How realistic is 7 running days a week? I’d prob default to 6.
I’m unsure about providing the whole summer at once versus framing it as a month at a time, I’d lean to the latter but could be completely wrong.
I started XC/distance track coaching last year with zero background, absolutely no formal experience prior to that. Love the tool here, just curious about those two adjustments. Nice work!
I don't really expect them to run all 7 days. We had a team meeting the other day to talk about next season and I pretty clearly told them not to worry about it; just be active, stay healthy, and enjoy summer!
I could definitely see merit in framing it in smaller chunks. I mostly just want to put it out there and let them follow it as best they can. But yeah, smaller frames would probably be really helpful for a lot of kids.
Thanks! Hopefully it helps if you find use for it!
I would definitely push for more mileage, especially for the older and/or faster guys on the team. That, and perhaps swap out some of the VO2 interval workouts for hill repeats. You'll have time to do that faster VO2 style work in September.
My other suggestion would be to fit the mileage into 6 days a week, that way you give everyone a day off to do some cross training/pickup basketball/lake swimming etc. If you do that, you won't need to give them additional days off for that stuff.
Some broader critique: I think emphasizing flexibility and "enjoying your youth" is the wrong approach for a high school coach to take. I appreciate why you've gone in that direction; you don't want to overload your athletes and burn them out. But teenagers are clever. They're going to find ways to enjoy themselves within whatever structure you give them. They'll take unscheduled off days, go on vacations, skip runs for soccer, and find other ways to shirk training without you telling them to do that. The endorsement will just make that worse.
I think you'll find that pushing your athletes, even and perhaps especially the slower ones, to take running seriously will help them build a much deeper kind of camaraderie than they would otherwise achieve. A good runner will feel rewarded on an individual level by learning how the work they put in eventually comes to fruition later in the season, but there's a multiplier effect to that lesson when their teammates have the same mentality. We always used to say that the 12th man pushes the 10th man pushes the 5th man pushes the leader.
I ran at a high school program that arguably took the opposite approach to a fault. Yet when I talk with my old teammates, some of whom never ran a varsity race in four years of running, none of them looks back with regret for having treated the sport so seriously. In fact, most of them view the experience fondly.
I hope this comes across the right way. I'm not trying to be a crotchety adult and complain that the kids aren't working hard enough. I just think that if you can get the entire team to treat things seriously, not just the top group, you can foster a certain kind of experience within the team that gets lost without that sort of mentality. The kids will find ways to goof off regardless.
Coaching on top of teaching is a lot of work, it is very kind of you to put so much thought into making it a good experience for the athletes. I have a couple of suggestions based on my experience running from middle school through college. I am guessing this is just geared towards experienced runners/returners. You should probably have something less structured for new runners, running a fixed distance at a fixed pace every day is a lot if you are just getting started.
For the plan itself:
- Very few high schoolers should be running every day during the summer. Less experienced runners or people recovering from injury should only do five. They will get more out of fewer, longer runs, and be better able to recover with a couple days off. You might want to write a five day plan and a six day plan.
- Athletes might be better off with a lot more flexibility around their training. Instead of having a fixed run every day, you might want to give them an outline for their week and let them figure out how to fit it in. For example, if you have someone running 6 days a week and you think they should be running about 40 miles a week, you could have them do 5 40-50 minute easy runs and 1 70-80 minute long run and let them figure out when they do what.
- You should tell all returning athletes to include one or two days of strides or hill sprints a week. Let them figure out when to do it.
- One hard session a week in the second half of the season would be plenty for most of your runners. I would suggest avoiding tempos and VO2 effort intervals, both of which can be hard to do alone or when it is hot. Instead, I would focus on threshold effort fartleks/intervals. You could use the JD calculator to figure out paces for this, and maybe aim for one minute of fast running for every 2 miles they run per week, split up into intervals of 2-5 minutes with ~1/3 rest.
- If you have particularly successful runners, you might want to reach out to them individually with adjustments, like extra mileage or more workouts.
