This Simple Phrase Will Help Your Kids PR

Published April 30, 2025

Over the next few weeks, I'll keep the emails short because it's a crazy time of year. I'll give you one actionable idea that you can use with your athletes. Concise and useful.

Sounds good?

Think about what you’ve asked your athletes to do to run PRs this week since they started training months ago.

Things like...

• A new warm-up
• New post-run work
• Workouts you didn’t do last spring that you knew could lead to PRs this spring

Hopefully, these adjustments have led to your athletes running fast and having fun.

Now that it’s April 30, you will probably ask them to do things they’ve never done before so they can PR.

Perhaps you’ll ask them to...

• Go out faster in the first 200m or 400m of a race.
• Sit back longer and trust they can make a hard move earlier in the race.
• Run a different leg on the 4x800 than they’ve been running for a reason that is obvious to you but makes no sense to them.

When I look at a list like this, there is a simple phrase that encapsulates what you’re asking them to do:

“If you want to do things you’ve never done before, then you’ve got to do things you’ve never done before.” 

New Race Plans Can Lead To New PRs

I’ll never forget the snowy day late in my senior year of track when my coach told me, “You’re stuck at 4:40. Run 68s today.”

I was scared and didn’t think I could run 68s/4:32 pace.

I didn’t think I could do it and didn’t like the plan, but I did what he suggested, ran alone in the snow, and came through the 400m and 800m on pace.

I ran 4:32.

A few weeks later, I ran 4:25. That was fast enough—in the mid-1990s—for me to barely get a walk-on spot at the University of Colorado.

What a gift it was to have my coach give me a plan I didn’t think I could run.

Back to the phrase...

“If you want to do things you’ve never done before, you’ve got to do things you’ve never done before.” 

I don’t know how best to use this with each athlete, but with a handful of weeks left in the season, now is the time to take a risk and set them up for a breakthrough race.

“I’ve Got Kids Ending Their Season Soon – What Should They Do?” 

At a minimum, they need two weeks, in which they run very little.

​Here's a 2-page PDF, with QR codes, that clearly lays out a two-week training plan between the end of track and summer cross country training.

But if an athlete is ending the first or second week of May and they’re a rising sophomore, I’d let them take one more week where they run just three days. The summer is long, and you don’t want them to show up to practice on the first day of school in August physically fit but a bit tired mentally.

The flip side is that the PDF above—and this article—are perfect for your kids who will run at the state track meet and want to have an even better 2024 XC season.

Let’s go!

Jay

PS – If the season hasn’t gone how you wanted, know two things.

Next November, you can invest in the Track Training System like these coaches and achieve the same results.

You can get started with the XC Training System in a few weeks and get the same results as these coaches.

Like it says on my website, “There is a better way.”