While many athletes identify summer training as the best time of year to make a jump in volume, general strength and overall fitness, the training that takes place between the end of the cross country season and the beginning of outdoor track is just as important. There is no reason that the summer should be the only time to make a significant jump in volume, strength and fitness.
So, what should a serious high school athlete who wants to run at a higher level in outdoor track than they did in cross country do during the winter?
I suggest the following list of Must-Do items, mantras that should be repeated weekly (if not daily) and a handful of tips to remember:
1. Easy Days Easy enough that Hard Days can reach High Intensity
2. Running by Feel (learning to interpret meaningful internal sensory data while you run)
3. DM and SAM Every Day You Run
4. Quality Drills and Striders (do it right every time and become a more efficient runner which is a better alternative than goofing off and going through the motions and yielding no positive results in your running efficiency)
5. Weekly Long Run and improving overall average pace of this run
6. Use Strength Training Exercises and Core Work to get Stronger
7. Intelligent Increase in Volume (if necessary)
8. Sleep Enough to Support Your Training
9. Quality Post-Run Stretching
10. Nutrition and Hydration
11. Have Fun, Smile, Laugh, Be Thankful, Have a Great Attitude, Encourage Others, Have Fun
Simple Ain’t Easy #simpleainteasy
Easy Days Easy, Hard Days Hard #EDEHDH
Sleep to Race Fast #sleeptoracefast
Run for Fun and Team Success and Personal Bests
Injury Free Leads to Consistency
Consistency is the Aim, not Perfection
Patience Is a Necessity
SAM Is My Friend.
Stress + Rest = Growth
Belief Comes Before Results
You can’t control the weather, but you can control becoming a better runner each day. April and May are several months away. Value the non-running work as much as you value the running work. You can’t gain fitness if you don’t rest and recover properly. Remember the equation. Growth = Mindset and Grit – you need both. You’re trying to transcend a former self and become a better version of you.
Before we begin, please make sure you’ve taken the proper recovery at the end of your cross country season. Being fully recovered from a long season – one that started in June – is key to running well in outdoor track.
What should you do?
Simple: one to two weeks of downtime. I suggest one week of no running, but include very low intensity physical activity like hiking short distances or walking the dog, riding the bike leisurely, yoga, pool walking or leisure swimming. These low intensity physical activities for short duration promotes physical recovery more so than doing nothing. Laying on the couch will only make you feel sluggish. The other side of this downtime is allowing your mind to be refreshed. Everybody is different in regard to this but for me it includes stepping outside of routine and doing things I enjoy and eating good foods and watching or reading things that inspire me as well as dreaming big. This gets me excited for the future as well as the upcoming work that is going to lead to me realizing those big dreams.
The second week of downtime depends on the person. Some may need another week similar to the first, but I suggest doing some of the same, but also including three easy aerobic runs of short duration.
Don’t say, “I’m building a base this winter.” Instead, say, “I’m doing foundational training this winter.” This is a more proper mindset towards winter training.
If you think all you should do in the winter is “build a good base,” of mostly easy to moderate paced running then you won't reach your potential come April and May. Sure, you need to get in plenty of minutes/miles to run well in outdoor track, but if you ignore strength and mobility work, fail to do striders, and refuse to do quality work followed by stretching, you will not realize your potential come April and May. Foundational training encompasses more than just running, as you’re building the foundation upon which you can add more miles and more intensity. We both agree that if you run more and run at higher intensities, you’ll race faster, but you have to lay the foundation in the winter to be able to do those two things and stay injury free. Lay a foundation of training this winter, a foundation that you can build upon as winter ends and outdoor track begins.
This one is simple, and is the core of the training for the winter. Your easy days need to be easy enough that you can gain fitness on the harder days by pushing yourself to a high enough intensity.
If you push too hard on easy days or you do not take recovery serious and fail to sleep enough or any other failed recovery pitfall then your body will not be prepared to reach a high enough intensity on the hard days to provide a stimulus to your body that will bring about any growth.
Remember this equation:
Stress + Rest = Growth
For the serious high school runner, this equation uses “stress” to mean training stress, i.e., the hard days. Rest means sleep, easy days and other recovery activities, such as pool walking/pool running, swimming, and stretching.
So what’s growth? It’s your fitness.
Completing cycles where you stress the body and recover from the stress will lead to new levels of fitness. This phenomenon, also known as the General Adaptation Syndrome, first proposed by Dr. Hans Selye, is the process underlying all sound running training.
The serious high school athlete is trying to get things just right - hard days followed by easy days - which allows them to absorb the training. Do that over the course of weeks and months and you’ll gain a great deal of fitness. Key point: you are always better off training at 90-95% of your capacity, ready to race when the gun goes off.