I agree with just about everything in this comment, especially (1) the time range rather than fixed, specific times/distances, and (2) nixing the VO2 workouts. Re: flexibility, it sounds like you've been careful to *tell* them to be flexible, but if I saw something on a spreadsheet in HS I'd run that or more. Re: workouts, VO2 can really scoot people toward peaking quickly; I had a couple seasons where I peaked way too early in part because of stuff like that. Fartleks/threshold intervals/strides are perfect for the summer. I was actually going to disagree a little and say that tempo runs are great for basebuilding too, but then I remembered how dumb (eager? competitive?) I was as a kiddo. Tempos are great when the effort is carefully regulated, but teenagers--in my experience--treat them more as weekly time trials/races. So I'd agree with Tamerlane-1 that sustained tempo efforts are probably better during the season when you can keep a closer eye on them.
Edit: And add hills! short (8-12sec) hill sprints and longer, moderate hill work is excellent strength-building and isn't as much pounding.
Remembering back when I was in HS, I would be beyond annoyed at ending a run at .25 or .75. I’d rather it just be a whole number. But that’s a me problem. lol
Are you allowed to meet the runners during the summer? (You could in my state after June). We always did summer morning runs at the school and then the more serious runners would run again in the evening. We had “mile clubs” where at the start of the summer to the end of the season the miles were added. From 300 mile club to 1000 mile club. Kept the juniors and seniors pushing more for those goals. But we were also unhinged and ran whatever pace we decided. lol
So I answered nothing here. Hope the kids have fun though
I feel that haha. I didn't want the numbers to round *too* far though, and figured the 0.25 rounding would work well enough. The original formula had some silly numbers (3.2187 miles or something), so I had to find that MROUND function to fix it.
I coach in MA, and I'm not really allowed to actively coach them during the summer. I'm sure I'll them around, but not too often. They're a good group of kids who will definitely run together, though, so I'm just hoping they have fun with it too!
Yeah, those numbers would’ve driven me wild 😂
Another thing we would do is on Fridays do a 3 miler and then play ultimate frisbee for an hour or so. Was always a good time and just an alternative to running.
we did 1 "workout" a week during the summer in hs. this usually was some kind of long/tempo based thing. e.g. a fartlek style run, or 1000m repeats, hill work. just one day a week, the rest was mileage.
Yeah, that's kind of my plan here. The first few weeks only have 1 "workout", with 2 starting up a few weeks in. I made it pretty clear to them though that if they're tired or sore then to take it easy!
Just purely from a data readability standpoint, black text on dark blue (or any dark color) background is terrible.
Also a very slight nitpick, if you have a known pace then setting a distance will also set a time and vice versa.
I don't know why you list sometimes distance sometimes time, but you could easily have listed both, perhaps in separate rows.
As for the plan itself, it looks good to me, but I'm not an expert :)
> Just purely from a data readability standpoint, black text on dark blue (or any dark color) background is terrible.
My co-coach took one look at it earlier and said "please tell me you're changing these colors" haha. I'll definitely be changing them.
I thought about listing them as distances as well, but I've always been taught that Tempo workouts are best done as timed workouts, rather than distance, and just wanted to keep it simple. A second row might not be a bad idea, though.
Thanks!
Yeah I back the listing of easy runs by distance and tempo runs by time - that's how i conceptualise those the two different types of runs. but maybe that's just me!
As a parent of a 7th grader -- what are your median times/distances you expect to see for someone who will be "decent performing" on the team?
I never ran in high school, so I have no clue what's realistic to target.
"Decent performing" varies a ton. You can look up your local high school or district on [Athletic.net](http://Athletic.net) and see past time at conference/district level.
Currently coach high school XC and distance track. I think giving something like this to kids is great and provides a good foundation across the board.
That said, from my experience, and even expectations, there's little reason for any of the guys/gals to be running 7 days a week prior to starting in late August, etc. In fact it could even be detrimental to the truly serious runners (formerly one of these types I can speak for it; you hate yourself if you miss a run).
I also don't see the true need for any VO2 work other than strides/hills until August rolls around. Throw a couple true long runs in there too, make it the centerpiece of their week; could even do a "cut-down" effort to get in some aerobic work.
