I attended a clinic with the top high school cross coaches in the country: ask me anything

Thanks Wejo for answering my questions and I promise to behave next time!! I do love these boards.

Great thread. I'm curious whether any of the coaches discussed periodization. I've always thought this was an under-appreciated aspect of training, particularly when it came to high schoolers. Did any of them comment on linear v.s. non-linear? Is mileage peaking in ~September/October and then declining or is it steady throughout the season until maybe the last couple weeks?

Thank you ;)

On our weekly all staff conference call on Monday, Wejo was raving about the clinic and the core work. He said something along the lines of, "I could have been so much better if I had done all the drills and not gotten hurt. Your guys didn't do drills at Cornell either."

I laughed and said, "You clearly are forgetting how great JK (John Kellogg) is and what we did at Cornell. I think you did pretty darn good. 4th in the country when you weren't even close to best guy in your grade at our 70 person high school senior year. And we most certainly did do drills at Cornel -were you never watching practice in the 3-4 years you were living there. I prided myself on the health of my runners and don't think in 10 years we ever missed a superstar for a season due to injury. Not once."

Now maybe weights/drills would have helped Weldon avoid a stress fracture but I think having health insurance would have been an easier solution. He had foot pain for like 2 years, never had an MRI and didn't know he had a navicular stress fracture. But I think Weldon got pretty damn close to his genetic potential at 28:06.

But even if he had stayed 100% healthy for longer, how much better would have been? He ran his pr of 28:06 1 month before his 30th birthday. He improved far longer than most.

And the guys at the 10,000 who were beating him were just better than him.

2001

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 102 Abdi Abdirahman Nike 28:23.82

2 481 Mebrahtom Keflezighi Nike 28:39.64

3 247 Alan Culpepper adidas 28:49.03

4 855 Weldon Johnson Unattached 29:01.40

2003

Men

10,000m 19 June

1 Alan Culpepper USA 15 Sep 72 27:55.36

2 Meb Keflezighi USA 5 May 75 27:57.59 SB «

3 Dan Browne USA 24 Jun 75 28:03.48 SB «

4 Weldon Johnson USA 24 Jul 73 28:06.58 PB »

I mean think of it this way - how often do the BIG BIG Time talents like Meb, Rupp, etc lose to the the pretty big talents? Not very often. A 12:55 guy almost always crushes a 13:10 guy. A 27 flat guy almost always crushes a 27:30 guy and a 27:30 guy almost always crushes a 28 flat guy.

Andrew Wheating in a bad year was normally like top 8 at USAs. Half the guys in the final are having career years just to make the final;.

Now injuries really hurt him in the marathon. So maybe top 3 would have been possible as not all of the guys were racing the marathon in 2004 but I also think genetically that 26.2 wasn't his/our best event.

And then I come on this thread and see Weldon raving about this.

That made it official. Weldon clearly doesn't pay attention to me. Whenever I've spoken at HS camps, whether it was the Cornell camp the summer before I got hired there or a guess lecture, I've almost always given the same talk. "The 10 minute plan to success."

I said it's pretty simple. The average HSer doesn't run nearly enough.

Just do the following and you'll train way more than most

9th grade - 30 mins (60 min long run)

10th grade - 40 mins (70 min long run)

11th grade - 50 mins (80 min long run)

12th grade - 60 mins (90 min long run)

If you are a FL contender, you can do more. And you don't even have to run 6 or 7 days a week. It could be less when you are younger.

Rojo

PS. I'm not saying drills, plyos and weight aren't important but they are a TINY portion of it. JK's favorite joke is "Whenver you hear an interview with a guy who says he just got serious with his drills and plyos as being that's why he's super good, you know that's code words for drugs."

We did them, I just was lax about talking about their importance so maybe weldon didn't notice.I was a bit like Mike Tomlin. Chill. I felt like the Ivy league kids were already under enough stress so I let them goof off a big when they were warming up.

If I started coaching again in my 40s versus late 20s, I think I'd run a bit of a tighter ship. And in HS, where the kids aren't running very much at all, yes spend more time on it. A) There is a psychological component to it and b) It takes up time/creates a culture. At Cornell, I was looking to save their time.

PPS. I even had the famed Sage Canaday film a video him doing all of our drills as he was great at it and knew them way better than me. I should find it and upload it.

