Article on Doubling for Distance Races

From Miller:   After your first race, part 3 is especially helpful......See me if you have questions..The article comes from Coach Jay's newsletter....Here it is:

One of the biggest questions coaches and athletes have during the track season is what to do to properly warm-up when the athlete is running two races. Great question! 

After they finish the first race of the day, the athlete should take 10-15 minutes until they feel mostly back to normal. They can choose to jog for 2-3 minutes, though this isn’t necessary. What is necessary is the following mobility work, to ensure their body is ready for the next race. If you don’t know what the following exercises are simply read the entire to learn how to access videos that show each exercise. 

1. Quick Mobility Routine

•  Iron cross x 10 – do this a bit slower than normal 
•  Low whips x 5 each leg – again, do this a bit slower than normal 
•  Groiners x 5 each leg 
•  Reach under/up x 5 each side 
•  Cat-Cow x 5 cycles 
•  Stand up and do side bends – 5 for each side. 

That’s it! Now it’s time to hydrate, and depending on the length of time until the next race, possibly refuel. 

2. Adjusted Jeff Boelé Warm-Up for Doubling

For 20m, do the following:

• Skips w/ arms forward 
• Skips w/ arms backward
• Skips w/ arms crossing 
• Skips w/ twist 
• Backward walk w/ reach 
• Backward skip 
• Butt Kicks
• Side Jumping Jacks
• Carioca

Now move to a wall or fence…

• Leg Swings – front/side
• Hurdle Trail Leg – forward/back 
• Eagles
• Side bends – L/R

Move to the ground…

• Camel/old horse
• Cat/Cobra
• Reach under/up
• Fire hydrant
• Donkey kick
• Low whips 

Finally, for 10m…

• A March
• A Skip
• A March
• A Skip

We’re doing the A march and skip twice, and taking out the B march and skip, for two reasons. First, we need to get focused for the race, and doing a technical aspect like skipping is great. But the hamstrings may be tight from the first race so we’ll keep those out. That said if the athlete never has hamstring issues you can replace the second A march and skip combination with B march and B skip.

3. Strides

Athletes can do a 5-minute jog, if they want to, but this is not necessary. After they put on their spikes, they’ll run:

1. 2 x 150m In-n-out with middle 50m at 92 percent, 94 percent.
2. Strides at goal pace:  

•  1600m: 2 x 100m with a run-in at goal pace.  
•  3200m: 2-3 x 100m with a run-in at goal pace. 
•  800m: One more 150m In-n-out at 96 percent. You could possibly do 80m from a standing start in lane 6, 7, or 8 to replicate the start of the race, but that’s not necessary.  
•  400m: 1 x 150m In-n-out at 96 percent, for an older athlete. Make sure there are several minutes between the end of this rep and the race.

Following the race, you’ll repeat the Quick Mobility Routine.

“So where do I find all of these exercises?”

You can get Jeff’s Warm-up by joining my email list and selecting "High School Coaches" as one of the emails you'd like. You'll automatically be sent the 2-page PDF with the warm-up.

You'll get a second email that allows you to log into CoachJayJohnson.com and view Jeff's warm-up and all the SAM videos on your phone (or computer or tablet). 

Also, you'll want your athletes to join my email list too so that they get access to the videos, which they can reference at practice, on their phones. Click here to join.

Distance Workouts 2021-2022

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Why Easy Days? How do I run them

 In order for you to benefit from easy days, you must do the hard days correctly. This article is mainly for varsity runners, but everyone can learn that sometimes we run too slow and many of you run easy days too hard (You know who you are)

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EXTERNAL] Why are easy days necessary?

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Jay Johnson via m.dripemail2.com	5:51 AM (4 hours ago)
to roger.miller

**CAUTION: This email originated from outside Douglas County School District. Use caution and judgment in responding to this message.**

