XC Training System
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 ...
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800m Training: Pre-race Day

This article is for coaches of high school 800m runners, yet I’d use the same 800m workout for advanced middle school runners, as well as adult runners. 

We want to do three things in an 800m pre-race day workout. 

1. Get neuromuscularly ready to race 800m the next day. 
2. Get mentally ready to race 800m the next day. 
3. Avoid having any carry-over fatigue from this day to the race. 

You won’t have to worry about the third one if you simpl...

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PRing Indoors and Outdoors

Here's how you can get an athlete to run fast indoors and outdoors. 

It's hard to strike the right balance of training and racing indoors while setting them up to faster outdoors. Do these three things to help kids PR in both seasons. 

You know athletes need to: 

  1. Build the aerobic engine
  2. Strengthen the chassis
  3. Rev the engine most days 

Here's what you need to do for each of those elements to make sure athletes race well indoors and are ...

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The Keys to Injury-free Running

Injury-free running is more than doing daily pre- and post-run work.

When I was a first-year coach, I was convinced that if I could keep athletes healthy throughout a season, they'd run PRs. 

Twenty-three years of coaching have only strengthened my conviction. 

Now I have a system that keeps kids injury-free.  

I want to share it with you today. 

You know that injury-free, consistent runners race faster. But what exactly do they do? 

I'm go...

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