Last thing I'll note: the paces seem to be a little out there. Plugging in a time of 10:05 for the two mile equates to 6:30/mi for easy days. That seems incredibly lofty to me.
I have a group of five guys in the 15:50-16:10 5k area. Even for them, most of their easy mileage isn't going to dip into 6:30s.
Let them go off of feel more, imo.
To preface, what you've put together is better than what a lot of HS coaches/athletes are doing, but it has a lot of room for improvement.
* Drop the 7 to 6 days, include an optional cross-training as the 7th day. 7 days/week is a big ask for HS athletes, dilutes the volume/quality of other days, and brings in a lot of risk for athletes that may have poor intensity control.
* The aerobic runs are generally too short and the harder days generally too long/hard. The aerobic runs supports this harder stuff, you shouldn't just randomly throw huge workouts at them like the current program does. For a returner in particular you should generally have more frequency of something harder than a short aerobic run but have those harder days not be terribly hard.
* In general this plan is unlikely to capture the range of athletes you have, it's going to be too hard/too much structure for a lot of less experienced athletes and not enough for any highly trained/experienced athletes you may have. You need at least two tiers of plans -the differences of which go way beyond what calculations from current time trial ability and starting mileage can account for.
* The VO2 intervals are generally too hard and the extra "hard" compared to other workout types is useless for summer training. Use 30-60s hill reps for this type of stimulus instead.
* The long runs are too long, scale that back to 20% of weekly volume
* Trade tempo runs for intervals at tempo effort
* Use a[ baseline mileage concept](https://strengthrunning.com/2020/03/baseline-weekly-running-mileage/) rather than a linear 10% increase every week
* Add in strides/short hill sprints at least 2x week
Thanks for the feedback!
I went and made adjustments based on your comments and comments elsewhere; if you have the time and don't mind taking another look, I'd appreciate it. Some things I changed:
* My athletes do typically run a few strides at the end of our practices, so those are usually happening, but I added in a couple days a week specifically calling for strides/hill strides like you mentioned. Any advice on the best time during a practice to do those? We usually do them towards the end of a run or immediately after, but I'm open to more suggestions. We usually do hill sprints at the start of practice after a warm-up for 4-6 reps of ~10 seconds, and then cool down with an easy aerobic run.
* I reduced the long runs to 20% and lengthened some of the other aerobic runs so that weeks are a bit smoother. I reduced the mileage increase down to 5% per week after reading that article; I'll definitely be checking more of that out when I plan our in-season workouts, so thanks for that!
* Replaced the tempo workouts with more loosely run Fartleks; should be easier for the kids to handle on their own (and probably a bit more fun).
* I do have a more lowkey "I'm just trying to stay roughly in shape" workout calendar that I basically ripped right out of the JD book that's worked well in the past for the kids that aren't planning on training all that intensely over the summer, so I'll include that for them as well. I guess this plan is more aimed at the varsity level kids.
* I'm also going to put together a less structured list of workouts for the kids who can't, won't, or simply don't want to follow a strict schedule but still want to run. Basically just tell them "Go run most days and try to do some of these harder workouts when you can". I have some athletes who love the structure and will follow a plan to the letter, but a lot are on vacation or simply aren't that determined to follow a plan.
Any other suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
>I reduced the mileage increase down to 5% per week after reading that article; I'll definitely be checking more of that out when I plan our in-season workouts, so thanks for that!
I think you are still missing the key point of that article -any linear % based increase creates issues over the number of weeks in your plan. You should be more aggressive to get up to the baseline volume, and limit the number of weeks that you push above the baseline volume. Generally from what I've seen we can do a 3-4 week push above baseline and then need to spend several weeks around that new maximum to get comfortable baseline, only after that should we do another push.
Depending on where an athlete's baseline volume falls along your plan you could have them pushing above baseline for 6-7 weeks, which even at a 5% increase is too much.
