Few people leave on a road trip without knowing where they are going. Most people use a map or maps on their device to help them get there. Similarly, coaches and athletes benefit from specific goal setting during workouts. I don’t believe it is enough to tell an athlete, “run 70%”. What does that mean? As a coach I give specific goal times to runners for each and every workout. The athlete’s performance is then recorded on the workout goal sheet.

On another article on this site, Determining Training Paces, I discuss my adaptation of Dr. Jack Daniels VDOT training system. This provides specific goals for each athlete in each workout. Those goals are based on the runners’ current level of fitness. As you will see in the sample, I write the goals down ahead of time and provided to the runners. Coaches, injured athletes or others then record the times actually run by each athlete. The results can then be analyzed, and future goals can be adjusted accordingly.

I regularly emailed or posted the workout goal sheets showing the results of the workouts. This helps athletes be accountable. Hopefully it inspires them to do their best.

Sample Workout Goal Sheet

The post WORKOUT GOAL SHEETS appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

When planning for the State Meet, a cross country coach needs to do several things. First, study the race results for past years. Note what race times it takes to get to the State Meet from your qualifying races. In California this would be the section finals. In some of the ten California sections there is also a preliminary race. Second, study the race results for each of your seasons scheduled races. You will be working backward, studying each of your races until you arrive at the season opening race. The point of this exercise is to understand what your team must do each week of the season to place themselves in contention for the State Meet. See this spreadsheet https://coachrunwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/State-Meet-Goals.xlsx for an example I used with my team for the 2018 season. It is based on the results of the 2017 season when we did make the California State Meet for the sixth straight year.

What to consider in setting your goals to get to the state meet?

You as the coach need to be clear about how much you can progress from meet to meet. Each race is different. There may be different terrain and different weather. The weather of course can vary year to year. What you are trying to do is to realistically determine the times your team needs to run at each meet. Look at results of past races. What do they predict about how one week will compare to the next?

Setting up the workouts to achieve your goals of getting to the State Meet

Once you have established your season long, race by race goals, plan the workouts that will get you there. In Chapter 3 of my book, Coach, Run, Win, I explain how to plan your workouts from end of season to beginning. I also provide complete day to day explanations of the workouts used by our team in 2017. In the book, I explain my adaptation of Dr. Jack Daniels VDOT training system. This allows for very accurate, science-based predictions of how workout results translate to race times.

The post Planning for the State Meet appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

Establishing a strong base of miles run in the summer prior to a fall cross country season is an important precursor to sucess. I have discussed this principle in Coach, Run, Win and in other articles on this website. Summer Workout Plan I believe that a good practice for any high school cross country coach is to keep track of the summer miles athletes run.

There are several reasons for this. First, if you as a coach, are requiring attendance, it is a good record keeping device. Second, you may require runners to run a certain number of miles to be on the team or qualify for special camps. Keeping track of summer miles ensures accuracy and accountability. Third, requiring and documenting miles run has a defensible safety and preparedness aspect. Athletes are more likely to be injury-free, safe and healthy for the first race if they have logged the required base of miles.

How to Keep Track of Summer Miles

I am including a sample of a worksheet I used to document summer miles run. As you can see, it includes daily totals, weekly totals and a comparison with previous years for veterans. Daily totals include any warmup and/or cooldown. Additionally, the “other” column is where I logged miles run away from team practice. Often in the summer, athletes had work, school or vacation conflicts. I believed that as long as they were getting the miles in, I wanted to document them.

The post Keep Track of Summer Miles appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

This article presents an overall approach to setting up and implementing a summer workout plan. https://coachrunwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Summer-Workout-Plan.xlsx The examples here were for a high school cross country team. At a team’s Newcomers or pre-summer meeting, establish clear guidelines establishing your expectations as the coach. Explain how much you want athletes to run. Indicate how far and how fast they should be running. If you will have requirements for how much they need to participate, make those clear.

Rules Considerations for participation in the summer

Make sure you understand any rules that your school, region or state may have regarding participation in the summer. These vary widely across the country. As a coach, you need to then communicate these clearly to athletes and parents both newcomers and veterans. For example, I was not allowed to lead practices for a prescribed period early in the summer. Athletes could organize and meet on their own. Usually, captains would set this up without my direction or participation.

Tryouts and the summer workout plan

If you as a coach are going to use summer participation as a criterion for team selection, make that clear. If you are going to hold tryouts during the summer workout plan, make sure you have made the standards for selection clear. I did not hold a tryout. What I did, was to “require” a certain minimum participation in terms of practices attended and miles run. I coached females primarily and found that there were too many examples of athletes who developed over time. Had I implemented a tryout, they may not have made the team. I would have lost the chance to have valuable contributors to the team. Additionally, many of them would have missed out on a great opportunity to be a part of the program.

The post Summer Workout Plan appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

For a Fall Cross Country season, begin in the summer with the earliest workouts, recording distances, times, and paces for each athlete. Once you have two weeks of workout recorded, begin to individualize the workouts. Use my “Training Paces on One Page” table 1. It is my adaptation of Dr. Jack Daniels Table, “Training Intensities Associated with Current VDOT”.

