NAU and Mike Smith Training

Wasn't he coaching the hoya women when they had a great indoor season a few years ago, won the DMR. They were all pretty much toast come spring. Same coach, different athletes, maybe athletes make coaches look good.

It’s actually very easy to find what they do. Just look up some of their guys on Strava. I have an excel document with all their XC training from last year, indoor and outdoor track, and this years XC so far. Make sure you find the book Matt Baxter wrote about the 2017 championship season. Lots of info there. But basically it goes a lot like this:

Core Principles

High mileage - basically as much as you can handle. It seems to be I individualized though to what you can manage. Based on podcasts and interviews, it sounds like Day and Baxter were up around 110-120 last year, while others were 80-90.

They lift on Mon/Wed. Not sure what but I believe heavy weight low rep. They also do a ton of supplemental flexibility and strength and mobility. They do a five isolated stretching before every run.

High end aerobic focus

Lots of mileage and sub threshold running, and their speed work is in short chunks of 200-400m. I believe this to be because of the altitude they’re at. It’s more manageable this way. A traditional XC workout for them is 4x6x300 at around 3-5k pace, with #4,6 faster. Short rest between and a few minutes between sets.

I know all summer they basically alternate each week with a 4-8 mile sub threshold run / 10-15x1:00 on/off. And Fridays are 8x20sec Hill sprints as part of their run. And they run long on Saturdays right after Friday workouts. Doubles Mon, tue, Thur, fri. Medium long on Wednesday and single on Sunday.

A lot of their mileage is done very slow actually due to altitude. But they pick and choose when to hammer certain runs. I think their workout the week of Nuttycombe this week was simple 10x1:00 on/off and 4x200.

A typical week in season would be like this:

Mon: Mileage run in the morning / Easy double in the afternoon with lifting, strides, mobility, etc.

TUE: Workout...threshold or SUB T, maybe short reps. Double up as well.

WED: medium long run - 16 for the top guys

THUR: double easy runs again...in the afternoon they do 10-15 sec hill sprints on the treadmill, set at 15 percent, 10-11mph.

FRI: Second workout of the week...opposite of Tuesday, or sometimes they do harder V02 work later in the season.

SAT: long run...18-20 miles or so easy. Sometimes they’ll run this with sub threshold like 3x3 miles if they don’t have a hard workout the day before.

SUN: easy single run

He uses Daniels as the guide for paces, clearly, but doesn’t follow the training plans. Saw some crazy stuff in the track season like 40x400 and 16x1000 for the 5k/10k Guys.

Pretty cool to follow actually. Again, I have every day of their training for the last 2 years basically if you’d like more details.

It's really quite simple. Load all scholarships into distance. Get good talent and train high volume but smart at altitude. They spend they entire year in a place that world class runners go to get altitude benefits. The deck is stacked in their favor based on location and commitment to a distance program.

Han Solo thank you for posting

Yes thank you Han Solo! Could you send the document to pre.lives.in.me.12@gmail.com? Many thanks for the insight into the program.

I think his training is...

1) get a bunch of foreigners

2) don't eff it up.

He never actually develops anyone

Easy runs easy, hard runs hard pretty much. Because they truly recover on easy days, they can afford to do some incredibly hard workouts, then recover. Also high mileage, nothing too far above 100 though.

Would also love a copy!

xctraininginformation@gmail.com

Many Thanks!

Look up Tyler Day and Pete Lomong's high school times and tell me he doesn't develop anyone.

Watch the progress of guys like Luis Grijalva in distances ranging from 1500 to 10k.

It's easy to take shots at NAU because they've been so dominant the last two plus years. The natural tendency on this board is to drag those doing well down, so I appreciate those that just are trying to learn what NAU is doing to reach that level instead of just throwing out putdowns.

Naysayerrrrrrr 45 wrote:

I think his training is...

1) get a bunch of foreigners

2) don't eff it up.

He never actually develops anyone

I'm not sure this really adds up. Yes, you could call Peter Lomong a "foreigner" if you want to, but it was considered a huge gamble when Eric Heins recruited him, (some saw it almost as a favor to Lopez, who was Coach Heins' golden child right when he started coaching at NAU). Peter didn't have much more than some fast HS 800s to his name, and both Heins and Smith did a great job developing him into an NCAA top 10 cross country guy. Grijalva and Ferro were both good high school runners, but it obviously takes some good coaching to get them to the level that they ran at Nuttycombe this past weekend.

Grijalva was a stud in HS, anyone paying attention knows that.

I would love the document as well and maybe even talk some about training!

alittle716@gmail.com

Thanks!

NAU XC? wrote:

Yes thank you Han Solo! Could you send the document to

pre.lives.in.me.12@gmail.com

? Many thanks for the insight into the program.

Don't email it to him on principle because of his lame email address.

I won’t be home until late tonight, but I will get that sent out to you. Again, it’s last CC season, track, and whatever they’ve done this season.

podcast wrote:

https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2017/10/episode-59-culture-and-belonging-interview-with-nau-coach-mike-smith.html?v=7516fd43adaa

Great interview, thanks

I'll take one as well please!

eday1500@gmail.com

I'd love one, too, at girvincn@gmail.com . Thanks!

I ran a few days on the Buffalo Loop in Flagstaff earlier this year, and ran into NAU guys each time. You aren't kidding they run slow on slow days. Can confirm.