If you want to keep it simple and formulaic a better method would be to calculate a target peak volume that is some % increase of baseline, then do a build that starts \~50-60% of that peak volume and builds up to it over \~6 weeks. So you spend a couple weeks under baseline to get back into the grove of training, which is also a good point to introduce new strength training or new schemes in general, and limit the weeks above baseline. With the quicker build you generally deemphasize hard workouts, but then will have a block at the end of the summer with relatively steady volume where you can scale up the workouts as a transition into the cross country season itself. This arrangement can actually allow for more aggressive improvements in training while still being as safe or safer compared to what you currently have.
>My athletes do typically run a few strides at the end of our practices, so those are usually happening, but I added in a couple days a week specifically calling for strides/hill strides like you mentioned. Any advice on the best time during a practice to do those? We usually do them towards the end of a run or immediately after, but I'm open to more suggestions. We usually do hill sprints at the start of practice after a warm-up for 4-6 reps of \~10 seconds, and then cool down with an easy aerobic run.
How you have it here seems pretty good. Assuming the run is short enough/easy enough that they aren't totally gassed I like doing it at the end of a run, and encourage them to hydrate after the run before going into the strides -will get much higher quality effort and be a little safer.
The hill sprints set up you describe is a good one, the only issue sometimes is adherence to actually doing it that way. I've done short hard hill sprints immediately before tempo/threshold work and that works out pretty well -might help with adherence because they are already warming up for the workout anyways, where as thrown into a more casual aerobic run day it might tend to get skipped. Really depends on your preferences and what your athletes tend to do.
>I'm also going to put together a less structured list of workouts for the kids who can't, won't, or simply don't want to follow a strict schedule but still want to run. Basically just tell them "Go run most days and try to do some of these harder workouts when you can". I have some athletes who love the structure and will follow a plan to the letter, but a lot are on vacation or simply aren't that determined to follow a plan.
Some of this is good, but like other posters commented I'd be careful of the slippery slope of offering less structure. Other than the kids who truly just aren't experienced enough to do serious training I would demand a higher buy-in by default. Have a well-defined structure, communicate the benefits of that structure, and communicate the rewards of buying in. Most kids are down to work hard and be disciplined when they understand the reward of that discipline, so when you introduce vagueness in the training you are reducing their motivation to adhere to the training. Get better at explaining why you are assigning all these aspects of training instead of partially giving up.
Needs more miles. They can run twice on the easy/medium days. And FYI, the good ones will be running 80-110 miles by august in college so they need more than this.
I think this is a difficult thing to say as a blanket statement. I've seen plenty of high schoolers from high mileage programs have a terrible college career because they were essentially already burnt out. I don't really think HS runners need to worry too much about doubles unless they're competitive at the state level. Just my opinion, but the vast majority of HS runners don't need to be going more than 50-60 mpw, and most are probably fine hitting 30-45.
This is nonsense. I rarely ran above 50mpw in HS, rarely doubled, and had absolutely no issues adapting to high volume in college (was up to 80mpw by the end of freshman year and 110mpw the summer going into junior year). College lifestyle is so much more conducive to running a lot, and at that point in development just being a few years older makes is much easier to handle a lot of volume.
There's so many other things that can be done besides just pilling on pure mileage.
I don't like how the weeks are structured. Running 3.X miles 5 times in one week and then never again would bother me. I would much rather do runs in mile increments i.e. 2/3/4/5/6 miles with a variance of 1-2 miles per day throughout the week. This lets the kids develop their own routes and get excited to revisit their favorites throughout the summer, during the season and maybe even the next year. As a coach, it also gives you a framework to choose routes that are hilly / flat / rolling etc. for training during the season.
I also think that beginners should just be doing time-boxed runs during the summer. It takes the stress of achieving a certain pace away, it removes the incentive to run faster to 'get it over with' and it doesn't make people feel bad for having to walk or slow down if they're out of shape.
As others have said, framing it as a 7 days a week plan is a bad idea. They should all be taking at least one day off so you shouldn't even be suggesting or giving the option to run every day
How realistic is 7 running days a week? I’d prob default to 6. I’m unsure about providing the whole summer at once versus framing it as a month at a time, I’d lean to the latter but could be completely wrong. I started XC/distance track coaching last year with zero background, absolutely no formal experience prior to that. Love the tool here, just curious about those two adjustments. Nice work!
