Key Workout Archives - Page 3 of 5 - High School Running Coach

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

Scott Bliss – Key Workout

Here is an example one of the staples of our xc training. It is kind of a combo of taking stuff from Scott Simmons book “Taking the Lead” and a workout I found in one of the running magazines done by one of the elites. We are trying to simulate a number of the things that they will experience in a race. We call it a combo workout and it includes three different training stimulus in the workout.

Warm up drills – lunge matrix, leg swings and dynamic warmup

Running warmup 15 minutes

First segment 10 minutes at tempo pace – we have a 1000 meter grass loop that is rolling that we will do this on for the full 10 minutes. We can change where we are doing this based on what we are wanting to accomplish with the tempo. This is followed by about a 4-5 minute jog down to where we will do hill repeats.

The second segment is hills and they will be determined by what race is coming up and what we want them to get out of the hills. We have a medium length stair step style climb, a shorter section with 2 hills that we call the “figure 8 hills” because they allow them to climb and then recover down to the next climb and they just keep doing them and it is basically in the shape of a figure 8 and then we have a much longer, hard hill that will do near our state meet. We again then jog for about 4-5 minutes to the last piece.

The third segment is very similar to strides to simulate the end of a race. We want them to change gears when they tired from the rest of the workout to feel what it feels like to do that when they are fatigued.

Cool down 15 minutes and any after practice work we will do if any.

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

Jonathan Dalby – Key Workout

Warm-up: Dynamic Stretching followed by 10-15 mins of easy running and 4-6 strides.

Workout: 2-5 x 1 mile w/ 800 at Tempo pace, 400m at 5K effort, 400 back at tempo. 2 mins rest between.
Followed by some short sprint work. Something like 5-6×10 sec hills all-out w/3 mins rest, or 2×80,2×100,2×120 w/3 mins rest.

Cool-Down: 10 mins of easy running followed by either light hurdle mobility and/or plyo work. Finish w/ 5 to 10 mins of dynamic flexibility. Some athletes throw on some additional static stretching if they choose to.

We use workouts like this when the kids have an important race late in the season and we are trying to maintain fitness. If the race is on Friday, we might do this workout on Tuesday. However, we have done this with only a day of rest between the workout and race w/ great results. We just had to reduce the volume a little.

The volume usually depends on the age of the athlete, and the importance of the race. Our freshman/low volume kids typically only do 2×1 mile, where the older kids can do 4 or 5. Before a race like the League Championships our older kids might do 5 of these as the only workout that week, knowing the race itself counts as the most important effort of the week. Before state or NXRSW we might only do 3 of these w/ 2 or 3 days of rest after.

The short hill sprints at the end of the workout are there to help keep their speed up. Late in the year they have already developed a nice base of speed hopefully, and the short hills are to make sure that they do not loose that.

I have found that the kids usually bounce back very quickly from this workout, and walk away feeling pretty good from the effort. As a coach, I like to watch and make sure they are not pushing too hard, especially on the tempo portions of the workout. It is important to not let the kids get carried away with this workout if you want them feeling good for an important race.

by Jay Johnson

Jamie Kirkpatrick – Key Workout

Long run with progressive finish

This workout is used throughout the year (in and out of season), but more frequently in the last 2 months of our competitive season. Generally, the workout is 10-13 miles of running with the last 2-4 miles progressively faster starting ~marathon pace working down to ~anaerobic threshold pace or a little faster. These paces are estimated based on 5K pace + 50-60 seconds per mile & 5K pace +20-25 seconds per mile. Workout is preceded by lunge matrix (thanks Jay!) and almost always followed by 4-6 100M strides and some version of strength/core/hurdle mobility.

As the season progresses, the workout moves from less structured to highly structured – mostly because there is less concern (risk) about whether or not the athletes get it exactly right from a pacing standpoint early in the season. To illustrate this – this is how this workout was executed at three points during the 2015 cross country season:

“Pre-Season” (almost no structure) – Training camp in late June

Pre-run: [Read more…]