Thank you for taking some questions from the Colorado Coyotes Youth Running Club. Can you first tell us about yourself, your background as a runner, and your coaching career?
I grew up in New York and New Jersey and went to high school in the southwest corner of Connecticut. I started running because my family had just moved for the 13th time and I didn’t know anyone in the new town. A girl asked me if I would go out for the cross country team with her during my freshman year of high school in order that she would not be the only new girl going out for the team. I didn’t even know what cross country was, but I said yes because I needed to make some friends.
I showed up the first day in jeans and high-top sketcher sneakers, expecting it to be like “syllabus week” where you just get to know everyone the first day and review the season plan, but don’t do any actual work yet. Come to my surprise, light-up sneakers and skin-tight jeans or not, I was asked to run four miles on day one, through which I got lost, and the team captain had to come back and find me. It was a rough start. I was drawn to the team and the coach, whose militaristic approach and high expectations were something I needed at that point in my life. I was one of the worst ones on the team and those initial races, I couldn’t finish a 4k cross country race without stopping to walk a few times mid-race.
I ran every day that summer, sometimes twice a day, and came back my sophomore year to discover I had gone from being the worst on the team to the best on the team and ran my way into all-state positions. I quickly learned that in this sport, you get out of it what you put into it. By my senior year, I was determined to compete at the NCAA Division I level and learn from some of the best in the sport, as well as being pushed by them too. I wanted a coach that would let me run both cross country and track collegiately, as my track 400m/800m marks were much stronger comparatively than my 4,000m cross country marks.
The courses in New England are incredibly hilly, and Connecticut is a smaller state so you can run slower times than the rest of the country but be ranked fairly high in the state and have a disillusioned view of where you actually rank compared to the rest of the nation.
Trained as a 400m runner who stepped up to the 800m in high school, and only having raced the mile a handful of times, always doing standing recovery between intervals, highly explosive weight room training, lots of hills, and lower mileage volume, I was in for a huge culture shock when I transitioned to Florida State’s distance training that included some monster workouts that freshman season, such as 6 mile- long-continuous workouts of alternating mile repeats with jogging recovery in-between each.
I loved my time at Florida State. Tallahassee is often called Trail-a-hassee and has some of the most beautiful training grounds around. We were one of Bob Braman’s first recruiting classes when he took over that program, and Bob taught us to always be students of the sport as well. He used to have team meetings and would give us handouts from Jack Daniels pyramids and teach us about exercise physiology once a week. He imparted a love of teaching. So many Florida State graduates have gone on into coaching and that’s because Coach Braman does a phenomenal job imparting his passion for the sport to those he works with, and you graduate retaining that passion and love of the sport.
During our two week break between seasons when coaches would tell us to take time away and not think about track, I would come back the very next day to the track and tell the coaches I didn’t want to be away from it for two weeks, that I loved it too much. Coach Jackie (Richards) would hand me a stopwatch and appoint me as her assistant coach for those two weeks and allow me to learn from her while she guided the sprinters during that time.
Unfortunately, despite the best intentions of the coaching staff, I incurred a lot of injuries my freshman and sophomore year, ranging from frequent bilateral tibial stress fractures, having jumped from about 15-20 miles per week in high school to 45-65 miles per week my freshman year of college.
In my junior year, I struggled with anemia and vitamin D deficiency, amongst subluxations of the spine and hip malalignments. It was a long road before I got back to my high school times before I started breaking through them and earning personal best marks again. My senior and super senior year, our head coach (who was also our distance coach for the men and women) hired in a women’s cross country and distance track coach (Karen Harvey) and she transitioned the team from having a huge injury percentage at any given time to practically having zero athletes injured for the entire year, and catalyzed everyone’s performances and motivation by leaps and bounds.
It really opened my eyes to the influence and effect one person can have on the same group of athletes and the same level of talent before them. The FSU cross country team went from being ranked in the top 30 in the nation to 4th in the nation in one year, and my teammate (Hannah England) ran the NCAA 1500m national championship meet record that year as well.
When I graduated FSU in 2008, 25 of my teammates went on to compete at the Beijing Olympics representing a plethora of countries (ranging from Lacey Janson, USA, pole vault to Walter Dix in the sprints to Susan Kuiken for the Netherlands to Barbara Parker in the steeplechase to Hannah England in the 1500m), etc.