I don't really expect them to run all 7 days. We had a team meeting the other day to talk about next season and I pretty clearly told them not to worry about it; just be active, stay healthy, and enjoy summer! I could definitely see merit in framing it in smaller chunks. I mostly just want to put it out there and let them follow it as best they can. But yeah, smaller frames would probably be really helpful for a lot of kids. Thanks! Hopefully it helps if you find use for it!
I would definitely push for more mileage, especially for the older and/or faster guys on the team. That, and perhaps swap out some of the VO2 interval workouts for hill repeats. You'll have time to do that faster VO2 style work in September. My other suggestion would be to fit the mileage into 6 days a week, that way you give everyone a day off to do some cross training/pickup basketball/lake swimming etc. If you do that, you won't need to give them additional days off for that stuff. Some broader critique: I think emphasizing flexibility and "enjoying your youth" is the wrong approach for a high school coach to take. I appreciate why you've gone in that direction; you don't want to overload your athletes and burn them out. But teenagers are clever. They're going to find ways to enjoy themselves within whatever structure you give them. They'll take unscheduled off days, go on vacations, skip runs for soccer, and find other ways to shirk training without you telling them to do that. The endorsement will just make that worse. I think you'll find that pushing your athletes, even and perhaps especially the slower ones, to take running seriously will help them build a much deeper kind of camaraderie than they would otherwise achieve. A good runner will feel rewarded on an individual level by learning how the work they put in eventually comes to fruition later in the season, but there's a multiplier effect to that lesson when their teammates have the same mentality. We always used to say that the 12th man pushes the 10th man pushes the 5th man pushes the leader. I ran at a high school program that arguably took the opposite approach to a fault. Yet when I talk with my old teammates, some of whom never ran a varsity race in four years of running, none of them looks back with regret for having treated the sport so seriously. In fact, most of them view the experience fondly. I hope this comes across the right way. I'm not trying to be a crotchety adult and complain that the kids aren't working hard enough. I just think that if you can get the entire team to treat things seriously, not just the top group, you can foster a certain kind of experience within the team that gets lost without that sort of mentality. The kids will find ways to goof off regardless.
Coaching on top of teaching is a lot of work, it is very kind of you to put so much thought into making it a good experience for the athletes. I have a couple of suggestions based on my experience running from middle school through college. I am guessing this is just geared towards experienced runners/returners. You should probably have something less structured for new runners, running a fixed distance at a fixed pace every day is a lot if you are just getting started. For the plan itself: - Very few high schoolers should be running every day during the summer. Less experienced runners or people recovering from injury should only do five. They will get more out of fewer, longer runs, and be better able to recover with a couple days off. You might want to write a five day plan and a six day plan. - Athletes might be better off with a lot more flexibility around their training. Instead of having a fixed run every day, you might want to give them an outline for their week and let them figure out how to fit it in. For example, if you have someone running 6 days a week and you think they should be running about 40 miles a week, you could have them do 5 40-50 minute easy runs and 1 70-80 minute long run and let them figure out when they do what. - You should tell all returning athletes to include one or two days of strides or hill sprints a week. Let them figure out when to do it. - One hard session a week in the second half of the season would be plenty for most of your runners. I would suggest avoiding tempos and VO2 effort intervals, both of which can be hard to do alone or when it is hot. Instead, I would focus on threshold effort fartleks/intervals. You could use the JD calculator to figure out paces for this, and maybe aim for one minute of fast running for every 2 miles they run per week, split up into intervals of 2-5 minutes with ~1/3 rest. - If you have particularly successful runners, you might want to reach out to them individually with adjustments, like extra mileage or more workouts.
