The best book for High School Coaches

Jay, I can't agree more with you regarding this. I'd probably even go further and say JD's book is more focused on mature single runners, rather than new, young, still-growing runners. And at least from my experience, I don't know how many coaches can create individual workouts for everyone on the team — not just because of time constraints, but because of the need to build a team (in both the sense of keeping people involved and creating chemistry) and the difficulty of many younger people to run personalized workouts alone.

In short, I can see it as a bible for the NXN teams out there, but the further you get from that….

PS — thanks for the post below this!

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Jay,
2 things on this one…

1. I ran a year at Adams State just after Joe Vigil retired. He was still around Alamosa and was a very cool guy. The seniors on the team had enough stories about him to make me wish I'd been there a few years earlier.

2. As you mentioned in an earlier post, The Pacewheel puts Daniels compactly in your hand. I have one of the early copies and will go back to using it shortly (as soon as I can rehab a little more from a freak ax accident to my left foot). I just wanted to remind some of the other readers of how accessible Daniels' charts can be.

I am only in my third year of coaching and have found JD's book to be quite useful. There are many training philosophies out there but JD makes it accessible for a former HS JV runner with little experience like myself.

The question I have for more experienced HS coaches is how do you differentiate workouts while still making everyone feel like they're a valuable part of the team? Do I need to do a better job of communicating the reasons for the different workouts or is there something else I can try? I've grouped them by event and amount of base work but it inevitably ends up being varsity athletes in one group and JV athletes in the other with the JV athletes wishing they could be on the track instead of doing base runs.

For those who don't have the book and can't wait to get it, this link (http://www.coacheseducation.com/endur.htm) has 5 articles written by JD himself. Also, Flotrack has a few seasons of “Thirsty Thursdays with Jack Daniels” which provide good insight into his training philosophy.

After I was done running in college, the first book I read was Jack's first edition book. I later acquired his Oxygen Power book of VDOT tables (more detail and nearly every event you can think of). Having competed against Jack's teams for several years (I went to a rival SUNY school), I had a good knowledge of his teams and what they did. In the years since I've been fortunate to have talked to him many times.

I think one problem that some coaches make, mostly new ones, is they treat the VDOT as law. If you run 14:55 for 5k, then you must run the exact paces to get the most benefit. This is the difficult part in putting things like this in print. Training is not an exact science in this case, there are guiding principles. Being in a range is much easier for a youngster to handle and also much easier to build team chemistry. It was my belief that the 15:30 5ker can still train regularly with the 14:55 guy. That is where your individuality as a coach must come out.

One other interesting thing I learned from Jack, but not so much from his book is the use of “Mix” workouts. His books do some of this, but I found he did it a lot more often with his college teams than the book represents. Here is what he did in mid-September prior to a early/mid-November championship:

Su: Long run + 8x100m strides
M: Easy run + 8x100m strides
Tu: 1200 repeats at I on grass
W: 6×200 @ R + 3x1k @ I + 2 miles @ T
Th: Easy run
F: Easy run + 6x100m strides
Sa: Race

Some other examples of his mix workouts from that season:
2 miles @ T + 4×200 @ R + 3×800 @ I
6×200 @ R + 2×1000 @ I + 2 x 1 mile @ T (Tues prior to conference)
1 mile @ T + 6×200 @ R + 1 mile @ T + 2×1000 @ I
3×1000 @ T + 4×200 @ R + 1×800 @ I (Tues prior to NCAAs)

I guess I went a little on a tangent, but the point I'm trying to make is that Jack's training is great if it's used by a beginner with not a lot of background OR by an experienced coach as a guideline.

What I think is important about the intensity tables is to stay near those values, rather than run “quality junk.” Run the different workouts no harder than necessary for the purpose of the workout.

I also don't know anyone in town here who actually tests VO2max. Rather, the tables can show what they might be based on a PR in a certain event, and give training ideas from there. E.g., if a girl's best event is an 800 and she can run a 2:30, then easy pace should be in a certain range, a T run would be around a certain pace, etc. But if her best event is the 5k, then there is a different table.

Yes, it sounds like we need a clinic in Boulder and I will discuss – with you and coach Kedge in particular – the best time and the best format.

