Hey there.

In this email, I’m sharing the workouts I teach coaches, workouts that have kept over 10,000 athletes injury-free. At the bottom is a comprehensive PDF with every workout, including post-run strength and mobility assignments, for five weeks of training.

This email is concise, but it’s not short. If you’re in a rush, make sure to keep this email in your inbox and come back to it later today or tomorrow.

In the past two emails, I’ve explained why the “car analogy” is a useful way to understand the goals of training, and what the four elements of each workout day are. If you didn’t get those emails, you can check them out here and here. If you’re wondering what workouts you should be assigning your athletes, you’re about to get that question answered!

Two Types of Workouts

We do two types of workouts: challenging aerobic workouts and race pace workouts.

The challenging aerobic workouts build the athlete’s aerobic engine. Race pace workouts get the athlete ready to run race pace, and if done correctly, empower them with the ability to speed up at the end of the race.

Remember, every race from 800m on the track to 5000m in cross country is primarily fueled by the aerobic metabolism. Here’s the breakdown for the four events your athletes will run:

• 5000m - 95 percent aerobic
• 3200m - 90 percent aerobic
• 1600m - 82 percent aerobic
• 800m - 60 percent aerobic

As you can see, building the aerobic engine is crucial for a high school distance runner.

The question is, what are the more effective workouts for building the aerobic engine?

Challenging Aerobic Workouts

Here is a brief overview of the five workouts that are effective ways to build the aerobic engine.

Note that the order below is the order in which athletes should learn the workouts. One of the key elements in my system is that athletes need to “run by feel.” These five workouts do just that, starting with the long run. I don’t want to overwhelm you with information in this email, so I’m keeping these descriptions brief. If you want to read my full explanation of each workout, check out ​this article​.

Long Run

The long run is one of the best ways for athletes to develop their aerobic engine. We’ll do strides in the last 20 minutes of the long run, and we’ll start the off-season using minutes and not miles for the long run assignments. The other aspect that’s great about the long run is that it’s a great mental challenge and builds their capacity for hard work.

Again, I go into detail about this long run in ​this article​.

Fartlek Run

Fartlek is a Swedish term that means “speed play,” and there is little doubt that fartlek training is a simple and effective way to gain fitness.

A “true fartlek” is a workout where the athlete oscillates between multiple paces. We’ll simplify things and go back and forth between two efforts. We’ll have an “on” portion and a “steady” portion. The crux of our fartlek workout is that the “steady” portion is faster than your athlete’s easy run pace.

I like using 5-minute segments for fartlek workouts for the vast majority of athletes. So this can be 2 minutes on, and 3 minutes steady, and then progress to the more challenging 3 minutes on, 2 minutes steady. For brand new athletes, who are in the “no prior training” group, and for middle school athletes, I’ll use 1 minute on, 2 minutes steady fartleks.

Just 30-40 minutes of fartlek running for a fit upperclassman is enough to get a great stimulus, yet a runner who is new to the sport can gain significant fitness with just 15-20 minutes of fartlek running.

Fartlek workouts are underutilized by most coaches, but they are a powerful workout that you can do in the first week of training.

Progression Run

Progression runs are simple and extremely effective. Plus, they’re fun! We’ll typically use 5-minute and 10-minute chunks for runs that range in duration from 15 minutes to 30 minutes (though older athletes could even do 35-and 40-minute progression runs).

A 20-minute progression run is written as: 10 minutes steady; 5 minutes faster, but controlled; 5 minutes faster, but controlled.

Athletes should end the workout saying, “I had 3 more minutes in me at that final pace, no problem, and if I had to do 5-6 more minutes, I could have.”

A progression run can replace a long run in the middle of the season.

When a coach wants to get in a challenging aerobic workout, but wants the athlete to spend less time on their feet, and have their legs feel fresh 48 hours after the workout, a progression run is the perfect workout choice.

Aerobic Repeats

Aerobic repeats are longer repetitions – 4 to 6 minutes – that are as fast as an athlete can run without producing any lactate. Unlike a fartlek workout, you won’t have your athletes run “steady” between the repetitions, but rather they’ll run at an easy pace. The recovery periods for this workout are relatively long - 3 minutes of easy jogging following 4-5 minutes of faster running.

Athletes love this workout, yet you need to do a couple of fartlek runs and a couple of progression runs before you progress to this workout.

30-90 Fartlek

This fartlek workout is much different than the traditional fartlek workouts we’ll do during the year.

Athletes run 30 seconds at 5k cross country goal pace, then run 90 seconds at an easy pace. After a few repetitions of this, the athlete can speed up the 90 seconds and see if they can run a bit faster, though it’s not mandatory that they run steady (as it may not be realistic for them to run 5k cross country goal pace for 30 seconds and run steady for 90 seconds).

If an athlete is having an off day, they need to keep the 30-second portion at 5k race pace, then simply run easy for the 90-second portions.

This is another workout that athletes look forward to as it’s fun, and the overall workout is a bit shorter. And it’s the perfect transitional workout into race pace workouts.

There are two concepts that underly all of these workouts, which I explain in detail in Consistency Is Key.

1. Running by Feel

Running by feel is one of the only skills a high school runner needs to learn, yet it’s a tricky one to master. When a runner can do workouts by feel, and not rely on a GPS watch, they’ll both decrease the chance of injury, but they’ll also have a better chance of running “the right pace” in both cross country and track races.

The progression of workouts above, when assigned in that order, will develop this skill. What you need to do as a coach is know that it’ll take a few seasons (and maybe a few years) for athletes to be able to run workouts by feel.

2. Farther or Faster (or Both)

Athletes must finish these workouts saying, “I could have gone farther” or “I could have gone faster.”

For long runs, the athletes must finish by saying they could have done both.

For fartlek workouts we simply want them to say they had one more 5-minute segment left.

For progression runs, as I said above, they need to be able to say they had 3 more minutes at the final pace in them (and ideally 5-6 more minutes).

For aerobic workouts, you need your athletes to finish saying they could have run the last repetition faster (though that means they would be producing some lactate, but that’s a different topic).

For the 30-90 fartlek an athlete should always be able to say they had 2 more sets in them, i.e. four more minutes of running.

“How often should we be doing these workouts?”

If an athlete is going to train 48 weeks a year (with two weeks of downtime after both cross country and track) then they’ll have roughly two months where they will do a weekly long run once a week, and one of these workouts on another “hard” day.

As the season progresses, we’ll keep the long run once a week and then do a race pace workout (more on those in the next email). That said, I often use a progression run during the racing season rather than a long run because athletes will still get a great aerobic stimulus, yet the time spent pounding the ground is significantly less than in a long run. Plus, kids love progression runs!

Five Weeks of Free Training

I want you to have the exact training I teach coaches to use with their athletes, which can be used in the first five weeks of summer training or winter training.

Included in the PDF below is training for two different groups.

The first PDF is for an upperclassman that was running 70-minute long runs at the end of the previous season. We’ll start them off with 60-minute long runs, but with warm-up and the post-run work, they’ll have their heart rate elevated for 90+ minutes.

The second PDF is for athletes in the “no prior training” group. This is any athlete who is either (a) brand new to the sport (or any sports) or, (b) has run cross country or track in the past, but who hasn’t run in more than a month.

Download The Free PDFs

This is the same training I use with coaches in the ​XC Training System​ and ​Track Training System​. These coaches get 20+ weeks of training for every level of athlete, a post-run routine that matches the intensity of the workout, and they get the XC and/or track-specific race pace workouts.

In the next email, I’m going to give you examples of race pace workouts you can use with your team this season.

Let’s go!

Jay