Free Training Archives - Page 2 of 3 - High School Running Coach

Greg Weich Q&A – Audio and Notes

Greg Weich has accomplished a great deal in his coaching career, coaching five different Footlocker Finalists, including Katelyn Kaltenbach, who won in 2003.

Greg now coaches at Broomfield High School and his teams are consistently in the hunt for state cross country titles.

What follows is Q&A with Greg recorded a few years ago at the Boulder Running Camps. You can listen to the audio, or, at minimum, read the notes below.

Thanks Greg for your time, not only during this interview, but also for being part of Season 1 of HSRC.

NOTE: The following audio will be in a future episode of the Run Faster Podcast, which also features many HSRC coaches.

Download – Greg_Weich

When Do You Individualize Programs for Athletes and How Do you Do It?

Greg gives an specific example of a CU runner demonstrating elite tendencies during his junior year in high school.
Greg discusses extending a foundation period of training to prep for a specific meet at a certain location.
Greg describes how the traits of motivation, personal goals, and skill set for each athlete will dictate the specific customizing of workouts.

How Has Running with Athletes Helped Your Program?

He describes himself as an intuitive coach and how it is important to get athlete feedback as you run with them.
On a run with athletes you can use cues such as breathing, mental readiness, physical readiness as a coach to determine the execution of that day’s workout.
Running with athletes permits you to determine which athletes should work harder and which should ease up.
Athletes typically give the coach a little more respect or understanding if they know he/she can do the workout too.
Coaches running with athletes help build culture as motivation for the program

All of the Foot Locker Finalists Were Obviously Successful, What Were Their Strengths and Weaknesses and How did You Address Those?

It’s enjoyable to coach athletes that are students of the sport, most high achieving athletes are highly motivated and passionate about the sport.
Being highly motivated can be a gift and a curse during high school training for athletes (lack of rest).
Some common strengths of high achieving athletes are having a large aerobic engine and having a high capacity to train daily.
Some common weaknesses of high achieving athletes are not knowing when to back off, listen to your body, and rest.
Having an athletic background is an important and unique criteria for success in distance runners.
Transitioning from High School to College running can be a challenge for high achieving athletes that rarely lose in the High School setting.

[Read more…]

by Jay Johnson

Jeff Boele – Key Workout

I would say I am pretty vanilla when it comes to assignments. We tend to do the same things over and over from week 1 to the state meet. I guess I look at training from a specific work capacity perspective. Meaning, how are the different assignments increasing and supporting the specific goal race(s)? Volume and intensities will progress and cycle in and out throughout the season. I do my best to use KPIs (Key Performance Indicator/Inhibitors) of the event and the individual to dictate what is included in a program.

We are always doing a bit of everything – easy runs, tempo runs (what some might call steady state or Daniels’ marathon pace), AT, LT(choose your “threshold” terminology), 10K, 5K, 3K pace, mile pace, hill work, time/effort based fartleks, progression runs, high neural demand sessions (like a sprinter), daily ancillary tasks that range from body weight general strength to resistance training with weights.

With that disclaimer, here is a workout that fits well for our setting in Lyons, CO. We can literally run uphill less than a minute from the school. I call it “Hills and Track.” It’s just that, some faster work on a hill or hills and then some kind of harder running on the track. I initially put this in during the early track season to offer variety because of the amount “track only” work to come. The athletes really like it, so now we do it year round in both cross country and track and almost at all points in the season.

Here are two versions of the workout: [Read more…]

by Jay Johnson

Rob Murphy – Key Workout

The Alta Run

Distance: 6.5 miles and up depending on the number of campground loops.

Pace: “Survival Pace” going up. As fast as they can maintain without stopping to walk. As close to 5k race pace as possible on the run down – allowing gravity to do much of the work.

Every Thursday throughout the summer, we meet at Alta Ski Area for “The Alta Run”.

The run begins at an elevation of 8,500 feet and proceeds along the base of Alta Ski Area to what’s called The Summer Road. It’s a ski run in the winter. From that point, the run climbs about a thousand feet over 2.5 miles. This is some stressful running – especially early in the summer when the kids aren’t acclimated to the altitude. Our best runners struggle to maintain 9 minute pace. At the top of the Summer Road you reach the campground at Albion Basin. The entrance to the campground is 3.25 miles from the start so if runners turn back here, they have a 6.5 mile run – almost all uphill for the first half and almost all downhill on the return.