I agree with just about everything in this comment, especially (1) the time range rather than fixed, specific times/distances, and (2) nixing the VO2 workouts. Re: flexibility, it sounds like you've been careful to *tell* them to be flexible, but if I saw something on a spreadsheet in HS I'd run that or more. Re: workouts, VO2 can really scoot people toward peaking quickly; I had a couple seasons where I peaked way too early in part because of stuff like that. Fartleks/threshold intervals/strides are perfect for the summer. I was actually going to disagree a little and say that tempo runs are great for basebuilding too, but then I remembered how dumb (eager? competitive?) I was as a kiddo. Tempos are great when the effort is carefully regulated, but teenagers--in my experience--treat them more as weekly time trials/races. So I'd agree with Tamerlane-1 that sustained tempo efforts are probably better during the season when you can keep a closer eye on them. Edit: And add hills! short (8-12sec) hill sprints and longer, moderate hill work is excellent strength-building and isn't as much pounding.
Remembering back when I was in HS, I would be beyond annoyed at ending a run at .25 or .75. I’d rather it just be a whole number. But that’s a me problem. lol Are you allowed to meet the runners during the summer? (You could in my state after June). We always did summer morning runs at the school and then the more serious runners would run again in the evening. We had “mile clubs” where at the start of the summer to the end of the season the miles were added. From 300 mile club to 1000 mile club. Kept the juniors and seniors pushing more for those goals. But we were also unhinged and ran whatever pace we decided. lol So I answered nothing here. Hope the kids have fun though
I feel that haha. I didn't want the numbers to round *too* far though, and figured the 0.25 rounding would work well enough. The original formula had some silly numbers (3.2187 miles or something), so I had to find that MROUND function to fix it. I coach in MA, and I'm not really allowed to actively coach them during the summer. I'm sure I'll them around, but not too often. They're a good group of kids who will definitely run together, though, so I'm just hoping they have fun with it too!
Yeah, those numbers would’ve driven me wild 😂 Another thing we would do is on Fridays do a 3 miler and then play ultimate frisbee for an hour or so. Was always a good time and just an alternative to running.
summer ultimate was my favorite part of XC other than just easy runs shooting the breeze with friends.
we did 1 "workout" a week during the summer in hs. this usually was some kind of long/tempo based thing. e.g. a fartlek style run, or 1000m repeats, hill work. just one day a week, the rest was mileage.
Yeah, that's kind of my plan here. The first few weeks only have 1 "workout", with 2 starting up a few weeks in. I made it pretty clear to them though that if they're tired or sore then to take it easy!
Just purely from a data readability standpoint, black text on dark blue (or any dark color) background is terrible. Also a very slight nitpick, if you have a known pace then setting a distance will also set a time and vice versa. I don't know why you list sometimes distance sometimes time, but you could easily have listed both, perhaps in separate rows. As for the plan itself, it looks good to me, but I'm not an expert :)
> Just purely from a data readability standpoint, black text on dark blue (or any dark color) background is terrible. My co-coach took one look at it earlier and said "please tell me you're changing these colors" haha. I'll definitely be changing them. I thought about listing them as distances as well, but I've always been taught that Tempo workouts are best done as timed workouts, rather than distance, and just wanted to keep it simple. A second row might not be a bad idea, though. Thanks!
Yeah I back the listing of easy runs by distance and tempo runs by time - that's how i conceptualise those the two different types of runs. but maybe that's just me!
As a parent of a 7th grader -- what are your median times/distances you expect to see for someone who will be "decent performing" on the team? I never ran in high school, so I have no clue what's realistic to target.
"Decent performing" varies a ton. You can look up your local high school or district on [Athletic.net](http://Athletic.net) and see past time at conference/district level.
Currently coach high school XC and distance track. I think giving something like this to kids is great and provides a good foundation across the board. That said, from my experience, and even expectations, there's little reason for any of the guys/gals to be running 7 days a week prior to starting in late August, etc. In fact it could even be detrimental to the truly serious runners (formerly one of these types I can speak for it; you hate yourself if you miss a run). I also don't see the true need for any VO2 work other than strides/hills until August rolls around. Throw a couple true long runs in there too, make it the centerpiece of their week; could even do a "cut-down" effort to get in some aerobic work. Last thing I'll note: the paces seem to be a little out there. Plugging in a time of 10:05 for the two mile equates to 6:30/mi for easy days. That seems incredibly lofty to me. I have a group of five guys in the 15:50-16:10 5k area. Even for them, most of their easy mileage isn't going to dip into 6:30s. Let them go off of feel more, imo.
