A few years ago, I watched one of the most talented athletes I’ve ever coached lose an entire outdoor season in 21 days. She’d just run 2:18 in the 800m indoors as a junior—a time that should’ve launched her into elite company by spring. College coaches were already calling. Her trajectory was set. Then she…
It was mid October, more than halfway through cross country season and a week before Divisionals, and I was chatting with another coach after practice when Sarah’s mom called my cell. “Coach, can we talk?” Sarah was one of my varsity girls—a junior with legitimate talent. She’d been a standout freshman, improved her sophomore year,…
A Coach’s Guide to Breaking Through Self-Limiting Beliefs in Distance Runners The snow was coming down sideways, the kind of February afternoon in New Hampshire where the wind makes the windows rattle and you’re grateful to be inside. I sat across from one of my runners—let’s call her Clara—talking about her cross country season and…
The Engelhardt Blueprint: Balancing High Performance with Long-Term Growth I’m going to tell you something that most coaches, parents, and athletes don’t want to hear about high school distance running training: doing more doesn’t make you better. Running harder doesn’t make you faster. And chasing every race on the calendar doesn’t make you tougher—it makes…
The High School Coach’s Guide to the Norwegian Method I stood at the two-mile mark of last fall’s championship race, watching one of my varsity girls approach. She should have been surging toward her PR. Instead, she was fading—badly. Her breathing was labored, her stride choppy, her form was collapsing, and the race was slipping…
The “1:42” Blueprint: How Cooper Lutkenhaus & Chris Capeau Revolutionized High School Training Inside the Training System That Produced the 4th Fastest 800m in American History—At Age 16 On August 3, 2025, at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, something happened that shouldn’t have been possible. Not by the conventional wisdom that governs American high school…
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