Thanks for your thoughts on vDOT

For the first two or three years of my coaching career I was fired up about the graph of the intensity zones and the idea that there are areas that you can't train in. This, of course, was based off of my experience running at CU where in the months of August there were in essence 4 threshold runs a week, even though it looked like a fartlek on Tuesday, Medium Distance on Wednesday, either and AT or fartlek on Friday and the Sunday long run. September only differed in that there would be 300's on either Tuesday or Friday. It simply didn't make sense to me that there were zones where you got a lot of aerobic benefit and then zones where you got no more benefit by running in that zone. While I see how this conceptualization gets athletes and coaches to focus on “what do we need” and get away from “more is better” I still think it's counter-intuitive and I wonder if the laboratory methods used to measure oxygen utilization lead to this.

But more important, in Dan Pfaff's interview on the Canadian Coaching Center site – http://www.coachjayjohnson.com/2009/11/coaches-… – he talks about the fact that while we try to train the three metabolism separately, when the athletes racing there's no distinction between metabolism, CNS, muscles, etc.

Now, let me be clear. I may be wrong (and Steve may be wrong too) and maybe there are “no man's land” training zones that you shouldn't train in, yet the argument that you gain nothing more by training in those zone and you should either run slower or faster to get into a defined training zone simple sounds too complex to me. For this reason I have RMB running up to 12k on the track, touching half marathon “dream PR pace” for just 400m or so, then running well slower than threshold pace, then going back to that half marathon pace. The workout is all over the map and for the 12k (almost 7.5 miles) she doesn't run nearly as fast as she might if she just ran controlled for 8k and then ran had for 4k – the typical progression run (or may closer to Scott Simmons's predator run) – so you can't look at it and say, “Wow, I killed that.” But to me it's money in the bank because we can keep running the recovery part faster over her career, but we're teaching her body to be comfortable at that rhythm. And even today's workout is an example. She ran 5×1 mile on the roads with the Jonesy group, then came to the track for 15 more minutes of work. I had her run 300's in 60 sec, then jog 15 seconds across the HJ apron for 1/2 of a Vern Gambetta leg circuit; then 10-15 jog and another 300 in 60. I have no clue* what was going on metabolically, yet I know her leg circuit was fantastic – great pop, great posture, fantastic rhythm on the step-ups (no real decrement across 50 reps) – and that at the end of the day she needs to be able to ask her body to either maintain pace when it's tired or speed up when it's tired. Yes she needs and engine to do that and yes we want to most efficaciously build that aerobic engine, yet there are days where we simply need to work hard and need some coordination between metabolic training and the neuromuscular/whole body training.

Motor learning is complex and the role of nitrous oxide as a signaling mechanism in the body is complex, but I don't think that train 5-10 seconds a mile on a four mile run is the end of the world.

And to bring this full circle, read Coach Kedge's comment above – maybe the three previous threshold runs or cruise interval workouts the athlete has been under stressed because of schoolwork, yet the rock this weeks workout partly because they just got a full ride academic scholarship to Kenyon College.

Sorry to rant and I know it looks like I got off topic and to summarize, I agree with young Mr. Magness that there ARE NOT “certain magical intensity zones.”

*That's not completely true. I have know clue in the laboratory sense; I have not HR data and no blood lactate. But I watched part of each 300 and I looked at her face before each 300 (she said she was working/hurting but she looked good) and obviously I was watching like a hawk during the curcuit work.

I wonder how much of the “go no faster than this pace for this workout” is because JD thinks there is no more benefit, vs. the benefit is not outweighed by the risk of injury. Injury avoidance is clearly a top priority (if not *the* top) for JD, and from my observations of HS teams, is even more an issue with growing kids new to running.

Good news and bad news – good that my guess was correct but bad because I'm fairly lazy when it comes to this, but I need to take the time to do it – looks better and is easier for people to click on a link rather than cut and paste.

Thanks Matt!

I agree with many of the comments. Daniels' book is an excellent foundation to build on. For example, you might use threshold miles as a benchmark workout at several stages of a high school cross country season, as both a physical and a mental gauge for your athletes. Keep in mind that you may need to tweak the overall program of 24 weeks into shorter phases that best fit the goals of your team for that particular year.

