Q:

We are going to start optional winter practices in January, but we will only meet 3 days per week. I am wondering what a realistic weekly mileage expectation is when kids are only running 3 days? I understand increasing weekly mileage by no more than 10% per week, however I am not sure where to start kids, some of whom have never run before.  

A:

Let’s make the most of the 3 days you meet with the kids and encourage them to run some easy mileage on their own on the other days of the week.

For the 3 days you have them together, focus on these workouts:

1. Hill workout
2. Tempo run
3. Longer easy run

Hill Workout:

1 mi warmup jog (or 10 minutes)

25 minutes of running uphill hard and jogging down(For kids who are new to running, start them at 15 minutes)

1 mi cooldown jog (or 10 minutes)

NOTES: Grass hills are great, maybe if you can take them to (or they can run to) a hilly park, but road or sidewalk hills work too – you just have to watch out for traffic. A hilly park is ideal because it’s safe and hopefully there is more than one hill to choose from, so they don’t get too bored. Make sure to include the warm up and cool down, as it’s important for injury prevention AND adds easy mileage, Make this fun! Put them in groups based on fitness level, and tell them to take turns leading up the hill.

Tempo Run:

1 mi warmup jog (or 10 minutes)

3 mile tempo run at Tempo Pace OR 20 minutes at “tempo run effort”

1 mi cooldown jog (or 10 minutes)

NOTES: In the workout plans we offer, we talk about how to determine athletes’ Tempo Pace. You might not get to do this until track season, so just explain to them that “tempo run effort” is about 85% of full-on race effort. And then let them run. If they end up racing each other, it’s OK. The point is that they’re running hard for about 20 minutes without stopping! I pretty much raced all of my tempo runs in high school.

NOTES PART 2: For kids who are brand new to running, the Tempo Run is very difficult. You could group those kids together and instead have them do a “fartlek” (German for speed play), where they run at a sustained pace (not all out) for 3 minutes, then jog for 2 minutes, and repeat 4 times. This will help them work up to being able to do a tempo run

Long Run:

For kids who have never run before, they can start at 30 minutes. Tell them they can run slow, they just need to keep going. Don’t tell them it’s OK to walk (they’ll walk if they have to anyway) – tell them the goal is to keep running for 30 minutes. This is part of being a distance runner – mentally dealing with the long slow distance run!

For kids who have run before (let’s say, finishing a 5K is no problem for them), you can start at 45 minutes. Each group can increase by 10% each week.

I would START practice on this day with everyone doing some core work together – pushups, crunches and holding plank. I would also challenge the kids to do core every night before going to bed on their own, working up to 50 pushups, 50 crunches and 1 minute of plan – and then setting a new goal after that!

I hope this was helpful. Good luck!