Capillary runs are nothing new. My high school coach used to post things on the schedule like “12 miles, hard”.
The long run or longish tempo run has generally been lacking from our program because when we start practice in August, the temperatures at pretty hot. So, we’ve generally been lower volume as a team.
but over the last few years more of my kids have been buying into the process of becoming good and will do things like wake up at 6:00 on summer vacation or show up during the winter when they can leave when school ends.
So, understanding that for August and most of September, anything uninterrupted over an hour can be problematic, I’ve decided to really emphasize the longer, sustained effort type of stuff during the winter and early spring then bring it back again for most of the summer. So far, it seems to be working.
The last couple of years, our long runs have been, “just cover the distance “. We started doing the Tinman thing with throwing strides in during the last few miles this year. My kids still aren’t where I want them when it comes to their ability to do sustained tempo runs. For example, every pace on the pace chart seems easy for them except threshold pace or the slower tempo pace prescribed by Tinman.
It’s not like I haven’t been trying to get my kids to be able to float along sub LT and still feel relaxed, but we’ve got institutional knowledge that says, run your sustained runs slow and your intervals and reps fast. I came across the Timo Mostert video and showed it to my varsity guys after a workout last week. It’s way more powerful when I can show them a successful program that uses a given type of workout when trying to introduce that workout into out program.
In the van on the way home from state, the two kids I brought as alternates we’re talking about doing a capillary run the next day.
I figured I better put up some guidelines ASAP to keep my more motivated kids from killing themselves.