*Emma Bourg (Louisiana) winning the 1600m state title
Braedon Methvin is an online coach for hire originally from Louisiana. He has coached runners like Emma Bourg and Brady Sins from Houma Christian (LA). Bourg went from a 20:54 5k to an 18:00 5k equivalent, and Sins from a 5:04 mile to a 10:05 two mile. His email address is bmethvin2003@gmail.com.
What is the Purpose of Training?
When coaches and athletes think about cross country and/or track and field training for a distance runner, their minds automatically go to an upcoming workout and the splits or total mileage they have to hit for the week. They may think about all the training they have done in the past few months to get them as fit as possible. It's also reasonable to assume that if an athlete has run an adequate amount of mileage and ran every workout perfectly, they should just outrun the competition every time because they are so fit... right?
Sometimes that is not always the case.
Imagine a high school boy, Joe, who has been training for the whole season to win his state championship. The athlete and his coach know he needs to be in at least 16:15 5k shape to win over the other runners in his division. So throughout the season, he's hammered his long runs at the right pace and volume, done plenty of race pace work at 5:15 pace, and even a few tempo runs where he hit every split dead-on and evenly paced-everything in his training points to his being at least 16:15 5k shape.
The day of promise comes. A cool breeze floats in the air, the sun shines beautifully, and the course is dry and firm - a perfect day for racing. The race goes out, and our hypothetical runner is stride for stride with his biggest competitor, Brian, who has a slower seed time of 16:30. Joe is confident and knows he can win. The duo goes through the first mile in 5:30. Joe thinks this is a little slow, but he knows he can run this pace. Then Brian puts in a surge in the middle of mile two. Joe responds to the pace change, but the longer the move goes on, the more taxed our hypothetical runner feels. He loses a bit of focus going into the last mile. Brian makes one final push, and poor Joe gets left in the dust. The competitor only stays about 60 yards ahead the rest of the race, and Brian crosses the line at 16:30 with Joe at 16:40. Joe is beyond upset with himself. He knows he's in better shape than Brian, so why did he lose?
Conditioning, more commonly known as fitness, is not the only determining factor in racing. Skills like cutting down are also part of the equation. Joe could hold a 5:15 mile pace for longer than Brian could, but Brian had a skill that Joe didn't, which was the ability to cut down as the race went on.
Training is the combination of conditioning the body to run fast and to work on skills to prepare your runner to run their best race in any given scenario.
The best part is that skills are as trainable as these physiological factors. We usually get the conditioning part right with workouts like 8x400m at two-mile pace and 4x1600m at 5k race pace.
One of my favorite workouts when teaching runners how to change gears is 1000m at tempo effort straight into 200m at two-mile race pace. Another is two sets of 1200m at 30 seconds slower than 5k pace+800m at 5k pace+400m at 30 seconds faster than 5k pace, all with a minute and a half rest. You can also run the last workout in reverse to work on going out fast and settling in.
Can your runner cut down as the race goes on? Can they go out faster than they are capable of and remain calm enough to race intelligently? Can they out-kick other runners at the end of a race? If you can't answer yes to all these questions, it may be time to add some workouts to teach them these things in the time we have left in this cross country season.