There were also many of us who graduated feeling we had unfinished business, and wondered what if we had benefited from Coach Karen Harvey for four to five years versus just our last year—what could we have achieved? Regret is extremely painful—looking back now, I also saw that my perfectionism hurt me and that my late nights of no sleep fighting for a 4.0 GPA and insisting on trying to repeat my high school patterns of being involved in multiple clubs and groups left me stretched too thin collegiately.
From being a sponsorship chair for Relay for Life to FSU’s SAAC (student-athlete advisory committee) representative for the track team, I had a habit of taking on too much, never sleeping or resting enough, and as a coach, I look back and see that I didn’t fully grasp how to set myself up for success or how to focus on one singular goal versus ten at once.
I think that everybody deserves to have their shot and to have peace and calm around the question of knowing how good they can be and what they can achieve or what marks they can accomplish if they have a coach that fully believes in them and invests their entire selves and souls into their journey and if they, too, as an athlete and human can fully invest in themselves to meet their coach half-way to see what they are capable of.
I absolutely loved the sport and was driven to coach others and desperately wanted each of my athletes to be able to graduate from the sport and feel calm in their hearts that they were given guidance in every possible category—nutrition, sleep, injury-minimization, sport science, sport psychology, tactics, race strategy, strength and conditioning, and more—and that if they chose to, they were able to see what they were capable of when fully believed in and provided individualized focus. I think everyone deserves to have their moment and to pursue mastery over this beautiful, phenomenal sport, and grow motivated by that process.
I learned a lot from being a sports journalist for Trackshark.com through the years, interviewing coaches and athletes alike, along with being a medical assistant for sports doctors in Colorado, working at the (then) best retail run-technical store in the USA (Boulder Running Company when it was owned privately by Marc Plaatjes and when Henry Guzman was the store buyer). I pursued every professional development opportunity I could, ranging from strength and conditioning certifications to sports psychology and movement science scores. These experiences furthered my background as a coach and strengthened what I could offer my athletes.
How have you and the team been handling the COVID-19 situation? I assume most of your runners went home, did some stay in Las Vegas to train?
About 2/3 of the 45-person track and field team has gone home to live with their parents. The track and field squad halted their technical training and followed a strength and conditioning protocol issued through the Train Heroic app for the remainder of the track and field season. The distance and mid-distance squad kept training and I was able to administer that training via a shared excel google document, individualizing that training based upon where each athlete went home to and what training resources they had there and what training culture/environment they were in.
A few parents were uncomfortable with their daughter training during the initial few weeks, and of course, all training was optional and not mandatory. One of my athletes in Philadelphia staying with family hasn’t been able to run at all, whereas others in more rural parts of Colorado, Hawaii, Vermont, Virginia, and California were able to safely run socially distanced from anyone else, and maintain that aspect of both mental and immune health within their routine, as well as stay engaged towards longer-term goals.
The ones that stayed in Las Vegas included a combination of athletes who perhaps held jobs they wanted to stay working with while others, such as athletes from Europe, were concerned about the ability to return in August to start masters programs or be back in time for the cross country season if they went home, as travel protocols further out were unpredictable.
The university had shut down completely including facility closures, and all classes were transitioned to online learning. The athletes received continued support throughout the semester from their athletic trainer, a sports psychologist, nutritionist, academic advisors, and more through platforms such as Zoom and of course, phone/face-time. We had weekly team meetings via zoom to stay connected as a squad under the leadership of program director Yvonne Wade, who was an Olympian for team Japan and All-American for the University of Colorado, Boulder. Coach Yvonne would also invite former UNLV track and field/cross country alumni to join the zoom team calls to tell their story and share where they are now, ranging from athletes who are newscasters and media announcers to those who just graduated law school despite tons of adversity faced while being a student-athlete.
During those team zoom meetings, the team was also presented to by the University team doctor where athletes could ask any questions they had about coronavirus in order to dispel myths and distinguish fact from fiction, as well as they could ask sports supervisors and even their athletic director, who sat in on a few calls, about policy changes through the quarantine. It provided a lot of transparency in order to calm those athletes with high-anxiety and kept them connected to each other as well.
What’s it like to coach cross country and distance runners in Las Vegas? I’m guessing the heat becomes an issue during the cross country season, but the mild winters make it easier for students to train during the winter? I’m guessing you practice in the morning?
