5 Things We Got Right This Year

New Year, New Review

Last year here on the blog I offered five things our team got right, five things that were works in progress, and five things missing from our program.  You can read the full breakdown of each by clicking on the links in the last sentence, but a summary of that assessment can be found below:

I think it's important to start with last year as it allows for tracking progress and seeing how many works in progress and missing things moved up the line.

This year I want to take the same approach, and so below you'll find the five things I thought we got right in the 2024 season. 

I did want to start by saying that for the most part I thought each of the things we got right last year stayed right this year.  I'm sure technically they all have room for improvement. For example, I thought on occasion a few runners pushed the pendulum of starting slow a little too far.  Some of that was probably because these athletes' fitness improved during the season while there starting paces didn't follow proportionally.  That's on me as much as the athletes for not helping them adjust.  I also think it's easier to fix than a swing in the other direction.

But overall we did a good job of maintaining and/or building on these things while adding more to the mix.

#1:  Commitment

While it isn't the most concrete or particular idea to lead off with, the thing that stood out to me the most about this season was commitment.  This started with summer training.  In previous years summer training was a bit spotty for many of our runners.  Most athletes came to some of the days, but only some athletes came to most of the days.  Summer 2024 seemed markedly different, especially for our younger athletes.  All but two runners on our team made it to at least 10 summer practices, and at least one of those two was still training consistently during the summer.  Even as we cut back on the number of contact days to appease state regulations, our runners stepped up to fill the gaps, meeting together at parks and lakes to get the work in.  

I'm sure some of that has to do with standardizing practices in the morning, publishing training plans in advance, and trying to offer more fun incentives like team breakfasts and summer shirts.  But I think the majority of this is that our team simply bought into the idea that they could become better runners if they put in consistent work.  That belief carried over into the official season.  Conflicts and illnesses inevitably arose and kept athletes from practice, but I felt like this year there was a greater push to be at practice.  When athletes had to miss practice or leave early, they generally made efforts to work around that, whether this meant starting practice early or committing to doing as much as possible before leaving.  Our athletes wanted to get the work in, and that says a lot.

Most of the credit for this one goes to our athletes.  Coaches can set the number of races, implement certain exercises, or plan specific workouts, but it's the runners who not only show up but give 100% when they do.

Our freshmen were some of the most consistent participants in our summer training, many of them earning their summer shirts within the first week.

During the two-week dead period in the summer, the majority of runners still kept the ball rolling with their training.

#2:  Alternating Surfaces

We spent most of Summer 2023 on the roads, and by that August I was convinced this wasn't ideal.  During the 2023 season we spent a lot of time practicing on our course, but I felt like we could do better at alternating our running surfaces and spending more time on the sort of ground on which we would be racing.  For that reason, last year this was an area with room for improvement.

While 2024 wasn't perfect in this department, I think we largely got it right.  While we did still do most of our long runs on the pavement instead of the dirt or crushed gravel like I would prefer, nearly all of our summer aerobic workouts were on the grass.  We also introduced trail runs at the Perry County Lake during the summer and did all of our fastest running like strides or our neural day accelerations on grass or gravel.  I even encouraged our runners to do some barefoot strides on the football field.

I think avoiding excessive road running did contribute to the relative absence of shin splints and other lower leg issues during the summer.  And the earlier introduction of gravel, grass, and trails left our runners with stronger feet, ankles, and knees when racing season arrived.  My increasing familiarity with some of the premiere teams in Illinois and Colorado who do most of their running on dirt trails in forest preserves or crushed gravel paths in parks only confirmed the wisdom of this move.

We were able to get in multiple workouts this summer on the back loop of our course, meaning less time on pavement.

#3:  Nutrition

Nutrition also earned work-in-progress status in last year's review.  In 2023 I tried to provide treats after hard workouts to promote recovery, and I pushed for more snacks at meets that would prime athletes for racing as well as ones that would help them on the back end with recovery.  Yet I knew there was room for improvement.

My time last January at the Boulder Running Clinics turned me on to the importance of nutrition for performance.  There I met Marie Davis Markham and Robyn McGillis at Wildwood Running (more on them in future posts), who introduced me to a new term. 

Snocker: a contraction of the words snack and locker;  a place where athletes can readily access the snacks and drinks they need to fuel their running and recovery.  

I knew this was something our program needed, and so I began brainstorming what that could look like.  I spent the spring reading through books on runner nutrition and cookbooks jammed with recipes for runners.  During the summer we had protein-packed treats after most aerobic workouts, and we introduced team breakfasts after our Friday long runs.  There were the occasional electrolyte freezer pops and an admittedly inconsistent supply of graham crackers for pre-practice consumption. 

