In speaking at a couple coaching clinics this summer, one of the things that struck me was how many people came up to me and would talk about the HS training logs I posted on here.  They’d talk about how after reading my training philosophies and then seeing the logs, it helped conceptualize things quite a bit.

I haven’t done that in a while, so what I’m going to do is post some of the pro and college athletes logs.  Not so that you can sit back and copy them, because that doesn’t work, but instead so that you can get a better understanding of how things fit together.  Whenever I get in a bind in figuring out what to do with an athlete, I always go back and read the basics of training again and then look at past logs and experience.

I’ve always been a big believer in open sharing.  So I’m going to ask that if anyone has any logs of themselves or athletes they have coached successfully, whether on the HS, college, or Pro level.  Please email me or leave a comment, and I’ll create some kind of training log repository.

So to start with, I’ll post the logs of O’Lionaird when I was coaching him. He is now coached by Mark Rowland who is doing an excellent job.  The reason I’m starting with a professional is to dispel the shroud hidden behind elite training.  Nick Symmonds was nice enough to publish his 2012 training log, so if it’s good enough for Nick to do, it’s good enough for me.  When I first started coaching elites, you think you know what to do with them, but you are so trained in this CC/indoor/outdoor mode of HS or college training, it’s hard to translate the principles to an elite program where it is months of training leading to having to be in peak shape for not only standard chasing races in May, but also championships in June and European race/championships in August.  It provides a unique challenge.  Given that, I’ll start with a O’Lionairds indoor season and then move towards Jackie Aresons full year, to show how the process of coaching elites differs.

Then later in the summer, I’ll post the training of my 1:49 800m college guys, and finally when her season concludes I’ll post Jackie Areson’s from this year.  The goal is to give a wide range from 800 to 5k with a wide range of abilities and backgrounds.

I hope you enjoy.  It worked well until a nagging Achilles injury derailed us at World Indoors.  There are some good and bad things about this program, as there are with any, but the key is learning from it.

If you can’t see it, try this link:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1vfZ7tD21qONFdOVDAxNE94LXc/edit?usp=sharing


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    6 Comments

    1. BradyH on July 12, 2013 at 7:25 pm

      Thanks for posting, definitely interesting stuff here! What I noticed is that an "elite" log seems not much different than what my log looks like…and running can still in fact be kept simple and still be effective.

    2. b43fed28-eb49-11e2-8be6-000bcdcb471e on July 12, 2013 at 11:21 pm

      I'm just getting a grey blank where the log is suppose to be

    3. acruns on July 14, 2013 at 7:16 pm

      2xday's seems to be the secret? I know…I know…it's different for everyone and every race.

    4. Anonymous on July 15, 2013 at 11:24 pm

      I can't see it with Safari, but it works with Firefox.

    5. Anonymous on July 17, 2013 at 11:51 am

      I notice that 1 consistent workout was 10 X 200 followed by more 200's on a hill. Was the point of this to get accustomed to sub 4:00 mile pace before the harder rep workouts begin like 600's and such?

    6. Anonymous on August 28, 2013 at 4:19 pm

      I'm really interested to see what your 800m runners' schedules look like. I've struggled figure out specific endurance for 800m runners because of the higher lactate levels involved in that type of work. My suspicion is you can't do as much specific endurance work for the 800 (i.e. it has to be introduced later in the season than, say, specific endurance workouts for a 5k athlete) because the workouts usually involve acidosis. Do you think this is true? Or am I missing something? Would a potential answer be a longer period of nonspecific lactate work like hill workouts?

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