Las Vegas weather is perfect for distance runners from about that first week of October through the end of April, early May, which is the majority of the NCAA cross country and track and field season, ranging from 45-65 degrees in the morning when we train to about 75 degrees mid-day, and cooling off in the evening once the sun goes down.
June through August is pretty brutal! Extreme heat training, extreme humidity, extreme dry training, and extreme altitude training all provide perks to training and challenge an athlete both mentally and physically—but all take a period of adaptation and adjustment, and need to be met with informed decision making on how to execute training design protocol through it.
In the fall we practice during that 6 am-9 am time block, and in the spring, while I stagger different athlete groups on hard workout days, it’s mostly 7 am-11 am during the indoor/outdoor season. I think people forget that UNLV is in the mountain west conference for a reason. We can get to 8,000 feet high altitude trail runs in deciduous forest in a 45-minute drive from campus. We can drive 20 minutes and be running in mountain foothills on undulating terrain the whole way. Around campus, there are tons of parks we use during the week, but Friday/Saturdays we drive a bit further out and really take advantage of the training resources we are surrounded by.
I also assistant coach with professional elite coach Brad Hudson. Brad used to be based out of Colorado and I’ve known him for years and have worked with him plenty in the past. He is based out of Texas now and guides Rogue Running down there, but he has a team of post-collegiate marathon-specific athletes (Las Vegas Gold) that train out of Las Vegas, that I assistant coach and oversee, and a few whose training I guide completely (1500-5k runners). For the marathoners’ long runs, I’m biking alongside them and they’re taking fluids every 3-4 miles, and alternating between water and an electrolyte source like Maurten or body armour or Gatorade. They’re taking carbohydrates before 60 minutes, and I’m offering ice cubes or frozen grapes or splashes of water on their hats or over their backs sporadically across a run. It’s hot for sure, but when training is implemented in a smart way, it’s very doable.
That group includes Olympic trials qualifiers in the marathon on the men’s and women’s side, and there’s a huge triathlon training scene in Las Vegas as well. Those athletes can have success out here for a reason—there are great training grounds out here for distance runners.
UNLV does not have a men’s cross country or track program, how long has that been the case? I noticed that University of Nevada added men’s cross country in 2018, do you think UNLV will be able to add men’s cross country at some point?
Unfortunately, none of the state schools in Nevada offer men’s track and field, and UNLV has never offered men’s cross country or track and field. University athletic directors can choose to balance 75 scholarships on a football team and basketball roster numbers however they like. At some universities, it’s by offering a women’s swim and dive team but not a men’s, at others, it’s with golf and tennis programs. At UNLV, it happens to be by having a women’s track and field and cross country team, but not a men’s.
I do not think UNLV will add a men’s cross country team in the near future—they would have to add another women’s sports team first in order to balance the gender numbers by the add.
There is some great talent in-state and I’ve loved creating strong relationships with those high school coaches who feel comfortable to call and ask for guidance in helping their top male athletes continue the sport who simply want to pick my brain about where they ought to consider and what factors they might take into account. UNLV doesn’t have to have a men’s program in order to provide guidance to high school coaches and support their encouraging athletes to stay in the greatest sport around (our sport).
Looking at your roster, UNLV has a large team, 32 runners listed on the website roster. I’m thinking this is higher than most D1 schools, does that mean you’re more flexible with the additional runners than other programs? When you travel to meets, how many runners do you typically take?
We don’t actually have 32 athletes who are actively training to race a 5k/6k. It’s actually quite common for 400m runners to include a 20 minute run in their training regimen during base phase and pre-season. Last year program Director Yvonne Wade partnered with a few charities to host a Color Run on-campus in order to fundraise for great causes. Our whole team participated in the weekend event, and all of our 400m runners finished the 5k road-race. Many 400m athletes will often do things like participate in a cross country race during the pre- season, or do hill work with our distance squad, but aren’t actively training to race the 6k at conference ever. Some of the 400/800 group is actively training to eventually race a 5k/6k in cross country well, but others simply train from a strength background but my plan for them long-term does not include blazing a 6k but might need to incorporate the hill work. This upcoming cross country season, our current plan includes four pre-season meets with no squad size limits to the race fields, which provides lots of opportunity for athletes to step up.
