How To Ensure They PR This Year

Published February 26, 2025 

The official outdoor track season started on Monday here in Colorado. Let's go! 😀

Today I want to talk about one of the most important things you can do this outdoor track season to ensure that in April and May your kids are running PRs and running to their fitness level.

If you don't read the rest of the email, please make sure you do the following:

When you have a break in the weather and it's nice, make sure you go to the track and run a race pace workout (or a time trial).

Why is this so important?

Because in 2025, the number of meets that are going to be canceled due to weather is much higher than it would've been in 2015 and 2005.

Sure, the track season has always been more challenging weather-wise than cross-country. But if you've been coaching for five, ten, or twenty years, you know that the extreme weather that you're going to have to deal with this season is different than what you would've dealt with when you were first coaching.

You can look at this two ways.

One is that this is horribly difficult and it makes you want to stop coaching. Hopefully that's not your attitude.

The other way to look at it is that everybody in your state is likely dealing with similar weather. So, what you've got to do is simply be smarter and better at your craft than the people you're coaching against. (And yes, I totally understand that in our sport, we're coaching with, not against, other coaches, but you get my point there.)

What you want to do this year is say to yourself, "We're dealing with a tough patch of weather, but we have some good weather coming up ten days from now. I need to be smart about the type of training we do in those situations and not stick to the plan that I wrote in February."

I'll show you an example of an 800m workout you could do in the next couple of weeks if the weather is nice. But first, let me share a story from a few years ago that illustrates the point that the best coaches in the country do this.

The Art of Coaching

At the 2020 Boulder Running Clinics at the Saturday night Coaches Social that I was talking to Jonathan Dalby, the coach at Mountain Vista High School in Colorado.

He's always has exceptionally good teams, often making NXN.

His boys have finished third at NXN. His girls are the reigning NXN champions.

He also had an alumnus run 3:53 for a full mile two weeks ago, which just supports the fact that as long as an athlete has good coaching in college, they'll continue to improve.

I told him I was hoping to get a couple of days on my calendar where I could go watch their practice. "Which days during the track season are you on the track?"

His answer was, "I don't know." I responded, "What do you mean, you don't know?"

He explained that while they might have a track workout planned for Monday, if the athletes look flat during the warm-up, he'll just have them go for an easy run and a shorter post-run routine and then have them try it again on Tuesday.

This is the great example of the art of coaching.

Coach Dalby had 20 years of coaching experience under his belt when we had this conversation. He's not the type of coach who had one year of experience twenty times, but he truly has 20 years of experience.

As an aside, I think people overuse the concept of the art of coaching when they'd be better served to start with a system like my ​Track Training System ​and tweak that a little bit season after season. Some number of years down the line, truly be a craftsperson able to tweak training like this.

The point of this story is this: You've got to be flexible in your training and the training plan that you write the last week of February should be written in pencil so you don't have any problems changing it when kids look tired.

Another aside...When the entire team looks tired, you need to take responsibility that it's a result of your training. The flip side is if one or two or three individual athletes look tired, that could be a function of them not getting sleep or other variables.

So that's issue number one.

Now, if you're thinking, "That's great, Jay, but you said that when the weather is good, we should go to the track and do a track workout."

That's exactly what you should be doing. So now that you know you've got to be flexible with training, here's a workout you could do for a 800m runner.

Race Modeling When The Weather Allows

A key concept for you to understand today is race modeling. That simply means that you're going to set up a practice to replicate what you want the athlete to do in a race.

So for an 800m runner, they have to get comfortable running the same pace they're going to run for the first 200m and the first 400m of the race.

But if you have a break in the weather in the next 3 to 5 to 10 days, and your athletes haven't run any outdoor meets, you need to take advantage of this opportunity to run fast. And if they are going to be an 800m/1600m runner for you this year, they may have only run 1600s or 3200s indoors, which makes a hard 800m workout an obvious choice.

Running 800m pace and running a pace you hope they'll run in late March or possibly early April is going to be a shock to the system.

For this athlete, you could implement the following workout.

The Workout

The workout is very simple: Start with 400m at their late March/early April goal pace.