If you ever get to a point in the winter training months where you have let yourself get run down and feel overly tired talk to me so I can employ some easy days to help you get recovered and get your body back ready to absorb training stress.
Every serious runner is motivated to put in the hard work – the stress part of the equation. The question for the serious runner is “Am I willing to rest/recover properly to “absorb” the training?” The most serious collegiate and professional runners have no problem grinding out long runs, pushing their limits in workouts and crushing their general strength following these long runs and workouts. The best ones often separate themselves by valuing the second word in the equation as much as they valued the first.
Stress + Rest = Growth
This one is pretty simple, but one that many serious high school athletes don’t focus on.
In the summer, most high school athletes know that they shouldn’t be doing a workout like 10 x 400m at sub race pace with 60 seconds of recovery in July. They’ve done those workouts during the track season to get ready to run the 1,600m or the 3,200m, but when the race distance is 5,000m, they correctly identify that particular workout as inappropriate at that time of year. But when cross country ends, many athletes think they need to get back to “speed work” during their winter training to be properly prepared to run well at 800m and 1,600m distances, and possibly to run a leg on the 4x800m relay. While you absolutely need to do race pace work – e.g., if you’re going to run 4:40 for the 1,600m, then you have to do some work at a 35 second 200m pace, or a 70 second 400m pace; if you’re going to run 5:20 for the 1,600m, then you have to do some work at a 40 second 200m pace or an 80 second 400m pace – you don’t need to do a 10 x 400m with 60 seconds recovery in December and January. Rather, you need a steady diet of challenging aerobic workouts. Why?
Look at this chart:
Distance Aerobic % Anaerobic % Phosphagen %
800m 60% 35% 5%
1600m 84% 15% 0-2%
3200m 90% 10% 0-2%
5000m 95% 5% 0-2%
As you can see in this table, the aerobic metabolism contributes the majority of your energy when running 800m, 1,600m and 3,200m. It makes sense that you would do workouts that develop this metabolism, right? Plus, the aerobic metabolism can be developed year after year, which is why the best endurance runners in the world are typically older than the best sprinters.
The bottom line is if you want to run better in track than you did in cross country, you need to develop the aerobic metabolism. The obvious question is then, “What workouts should I be doing to build my aerobic system?”
Fartlek workouts, aerobic repeats, progression runs, progression fartleks and a weekly long run are the keys to improving your aerobic system in the winter.
The key with all of these is to make sure at the end of each workout you can say, “I could have run 5-10 more minutes at the final pace” or “I could have sped up a bit for 5 minutes if I had to.” While being able to make either of those statements will likely mean it would have been a race effort, that’s fine, so long as you can make one of those statements. Said another way, you are not running “all out.” Rather, you are running challenging workouts that are controlled; you’re running at less than a 100% effort, with a 100% effort being a race effort.
Running by feel is important all year long, but especially in the winter when you have to face typically more challenging weather days. This may include extreme cold for us Alabamians, icy days, and typically very windy and cold days, and yes some great weather days, and a lot of days in between.
Paces that you easily run on a good weather day might not be reasonable in a strong gusty and cold winter day, even though you’re fitter than you were a few months ago. You won't be able to rely on a GPS but rather you must go by feel. Running by feel is a skill. It’s not foreign to you, as you had to learn to race by feel in cross country. Tap in to how your heart and lungs feel when you’re running easy, running a bit faster, and running a hard pace. Learn yourself and it will pay huge dividends in your racing. Learn to run by feel.
This one is binary; you will either do LMLS before each run and SAM after each run, or you won’t. If you do them, you’ll decrease the chance of injury. An injury free runner is a consistent runner, a runner who can string together week after week of uninterrupted workouts. Show me a runner who has done several months of injury free running and I’ll show you a runner who is ready to race well, and likely PR.
Distance running is a game of incremental steps forward; consistency is our goal.
Consistency in training is the key to running PRs each season.
Dynamic Movements (DM) is the proper way to get ready for a run, and runners at all levels report that they feel much, much better when they take their first step running after having done DM before the run. You do DM before you take your first step of running.
Dynamic Movements
SAM stands for Strength and Mobility, specifically core strength, hip strength and mobility. You no doubt know you need more core strength. You may not know how important hip strength and hip mobility are; they are vitally important if you want to train injury free. So many injuries “down the kinetic chain” – knee injuries, shin injuries, plantar fascia injuries – are related to dysfunction at the hips.
Strength and Mobility
You need to do SAM after every run to ensure you have the strength and mobility to stay injury free. You do SAM immediately after your run so that you get a longer aerobic stimulus (i.e., your heart rate stays elevated, which is great as you’ve ceased the pounding on your legs, but you’re getting a significant aerobic stimulus).