With that said, a coach’s job is to both challenge athletes and push them outside of their comfort zone, and balance that with building confidence. Part of that happens in the selecting of where an athlete opens up for their first 6k race experience—it has to be a strong fit for building that athlete and empowering them based on where they’re at in their development process.
For next year’s roster, there’s about 15 athletes that I would categorize as 1500m-10k runners, with the rest as 400m/800m athletes. Of those 400m/800m athletes, four of them have become pretty darn proficient at running cross country, and have made monumental improvement each year in that area, whereas the others thrive may train with the squad, but not necessarily even want to ever race a 6k.
I’m very picky with who I accept onto the team from a culture standpoint, and with who stays on the team with regard to a culture standpoint. You become like the five people you spend the most time around. Athletes ought to feel safe within their tribe as well versus threatened. Being around people who want to work at a high level and who can be happy for the success of their teammates is also critical. An athlete has to be a culture fit to earn a roster spot at UNLV. A coach also always has to balance the roster between athletes who are ready to score points at the conference, regional, and national level right away, and those athletes who are still developing to those levels. Who they recruit and allow a roster spot on a given year always has to do with keeping that in balance, and on who else may have just graduated out from the program and who is coming in the following year.
With your Colorado ties, I was surprised you didn’t have more women on the team from Colorado. Do you still follow Colorado high school running and keep in contact with your connections, especially at a powerhouse school like Niwot?
I’ve been coaching at UNLV since mid-September of 2018. This means that fall 2019 saw my first incoming recruits which included an athlete from Colorado along with athletes from Vermont, Hawaii, Nevada, California, Alabama and Virginia. My incoming class for 2020 includes multiple athletes from Colorado, along with athletes from New Mexico, California, Michigan, Utah, and Nevada. [Due to NCAA rules during covid19 on communication, I can’t list them specifically].
I follow Colorado high school running incredibly closely, especially given that I was the former Niwot high school coach, Metro State coach, Ric Rojas Running Club Coach, coached Superior Track and Field youth program under Amy Manson, Active at Altitude run camps under Terry Chiplin, the Boulder Tri-Babes, Revolution Running/ Bold Running/ Run Revolution, was an intern under the elite athlete coordinator for the Bolder Boulder 10k, coached athletes in recovery for Phoenix Multisport’s athletes training for the Bolder Boulder 10k, and more.
I was faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder, an integrative physiology academic advisor there in which I also academic advised a number of CU’s NCAA runners during that time, and a presentation coach for the real estate case competition team program. I’ve been a keynote speaker countless times for high school programs across Colorado and have coached at a number of summer running camps as well.
I’ve got a lot of roots in Colorado and have coached every level there, and am deeply immersed in multiple culture bubbles there of the sporting community—I stay in touch with many of those I coached alongside as well as competitively against with the deepest respect for their work, and follow what the athletes are doing closely. Coaches who have never coached or trained at altitude often don’t understand the value of the athletes’ performances at high altitude and how tough some of the courses can be (such as the Colorado state cross country course).
I recruit heavily from altitude programs, especially as the mountain west conference meet is held at altitude for both cross country and indoor conference many years, but also because I see how mentally tough so many Colorado runners are. That’s the nature of distance running—taking pain. It doesn’t matter how physiologically fit you are if you aren’t ready to race between the ears and if you aren’t willing to run towards the pain versus from it. A lot of Colorado athletes deal with crazy weather but also altitude adversity and tough terrain. There’s a grittiness that comes with that and I specifically recruit for that mindset and how an athlete approach’s training, how they response to failure and adversity, and how they handle when the race gets tough or what they do when an athlete goes by them that they don’t expect—that’s when character gets exposed.
When recruiting prospective runners to UNLV, what do you look for and what’s the draw to UNLV? I’m also curious as to how you view progress, do you worry about girls who were injured a lot in high school or who have not showed steady progress during their career?
I just touched on this in the last question, but their mental make-up is a coach component of what is being recruited with a distance runner, how they handle pain, their resilience to adversity in the process, and their competitiveness. Additionally, I look at how they treat referees, how they communicate with their coach, how they celebrate their teammates. Where they may fall on the leadership scale if it’s a particular year when I need to recruit in a more vocal leader or perhaps another year where I need a leader by example in the squad.
