Mark Popp started teaching and coaching at Wayzata High School (which routinely has around 100 HS boys participating in Cross Country) in 2008, shortly after graduating from North Dakota State University.  He assisted the successful and highly-regarded Bill Miles for seven years before taking over the program in 2015. In the last three years, Wayzata has won the State AA MN Championship twice and advanced to Nike Nationals each year, finishing 14^th, 10^th, and 11^th.  In 2015 and 2017 respectively, Jaret Carpenter (4^th) and Khalid Hussein (10^th) were NXN All-Americans.

In the spring, Popp has coached sprinters since 2011, where his athletes have earned All-State honors 17 times in the sprint relays and 9 times individually.  This year, he will continue to hand off distance coaching duties to Eric Jahn and Brandon Heebink, both of whom assist with the Cross Country team in the fall.

Key Workout

Cruise Intervals (Threshold)

One of the staples of our training at Wayzata is Cruise Interval training.  We incorporate this a little bit in the summer in order to add a little quality to our base training.  Running mostly on feel in the summer, our boys will build to 2 x 12’ at threshold effort with a 2’ recovery.  During the season, we try to get between 7k-9k worth of threshold in over the course of a workout.  The intervals themselves can be as short as 3:20 (roughly 1k) or as long as 10:00 (roughly 3k).  The running surface might be the track, the roads, or dirt/gravel paths, depending on the conditions. In early to mid-September, we try to get a 4x2k workout in.  We have 2k loop that is about 1200 of winding gravel path, and 800 of a paved residential street.  Our time target ends up being the same as a Cruise 1000s track workout from week 1…but due to the more challenging running surface and turns, slightly shorter recovery ratio, this workout is more demanding.  [Read more…]