Then they're going to take a big rest, and then they're going to do a 200m at replicating what you want them to run in the race.

Then they'll take another big rest, and then they'll run the last 200m like you want them to run in a goal race.

From there, you can tack on one more thing to the workout if they're up for it.

It could be 200m where they go "Fast, Faster" or it could be a 300m where they go "Fast, Faster, Fastest."

One of the keys to this workout is they're going to have a ton of recovery in between all these reps. 

At this point in the season, they've likely got a fairly big aerobic engine and hopefully you've been following the stride progression so they've been able to run lots of hundreds and 120s and hopefully some 150s at 800m pace. But they haven't run a 400m at 800m pace, and then after they've run that, they haven't run two 200s where their legs are tired and run hard in those.

This workout might differ from what you're used to due to its extended recovery periods. Trust this!

The final point to make is they're probably not going to feel very good in this workout. Even an athlete who's been training with you all winter needs this workout as a "rust buster" workout in the same way they need "rust buster" races. And even an athlete who ran some indoor meets is likely going to find this workout pretty challenging, and they're just not going to feel very good.

But what's great is by doing this workout when you have a break in the weather, the first opportunity they have to run an open 800m or a leg on the 4x8, they're going to run much faster because they've got this workout under their belt.

It's worth noting that every repetition here begins with a run-in start. This is a small detail, but I don't think there's a reason to do a standing start with any of these because they're just not comfortable doing that yet, and we want them to simply run race pace rhythm.

The Workout

3 x 100m - first curve - to groove rhythm/pace. Walk back to the start line for the recovery.

2 min after the last 100m, then...

400m

3-5 min walking/jogging

200m

3-4 min walking/jogging

200m

5-6 min walking/jogging, with you making a determination 3-4 minutes into it if they are ready to go for one more rep

Bonus - 200m or 300m

There you have it - the workout and take-home message for the day, which is to be flexible with training and when the weather gets nice for a few days to go to the track and do a race-pace workout.

One More Story

This year I've been doing some advertising on Facebook and Instagram for the ​Track Training System​. The ad is really simple: it has testimonials from coaches who are in the track training system.

In one of the testimonials, Coach Allen says that he had a freshman run a 4:26 mile with the training system.

Facebook and Instagram ads are interesting in that people can leave comments on the ad. And somebody commented, "So every coach needs a talented freshman?"

Obviously that's not true, so I responded:

"Not at all! 😀 Coach Collins and Coach Akers have all levels of athletes, but what they have in common is that all the kids (a) stay healthy and (b) PR all season."

Coach Collins and Coach Akers were also quoted in this ad, and notably, Coach Akers responded to this idea that you have to have a talented freshman:

"This program addresses injury prevention and provides beginner level to elite high school athlete levels of training.

Your kids will reap the benefits, regardless of their talent level.

I realize we won't set school records every year, but the growth of our program after only 2-3 years cannot be ignored.

The TTS and XCTS have played a huge role in the development of our athletes."

If you're wondering if it's too late to join the ​Track Training System​ and have the results that these coaches are having, it's absolutely not too late. T

hat being said, once we get to mid-March, you're probably going to run out of time to learn the system and be able to implement it, because it is going to take a few days of you studying the systems in the system to learn how to implement. And if you don't have a few hours to learn the system, then this isn't the time for you. But the system isn't going anywhere, and I'm not going anywhere, so you can join us after track to be part of the ​XC Training System​.

If you have any questions, please respond to this email and I'll get back to you promptly.

Let's go!

Jay

PS - Here is Coach Akers's testimonial from the ad:

"Our 4x8, 1600, 800, and 3200 school records were all broken multiple times for our boys, and we had state qualifiers in each of these events for the first time in the history of our program." - Coach Akers

And here's Coach Allen's full testimonial:

"The Track Training System is 100% as advertised. Everyone PR'd in at least one event, we stayed healthy, and my athletes enjoyed the structure of the weekly workouts.

Our biggest accomplishments were breaking the school record in the 1600 and 800, and we had a freshman run a 4:26 mile." - Coach Allen

 ​Track Training System​