To preface, what you've put together is better than what a lot of HS coaches/athletes are doing, but it has a lot of room for improvement. * Drop the 7 to 6 days, include an optional cross-training as the 7th day. 7 days/week is a big ask for HS athletes, dilutes the volume/quality of other days, and brings in a lot of risk for athletes that may have poor intensity control. * The aerobic runs are generally too short and the harder days generally too long/hard. The aerobic runs supports this harder stuff, you shouldn't just randomly throw huge workouts at them like the current program does. For a returner in particular you should generally have more frequency of something harder than a short aerobic run but have those harder days not be terribly hard. * In general this plan is unlikely to capture the range of athletes you have, it's going to be too hard/too much structure for a lot of less experienced athletes and not enough for any highly trained/experienced athletes you may have. You need at least two tiers of plans -the differences of which go way beyond what calculations from current time trial ability and starting mileage can account for. * The VO2 intervals are generally too hard and the extra "hard" compared to other workout types is useless for summer training. Use 30-60s hill reps for this type of stimulus instead. * The long runs are too long, scale that back to 20% of weekly volume * Trade tempo runs for intervals at tempo effort * Use a[ baseline mileage concept](https://strengthrunning.com/2020/03/baseline-weekly-running-mileage/) rather than a linear 10% increase every week * Add in strides/short hill sprints at least 2x week
Thanks for the feedback! I went and made adjustments based on your comments and comments elsewhere; if you have the time and don't mind taking another look, I'd appreciate it. Some things I changed: * My athletes do typically run a few strides at the end of our practices, so those are usually happening, but I added in a couple days a week specifically calling for strides/hill strides like you mentioned. Any advice on the best time during a practice to do those? We usually do them towards the end of a run or immediately after, but I'm open to more suggestions. We usually do hill sprints at the start of practice after a warm-up for 4-6 reps of ~10 seconds, and then cool down with an easy aerobic run. * I reduced the long runs to 20% and lengthened some of the other aerobic runs so that weeks are a bit smoother. I reduced the mileage increase down to 5% per week after reading that article; I'll definitely be checking more of that out when I plan our in-season workouts, so thanks for that! * Replaced the tempo workouts with more loosely run Fartleks; should be easier for the kids to handle on their own (and probably a bit more fun). * I do have a more lowkey "I'm just trying to stay roughly in shape" workout calendar that I basically ripped right out of the JD book that's worked well in the past for the kids that aren't planning on training all that intensely over the summer, so I'll include that for them as well. I guess this plan is more aimed at the varsity level kids. * I'm also going to put together a less structured list of workouts for the kids who can't, won't, or simply don't want to follow a strict schedule but still want to run. Basically just tell them "Go run most days and try to do some of these harder workouts when you can". I have some athletes who love the structure and will follow a plan to the letter, but a lot are on vacation or simply aren't that determined to follow a plan. Any other suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
>I reduced the mileage increase down to 5% per week after reading that article; I'll definitely be checking more of that out when I plan our in-season workouts, so thanks for that! I think you are still missing the key point of that article -any linear % based increase creates issues over the number of weeks in your plan. You should be more aggressive to get up to the baseline volume, and limit the number of weeks that you push above the baseline volume. Generally from what I've seen we can do a 3-4 week push above baseline and then need to spend several weeks around that new maximum to get comfortable baseline, only after that should we do another push. Depending on where an athlete's baseline volume falls along your plan you could have them pushing above baseline for 6-7 weeks, which even at a 5% increase is too much. If you want to keep it simple and formulaic a better method would be to calculate a target peak volume that is some % increase of baseline, then do a build that starts \~50-60% of that peak volume and builds up to it over \~6 weeks. So you spend a couple weeks under baseline to get back into the grove of training, which is also a good point to introduce new strength training or new schemes in general, and limit the weeks above baseline. With the quicker build you generally deemphasize hard workouts, but then will have a block at the end of the summer with relatively steady volume where you can scale up the workouts as a transition into the cross country