Summer Numbers: Volume, Intensity, and Progression

The Big Picture
​of Summer Work​

In the first post on summer training, I gave an overview of our structure and then explained how state guidelines largely determined our schedule.  This week I want to look beyond the "when" of our training to the "how".

Effective summer training is all about building a foundation for the rest of the season.  That primarily means working toward greater levels of aerobic capacity and structural strength, starting at a runner's current level of fitness and progressing toward a place they can launch to success from during race season.  It's a season where runners can make a lot of progress. 

But if done incorrectly, it can spell injuries and disappointment.  And let's be honest.  No one signs up for this team in order to get hurt and sidelined from competition.  Healthy runners are happy runners ... and generally successful ones.  The number one goal is to prevent injury and allow runners to thrive.

Strength Running Podcast host Jason Fitzgerald often discusses how in order to do this, runners need to avoid the three "Toos":  Too Much, Too Fast, Too Soon.  In their desire to progress and improve, runners can easily overload the miles, push the pace beyond the target ranges, and progress too quickly in their training.

To help put checks in place and hopefully avoid any of these "toos", our summer training has structures to dictate volume, intensity, and progression.

Color Groups as a
​Limit on Progression

Summer training for all runners should come after something of a break from running.  For those coming off of track or independent workouts, this could be a couple weeks of decreased or altogether paused training--stay tuned for a plan on that in a later post.  For others, summer training could be the first regular running since November.  For our new members, their entire life to this point might not have included much structured running.

Regardless of the excitement to get back to running, the importance of easing into that can't be emphasized enough.  Picking back up exactly where one left off, whether that was several weeks ago or several months ago, simply isn't realistic, especially if that was some sort of end-of-season peak level that our bodies can't sustain for more than a few weeks anyway.  We have to ramp up to those levels again.  The less removed one is from structured running, the faster they can proceed to this point, but it takes time regardless.

To help ensure this, our runners will be split into three "ability groups".  I want to be clear from the outset that by ability I don't mean how fast a runner is.  People often question why the fastest runners aren't necessarily in the top group running the most miles.  What I have to stress--often repeatedly--is that pace, volume, and progression are three different things, and these groups are about progression and--at least not directly--the other two.  So the group a runner is placed in says nothing about how fast they are.  It won't even automatically control their mileage.  We have other means to address those things.  By ability, I simply mean how quickly they can advance to more difficult running and strength training. 

The greatest factors in this are actual age, training age, and recent running experience.  Training age simply means the number of years someone has been running in a structured/competitive fashion.  For example, a senior who didn't start running until last year would have a training age of one, whereas a junior who started as a freshman would have a training age of two. 

But at the same time, the recency of that running matters.  As an example, say a junior runner takes a season or even an entire year off.  Since he/she spent significant time away from the team, some rust had accumulated on that training, or what is often called detraining.  That athlete certainly had a capacity to progress that was higher than a new senior runner, but it was also probably lower than a senior with the same training age of two who had run their sophomore and junior years.

One other factor to consider in this is the non-running athletic background of an individual.  For example, if an athlete wasn't running but continued to play sports like soccer and basketball and wasn't just sitting on a couch scrolling through TikTok, that makes a difference.  The same could be said for someone who does track but competes as a jumper/sprinter instead of a distance runner.

A last factor to consider is injury history.  If an athlete kept running into injuries in the previous season, pushing the training load might not be the wisest decision.

Certainly each runner has their own unique ability rating here.  There isn't an exact science to determine that, but for the sake of simplicity with training, our team is split into three groups, each labeled by color.  Assuming an athlete has been healthy, they will roughly they will follow the guidelines below:

Green:  Zero years of training or more than one year of training with little recent running.
Blue:  One year of training with recent running or two or more years of training with no recent running.
Gold:  Two or more years of training with recent running.

Because groups don't directly dictate pace or volume,  they also don't generally determine who an athlete runs with most days of practice.  But more than anything, it is dictating how quickly they advance to new loads of training and ancillary (strength and mobility) work.

From this sample of training, you can see that the group primarily dictates the quantity and progression of ancillary work, not the pace or volume of running.

What About Freshmen?

A logical question to emerge from this is whether that places all freshmen in the green group.  In my first year as coach I would have said no, particularly for those who competed in track/cross country in junior high.  But my opinion has shifted some here.  That came especially after speaking with Justin Leonard, head coach at perennial powerhouse Southlake Carroll High School in Texas. 

On the first day of summer training, every one of Coach Leonard's freshmen run a mile.  That's it.  One mile.  Then they come back on day two, and in a real progression of distance, they once again run one mile.  Every day of that first week is a mile. Even by the end of the season, the freshmen at Carroll only max out at around 25 miles a week.  

