Dr. Jason Saltmarsh

Where This Started

I was learning to coach long before I knew it.

The summer before fifth grade, my father took me on a seven-mile run. I was ten, and it felt like a marathon. But I finished it, and I kept going. By the end of that summer I was lining up at local road races, a kid in a field of adults. The local paper ran a story on me. My father never made a big deal of it. He just kept lacing up next to me.

He coached too, and I grew up in his gym. In seventh grade I was playing pickup games with his high school players, radio on, my dad right there on the floor with us. He was hard on his athletes and expected a lot. But he backed every one of them, and they knew it. He demanded their best and then helped them find it. I did not understand how rare that combination was until I started coaching.

That is the model I inherited: high standards and total support. One without the other does not work. Standards without support break kids. Support without standards wastes them.

When I took over the program at Winnacunnet, I made a decision that has shaped everything since. I would never trade a kid’s senior year for a good freshman season. Development takes four years, sometimes longer. Coaches who burn kids out for early results are not winning anything that matters.

That decision forced me to get serious about the science. I earned my USATF Level 2 Endurance and Cross Country Specialist certifications. I studied Lydiard, Daniels, Vigil, Iglói, the Norwegian method, and polarized training, along with the physiology behind why some programs produce seniors who peak and others produce seniors who quit. I tested everything on myself, then on my teams, before I trusted it.

The results show up in two ways. One is public: the state titles and the 2018 NH XC Coach of the Year award. The other is quieter, and it means more to me. Four of my former athletes ran in college and then came back to coach on my staff. Two of them now run programs of their own as head coaches. Kids do not come back to a program that used them up. They come back to one that built them.

If you coach, that second result is the one you want. I can help you build it.

Life Off the Course

I live on the New Hampshire seacoast in a house I bought from my grandmother twenty years ago, when my kids were small. My wife and I are still renovating and landscaping it, one weekend at a time. When I am not at practice, I am probably outside with our two rescue dogs, Odie and Tempo. Yes, one of my dogs is named after a training term. My athletes have opinions about this.

I still run and bike. Not as fast anymore, but consistently, which is the whole point of everything I teach. I write. I read training research for fun. I answer emails from coaches in states and countries I have never visited, and I learn something from every one of those conversations. If my answer helps an athlete I will never meet get better at a sport she chose, that is a good trade.

Here is what that means for you. I am not a content company. There is no team of freelancers behind this site. When you buy a training plan, book a consultation, or send a question, you are dealing with the same person who stands at the two-mile mark with a stopwatch and a clipboard every week of the season. I coach real kids every day. That is my quality control.

What You’ll Find Here

I built coachsaltmarsh.com to be the resource I needed in my first year of coaching: a free library of training frameworks, calculators, and strategies for high school distance runners and their coaches.

New coach looking for practice structure? It is here. Athlete trying to add mileage without breaking down? It is here. There are more than 100 articles and 20 free interactive tools, all built on the same system I use with my own team. They handle the planning math so you can spend your energy on your athletes.

Clinics and Speaking

The running community gets better when coaches share what works. I speak at clinics about training physiology, mental performance, and team culture.

Upcoming: Nebraska Coaches Association Multi-Sport Clinic, Lincoln, NE, July 2027. Come talk shop.