I’m curious as to the story surrounding athletes who had a lot of injury in high school—was that due to mental health, to nutrition, to eating disorders, hormone changes (birth control choices for example), to poor shoe choices, to multiple coaching changes and lack of consistency, high increases in volume and intensity simultaneously, and more. There are so many factors. An athlete who has been inconsistent doesn’t get written off or overlooked—it simply becomes a question within the process.
Understanding a past history of injury helps prevent repetition from going forward. Some of those athletes become diamonds once they can finally get a string of consistency going. In recruiting, I look for whether an athlete is truly into the sport or not. I look for if they know their why and if they’re running for them and because they love the process, and make sure it’s not a case of the parents being more into it than they are, or to do it for trying to earn parent love/approval/recognition.
I look at if they can self-motivate during time away from the team and coach, because in NCAA, there might be five weeks off from classes during the winter break or multiple months in the summer that you don’t see your coach that you go back home to train, and I need to be able to count on you to be dependable to your teammates to do the work and to exhibit honest communication about this time in order to avoid injuries and engage in planned gradual improvement across time with consistent deposits of work ethic to the body bank. I look at whether an athlete is a bully to others and assess their emotional intelligence and emotional maturity. I look at their ability to take feedback or coaching from their high school coach. I also look at who is actually coaching them and what they’ve accomplished given the training that they’d had and what level of guidance.
An athletes’ communication skills during the recruitment process also affect their recruitability. Ultimately, it’s about connection. It has to be a good fit between coach and athlete, where there’s a draw and desire to work together to achieve more out of someone than they could on their own. Trust starts in the recruiting process.
What’s your opinion on the status of girl’s high school running? Do you feel that most of the girls coming into UNLV are adequately prepared to run at the collegiate level?
From the state of Nevada, no, most aren’t. From other states, yes, definitely. The depth of high school girls’ running has catalyzed, especially after athletes like Sarah Baxter, Jordan Hasay, Elise Cranny, Katie Rainsberger, Alexa Efraimson, Mary Cain, Jordyn Colter, and more came through and inspired entire generations that followed them. They, each in their own way, shattered ceilings of what could be done and how it could look.
High school and club coaches are more educated now that a few decades ago, and/or are engaging in holistic life coaching versus simply single-season guidance for these phenoms. There are more resources now than ever before. I’ve had the privilege of seeing first-hand quality camps like those hosted by Melody Fairchild for middle and high school girls that empower, inform, and educate them and provide them both the camaraderie of their unique hero’s journey and perspective for their individual experiences for the years to come, and that they’ll have each other and role models like Mel to lean on through it, regardless of how that first year unfolds.
With that said, there is still tons of room for girls’ high school running to grow and improve. Adolescence is a time when girls’ self-efficacy, self-esteem, and ability to self-advocate can either plummet or thrive exponentially, or become stagnant by ignoring their existence. I think we can empower high school girls in this arena so that their communication skills with their collegiate coaches is stronger. I think we can help high school girls get in touch with their emotions, desires, and ownership over what they want so that they’re confident in decision-making and in choosing a program as well as a person they want to be led by from these places of strong-will and clarity.
I think athletes from low-mileage and high-mileage programs can be “ready to compete” at the division I level immediately as long as their coaches implement an athlete-focused approach for them versus event-focused, that is tailored to the athlete in front of them and their particular background and needs.
High school running programs can improve in how we advise athletes on transitioning from big fish in a small pond to a big heart in a larger ocean, de-stigmatizing “asking for help” with everything from mental health to vulnerability, and more. That’s our sports culture as a whole though, not limited to high school running, but as this is the sport’s foundation for so many youth, our roots and initial experiences in the sport matter more than ever with our first impressions.
I’ve been a high school coach before (Niwot High School and Ric Rojas Running Club) and understand the struggles of trying to provide everything to very large groups, keep the environment fun, and offer a high-level experience simultaneously. With that said, intention is everything.
Improving movement patterns and overall athleticism before adding mileage would be immensely helpful at the high school level for both genders to decrease injuries later on, because a gait that doesn’t hurt an athlete at 35 miles per week suddenly can at 55 miles per week. Equally, the sprinter or mid-distance runner that is always in the lead in high school might get away with mechanics that they could get hurt with if they over-stride in over to compete against someone faster than them. There is more information out there now more than ever, between Letsrun.com, the internet, pro-athlete Instagrams, and Flotrack Workout Wednesday.