However…

“If speed is the name of the game, we should never get too far from it.”
- Peter Coe

Obviously Coe is speaking more of training for 800/1500, but the basic concept doesn't change. In the end, all distance running is speed over some race distance. The results of Frank Horwill's 5 pace training system (Workouts at 5k, 3000, 1500, 800, 400 pace over a 2-3 week cycle) as adapted by Peter Coe (multi-tier training) and used by Seb Coe speak for themselves.

It makes logical sense that you should train at 2 race distances above, 2 race distances below, and the race distance itself, as long as you're matching the specific demands of the race in terms of aerobic vs. anaerobic. For high school cross country, this would be Half marathon, 10k, 5k, 3k, 1500 (or long run, acceleration run, AT run, long intervals, short intervals if you want to think of each pace in those terms).

My question:

Any thoughts or insight from high school coaches who have used Daniels Running Formula with female athletes?

A few years back I worked “across the tracks” from a coach that had her girls do almost exclusively what I'd consider mixed zone training. Mixed zone training is a nice word for what could better be described, by me, as a little of this, a little of that,… that did not add up to much of anything. It was often some distance, some AT, some VO2 max, in a random order. I'm being critical, but I often found the end result – classic underacheiving. I always asked myself, where is the long run? Where is the VO2 max workout? When do they recover?

At my core is the feeling that you do one type of workout, do it well, and then recover from it. While you're waiting on the recovery you work on your aerobic fitness.

Now recently, I've begun to do some mixed zone trianing with my boys. The difference as I see it it is most always in a format that mirrors a race. I try to have it transition from a lower intensity zone to a more taxing zone. Simply put, I think the Kenayans are on to something with what we'd classify as their progression runs; start at recovery and work to AT. Or start at AT and work to VO2 max. Even start at VO2 max and finishing up at considerablly faster than race pace stuff. The key to these are that anytime we get towards the 5K race pace or faster for an extended period of time that we work in recovery for a day or so – recovery is key! So much so that I'll write it again – RECOVERY IS KEY. Logic has it that I'd then do my CNS / drills, etc… on or after a VO2 max day but my kids are usually so taxed after those workouts that I often bunch them in on my recovery days.

Sorry to get away form the JD – Running Formula talk and touching on what I see Jay doing as progressive zone training. “Progressive zone training – A walk through the various metabolic zones.” Jay that sounds like a book title to me. You're the guy.

When I started working with HS kids 5 years ago, I did a good deal of what I'd call traditional interval training and not a whole lot of what you called mixed training. We'd do things like 6×800 or 4xmile or other straight rep intervals.

Every year I've gotten further and further away from that and had more and more successs.

It's gotten to the point where for the past 2 years where I don't think they've done one traditional VO2max type workout. My detailed reasoning can be found here (shameless plug…sorry): http://stevemagness.blogspot.com/2009/08/do-we-…

I've moved more and more to mixed workouts on our hard days because I think it hits better metabolically and neuromuscularly what goes on in the race and what I'm trying to accomplish in the workout.

For example, we have used a lot of workouts like the following too:
-1200,400,1000,300,800,200 w/ 3-4min rest at, long stuff at 5k pace, short at 3k down to 1600 pace
-Alternating 1200m at steady, 400m at 5k pace for 4-5mi.

I guess my only point is that I think we need to get away from this concept of time spent at VO2max as being critical and the use of certain intensity zones. If you ever want to know why there are certain intensity zones just look at what variables we can measure. The reason we train at VO2max is b/c it was easily measurable and identifiable in the lab, same with LT.

Ok, please correct me if I am mistaken, but if one were to follow Daniel's book, wouldn't a large amount of testing have to be done? In addition to that, there is a lot of concern with “heart rate” training, and heart rate monitors need to be used, right?

My problems with this:
1. the testing–didn't Daniels just lose all his funding at NAU because to do the testing correctly, one needs state of the art testing equipment.
2. heart rate monitors–when running in a group, it's easy for a HRM to pick the transmission from a teammate, and not your own. my college team ran into this quite a bit, and after 2 weeks, we (and i'm not joking here) threw our HRM's away.