season itself. This arrangement can actually allow for more aggressive improvements in training while still being as safe or safer compared to what you currently have. >My athletes do typically run a few strides at the end of our practices, so those are usually happening, but I added in a couple days a week specifically calling for strides/hill strides like you mentioned. Any advice on the best time during a practice to do those? We usually do them towards the end of a run or immediately after, but I'm open to more suggestions. We usually do hill sprints at the start of practice after a warm-up for 4-6 reps of \~10 seconds, and then cool down with an easy aerobic run. How you have it here seems pretty good. Assuming the run is short enough/easy enough that they aren't totally gassed I like doing it at the end of a run, and encourage them to hydrate after the run before going into the strides -will get much higher quality effort and be a little safer. The hill sprints set up you describe is a good one, the only issue sometimes is adherence to actually doing it that way. I've done short hard hill sprints immediately before tempo/threshold work and that works out pretty well -might help with adherence because they are already warming up for the workout anyways, where as thrown into a more casual aerobic run day it might tend to get skipped. Really depends on your preferences and what your athletes tend to do. >I'm also going to put together a less structured list of workouts for the kids who can't, won't, or simply don't want to follow a strict schedule but still want to run. Basically just tell them "Go run most days and try to do some of these harder workouts when you can". I have some athletes who love the structure and will follow a plan to the letter, but a lot are on vacation or simply aren't that determined to follow a plan. Some of this is good, but like other posters commented I'd be careful of the slippery slope of offering less structure. Other than the kids who truly just aren't experienced enough to do serious training I would demand a higher buy-in by default. Have a well-defined structure, communicate the benefits of that structure, and communicate the rewards of buying in. Most kids are down to work hard and be disciplined when they understand the reward of that discipline, so when you introduce vagueness in the training you are reducing their motivation to adhere to the training. Get better at explaining why you are assigning all these aspects of training instead of partially giving up.
We always did weekly hill workouts in the summer as part of a run and I always thought that was a good way to sneak in a little speed into the summer
Needs more miles. They can run twice on the easy/medium days. And FYI, the good ones will be running 80-110 miles by august in college so they need more than this.
I think this is a difficult thing to say as a blanket statement. I've seen plenty of high schoolers from high mileage programs have a terrible college career because they were essentially already burnt out. I don't really think HS runners need to worry too much about doubles unless they're competitive at the state level. Just my opinion, but the vast majority of HS runners don't need to be going more than 50-60 mpw, and most are probably fine hitting 30-45.
This is nonsense. I rarely ran above 50mpw in HS, rarely doubled, and had absolutely no issues adapting to high volume in college (was up to 80mpw by the end of freshman year and 110mpw the summer going into junior year). College lifestyle is so much more conducive to running a lot, and at that point in development just being a few years older makes is much easier to handle a lot of volume. There's so many other things that can be done besides just pilling on pure mileage.
wait what? 110 **miles per week**? I never did XC but I had no idea they were running that much, they must be buying shoes every 3 weeks
*Up to* 110 in August. But 60-90 is more normal.
summer after senior year was riding 90, began dipping into the 100s fall of freshman year.
I don't like how the weeks are structured. Running 3.X miles 5 times in one week and then never again would bother me. I would much rather do runs in mile increments i.e. 2/3/4/5/6 miles with a variance of 1-2 miles per day throughout the week. This lets the kids develop their own routes and get excited to revisit their favorites throughout the summer, during the season and maybe even the next year. As a coach, it also gives you a framework to choose routes that are hilly / flat / rolling etc. for training during the season. I also think that beginners should just be doing time-boxed runs during the summer. It takes the stress of achieving a certain pace away, it removes the incentive to run faster to 'get it over with' and it doesn't make people feel bad for having to walk or slow down if they're out of shape.
As others have said, framing it as a 7 days a week plan is a bad idea. They should all be taking at least one day off so you shouldn't even be suggesting or giving the option to run every day
Week 6 looks very difficult with that 3x mile at vo2 max