SomeRandomCoach wrote:

Great thread. I'm curious whether any of the coaches discussed periodization. I've always thought this was an under-appreciated aspect of training, particularly when it came to high schoolers. Did any of them comment on linear v.s. non-linear? Is mileage peaking in ~September/October and then declining or is it steady throughout the season until maybe the last couple weeks?

In terms of periodization, all the coaches are going to change their training to try and have the best performances at the end of the season. Most of the coaches are touching on speed stuff year round. That doesn't mean intervals but the goal is for kids to run fast.

I have no idea what linear vs non-linear periodization is. But if it's mileage dropping off linearly, I'd say non-linear.

The coaches are all doing it differently but getting their kids to run as fast as possible at end of season if possible.

Dan Iverson has cycles of training throughout the season that he progresses through.

Joan Hunter had a bullet point "avoid big tapers at the end of the season."

She also said they never do VO2 max work, never do race pace work. They do a lot of aerobic intervals that are between 8k and half marathon pace.

Doug Soles noted his TOP boys easy pace goes form 7:15-6:30 during the season and the girls 8:00-7:15.

I didn't have hear this but there's a slide from John O'Malley where he says, "people aren't generally "peaking" they are far from their actual potential but got better and have confirmation bias."

He also mentioned how they're doing speed from week one. All aspects of training are there all times of year they just vary emphasis.

Run a bunch of easy miles early in the year, and then drop the mileage and increase the intensity is not how these guys are doing it.

My general thinking is coaching are now shying away from huge tapers. Dan Pfaff told NAU coach Michael Smith there are 3 things: density, intensity, and volume and you should only try and change one in the taper.

Now some might reduce mileage and intensity but the point is you don't want to change too much. The kids are used to running a decent amount and if you completely stop that mentally and physically it can bring changes that aren't good for performance.

How prevalent is doping (the PED kind, not pot) in HS cross country?

rojo wrote:

And then I come on this thread and see Weldon raving about this.

Jonathan Dalby wrote:

Freshman year (20-35)

Sophomore (35-50)

Junior (40-55)

Senior (50-65)

A few things. If Robert thinks I'm raving about this I'm not explaining myself. I answered someones question about what the mileage is. The most important thing I want to rave about is the culture these coaches have built and how they get their kids to run a decent amount. There is more knowledge now to do the other stuff.

And I agree people who want to know what nutrition drink they should drink to be the best probably are focusing on the wrong thing. The little things matter on the margin. Many people are missing the big picture but these coaches aren't. And neither was my coach. John Kellogg and Dan Pfaff are the two guys I said were geniuses in the sport.

And the genetic stuff I understand. Doug Soles have 40 boys under 5 minutes in track for the 1600. Amazing.

I was trying to talk to him and others and find out if they could "coach" the 35th kid to become the #5 kid. And pretty much it was my impression it doesn't happen over a season. And it's still unbelievable that the 35th kid is going sub 5. But if you want to have a top program you need the 15th guy pushing the 10th guy, etc.

I'm really into training efficiently. I want to come up with training hacks for working Joes. I don't think high school kids need 2 hours of training every day to be great but if they've got the time I don't see why they shouldn't use it.

Wejo:

This has been fantastic. I enjoyed the article about how you got better after college. In many ways that was me as well. However you have out-done that with this story.

Thank you,

waltertompatton

Great summary of the key points in training Weldon. I'll add:

- Joan Hunter said LV did 55 miles the week they won NXN, so not much of a drop in mileage. And they don't do Vo2max work, which I was shocked to hear, but next weekend Tom Schwartz is speaking in Boulder - info coming soon - and I'm sure he can explain.

- Dan Iverson is on a 9-day cycle with the normal Mesocycles and phases you would expect. 7-day cycle in the summer. I found this really interesting. He got this from Scott Christensen, Stillwater MN and one of the lead instructors for USATF Coaching Education.

- John O'Malley has kids running 40m all-out the first week of practice ( I think practice started this week). Don't overlook this - this element of training, an element that is there for most of the top programs, gets less attention than it should. Coaches know they need to develop speed, yet how many truly have a speed development aspect to training, let alone a day devoted to speed development? Remember, you can get in the speed development as part of the warm-up before race pace work - or before Special II endurance day. You can definitely combine those. And they're fun for the athletes; running fast is fun, even if you're not particularly good at it.