I don’t think high school athletes know how to filter that information and extract what is appropriate or applicable to them. I think understanding that process as well as learn not to get caught up in comparison just because one is competitive is crucial during high school in order to thrive that first year collegiately.
Can you tell us about your training philosophy? What type of training are your top women doing in terms of mileage and their long run? What type of strength training do you implement at UNLV and how often are the women lifting weights?
I believe nothing is more important than team culture, and I believe in training the athlete versus the event, and teaching athletes to embody a growth mindset and pursue mastery over their sports’ skillsets as well as mastery over their own mind versus urging perfectionism. I believe in meeting athletes where they’re at—physically, emotionally, mentally—and growing them from there. Our team mantras are ohana, courage, and character. It means nobody gets left behind or forgotten—If I recruited you, I have a vision for you, I see something in you, and we are a team and it’s on me to extract that out of you. If you fail, there’s another skill set I need to give you or develop in you, failure is simply feedback. If you succeed, that’s all your glory, if you fail, we fail together.
I’m always with them vulnerable too when they race. Ohana means if a teammate gets sick, injured, has a family emergency, no matter what happens, I don’t just recruit over them or stop counting on them to be a dependable, contributing member to this team as long as they’re meeting me half-way too. Ohana means I’m not going to give up on you, and your team is your sisters and they won’t either. You’re a part of something, you belong to something, this is your tribe. Courage means a willingness to execute the plan and “win the day” for you in that particular race or workout, and being willing to put yourself out there, both in the process as well as in day-of-competition. And character is everything—who an athlete is to their teammates matters just as much as how they show up for their teammates as well as for themselves.
Athletes are always in-media-res of learning who they are better and better each year, and constantly evolving—I want them to be intentional in the cultivation of their character and improve in emotional intelligence through the years along with their mindset mastery. Especially in cross country, when you’re racing for your singlet, you race with the power of everyone who wore that singlet before you and all those that will come after—it becomes a hive mindset and you grow capable of achieving something more than you could individually. That doesn’t just happen on race day… that is nurtured and constructed through time together and over a process.
Our women’s team lifts three times a week if we don’t have a meet that week for most of the squad, some athletes twice a week. I got to UNLV in September of 2018—at that point, most of the squad was comprised of middle-distance athletes, so no one’s mileage was drastically high.
I’ve recruited in a versatile class, so now we have more depth in every event from 400/800m up through 10,000m. At past programs I’ve coached at, I’ve had athletes ranging from 15 miles per week (800m/400m) through those at 75-90 miles per week (5,000m/10,000m). It really just depends on the athlete. At the last program I coached at in Michigan, I had a pair of twins who both ran the 400 and 800m. One twin would run 45 miles per week and was an NCAA runner-up, could solo-lead a race through prelims in the 800m and split 2:07 by herself, third at cross country conference, 4:40 on a DMR mile leg, and 56 in the 4×4, while the other twin could also run 2:10 open and 55 on the 4x4R, but was training at 15 miles per week and had come from a multi background and 300m hurdle background in high school.
They were completely different humans—one was allergic to every fruit and vegetable and her body and the immune system broke down easily and she was a 4.0 GPA occupational therapy student who stressed over every exam upcoming so I trained her extremely differently than her twin. They both had high-level success and improved a ton from their high school and early college days.
At UNLV, I’ve had a 10k runner in the 65 mile per week range along with 400m/800m runners who range from 55 miles per week to 12 miles per week depending on the athlete. I don’t like junk mileage. Athletes use their best version of their form when they’re running fast. They use their worst version of their form under extreme fatigue at the end of a long run… If I up an athletes’ mileage or increase their long run, I’m always watching what they look like finishing that long run and how they’re adapting to that increase in mileage.
I’ve had athletes who ran 45 miles per week in high school but they ran a ton of miles at 8:30-8:50/mile pace and they were exhausted through a lot of races. They come to UNLV, and I bring them down to 30-35 miles per week but they’re running easy runs off their perceived effort now at 7:20-7:40/mile pace and suddenly start hitting personal best marks in a race because I notice that, based on where they were, they couldn’t USE the strength that higher mileage had given them in a race. Just like with teaching, how fast we teach students has no bearing on how quickly they learn. The body, too, takes time to adapt and absorb training and work capacity. I don’t put all my athletes in an event group in one mileage category. Where their heart is in training matters.
