Every Day or Feet Are Moving Fast

 One of the most influential pieces of training info I've seen or read in the past year was from John O'Malley of Sandburg High in Illinois.  He says of his teams "every day our feet are moving fast".  Sandburg high has had over 30 different teams run under 8:00 for the 4x800 relay (yes, that's 4 guys all running sub 2:00!)

Does this mean that we have to sprint all out every day....NO!  That would produce injury.  What it means is that every day, we should be doing something that reminds us that we are athletes and athletes can MOVE QUICKLY and RUN FAST.

Right now, We'll take care of our "athlete stuff" through our warm up drills and easy, relaxed striders at the end of runs.  As we begin to get in better shape we'll throw in some more actual sprinting.  

Here's our series of warm up drills that we will follow for the first 3 weeks of practice.  Right now, there is only 1 day of actual FAST running, and that is just a build up to 90% of top speed. Later, we will have days with MAX sprinting, but for now, we will ease into it. 

Don't worry about doing a bunch of drills and stuff OYO....just do strides after your easy runs. 

Happy Running Everyone!

Pre-Season Template.

 I'm attaching a Google Doc of our pre-season training template I think most of you understand what you should be doing, but wante to make sure you all have access to this resource.  This is the pattern we'll follow until we get close to the start of racing season in January.   

Just to Review: 

1. Build to your previous peak mileage + 5 miles per week.
2. Two big efforts per week: A long run of 20-25% of your weekly mileag and EITHER a longer tempo run at moderate pace OR a shorter fartlek run.  Both sessions would be followed by some faster reps on the track at mile-800m pace. 
3. Do as much auxially training as possible.  At least 3 days a week you should be doing stuff like: Core, Push Ups, Lungs, Burpies, etc....  Feel free to use the circuits that are laid out on the training videos page of this blog. 
4. I will let you know what kind of mileage I'm wanting from you guys by giving you a number.  An 8 week, for example, would mean that you should run 80% of your peak mileage that week.  So, if you're peak mileage is 50 mpw, then an 8 week would be a 40 mile week. 

Things are coming around with our team and we are starting to look pretty good.  Let's keep it up. Happy running everyone!