Overall, I think Daniels is a good start, but I think he fails to recognize that Cross Country and Track & Field are all about racing. If I wanted to time trial my way through the season, I'd probably go with Daniels, but since I want to race well, I'll do race-simulation type workouts. Now, of course, some workouts will feature more race simulation than others, and I think this is where the “art” of coaching truly steps in.

I've read most of the books on training, and the one I keep coming back to the most is Lydiard's first book, Run to the Top. (Jay, correct me if I'm wrong, but, didn't Wetmore host Lydiard on his last speaking tour?) I think it's great for more advanced runners–people who have 3-4 years of serious training under their belt, but if I had to start at the high school level, I'd go with Tony Benson and Irv Ray's, “Run With The Best.” If you can, try to find the software that accompanies the book, that can be a fun and useful tool as well. I keep hoping that 3rd edition of the book and software will come out.

Thanks Matt, I'll check it out today. I read the book right after reading Lydiard's about a month into grad school, and found that I enjoyed Lydiard's approach better.

Also, I do use some elements of his training–the pace wheel for example (and I know that Coach Pollard should be getting recognition for this as well), and I've had good results with it, after about 2 months of usage.

I think there is a practical way to apply threshold training in any situation. It is up to the coach to facilitate that. I like using H. R. monitors for recovery. That will tell you if the kids are training the way you want them to.

For several years (~2003 I think), we did what we called a Kenyan Warm Up run. We often did it while the team was away on break or they did it when they were home because it was unstructured and they could do it almost anywhere. Basically, they runners start out really slow and get faster throughout the run, until they are really moving (sub 3k pace sometimes) in the final 1k. We kept this to around 3-4 miles for the women and 4-6 for the men, but sometimes did it for longer.

Then I met Scott Simmons, heard his presentation on predator runs, read his book and realized that they are the same thing. And now CoachKedge (Jay, I know you have too mentions them again. We also had a lot of success when we did these runs 2-4 times a month (depending on the time of year and our race schedule). These progression runs cross several key training zones and even more important in my eye, teach the runner to run negative splits, run fast when tired and give them confidence to run fast at the end and feel great doing it.

One problem with doing more of these progression runs is convincing our runners that they are indeed better for them than the traditional 3x1mile or 5x1k workouts. Sure, they have their place, but I truly believe the progression run is much more important to their overall development.

Hey, Jay — best post / thread ever!

You don't need fancy equipment to use Jack's system. True, he did test all his runners at Cortland and this gave him some added insight that most of us can't get. But we used a simple time trial near the beginning of the season for a base fitness level. We used 2 miles (since the USATF put a lot of stress on that distance too in the level 2 school). Since I had Jack's Oxygen Power book, I could find their exact VDOT, to the nearest tenth and then find corresponding performances over a variety of distances.

Then we'd just use race performances from then on. Obviously making adjustments to the athletes paces based on race conditions and the terrain we did our workouts on.

Matt, you're right. For some reason, whenever I've spoken to others about Jack's workouts, the majority do not include these mix workouts. I don't know why that is, but that's been my experience.

Michael- Good point on that people misinterpret what JD means/says.

I'm aware that it's not % VO2 and that what Jack did is forced everyone on the same economy curve which then allows for him to get all the nice data of approximate speeds that a person could run at based on that.

My problem with relying on VDOT's and zones is that. It doesn't matter if the VDOT's correlate with LT or VO2max or whatever. JD's central premise in training is that training at or around these intensities elicit specific adaptations that give a superior training effect then the in between paces.

My point is that, In my opinion based on practical training knowledge and physiological knowledge, that's not true. In addition, if you read JD's book he states that the point of VO2max training is to accumulate time spent at VO2max. Once again, in my opinion, I don't believe that to be true.

For decades no one used training zones. They're a somewhat recent creation. I'd argue that the physiological based zones represent the fact that those variables are easily measurable. That's why those zones exist. It's similar to why we thought lactate caused fatigue for so long. Well, it was measurable early on, and since it's one of the only things we could measure easily and it corresponded with fatigue, it had to cause fatigue. Problem was, it didn't.

