are running both aerobic and speed in same workout, but I would NOT suggest running a weekly speed workout early in the season. We only get 2 good workouts a week and then a meet, so when you burn one of those on a workout that has less than a 800m of running (not including WU and CD) your athletes fall further behind the athletes that are building an "aerobic house" on those days.

My exception to this would be if you have an athlete that is a 400 and 800m runner. I do have those athletes running a speed workout second week of the season on.

Here is my basic template for an older high school girl. Volumes are adjusted depending on the kid, but for the most part it has produced multiple national top 5 finishes from 800m-3000m as well as the steeple.

S - 60min hilly

M - 5x80m, weights, 30min

T - 5-6x1km w/2.30 jog or 600m, 500m, 400m, 300m, 200m w/5,4,3,2min rec

W - 45min, weights

T - rest day

F - 15min AT + 5x300m w/2min rec, weights

S - 30min

I find the 800m type kids can't handle true AT runs and will generally break into 4-5x1km w/60s rec.

Strength work for girls is crucial to long term success.

mile whisperer wrote:

S - 60min hilly

M - 5x80m, weights, 30min

T - 5-6x1km w/2.30 jog or 600m, 500m, 400m, 300m, 200m w/5,4,3,2min rec

W - 45min, weights

T - rest day

F - 15min AT + 5x300m w/2min rec, weights

S - 30min

Interesting, looks like about 25 miles a week. Lot of Naysayers on here laughing at 25 miles a week.

We actually run our long Monday runs on long gradual uphills, so our elevation gain over the 50-60 minutes is about 10000-1500 ft depending on the run. On some of them our 5:20 milers are running 9 min miles.

Tell us about your 5x80, that is unique. Are these like floaters on a football field like 35-80-35 in trainers? Or do you have them spike up and toe the line with a stopwatch on them?

Monday is a true speed development day. They essentially train like sprinters for that portion, doing speed drills and then sprinting the 60m, 80m, 100m or whatever they may be with long rests in between.

Total weekly mileage will sit around 35 with warm up and cool downs included. Its a lot of total 'work' but injuries are few and far between and the results speak for themselves.

How many 4:30 milers do you have on your team?

Do you do your 5x80 throughout the season? Or start them like 4-5 weeks before peak?

The 60-120m sprints are done right throughout the year, even cross country.

Mile Whisperer wrote:

The 60-120m sprints are done right throughout the year, even cross country.

That's interesting. With your elite girls, what could they run a fresh 200m in? About 26.X? I've heard rumors that young Mary Decker (14-15 y.o.) could run a low 25 200m but have never seen actual results and times.

It sounds like you have the luxury of having a mature enough team to do LSD on Sunday. That's an accomplishment in itself.

25.x is a pretty standard requirement for elite girls and I'd say 23.x for boys. A fairly typical workout will be 15-20min of threshold work and then 100m-200m build up. Recently 7 girls broke 30 seconds to finish the workout.

I've been fortunate enough to have mature leaders from the very beginning. The team culture is about being the best that you can be and slackness is not tolerated by the group. Every item on the training menu is considered important and nothing is favoured or neglected.

All it takes is one hard worker to be successful and then you can build the team around them.

M-12x400 @ 65-67 for the top guys

T-8-10 miles

W-2x(1200, 800, 400) @ 3:35, 2:20, 65

T-6-8 miles

F-Race

S-Race

SRest

This week

800m/1500m group (2.10/430)

S - 60min (really staying under control)

M - 4x120m (sprint 40 float 40, sprint 40)

T - 600m,500m,400m,300m,200m w/5,4,3,2min (1.41,1.22,64,46,28) + 3x90m build ups

W - 45min

T - rest

F - 150m, 400m, 150m, 300m, 150m w/5-6min (57-58, 40-41)

S - 35min

1500m/3000m/steeple (4.30/9.40/6.45ish)

S - 60min

M - 4x120m (sprint 40 float 40, sprint 40)

T - 1600m, 1200m, 800m, 400m w/3-4min (5.10, 3.45, 2.25, 68) + 3x90m build ups

W - 45min

T - rest

F - 15min AT + 5x300m w/2min (50-52)

S - 35min