Winter Training for Mid Distance and Distance

Please Read: This is a good outline of what we have talked about many times before. As you transition into building up miles in December and January.....800 meters up to 5000m

Think about running by feel on your pace. This is a good resource that we have used in the past:


Runners Winter Training (800,1600,3200,5000)

Racing after the season ....OR NXR

Hello Gang....Here is a great article that came to me this week from Coach Jay. It fits perfectly and I like his use of 'race rhythm" and not  so much the  splits. This confirms a lot of what we do in our LT training already!  With that in mind, we will try to have events each month. November 9th (Weather Permitting) we will hold a 2 mile flat track time trial. This is a great time to use your cross country training and see what goals are next for the winter and spring

I know some of you will be getting right into winter sports, but nobody should stop all together. Take 2-3 weeks off then get back to some fun runs. We will have a winter program starting up after Thanksgiving. Enjoy this article. I hope you can find time to read these from time to time.

Hello, and I hope this finds you doing well.

While this newsletter focuses on things coaches and athletes can do to have a great experience at a postseason meet, the suggestions in this email are also helpful for coaches and athletes who are done with their season. For that group, simply keep this email and revisit it at the start of next year’s cross country season, making sure the following elements are in the training plan.

Race Pace Rhythm

This is a must do, not a nice to do. 

Athletes must have run race pace in practice in the weeks leading up to the most last two or three races of the season. This is especially important between the state meet and the NXR or Footlocker regional meets if the course for those meets are easier than the state meet course. There is a rhythm to race pace and athletes need to know how that rhythm feels.

Workouts can include longer reps, likes 1,000m repetitions, or shorter reps, as short as 300m repetitions. Are 300m repetitions too short? Not in my opinion -  we did 300’s at the University of Colorado to prepare for 10,000m championship races, so it follows that that 300m is long enough for high school athletes running 5,000m. 

The key is that the athletes groove the rhythm they’ll need to run in the race, if they are to run to their fitness level.

Replicate Race Distribution In Practice

This one is simple. If you want athletes to be able to go out a bit hard in the first 300m-500m of the race, then settle into the rhythm of race pace, and finish the race speeding up, so that the net race distribution is a negative split race, then you need to practice this well before the race. I know many coaches and athletes know this, and there is a very good chance that a staple workout that was done throughout the year can be tweaked to better prepare athletes for the specific task of a well-run race.

For instance, you could do 3 x 300m with 30 seconds jogging recovery, going out harder than the 5k pace you hope they’ll average during the race. Take 2-3 min easy, then do the next part of the workout, which is some work at race pace. 

The second part of the workout could be 5-7 x 500m at the rhythm of the race. This allows the athlete to groove race pace and learn to run that pace when they are uncomfortable. 

Then they Jog 3-5 min, then finish with a 1,600m where you’re running race pace for 800m, then the last 800m is split into 500m, 200m, 100m, where the athlete switches gears three times. 

Rest for 5 minutes, then finish the day with some fast strides, followed by neuromuscular work and general strength and mobility that you normally do with athletes following a hard workout.

The great thing about the workout above is that it teaches athletes to…

Speed Up When You’re Tired

You can’t expect an athlete, even one with great aerobic fitness, to know how to speed up in the last kilometer of the race if they haven’t had a chance to do it in a workout.

Learning to keep a calm mind when you’re running hard is an important skill, and one I learned from University of Colorado coach Mark Wetmore. It’s also crucial to teach athletes that when they are tired, they can speed up. And the way you do it is by designing workouts that demand that athletes speed up when they are fatigued.

This is not rocket science, but it does take some planning. And when in doubt, give them more rest between the different workout elements to ensure that they can run fast for the last part of the workout.

Note: I really like workouts that have three parts — A, B and C — where A gets the athlete into race pace rhythm, B has them doing some decent volume at race pace, and C is the crux of the workout, the time where they run race pace, then crush the last part of the workout. 

The Track May Be A Great Place To Work Out

If memory serves me, the only workout in Running with the Buffaloes that has lots of photos is a track workout at the end season. Why? Because it was done a track and Chris Lear, the author  and the photographer, could stand in one place and get a lot of shots. 

But why were we on the track for a workout late in the cross country season? 

When you’re at 5,200 ft and you want to run the race pace, getting on the track makes a lot more sense than running on grass. It would have bun near impossible to run a longer workout on grass, at the pace we’d run at sea-level, in Boulder, at 5,200 ft.

For other coaches, such as John Sipple at Downers Grove North (IL) — his boys were fourth last year at NXN — the reason to go to the track is that there aren’t dirt paths or lots of grass parks to train on near his school. The track is his best option, and obviously he’s figured out a way to make it work for his team.

Bottom line is that the control you have with the track — getting splits, helping athletes groove race pace — could make it the right place to do these end of the season workouts.