The best runners in the world are doing non-running work so they can handle more volume and more intensity. It should be obvious that if, over the course of months, you can handle more volume and more intensity, you’ll PR. If you truly want to PR this spring, then every day after your run, you need to ask yourself this question: “Did I do DM before my run and did I do SAM after my run?” When you answer yes, you set yourself up to handle more volume and more intensity.
Progression of Strength Training
Body Weight → Light External Load → Heavy External Load
With this in mind, it’s important that high school athletes have a good foundation in body weight exercises. Most high school runners are muscularly weak and SAM helps them gain the muscular strength they need to not only handle more running and more intense running, but SAM also lays the foundation of muscular strength needed to progress to light external loads and then heavier external loads.
Second, the body weight work in SAM will naturally stimulate testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH). These hormones help both males and females handle greater training stresses. Again, most high school runners are muscularly weak, the general strength work in SAM will be enough of a stimulus to increase the levels of these two hormones. While SAM is important for both genders, this work will dramatically improve training for female athletes. When testosterone and HGH levels are high in female athletes, the chance of injury greatly decreases, while the ability to train at higher levels increases. It’s so important that if a girl only has an hour to train, she must make sure she has enough time to get in all of SAM, even if that means cutting the run short.
Drills and Striders are a runner's training exercises to improve their efficiency.
A more efficient runner can use less energy to run the same speed as a less efficient runner, which of course provides an obvious advantage when racing.
The challenge for the high school runner is to give these exercises the same focus and attention that is given to your quality running sessions. The serious high school runner will do so and therefore propel themselves to faster runner through flawless form and therefore greater efficiency.
Striders also provide fast leg turnover and little stress which is extremely important amidst the great volume of slower leg turnover in all the essential aerobic work.
If you want to run a solid leg on the 4x800m relay, and if you’ll be asked to run a leg on the 4x400m relay, you need your legs to be moving at those paces in the winter. Waiting until the beginning of outdoor track practice to do 400m or 800m pace work is a big mistake.
So what should you do for your strides?
Simply start with 80m-100m strides at a 3,200m pace for the first week or two, then move to a 1,600m pace for a couple of weeks. If you can do 4-8 of these, that’s a good start. Ending winter training being able to do 10 x 100m strides, with the first 4-5 at a 1,600m pace, then 4-5 at a 800m pace is very realistic. Ideally, you are able to do some work at a 400m pace.
Keep this quote from John O’Malley in mind: “Our feet are moving fast every day.” John’s 4x800m relays have run under 7:46 for the past six seasons, which is roughly 1:56 per runner. Wow!
Striders are most effectively used after a warmup and before a quality session, after a quality aerobic run, after an easy aerobic run, or even during an easy aerobic run such as 5 x 20-30 seconds at 3,200m pace with 90 seconds of recovery at the 35-minute mark of a 50 minute easy aerobic run.
This one is simple. If you want to develop your aerobic metabolism, then you need to do a weekly long run. Even milers like Jenny Simpson focus much of their training on this workout, as they know that the aerobic benefits of this workout are enormous. So many athletes see their performances flatten out, or worse, take a nosedive, when they stop including the weekly long run.
However, there’s a caveat for high school runners with the long run. You do not want to run such a slow pace that you’re shuffling and running with poor mechanics at the end of the run. For instance, you’re much better off running 60-75 minutes and running with great posture, than running 90-105 minutes and running (shuffling?) hunched over with posture you would never want to employ when racing.
To ensure you’re running with good posture, you need to make sure your fastest running comes at the end of the run or during the latter fartlek portion of the run if your long run workout includes a cooldown phase at the end.
There are many ways to do this. Simply run a bit faster for the last 10-15 minutes of the run and focus on “running up tall,” a cue that will ensure good posture (and ensure that your foot is landing under your pelvis). You can also do some fartleks of a number of minutes "on", followed by a certain number of minutes "steady", for the last 10-15 minutes of the long run. Finally, you can simply put in some 20-30 seconds strides, done at cross country effort, with roughly 90 seconds between the strides. All three of these will ensure that you’re running with good posture during your long run. Key point: you need to finish the long run saying, “I could have run another 5-10 minutes at the final pace,” or “I could have run a bit faster at the end of the run and still be training well under 100% effort.” The long run should be challenging, but it should also be controlled.
For serious high school runners, looking to separate themselves from the state's top competition then improving the overall average pace for this run is a valuable goal. This builds and demonstrates great aerobic strength gains and the confidence to know you are strong enough to out battle physically and mentally your top competition come race day.
Many high school runners wrongly assume that the only way to improve between seasons is to bump up the minutes/miles in their running. That’s incorrect.