TABLE 1 training paces based on vdots

Jack Daniels wrote Daniels Running Formula, in which he presents his VDOT system. Dr. Daniels is a renowned exercise physiologist and coach. He measured, tested, and studied thousands of runners over many years. His research combines heart rate, VO2 max, and other measurements of fitness to arrive at his VDOT system. His scientific studies provide an accurate way of telling athletes how fast to run in any given workout. This maximizes their individual development. Daniels’s work has taken the guesswork out of determining at what paces athletes should run. Instead of saying, “run at 80 percent” or “run hard”, it is possible to give each runner a specific pace that matches their current abilities.

For more on Dr. Daniels and VDOT calculation:Jack Daniels’ VDOT Running Calculator | Run SMART Project

How to individualize and determine training paces

After you have gathered the initial data about distance, time, and pace, find the average pace of those runs in the E pace column on my “Training Paces on One Page” table (Table 1). Then look to the far left and find the VDOT associated with that pace. This is the athletes initial VDOT. Do this for each athlete. Continue to record data for all subsequent workouts and adjust the VDOTs as training progresses.

For any given workout, from long run, to tempo workout and speed sessions, find the pace indicated for a given workout by simply looking at the VDOT and moving across to the workout column. For example, an athlete, with a VDOT of 50, doing Tempo 1000’s, look under T paces 1000. The pace indicated is 4:14. I would prepare a goal sheet for a workout, with each runners’ goals listed. Record the results and use to adjust VDOTs and goals for future workouts.

The post Determining Training Paces appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

The tempo run has been THE workout in my training system. I attribute much of our teams’ success to this one workout! Tempo runs occur weekly for 8 to 10 weeks, beginning around the sixth week of the 23–24-week season cycle. You may see this workout done in a variety of ways; two-mile intervals, one-mile intervals, or 1200-meter runs. I prefer 1000 meters. 1k is a very manageable distance both physically and mentally. As a result, it can be done in a fairly confined area making it easy for the coach to monitor. I would have runners start with 3-4 of these with 1 minute to 1:30 minute rests. The ideal rest is 1 minute. Eventually top runners complete 8-10 of these.

Pace for the Tempo Runs

This is where they science comes in. Dr. Jack Daniels, Running Formula explains the science behind the tempo run. I adapted his key charts into one page for ease of use. The chart shows how to pick out the correct paces for most runs including these intervals. The tempo run is about 24-30 seconds over 5k race pace. The rest between each interval is short to prevent full recovery. That is the desired training effect as explained by Dr. Daniels. These workouts are usually done on Monday.

Purpose of the workout

The purpose of the tempo run is to increase the anaerobic or lactate threshold for runners. That is the crucial barrier between when a runner goes from aerobic running to anaerobic (without oxygen) running. Done at correct paces as indicated in the chart, this workout results in runners who are able to race faster and longer but still not become depleted. This workout usually proceeds race pace speed work and allows those workouts to be done at faster paces with less rest and more volume.

For additional information

Tempo Runs | Runner’s World (runnersworld.com)

The post Tempo Runs appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

Running hills efficiently is a key to successful racing in cross country. This article has three parts. A discussion of uphill running, then downhill and finishes with attitude and approach.

Uphill Running

Uphill technique has several parts. Do not bend over too far or lean too far into a hill. It causes
bad form and limits proper breathing. Try to stay upright. An aggressive arm swing is essential.
The steeper the hill, the more exaggerated the arm swing needs to be. It helps lift the legs so that
the runner does not end up with short, choppy steps. That results in a loss of power and speed.
Finally, cresting is especially important technique. That is, do not relax the effort when reaching the top of a
hill. Take two to four quick strides to reestablish a normal stride length. Otherwise, the tendency is to be in the shorter stride mode that uphill running often creates.

Downhill Running

Downhill technique also has several parts. It is important to stay balanced. This is achieved in
several ways. Land midfoot instead of using the braking motion that heel striking brings. Most
importantly, substantially increase turnover or stride frequency. This keeps the runner’s feet on the
ground more often increasing the sense of stability and balance. Finally, some experts suggest
making an adjustment with the arms. Moving them a bit wider for balance is the simplest and least
energetic strategy.

Running Hills, attitude and approach

Many studies have demonstrated that trying too hard while running uphill is ultimately more costly
in terms of energy use. This extra effort cannot be compensated for by the ease of the downhill. It is best to keep a steady effort with good technique. Make use of the cresting technique mentioned above and run downhill with an aggressive attitude. My experience with runners at the famously hilly Mt. Sac course is that really aggressive downhill running is a key to winning races on hilly courses.

see www.coachrunwin.com for more articles on running and coaching runners.