Our fit runners are encouraged to run “campground Loops”. The campground has a 2/3 mile rolling loop so each time you complete a loop you add 2/3 mile to the 6.5 mile run. Fortunately there’s water at the campground. We’ve had runners add as many as 10 loops but the general idea is to make this an 80 to 90 minute run.

On the downhill return runners are encouraged to approach 5k race pace for about 2 miles. I think the fast turnover on tired legs is really beneficial and the dirt road makes for less impact than doing something similar on pavement.

Unlimited chocolate milk at the bottom.

by Jay Johnson

Mark Lacianca – Key Workout

The Workout

Cruise Intervals – 6 x 800, 8 x 800, 8 x 1000 (depending on the age and fitness of the runner)

I prefer the cruise intervals over the tempo runs for most high school runners; it is a great team building workout and the workout is set up for everyone to succeed.

The Summer

Prior to the first time our team runs this workout, there is a slow summer build-up of mileage. This workout is not attempted until our team has maxed out our minutes of running.

The Varsity Workout

Our top runners will run 8 x 1000 with 40 – 62 seconds of rest. The different rest allows us to run our top 7 – 10 runners together, and gives the runners some flexibility to adjust their practice based on how their body responds. We are fortunate to have a grass campus with some room to run, and our track is circled by our cross country course. The breakdown of the 8 x 1000 workout is the first six 1000’s are on the course, and the last two 1000’s are on the track (standing recovery between all intervals). All of our workouts are “waterfall run” — run slow to fast, meaning that we always run our final intervals at a greater speed than our initial intervals.

The Specifics [Read more…]

by Jay Johnson

John O’Malley – Key Workout

Workout Concept: Deep into the competitive season, we have hopefully developed all facets of strong running: a variety of energy systems, neuromuscular abilities and connectivity, biomechanical efficiencies, and mental patterning that coordinates with these efforts. This workout enables you to key into your specific goal pace on specific goal terrain with desired goal mental responses. It follows the law of specificity—when you get closer to your goal performance, mimic the demands of that goal as much as possible. The workout affords us the ability to work on running cohesively, developing our psychological phases of a race, and becoming powerful—when you are self-aware, then you are powerful. You are prepared and you trust in yourself.

This is a demanding psychological and physiological workout. Consequently, I develop the components of this throughout the season through a variety of psychological and physiological practices. Each prior workout has a psychological and physiological momentum, and we attempt to pattern that toward desirable outcomes. I think this results in our runners having truly elite psychological approaches and responses to the competitive environment. Our psychological systems uses: running journals, reflecting on choices and “habit loops,” creating mantras and effective self-talk, interpreting internal and external feedback, experiencing failure, while our physiological plan parallels the mental approach by providing a challenge that requires the psychological goal of the workout.

Workout: [Read more…]

by Jay Johnson

Charlie Kern – Key Workout

Key Workout: 6/6/5

This is a 3 mile continual run on the track at 6:00 pace for the 1st and 2nd mile, and then the athlete attempts to get to 5:00 or faster for the 3rd mile.

Goals: Pace judgement, pace changing, aerobic & anaerobic stress, building confidence

Explanation:

Pace judgement: This is a workout for more mature athletes who can handle running 6:00 pace with little difficulty. Often times when we tell a kid to run a particular pace, they will get it wrong. They go way too fast, or they go way too slow. This workout helps athletes to learn to run a particular pace in a consistent manner. I run with the athletes and call the split, providing feedback at every 200. While running the 6:00 pace, athletes will feel very relaxed for the first few laps and have to fight the temptation to go faster. This helps with the pace judgement goal. Inside every race there is the temptation to do more than is necessary at that particular stage. Athletes easily sabotage a race because of their lack of discipline.
Pace Changing: By the end of two miles at 6:00 pace, aerobic fatigue has begun to increase; enough fatigue has set in that the goal of running 5:00 becomes a significant challenge.
Aerobic to anaerobic stress: At the start of the 3rd mile, the athletes now have to increase their intensity, but once again, must exercise pace judgement. The pace increase mimics the change in pace that occurs at the “moment of truth” found in every race. When the real race occurs, can I match the move? The athlete must be prepared for such an eventuality.
Building confidence: Confidence is achieved when the athlete is able to meet the 3rd mile goal of 5:00 or faster.