The athletes I work with don’t run enough. The reason the two athletes, Sara and Renee, didn’t run more this past season was due to training age (Sara) and history of injuries (Renee). Sara will need to train more and train harder in the coming year and Renee has now been injury free since Jan 1st* which means that she can now train more miles as well. So that’s the first item in this series of posts where I plan the upcoming macrocycle: The athletes I work with need to run more.
To keep things simple I’m going to focus solely on Renee from this point forward. Why? Because she’s run 15:20 this year, she’s run 15:15 early in her career and the training I will reference is 5k training. Many of the coaches on this site are HS coaches who will no doubt have a young man at some point in their career who can run 15:20 or faster for 12.5 laps on the track. The volumes and intensities for a woman in her mid twenties should not be transposed onto a male in his late teens, yet the similarities will outweigh the differences. Plus, Renee needs to move up to the 10k but she also wants to set a PR at 1,500m (she’s run just under 4:11) and I want to make sure that I do the things in the next 12 months to help her run a killer 10k and PR at 1,500m…and that should mean that a 5k PR will then be in order.
The other reason to profile Renee is that that while she’s a very special person and a very special competitor, I do think she has a somewhat normal distribution of talents across the aerobic and anaerobic metabolisms and I think her neuromuscular talent, while likely better than 90% of females who will this year’s NCAA DI Cross Country meet, is in the normal range of sub 15:20 women in the world. I bring this up because Sara is an outlier – she is powerful, yet I think she is somewhat limited in in her aerobic ability for 4:11 women, as her current PR at 3k (9:25) would attest to. By sharing Renee’s training and my approach to writing/conceptualizing her next macrocycle there is a better chance the coaches and athletes reading this site can take more from each post.
…and yes, Renee will eventually run races longer than 25 laps on a 400m oval and if she’s ends up running fast at those distances than this series may be a unique, useful reference point.
Finally, the next step for Sara is really specific. Why? We’ll soon be in year four working together and I think we’re doing a good job. Compare that Renee, who has never been in a weight room, who has never done uphill strides on a measured hill, who has never throw the shot put following a workout more than 15 reps. The next step for Renee will be a good introduction into why we do what we do, yet I need to make sure that I don’t adopt the stupid idea that if we take Renee – great aerobic engine, efficient mechanics – and add all more power, that she’s run well. Why not?
Because Renee needs to run more…
*There have been a couple 2-3 day periods where she had sore/tight muscles; she took a day off and trained lightly and then by day three was doing strides, then ready to run easy on day four. These 2-3 periods are not ideal, but I don’t consider them full blown interruptions, yet it does mean that I will need to evaluate more planned rest as these “rest due to tight muscle” periods mean we’re already taking a couple of 3-4 easy days every 6-10 weeks anyway, so why not plan it and give the body a chance to potentially go through a deeper super-compensation phase.