The post Running Hills appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

Long Run

This run is typically done on the weekend, usually Saturday and constitutes the most distance covered by a runner in a week. The exact distance varies by experience, conditioning and week of the training cycle. Distances go up a mile or two each week over the first half to two-thirds of a training cycle. 5k runners move from three to ten miles. 10k runners will be going from four to twelve miles.

As mentioned above, the pace Determining Training Paces is conversational and should be roughly 1:30 to 2:00 minutes over projected race pace. Heart rate-based training would indicate a long run pace in the 60-75% of maximum heartrate area. I have also used a simple method of determining maximum heartrate would be 205-.5 times age.

The purpose of the long run is twofold. It builds mitochondria cells which transport oxygen and blood to muscles. First, this process means more oxygen and more endurance. Secondly, the long run develops mental toughness and confidence.

Recovery Runs

This run is done in the minutes immediately after the completion of a hard effort like a tempo or speed workout. The day after a long run can also be a recovery run, sometimes called a medium distance run. For example, for a 5 or 10 k runner the post speed workout recovery run might be two to three miles. A medium distance run might be four to six miles.

Paces for the recovery run are often a bit slower than the long run or medium distance run since it follows a hard speed effort.

The post Long and Recovery Runs appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

Over thirty plus years as a high school cross country, and track and field coach, I was privileged that many athletes and parents sought advice about college recruitment. Deciding which college to attend is not easy. The college recruitment for a runner is unique. A recent PAC-12 cross country champion, and former California State Champion, Haley Herberg is one of those runners. Another, Carly Corsinita is currently at Oregon, and a third, Alyssa Bautista is at UCLA. So how does a high school runner decide which college to go to?

I developed guidelines for athletes, and parents to deal with college coaches during the recruiting process. I offer suggestions for the decision-making process.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO BE?

Go to a school where you want to be, even if you can’t run there. Many years ago, the top runner in Southern California, from a beach community, went to an elite program in the South. When she suffered an injury and had conflicts with the coach over training issues, she looked around and asked herself, “What am I doing here?” Make sure that the school, courses of study, culture and region are experiences you value, aside from running.

THE NATURE OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS

How does a high school runner decide which college to go to? Remember that college athletics is a business. There may be nice, nurturing coaches, and friendly teammates, but there is a bottom line. Athletes compete for roster spots in order to maintain or develop scholarships. Coaches can literally be fired if not successful. This will not likely be a warm, fuzzy, high school coach who acts as pseudo-dad or mom.

WHAT IS THE TRAINING LIKE?

Ask questions! How many miles do they run? What is the coach’s workout philosophy? Does everyone get to race? How are decisions reached about who races? Is there an “athlete only” dorm? Do athletes get priority in registration for classes? This information is important to factor.

WHO ARE YOU ON THE TEAM?

What is your role going to be, and what do you want it to be? If you are recruited, you are probably the number one runner on your team. Sometimes, high school runners are tired of being the #1 runner, who is expected to lead all the time. Often, he or she wants to be behind the scenes for a while and work his/her way up. Make sure you know what the coach’s mindset and intentions are regarding your role on the team. Are you slated to be the savior of the program? Are you going to be an important cog in the wheels of the program but not the leader just yet?

In conclusion, college recruitment is an exciting privilege. Take an active role in the process so that the next chapter of your running career fits with your goals and makes you happy. I hope this article has helped you decide which college to go to.

Here is a link to article on college coach’s view of recruitment and how a high school runner decides which college to go to.

A Guide to the College Recruitment Process | Runner’s World (runnersworld.com)

The post How Does a High School Runner Decide Which College to Go To appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.

Jeffrey Parenti of Mile Split, a national high school cross country and track and field website, interviewed Coach Sayles about his new book, Coach, Run, Win. Jeffrey clearly loved the book and asked lots of questions.  The resulting interview is extensive. Each question or topic is indicated in a sidebar according to the minutes into the interview where it appears.

TOPICS COVERED IN THE INTERVIEW

Coach Sayles and Jeffrey covered a wide variety of topics.

Included in the interview are Coach Sayles’ motivation for writing the book. He also discusses his use of Jack Daniels VDOT training system. Jeffrey and Coach discussed how to determine the paces of key workouts. Coach Sayles provides information about hydration, nutrition and cross-training. Coach discusses how to peak for championship time. Jeffrey prompts Coach Sayles to explain his mental approach to racing. There is a discussion of how to develop a championship mindset so that teams and individual runners can achieve ultimate success.

Jeffrey asks about some “tricks of the trade” like; shoe-tying and special methods to keep cool on hot days. Coach talks about his mentors. The interview also covers how Coach came to develop the system of training and racing that resulted in so much success. Coach Sayles discusses case studies of individual athletes he coached because they illustrate some of the most important themes covered in the book. Many other aspects of coaching and running are covered in this wide-ranging exploration interview. Coach, Run, Win can be purchased at https://www.coachrunwin.com

https://ca.milesplit.com/videos/502235/ken-sayles-chats-new-book-coach-run-win

The post Coach Sayles interviewed about book appeared first on Ken Sayles | Coach, Run, Win.