- Dan Iverson talked about the "seeing God" workouts and how they do those in the summer, not during the season. Great moment where he talks about 60 x 400 in Once a Runner and how he loved reading that, but wouldn't do it with his girls.

Excited to share the videos in a couple of weeks.

TheBusinessOfRunning wrote:

What was each coaches staple workout and also the most important thing they attributed to their programs success

Every coach that spoke is featured on HighSchoolRunningCoach.com. All but Joan Hunter have shared their training documents and done an interview for the site; Joan will be featured in June.

To get the document with the key workout for each coach, join the email list and it generates an email that has the links to those documents. It's good stuff.

How do they know they are training at half marathon pace? Do they run a half marathon to determine that?

I also say BS to never doing VO2 max work.

Jay Johnson wrote:

And they don't do Vo2max work, which I was shocked to hear,

Really? I'm pretty sure that there is a Flotrack video of the LV team doing a workout of 1K threshold repeats.

thought I saw this wrote:

Jay Johnson wrote:

And they don't do Vo2max work, which I was shocked to hear,

Really? I'm pretty sure that there is a Flotrack video of the LV team doing a workout of 1K threshold repeats.

Threshold is not VO2max. He means 3-5k pace. They do Tinman training - lots of CV workouts

Remember they run plenty of vo2 workouts during the season, they just happened to be called races.

Jay Johnson wrote:

- John O'Malley has kids running 40m all-out the first week of practice ( I think practice started this week). Don't overlook this - this element of training, an element that is there for most of the top programs, gets less attention than it should. Coaches know they need to develop speed, yet how many truly have a speed development aspect to training, let alone a day devoted to speed development? Remember, you can get in the speed development as part of the warm-up before race pace work - or before Special II endurance day. You can definitely combine those. And they're fun for the athletes; running fast is fun, even if you're not particularly good at it.

I had to leave early to get to Houston missed this and would like to know more about it. I saw it in the slides and just glancing was like "why would they run 40 miles the first week of practice all out." Make no sense. Ha ha. 40 meters for speed development. Still interested how it's done. I wouldn't have run very fast but maybe that was my problem. Are there like sets of these.

As for the Joan Hunter VO2 max, that's what you said and the pace of intervals matters. Just because you're running 1000s doesn't mean they're hard or at V02 max pace.

She said the first time she coached high schoolers she wasn't as good a coach and pretty much would do mile repeats if I remember correctly thoughout the season.

waltertompatton wrote:

Wejo:

This has been fantastic. I enjoyed the article about how you got better after college. In many ways that was me as well. However you have out-done that with this story.

Thank you,

waltertompatton

Email me if you want

or post here. I'm curious what you like so much about this article.

The article he's talking about is this one:

You did it! You figured out the secret!

Did Soles say anything about how he has a practice that long without major pushback. I feel like anything over 2 hours and kids are coming up with a million excuses why they "have" to leave, even dedicated ones.

Culture. Everyone in our program understands that to be the best we can be it takes that amount of time. You see the key is they aren't bought into my goals, they are bought into their goals. Athletes will waste your time, but they do not like wasting their own. A group of people 100% focused on their goal doesn't care about the time it takes. The time becomes irrelevant. It takes what it takes to get the job done. It isn't about me or the rules or the time. It is about getting the job done.

If you are struggling to get your athletes to do something, it is because they don't have or value the vision that is set for them. Start there.

Doug

Do any of the coaches run with their teams-and are any of them still journeyman runners-say sub 18 5k if they're 40-or are they heavyset and carrying clipboards.

wejo wrote:

I was trying to talk to him and others and find out if they could "coach" the 35th kid to become the #5 kid. And pretty much it was my impression it doesn't happen over a season. And it's still unbelievable that the 35th kid is going sub 5. But if you want to have a top program you need the 15th guy pushing the 10th guy, etc.

I'm really into training efficiently. I want to come up with training hacks for working Joes. I don't think high school kids need 2 hours of training every day to be great but if they've got the time I don't see why they shouldn't use it.

John Kellogg told me that coaching is worth 5 seconds per mile. Like a really good coach can get a 4:10 guy to compete with a 4:05 guy but he can't get a 4:15 talent to compete with a 4:05 talent. That's why recruiting is so key. Mark Wetmore didn't win any NCAA titles when he was at Seton Hall.

It happens in all sports - if you want to win - you have to chase the talent (at the collegiate level certainly).