A runner who simply replicates the volume and intensity they did in the fall for several months will, come outdoor track time, have gained enough fitness to run a modest PR.
Obviously, you want to be significantly fitter, but it’s important to acknowledge that in a young athlete, who is likely growing, the stimulus doesn’t have to change much, if at all, to improve.
Consistency will help you run PRs, especially when your training age is 0-2 years (this is the number of years you’ve been training year-round, with a serious focus on running).
No doubt you want to make a jump in fitness in the winter. Remember that you are doing foundational work – you’re doing DM and SAM, you’re doing striders most days, you’re doing your stretching. Do all of these things and you’ll gain significant fitness in the winter, even if you don’t run more minutes/miles or run at a higher intensity. But yes, it’s reasonable that you should increase your training volume in the winter.
We will discuss this together (coach and runner) and if a volume increase is necessary I'll explain the process for increasing, but know that everything will be gradual and appropriate as well as monitored by myself. The way you handle the progression of volume and especially the long runs as well as recovery from day to day will tell me a lot.
Let’s keep this simple. You need more sleep. If you want to reach your potential as a runner, then you need 8 hours at a minimum, with 9 hours being the sweet spot for most high school runners. Ten hours has been shown in the Stanford Sleep Study to greatly improve performance in both basketball players and swimmers. Think about it – if student-athletes at Stanford can get 10 hours of sleep, you should be able to as well (though I acknowledge that to get into Stanford, many of them likely didn’t get that amount of sleep in high school).
At some point, you’ll have to make a choice: you may need to take just two AP classes, rather than four, to get 30-60 minutes more sleep per night if you want to run fast enough in high school to be a part of a good college team. (Note: every HS runner can run in college – it may be a smaller college and it may be a college that you’ve not considered in your sophomore and junior year, but there is a place for every high school runner at the collegiate level.) Be honest about what is important to you; running may not be enough of a priority to get in another 30-60 minutes of sleep each night. And studying for an AP class in a subject you dislike, a subject in which you have no intention of taking the test in, is not in your best interest if running is your passion. If running is the one thing in your life you go to bed dreaming about, the thing you want to do to the best of your ability, then you need to re-evaluate your daily routine and find a way to get more sleep #sleeptoracefast.
Stretching, just like DM and SAM, this one is binary as well: you either stretch every day that you run or cross train, or you don’t. Stretching post run is vital to recovery, mobility, and it’s a key to staying injury free. You can do a simple routine that is just a few minutes, or you can do a 5-10 minute routine after long runs and hard workouts.
There is also a foot/ankle routine that is fantastic if you’ve had lower leg problems, from shin splints to Achilles tendon issues. If you’re serious about your running you need to investigate active isolated flexibility (AIF) exercises and put static stretching in the past.
And just like DM and SAM, you need to value this non-running work as much as you value the running work. And it’s binary – you either do it correctly or you fail to do it.
Eat clean, meaning you simply take out processed foods and add in whole foods. You can eat the rainbow when it comes to salads – it’s not just a bowl of greens. Small changes in diet can be felt and positively impact your running. There are good studies that show the importance of getting in a balance of carbs, fat and protein after hard workouts.
Researchers simply used chocolate milk, and athletes made aerobic gains compared to those athletes who did not consume these macronutrients after their workout. With this knowledge, some of the best high school programs in the country have chocolate milk ready for their athletes at the end of hard workouts. It works. Hopefully, this is something we will be able to afford to do in the future. We are working on it.
Hydration is not only getting enough water, but also enough electrolytes. A small glass of water with a pinch of sea salt goes a long way towards keeping you properly hydrated. Coconut water is a great way to balance pH after hard workouts. Carry a water bottle to class and drink 40-64 oz. of water a day.
Smile, Laugh, Be Thankful, Have a Great Attitude, Encourage Others
Running should be fun and you should enjoy winter training, knowing that putting in solid foundational work in the winter can lead to huge team success and PRs in the spring.
Will every day be fun? Maybe. Some people like myself have learned to enjoy or at least appreciate nearly every run, workout, and long run that we do and this comes from an underlying perspective of thankfulness for the ability and the benefits I receive from doing it.
But for most runners including myself at times, there are going to be days where you don’t feel good, when the weather is horrible, or you simply don’t want to train. If that last one persists then talk to me and we'll implement some easy days to help you round the corner physically and mentally and get back to enjoying your work and your teammates.
The winter is a great time to make a jump in your training. You simply need to have the mindset that “I’m building a foundation of fitness this winter,” and then do all of the things outlined above. Simple. But Simple Ain’t Easy (quote from the iconic jazz pianist Thelonious Monk). Training will not be easy this winter. If training gets to be something you dread, then talk to me and we'll employ a solution. Training should be fun, even though it won’t be easy.