Coach Leonard takes a lot of criticism for this approach.  Couldn't those freshmen be big(ger) contributors to the team if they were thrown more aggressively into training?  Absolutely.  But as Leonard is quick to point out, he's about developing an athlete for life, not a team for a season.  Pushing a freshman too much too soon puts them at much greater risk for injuries, burnout, and ultimate breakdowns in their progress. 

Coach Leonard even took that approach with his son Caden, a talented runner with middle school experience.  Talented is probably an understatement.  Caden ran a 9:36 two-mile as an eighth grader.  For reference, the high school record here at SV is 9:57.  Did  Caden run his fastest as a freshman?  Probably not.  He still made the varsity squad.  By the end of the season he was the second fastest runner on a team that made nationals, finishing 135th as an individual with a 5k time of 16:33.

Fast forward a year.  Caden's mileage climbed in his sophomore season, and his performance matched his progression.  He led his team to a third place finish at Nike Nationals, finishing as the fastest sophomore in the country and 21st overall.  He ran an 8:53 in the 3200 that year.  Last year as a junior he set a new 5k PR and launched all the way into the national spotlight at Nike Nationals, with an untimely fall being the likely reason he finished third at instead of at the top of the podium.  

The idea is that runners need to progress gradually.  Coach Leonard's seniors often end up running north of 60 miles per week.  But they start out conservatively and then slowly feed the hunger for more in a gradual fashion.  It's a lot like our race strategy:  start controlled and end strong.

Large schools like Southlake Carroll have the luxury of a bigger roster.  Often times our freshmen have to run varsity by sheer necessity.  Coach Leonard doesn't feel the same pressure to rush freshman development.  With or without that pressure, I'm more and more inclined to follow his lead in most cases when it comes to progression.

Coach Justin Leonard embracing his son Caden after a race.

​Training Volume: 
​Minutes vs Miles

Besides guiding a runner's progression of training, it is important that they begin at the right place in terms of speed and workload.  One of the first things to note about most of the runs we assign is that they are in minutes rather than miles.  This is tough for some runners. 

Mile totals can become a sort of trophy for many athletes, if not worse an idol that they worship. I understand.  When I was in high school, we could earn a t-shirt based on the mileage club we reached during the summer.  That started as low as 100 miles and went up from there.   My close friend topped 800 miles in the summer before our senior year (he also spent much of the season battling injuries). 

As you can tell from our own program's shirt incentive, I think consistency is the much more valuable pursuit.  We place the process over the results.  While high miles do tend to correlate with better performance, they aren't the direct cause.  Indiscriminate miles are far less beneficial than a structured plan of work.  Quality and not just quantity. 

Running by minutes rather than miles is one way to ensure this.  I say that for several reasons.  First, an athlete doesn't need a route or a GPS watch to run time.  They do need some sort of watch, but otherwise they are free to go wherever their heart takes them, and I even mean that literally in that it gives runners more freedom to run by feel.

Running by time allows flexibility with pacing.  If an athlete has an eight-mile long run but isn't feeling great, they might end up grinding through it, especially if their route was some sort of out-and-back.  They end up slowing down because of their sub-prime condition.  So now a run that should have taken them 55 minutes keeps a runner out on the roads for well over an hour, all on a day when they should have probably done less given how they felt.  But if the long run was assigned at 55 minutes, the athlete could ease up the pace and not be out running any longer. 

Another reason is that running by minutes tends to reduce the likelihood of runners blowing up the pace.  If I give an athlete a 4-mile run at easy pace, they might burn through it just to get it done and head home and finish in 26 minutes.  That's far from easy pace.  But if I give them a 32-minute easy run, pushing the pace won't get the run over any sooner, so the athlete might as well run it as intended.

The last reason is that it levels the field of ability.  What I mean by this can be illustrated if I assign two runners a mile warmup at easy pace.  The first runner is a top athlete.  They finish in seven minutes.  The second is a slower runner who takes nearly twelve minutes.   Relative to their fitness levels, the second runner did nearly twice the work of the first.    Giving runners a ten-minute warmup at easy pace ensures both runners get the same amount of work. 

​Levels as a
​Limit on Volume

Even running by minutes, it's still important to determine the right amounts.  To guide this, our weekly work is arranged by levels.  Primarily these are built around the duration of an athletes long run, with Level 1 correlated to a 20 minute long run and each subsequent level adding 5 minutes to that duration.  The structure and duration of the other runs progress in proportion to the long runs.  

Runners in the Green Group will start at Level 1.  For the other runners, it will depend on their recent long runs, with their starting level including a long run slightly shorter than what they had been averaging previously.  If a returning runner doesn't have any recent long runs, they will also start at Level 1. 

Ultimately the assigned level will be different for each runner, even those in the same color group.  Again, the color groups simply determine the progression, not the volume.  So one runner in the Blue Group might go on a 30 minute long run, while for another it is 45.  However, in general Gold Group members will see higher volumes than Blue, and Blue than Green.  If a runner completes all of the work in one week, they will progress to the next level.  Otherwise, they should remain at that level. 