Steve –

It looks like we're arguing the same point from different perspectives.

By measuring only what we can now and assuming it's causative (or at least correlative) to the results we're getting can be helpful for prescribing action for the future to repeat the desired result; however, once we better identify, measure, and understand the true cause, we should move to that as the measure and prescription.

2-3 workouts a week is all I've ever fit in, regardless of training age. You could argue that Renee is getting in 3-4 a week, yet relative to her PRs she only hits it once a week hard with race pace type work or work that will, all Adam said, tax her to the point where she's really tired. So maybe the answer is 1 workout a week that is hard/you barely can run with good mechanics by the end. And this could be a 10 mile run – it doesn't have to be repeat miles or repeat 400s. But then you have 1-2 more “quality” days and to me this is where great system are dogmatic. The long run at CU. Maybe it's not as hard as Tuesday and Friday for a senior who is a 10k runner, but it's solid. With Renee we're downplaying the LR from an intensity standpoint and just getting the mileage in; same with James Hatch.

But the bottom line is 2-3 is the max number of “quality days” and then you need to tease out what you want from each day. Again, back to one of Adam's comments – try to accompolish one thing metabolically in a workout. Or my take might be accomplish one thing metabolically in XC; in track do one thing metabolically, yet when you can also accomplish a specific neuromuscular goal, then that's the ideal two-for-one. But sometimes in track you're better off with a threshold run, then 5 min of slow jogging/spike changing/water drinking and then some fun 120's or 200's or 300's or what ever.

All shameless plugs to sites where thoughtful, passionate people talk training are encouraged.

While I just said in a previous comment above to keep things in one area, I agree that mixing is great….but I have the unique opportunity of working with just a 3-4 athletes at the MOST at one time and for this reason I defer to the thoughts/comments of the other coaches when it comes to groups. That said, I think we're all a bit remiss at this point to not use an old running word: Fartlek.

Aren't we really talking about anal fartlek running workouts? Yes the workouts are timed and over prescribed distances, likely done in racing flats or spikes, but isn't that really what it is?

Dan Pfaff commented to me a couple of years ago about seeing Bekele do a fartlek somewhere in Europe on a wooded path. Pfaff spoke about the fact that at every pace – and there were several different paces Bekele was running, not the just the On/Off or RacePace/Steady that I'm familiar with – his mechanics were great. I bring this up because I'm really trying to hone in on knee angle as a window into mechanics and the idea that at 7:00 pace vs. 4:40 pace both Brent and Renee will have much different knee angles. But that's just a simple window into the fact that the entire body is moving to a great ROM at most major joints at faster running. Combine this with the idea that the foot and ankle have much different stiffnesses when running slow or fast and you can argue that a simple run spending time at several paces is a great way to biomechanically prepare an athlete for their primary race.

I'll close with a phrase that Pfaff used several times in his Canadian Coaching Centre interview '- “There are many roads to Rome.” Indeed.

I like all of these,especially the idea that early you run 5 miles/8k but get either 1k or 2k of work at 5k…and if anyone is curious, I assume that if you go back and re-read Lear's Running with the Buffaloes you can equate Steve's workout to a CU fartlek…

and if you can't then trust me, it's the same thing, though college guys might go for 50-60 minutes, which is hard.

Jay, Thanks for noting my relationship to the PaceWheel. Matt, thanks for mentioning it and opening the door to this shameless plug:

To order one with the CoachJayJohnson.com discount, just click on my name above this post or go to http://www.pacewheel.com/jjohnson.aspx

“Why can't my 800m runner from basketball run the 3,200m time the table predicted?”
I'm curious — do coaches here have runners who run the longer distances faster than their shorter distances would indicate, as per JD's tables? JD emphasizes that people develop speed first, then endurance, and that has been what I've observed in HS — they run 5k way slower than their 800 times would indicate.

Jay, love this:
“I firmly believe that teaching athletes to feel paces – threshold pace, race pace and “the pace you can run for your long run” – is key developing athletes but very hard to do.”

It was a long time coming, getting a classic work horse, to understand the concept of rest. Curtis (7909 pts) was/is a special one that not many of us have seen come our way. Not only was he a work horse he was a thouroughbread too – a deadly combination. An endless worker – with talent, durability, and no fear.