Over the summer I also encountered two incredible individuals who have served as resources:  Meghann  Feathertun and Heidi Strickler.  Meghann gave me a lot to chew on through her blogs and podcast, and many of the recipes we tried during the regular season (like the quite popular recovery brownies) were from her.  Heidi Strickler helped clarify priorities when it came to nutrition, exposing the dark side of getting too obsessed with healthy eating, especially when that manifests in a condition like orthorexia.  She stressed the importance of taking a balanced and less judgmental approach toward food with athletes and simply making sure they get enough calories, especially in the form of carbohydrates and protein.  Many of the food items that ended up in our Snocker were her suggestion.

Speaking of the Snocker, that debuted with the start of school and was all in all a huge success.  I pretty quickly learned the most popular foods among our athletes.  For me the moment I knew things were clicking in this department was a day after school when I went into the library before practice and saw two of the girls on our team eating a snack.  At the encouragement of Dr. Jeff Messer, chocolate milk after races and race-pace workouts quickly gained traction as well.  Strawberry milk was also a popular alternative, though experimental flavors like root bear and orange creamsicle didn't win too many fans.  I'm still waiting for Prairie Farms to offer a sponsorship.

Nonetheless I think we nailed this one.

The Snocker was a HUGE win on the nutrition front for our program!

​#4:  Easy Days Easy

This was once again an item with room for improvement from 2023.  We had done a decent job of scheduling dedicated easy runs in our training, but my time looking into the practices of top programs and athletes left me convinced that the paces of many of our easy runs were way too fast to allow recovery and prevent additional fatigue.

For Summer 2024 that meant forced paces for some of our earliest easy runs so our athletes could get a sense of what comfortable and conversational meant.  This was a struggle at first, as many of our athletes thought that if they didn't leave practice gassed, the day was wasted.  But with time I do think most of our runners found their rhythm.

At the Boulder Running Clinics I had the opportunity to talk with Jonathan Dalby, a Missouri native and head coach of Mountain Vista High School.  His girls captured the team championship at the 2024 Nike Nationals.  Coach Dalby said that five or six years ago they would really push the pace on their easy runs, where as now far more often he's telling his runners to slow down.  Coach Dalby said that as long as running form isn't breaking down, he lets his athletes go super slow. 

I do think going forward the goal is to get our runners to run easy by feeling.  Some days the pace might need to be slower to accommodate scorching heat, a mild illness, or a little extra soreness.  But overall our ability to truly take our easy days easy kept many of our runners out on the course and free of injury during the season.  It also allowed us to really cash in on our hard aerobic workouts and race-pace efforts at peak capacity.

The girls at NXN Champion Mountain Vista High School prioritize slow paces on their easy days.

#5:  Culture

Culture is a broad word hard to pin down with any one feature or metric.  It's long been a trademark of our program, as evident in the fact that a whole page on our website is devoted to it.  Over the years numerous parents and athletes with experience in other sports have commented on the qualitative difference with cross country.

But one thing I've come to learn is the dynamic nature of culture.  Just because a team's culture thrives one year hardly means it will the next, let alone a decade down the road.  That's due in large part to the high turnover of high school sports.  Within four years you are guaranteed to have a whole new team. Culture takes ongoing effort to both strengthen it in the present and transfer it to the future.  

Listing culture here isn't so much an indictment against the 2023 season.  Our team culture that year wasn't bad by any means.  More than anything this is simply praise for how much we crushed it in 2024, particularly on the girls side.  I've been part of teams in the past where certain athletes refused to run with others or the primary goal of athletes was to outperform their teammates.  This year far more of the emphasis seemed to be on getting better, succeeding as a team, and having fun along the way.

I think cohesion deserves greater mention as well.  While we did implement games and activities (find the peanut butter, towel race, etc) that cultivate team building, the bulk of the credit for this really goes to our seniors for stepping up and bringing the whole team--especially the freshmen--together.  Beyond the pasta dinners and team breakfasts, they coordinated sleepovers, Texas Roadhouse road trips, and many more outings I never knew about.

As I've attended more and more clinics and conferences with coaches of some of the top high school teams in the country, this has been my greatest takeaway.  Of course these coaches will mention key workouts and core principles of training at their schools.  But if you ask 95% of them what's the biggest thing driving the success of their team, they won't say something like progressive long runs or wicket drills or double lactate threshold runs.  Time and again they point to the things that have enhanced culture:  team camps, goofy workouts, cry sessions before the state meet. 

As an example, the Boulder Running Clinics featured a presentation by the coaches at Lincoln High School--whose girls won the 2024 state title in Oregon (their boys finished fourth) and ultimately qualified for Nike Nationals--on the ten pillars of their team.  Not one of the ten pillars involved specific workouts or training modalities.  Instead it was things like creating a unique experience, establishing community, and setting goals that inspire confidence and belief.

Culture is going to look a little different for every team, even for the same program from year to year, but I think we've done  a great job of establishing the SV version.  As much if not more than a LUNAr long run or a scavenger hunt, it's the little things like our girls painting each other before races or the team spontaneously jumping into an over-sized puddle on a rainy day.  As our current seniors graduate and new individuals step into leadership roles, the challenge will be to build on this!

From food to games, our team had a ton of fun together this year!