Developing Young Distance Runners: Talent, Patience, and Burnout An eighth-grader showed up to my first practice wearing basketball shorts and generic running shoes from Kohl’s. He’d never run competitively. Didn’t know what a PR was. Couldn’t tell you the difference between a 400 and an 800. But when we did our baseline mile time trial,…
Mastering 5K Race Strategy: A Science-Backed Guide for Coaches I stood at the one-mile mark of a divisional championship 5K watching one of my best runners—someone who had trained flawlessly for twelve weeks—blow up spectacularly. She’d gone out in 5:45 for the first mile when her fitness supported 6:05. By two miles, she was shuffling…
Managing Parents in HS Sports: A Coach’s Communication Guide I’ll never forget the text message I received at 10PM on a Tuesday before the first day of school: “Why wasn’t my daughter in the top seven at today’s workout? She ran a 6:45 mile last spring. This doesn’t make sense.” The workout itself was simple—a…
Building a Championship XC Culture: Lessons from F-M, Niwot & Newbury Park If you study the nation’s most dominant high school distance programs—places like Fayetteville-Manlius, Newbury Park, Niwot, and Southlake Carroll—you start to notice something: their secret to success is hiding in plain sight. It’s visible in every practice, every conversation, and goes into every…
The 5 Mistakes New Distance Coaches Make I still remember my first season as a head cross country coach. I hadn’t planned for it to happen. I was a competitive masters road racer who had been recruited by the outgoing coach. I already worked at the high school, and my daughter was a sophomore on…
The Three-Ring Circus: How to Coach Multiple Training Groups It’s 2:50 PM on a Tuesday. The bell has rung, the locker room doors are banging open, and sixty high schoolers are spilling onto the track. You have your Varsity squad looking to qualify for States, a solid JV group that needs development, and a dozen…
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