Recovery only came after he began to think of decathalon as being ONE w/ 10 parts and not 10 seperate things. Then getting the numereous coaches, more than you can imigine, coaches that helped Curtis and I to understnad the same things was a challange. Once we were all on the same page, egos checked at the door, things went smooth.

Points that made the difference is to convince all that -
1) you can't fry the CNS or you're toast for a week.
2) taking some of the anerobic system contineum cP -> speed endurance to the brink is better than tapping it out completely. Tapping out any energy system has it drawbacks. Procceed with caution.
3) everything you do has a cross pollination benefit AND drawback. Your hurdle drills are plyos, your starts and your shot dry lands are in many ways are much of the same. HJ or LJ Reps at 1/2 speed count as speed endurance if you do enough of them, speed endurace bleeds into lactate threshold if you squeeze the rest too much. I don't know all the scientific ramifications but from a practicality standpoint I know that most every training mode involves multiple systems at different times in different amounts. It is back to the same continum of paces we started to talk about at the begining of these posts.

All in all, I learned more than I could ever imigine from coaching that boy. I was not ready for it but am thankful that I was tossed into the fire and had to adapt the best I could. The honest truth is, I was so relieved when it was over that I made it through without screwing him up.

Way off the JD and distance topic – sorry.

Wow. Where did you find that book/manual? I need to find a copy. I know a guy in Boulder who ran in the Boston area 15-20 years ago and probably knows some of the system, but the bottom line is that there is a lot we can learn about in terms of marathon training from American coaches and athletes who were running well over 26.2 twenty years ago. Also, I think I forget that at the elite level it is very much about “Speed with Endurance” and that what ever the athletes max 400m speed is we need to make sure we maintain that over a career. Vigil, Brooks Johnson and others with USATF identified the critical zone for world class distance races as being able to close in 52ish for men and sub 60 for women for races 1,500m-10,000m. Think how many American distance runners can't do that, yet could put in the work to run under 2:08 or 2:07.

Very interesting info.

In regards to the Bekele observation- I sometimes wonder if we spend too much time in that “on/off” mode and just see “easy/hard” or some variation of it and not the actual blend of paces/efforts that there actually is. Just an observation, but Africans handle changes of paces much better than most of us americans. We're kind of herky jerky and they can smoothly change paces with only slight changes.

Anyways, your entire comment, and especially the end part: “spending time at several paces is a great way to biomechanically prepare an athlete for their primary race.” reminded me of a workout I used to do with Tom Tellez when I was a younger developping runner. He's huge on relaxation and making pace changes as easy and efficient as possible. So, we'd head out on a dirt road with him driving his truck besides me and we'd do a fartlek where he'd basically tell me to pickitup and to what degree (varied between long gradual pickup to full sprinting and everything in between), and the focus would be on biomechanics and metabolic. In other words the idea was to learn how to be able to change paces, either subtly or dramatically in a biomechanically correct/efficient way.

I really like the idea and think it translates well to racing.

The name Brooks Johnson almost made me check out entirely, but I persevered and made it through the end of the post.
I hope large amounts of money weren't invested in some sort of task force to calculate this elusive 'critical zone', as it can be easily determined watching a couple championship track races on TV. They likely had a TV in the VIP room in Berlin/Beijing/Osaka/etc., though I'm sure the buffet was also quite attractive, so maybe the USATF boys missed the five and ten and had to check the tape.
The problem in the past has been that B. Johnson et al have harped on basic speed and making sure people can kick. The thing is, none of that matters if you're a 13:30 guy – or, really, even a 13:05 guy. Gebrselassie and Tergat can run 27:08 (Atlanta) and 27:18 (Sydney) ripping the last lap because they have PBs under 26:30. Even more so for Bekele as he likely has Gebrselassie over 150m, and by a bit over 10,000. Ritzenhein and Rupp have their tongues hanging out of their mouths at 27:20 pace, but for Bekele it's easy – which is why he can kick off of it.
I'm trying to remember what the Wisconsin TC guys closed in at USAs this year, relatively fast at any rate. I'm sure a kid like Jager could close a race in 53 sec. if was slow enough. So he has the mechanical and metabolic capability to run that fast. The problem is, he can't run 10km WR pace for 5km. So my feeling is that it isn't a problem of improving basic speed, rather extending specific endurance so one can reach the bell fresh enough to kick properly.

