Track & Field

Mid-Distance and Distance Runners,

Due to technical problems on my end, I was not able to get the preseason training out to you last week as I wanted to. I know that the majority of the team was set to begin last week and at least a good number of you did. I have attached the minutes sheet for the entire preseason. It is in pdf format. You will probably have to print it to be able to read it because the print is small. It was really the only way for me to give it to you in a legible way. I also have it as an excel file and will put that on the documents section if you’d prefer to download it in that format.

Please remember that all preseason training is a suggestion and not required. If you are participating in another sport over the winter, any training you do for track should not compromise your ability to be at your best for that sport.

Please remember that the weight room is open on Mondays at 4:30 and Wednesdays at 5:00. That should give you time to get your run in and then return to lift.

As for the specifics of the running: The goal is to get you to midseason cross country mileage (or track mileage if you didn’t run cross country) in four weeks. The first two weeks of running should be easy runs each day with 4×100m strides every other day. As you can see, Saturdays are long run days. You should also complete a strength circuit on Fridays. After those first two weeks, the workouts break down like this.

Mondays: After your first two weeks of easy running, Mondays will be the day that you will get some pace work in. In weeks 3-5 of your training, you will be running either 1 or 2 sets of 6×200m on the track. If you have 48 minutes or more you will do 2 sets. If you have less than 48 minutes you will do 1 set. If you have 58 minutes or more, you should also do a 20 minute warm-up instead of 10. The paces you should run for the 200’s are 5k, 5k, 3200, 3200, 3200, 1600. You don’t need to do anything faster than that. Your recovery is a 200m jog and then just roll into the next one. If you have two sets, you should run a mile in between the sets. You can do this on the track or you can just run for 7-8 minutes around the school or down Del Valle. That’s up to you guys. Starting in your 6th week of training, that workout should become a run where you include a section that you do 6×2:00 surges at about 3200m pace with 2:00 rest in between. You want to make sure that you are running as fast or faster on #6 as you are on #1. We want these to feel difficult at the end, but manageable at the beginning. This doesn’t mean to sandbag the beginning, but have a reasonable expectation of how hard you can run for 6 reps. In fact, the first time that you do this workout, you should sandbag a little bit at the beginning, because you will overestimate your fitness. Then just do better the next time. Do this until the regular season starts.

Tuesdays: These will be easy runs throughout.

Wednesdays: After your first 2 weeks, you will do speed development on Wednesdays. If conditions are dry, go to Doom Hill and do 4 reps of about 8 seconds with 4:00 minutes rest in between each. If conditions are wet, do not go to Doom Hill. We don’t need anyone falling and missing training time because of that. Just do 4×50m on the track with 4:00 rest.

Thursdays: Tempo days. After your first two weeks, you will do tempo on Thursdays. On the purple weeks, you will do tempo miles on the track. On the yellow weeks, you will go out to Patelco Park and run tempo there.

Friday: Strength circuits and easy running. After the first 2 weeks of training, you should complete 4×200m cutdown before going on your run. The first 200m at 3200m pace, the second at 1600m pace, the third at 800m pace, and the fourth one all out. You should take 200m jogging recovery after this and go for your cooldown.

Saturday-Long run.

Sunday-Easy or off.

Core-Complete Hip Hop core on Mondays, Classical core on Wednesday, and Jazz core on Thursday.

If you have questions, please ask. Otherwise, happy training and I’ll be seeing you out there.

Coach Ozzie