Levels determine the length of various runs through the week and the volume of workouts.

Stepbacks and Acclimation

One nuance to the volume levels is how they progress.  Our bodies aren't machines.  They can't continuously take on greater and greater loads.  Ultimately runners need time to adapt to the training they've done.  Otherwise they risk taking on volumes their body simply isn't ready to handle and not really getting stronger from the work they've already done. 

An analogy that works well for this is climbing a tall mountain.  If one ascends too quickly, they are likely to develop altitude sickness.  The body has to adjust to the decreased oxygen.  This is why mountaineers follow the maxim of climb high, sleep low.  They descend lower than the highest point they climbed in order to rest for the night and acclimate.

Our training takes a similar approach of three steps forward, one step backward.  From week to week, a runner who is training consistently would see their volume levels follow a pattern of +1, +1, +1, -1.  For example, a runner who starts with a long run of 45 minutes would run 50 minutes the second week, 55 minutes in the third week, 60 minutes in the fourth week,  but on the fourth week, they would drop back down to 55 minutes before continuing to progress in the following weeks.

This "stepback week" gives the body a window of recovery and adaptation.  When runners hit the same volume the second time, they will be able to progress through it with much less difficulty ... and risk of injury.

Jonathan Beverly currently serves as running gear editor at Outside Magazine, where he is a regular contributor. He's also the one to win me over to the idea of "stepback weeks".

Setting the Pace

The last important thing to guide in our training is pace.  Even if a runner is sticking with manageable volumes and not rushing too quickly to do more miles or extra strength work, they can still end up overtraining.  This happens when they run too fast.

If I'm honest, this is the "too" I have the most difficulty with personally.  I regularly catch myself pushing the pace in the middle of what should have been an easy run and have to constantly remind myself to take it easy.  Like many runners, I can struggle with the need to prove myself.  The old adage of "no pain, no gain" is persuasive.  It's also misguided.  The goal is always to train but not to strain.

We simply aren't made to run hard every day.  Our bodies need easier days to recover, ones where the focus is simply to extend our stamina.  Even hard days aren't generally days where we should "go to the well" or "redline", common expressions for maxing out.  Those sort of efforts place the body under incredible stress, at high risk for injury, and in need of significant recovery time that runners don't usually allow for.

To prevent this, athletes will have assigned pace ranges for recovery runs, other easy runs, and long runs.  These are loosely based off of 5k times.  I say loosely because the fitness of our runners has likely changed since the end of last season.  For those who have done distance events in track or substantial running on their own, they might be faster than they were in November.  For those who haven't been very active, paces might have moved in the opposite direction.  And obviously for those with little to no running experience, paces are a bit more of a guessing game.

Pace Ranges

Why give pace ranges rather than exact targets?  First, anyone with experience knows it's very difficult to run an exact pace.  GPS-generated paces are far from precise, so even with a watch one can only at best get close with any confidence.  

Second, a pace range gives flexibility for things like weather or soreness.  If it's a super hot day, a runner needs to back off the pace to maintain the same effort level.  On a good recovery day, a runner might be able to comfortably go a bit faster than on one in which they're still feeling the effects of the previous day's workout.

Third, a range creates tolerance for imprecision in assigning paces.  Ideal paces are going to shift somewhat during the summer as a runner's fitness increases.  If a runner's fitness is a bit above or below their assignment, they have the freedom to adjust within it until we can reconfigure without feeling like they failed the assignment.  

As seen in this snapshot of our pace chart, pace ranges allow a runner flexibility to adjust their training as needed.

Running by Feel

The last reason for a pace range is that it gives runners permission to run by feel.  In an era before watches, being able to gauge the pace oneself was the only approach, but in the estimations of most elite runners in coaches, it is also the most valuable.  As I've said previously, we aren't machines.  A runner with the ability to recognize how they're body is performing at a certain pace is going to be able to adjust much more smoothly than someone dependent on the feedback of a coach or device. 

This is especially true in the summer months when a runner's fitness level is changing significantly.  That is in part why none of our fastest summer work has assigned paces.  Instead we try to get runners to feel the effort level of 5k pace or 800m pace.   That becomes immensely valuable in cross country, where paces are going to be heavily influenced by weather and terrain.

But even on easy days, runners should be able to observe clues to their paces.  Easy runs should feel comfortable and conversational, meaning an athlete could still talk in paragraphs.  Long run paces are faster, but still ones where runners can speak in sentences.

In Summary

Hopefully this post has provided a solid overview of how we regulate the summer work of our runners.  To summarize, we can say the following:

• We use color group assignments to guide the progression of our runners based on training age and recent running.
• We use levels to structure the running volume of each athlete while building in "stepback weeks" to allow for recovery and acclimation.
• We use pace ranges and the ability to run by feel to guide how fast athletes run.