Hello!  At this point in the season your kids are racing AND doing hard workouts. Point number nine from Consistency Is Key is Do Your Easy Days Easy and Your Hard Days Hard. Simple enough. And something so many athletes fail to do.   Below is one of the most popular newsletters from last fall that explains the importance of easy days. Enjoy!  Why Is An Easy Day Necessary?   I’ll make this quick: the detailed answer is in the book. The short answer is rooted in Dr. Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Principle, which says that the body can adapt to a stressor—in our case, a workout or race—so long as the body is given enough recovery. So, the stressor, followed by rest/recovery, leads to “supercompensation.”    You may be familiar with the Stress + Rest = Growth equation that Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg shared in their book Peak Performance. Same thing – and probably easier to remember.    Again, if you want more detail check out my book.   Prioritize Strides, Posture and Mechanics, and SAM   You likely know that your athletes need to be doing strides on their easy days. And you’d like your athletes to run with good mechanics on their easy days. As Joan Hunter said in her interview for the Consistency Is Key Coaches Course, “I want my athletes to look like Olympians on their easy runs.”   Athletes need to do SAM (or similar) after each easy day.    When you combine these three elements, you can now organize the day.   First, figure out the volume of strides you want them to run, and figure out the intensity. If you want 6 x 150m In-n-Outs, that’s at least moderately challenging. Doing 10 x 100m is always a challenge, especially if the strides get faster as you go. The Oregon Drill, which is clearly described by the legendary Pat Tyson in this article, is another way to get in some faster running. (Note: I didn’t know what the drill was until last night. Thanks to the coach in Michigan for taking the time to send the article!)   Key Point: Figure out the volume of the strides you want first.  Next, figure out how much SAM work (or similar) you want them to do today and figure out how much time you need for this.   When you’ve done those two things, you simply need to explain to them that on an easy day they need to be able to speak in paragraphs. I received several questions about the pace of easy days and how to know if you’re running easy enough, and as long as they're speaking in paragraphs they're fine. Or, said another way, athletes should be able to tell jokes and stories on these runs. If they’re talking in paragraphs, then there is no reason they can’t check in a few times during the run and ask themselves: “Am I running with good posture?” or “Am I running up tall?’” You’ll need to teach them what it feels like to run with good mechanics, and a good place to start is with the Oregon Drill I linked to above.   Can They Run Too Easy?   Sure, there is a way to run with great mechanics and run 10-minute pace. But that’s item Z on your list of things to focus on.   You likely have kids who want to be excellent runners, some of whom are Type A. This simple concept – that you need to run your easy days easy – is going to be a hard one to grasp. They're wired to want to run at least a medium/moderate pace. Elite athletes and some collegiate athletes have such a high work capacity (due to their greater training age) that they may need to do that, but your kids simply need easy days where they are talking in paragraphs.   Now, let me share some quick answers to the questions I received.   What pace should I run? Don’t worry about pace; just run at a pace you can speak in paragraphs. And if you’re alone, talk to yourself for 30 seconds as a check-in.   What’s the point of doing easy days? It’s in the book, but again, Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome is the underlying physiological principle.   How do you know what is your easy pace? Any tips? It's not a pace, and what’s interesting is that even if you did track the pace of properly executed easy days over the course of a few months, you’d see wide differences in pace. A topic for another day (and another point in the book) is the crucial skill of running by feel. When you run by feel on easy days when you’re extremely fatigued, you’ll likely be running slower – but with good posture! – then your normal easy day.   I hope your team is off to a good start. If you have a topic you’d like me to cover in the coming weeks feel free to respond to this email. Take good care.   Jay

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Fartlek

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End of Season Awards

 Hello Team and Parents

I know our season ended 3 weeks or so ago. There are a number of developments in trying to plan an end of season event. We also need to collect uniforms and say thank you for a season this year. I want you all to know how proud we are of your efforts in running as well as following the COVID restrictions. 

For weeks, we have tried to imagine an event in person that we can hand out certificates, letter awards and special recongnition. We have tried very hard, but with new restrictions it is not possible. I have checked with other schools who have done this virtually. 

I know this is not ideal, but I think we must be safe and follow what is smart, even though it is not ideal. We have adapted as best we can and I know we can continue to move forward with positive intent!

I am not sure of details yet, because we have never done this before! We are looking at November 10th as a date, but nothing is finalized at this time. I just wanted to keep you in the loop

I can imagine maybe juniors want to do something like a video or senior "gift" recongrition etc.

I will be asking parents to send any pictures to Coach Peterson and we will try to make a simple slide show to be posted and shown on zoom and on website.

We will have more info by the end of this week. I am waiting on our awards to be completed and we will figue our a way to present these to each of you.

Uniforms can be dropped of to Coach Miller in F102 before Nov 10th OR to the office in a bag with Mr Miller's name on it.

You will hear more from me soon

Good Better Best!