Coach Kedge,
Have that book and it's great. I like that that book, and others from Dellinger and Bowerman from that era, pretty much take a common sense/practical approach to training. Athlete's want to run X pace for their goal race, so how do we progress them to handle X pace. One particular favorite from that book are the race simulation workouts.

I really think looking at some of the older texts is a must. A lot of the training is designed completely off of logic and common sense. It also helps to remind us that almost every type of workout imaginable has been done and it all gets recycled. A lot of times we think of GS or core work or name another in vogue training regimine as modern, but they've all been done at some time in the past. A couple other solid books from the past include:
-Run, Run, Run by Fred Wilt
-Running my way by Harry Wilson
-Mechanics of Athletics by Dyson
-Training with Cerruty
-Van Aaken method by Ernst Van Aaken

I agree with all that everyone has said. Daniels' book is a great template. I use it to plan out when I am going to do certain types of workouts. To determine the type of workout that I am going to do, I use my 20 years of experience to determine that. I have both editions of the book, the second addition is actually signed by him. I have a copy of the DVD made by McMillian Running. The DVD is an awesome tool to along with the book. I have watched all of the videos on Flotrack that feature Jack Daniels. Every time that I review his material, I learn something new. They are all excellent resources.

Speaking of Jack and individualization:
Flotrack video.

I haven't chimed in for awhile, but have been reading …

Coach K/Jay: maybe, especially with younger runners for whom there are some many unpredicatable stressors on a given school day, a 5×1000 (insert your favorite workout here) is a “mixed zone” workout even if they hit the same times for each repetition. Maybe what we really need to be doing is paying attention to what they look/sound like, as Jay suggested after his 300s the other day.

Concerning Daniels, I like what hamiltontrack said about Daniels' limitation on building a complete track team, and I'd add (as a high school coach) that perhaps gender plays a role in how we should train. My XC girls are, more often than not, capable and needed to compete in a much wider variety of events in track. My XC boys are pretty much confined to the 800-3200 in track, with the exception of a 4×4 runner occasionally.

I've built my training the past few years around the idea of multipace training in the fall because we had gifted girls for whom I knew I wanted them to be able to sprint in the spring. I think our boys suffered somewhat, because their primary gifts were more as aerobic monsters and were being “underfed.” It's probably why our boys were pretty decent in XC and the 4×8, but not great at the 1600 or 3200; we hadn't spent enough time on developing their aerobic capacity. By the time May rolled around, they only had enough gas in the tank for a good 800. Along with that, the year I was most pleasantly surprised by our boys 4×8 came after a winter filled with 50-60 minute hard runs (probably “mixed zone,” starting slower than LT and progressing to perhaps near their 5k race pace). Not that the boys don't need to touch on various paces in the fall, but maybe not as much as the girls.

Great little video- JD just confirms why this thread is so popular

“… if it were easy” [deciding how to train] “nobody would need a coach”

He also touch, just breifly on an area we tend to put on the back burner of our training plans that may be as important as any factor, “…, what give you better running economy, …” Jay, the first set of the many videos you made a few years ago got into this. Maybe you could repost them, I think there were of Brett Vaughn on the track. The series of hurdle drills I still use (I've modified one or two). I”ve done them most for track but need to work them in to XC this next fall.

Great interview, Coach K, and thanks for posting it, Coach MK!

Jay — running in Sabino Canyon a few days ago, we saw an entire girls' track team doing the lunge matrix.

Happy Holidays, all!

If you go to Letsrun.com there is quite a lengthy discussion on Daniels vs Lydiard. But then again, you need to have to a certain personality to post there. If you know what I mean.

You are right. I have been coaching 20yrs and using Daniels for 18yrs and I modifiy and increase the intensity and volume as needed for the experienced runners. Some kids I have been coaching since 6th grade and know pretty well what they can and cannot handle. The injury rate is very low. Thanks for the post.