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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Building confidence: Confidence is achieved when the athlete is able to meet the 3rd mile goal of 5:00 or faster.

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Dan Iverson – Key Workout

The 10-mile Run

This is a staple of our summer program.  It’s a pretty simple workout — it’s a 10-mile run, after all.  We revolve our summer program around this workout.  It seems crazy simple, I know, but the beauty of it is that it is so adaptable for so many kids.

For our freshmen, it piques their interest.  We start at five miles.  For them, that’s the most they’ve ever done.  So they do it and feel pretty good about themselves.  then, we go to six miles, and seven, and eight… Obviously, we end up for the last month of summer doing 10-milers every Monday.  The freshmen get to go farther than they ever went before.  Sometimes, it’s pretty slow, but it opens their minds to new volumes of what they can accomplish.  It’s truly awesome to see our new kids see how much they can do!

For our experienced kids, we preach this as not a feat of length, but of intensity.  [Read more…]

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Adam Kedge – 3,200m Workout

Coach Kedge has shared with us one of his key workouts, a workout that he uses in the track season for his 3,200m runners.

Objective: For kids to “see” what goal 2 mile pace is.  I use this workout during the mid-season period of training to develop speed, a sense of pace, and confidence for 3200 meter runners.

Pace set up:  Athletic tape and think markers are used to place goal pace marking on the track in lane 1.  See calculation table below.  

Time period:  

  1. The workout is usually scheduled in the meat of the season as kids are progressing from mid- competitive season into early peak season.  Estimated time period is about 4 – 6 weeks from the State Track Meet.
  2. Workout is usually done on a Monday or Tuesday of an invitational week (Saturday meet)

Warm up: 

  • 10 minute warm-up run
  • Dynamic flexibility
  • Sprint drills (grass or track)
  • 2 x 50 m accelerations

Running workout-

10 x :90 seconds for distance track repeats at goal 3200 meter pace with :90 seconds walk back to 400 meter start line.  See calculation table below.  

  • Note: I usually let kids get carried away with the workout and run it on the harder edge of effort instead of completely controlling the pace – I let them “go for it” if they feel good.   

Post workout: 

  • 10 minute jog cool down
  • Static stretch

 

Modifications:

Workout can be modified the following ways:

  1. to fit a 1600 meter goal pace workout by doing 5 – 6 x 90 seconds at 1600 meter pace by taking 2:30 recovery instead of 1:30 recovery. Our middle school team traditionally does this with marker that range between 7:00 / 1600 m pace down to 5:00 / 1600 m pace.  
  2. to fit a faster or slower runner by simply extending the pace chart – calculation process listed above.
  3. to fit a 5K or 5K cross-country workout by moving to grass surface, using a wheel or GPS watch to mark distances, and adjusting to 12 x 90 second repeats.   Time markers can then reflect 5K XC goal times.  Time markers can be posted with cones. 

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