A typical rule of thumb is that a long run should be about 20% of your weekly volume. I’ve had athletes who absolutely loved the long run as their favorite part of the week, loved exploring trails, or they wanted to do a half- marathon with a parent, or they wanted to do a marathon right after college—all of these factors affect those decisions. I think it’s important for athletes to keep whatever made them fall in love with the sport as an integral part of their training and get to include it sporadically across the season.
With regard to strength training, we have a mix of neural-high-demand strength (multi-jumps, plyometrics, speed and power followed by absolute strength of high weight, low or medium reps followed by physical therapy injury-minimization correctives or movement pattern work and mobility) and circuit-style, low weight, high-repetition body- building regional lifts, and then extremely explosive medicine ball work as well.
The strength work is tailored to the event they’re training for, and each athlete does a strength and movement assessment upon coming into the program, and their training design addresses their own deficiencies in movement patterns. We follow a load-load-load-explode pattern, which means that during a “down” mileage/volume week for them running wise, we coordinate the strength program to also allow them to “explode” in the weight room and test their ability to move the bar quickly comparative to their body weight and they use “tendo” units to test this and are given marks by the strength coach to hit based upon their individual needs.
Their strength training partners with their run training which means recovery days are just that, recovery. We might do some medicine ball core or some general body strength that day, but that’s about it. Hard days are hard—they’ll have a workout in the morning and then come back at 2:30pm for strength in the weight room. That way their brains are getting consistent messaging on what adaptation the body ought to make within the same 24-hour period.
With regard to strength, we really focus on the efficiency of movement patterns and form. Our strength coach (Heather Farmer) has a background as an NCAA soccer player, comes out to watch them run often, and understands their movement patterns, but more importantly, she understands their personalities and their communication needs. She is sassy and fun with them when needed, but also drives accountability and discipline when mandatory as well. She can read their energy and knows what they need or what level of sarcasm they can handle on any given day—her executive communication and ability to deliver honesty and feedback in a way that is received well because they have a strong foundation of respect with her already is her primary leadership strength. She and I get along very well, and I’m strength certified as well, so it helps that we can speak a common language as we communicate about how the athletes’ workouts went in the morning so that she can adapt anything she needs to for their afternoon strength session. If I tell her, hey, we raced on Saturday, so and so still looks tired on Monday, they were up all night Sunday finishing homework, etc, so I pulled them from the original session and had them fartlek on effort, or hey they are exhausted, can we adapt, she’s great about that and knows how to adjust so that they leave that session feeling more confident and energized than when they went in. Your strength routine and goals in there should match up and align with what you’re trying to do on the track or on the cross country course or else your brain gets confused. We are a program that implements speed year-round versus just sprinkling it in at the end of a periodization, even if that speed is in the form of power sleds, explosive med ball work, plyometrics, or hills during an early-season phase.
Lastly, what are your personal goals and teams’ goals for the next five years?
Our track and field team finished first at Mountain West Conference championships in 2020 and 2018 indoors. In 2020, I advanced four of my 800m athletes from the prelims to the finals at indoor conference championships, and my 800m athletes went 1-2 in that final. Our DMR took 6th.
Next indoor I want to advance more than four 800m athletes from the prelim to the final, and for more than three of them to score, as I know they can. I want to put an athlete on the podium in every distant event in the Mountain West Conference, and produce more Olympic Trials qualifiers, more USA junior qualifiers, more regional and national qualifiers than past years in a wider range of events, and break a lot of school records.
The cross country team has finished last or second to last in recent years. I improved the team a few places last year, and our goal includes to continue improving each year in our conference standings at cross country, especially as the roster depth has grown to include 1500m-10k specialists in addition to 400/800 specialists, and especially as they’ve bought into the vision with pack-running and my upper classmen juniors this year really ran like upper classmen and I was so proud to see that.
I have individual goals for each athlete that I coach and a short-term as well as long-term plan for each that is flexible despite that the long-term goal does not change. We want the world to recognize that Las Vegas is a prime training ground and culture for distance running and there’s no better way to prove that than with success metrics and by showing up on the day. I have a very hungry team and group that is into the sport. That matters a lot and I can’t wait for them to feed off each other’s energy in-person this fall.
