Coach ,

Regardless of your distance runners’ level, you’d be short-changing their progress if their daily training regimen only consisted of distance running. 

There are plenty of other training techniques that are proven to help runners become the best version of themselves. And one of the key figures driving this movement toward improved distance runner training is Jay Johnson.

Jay Johnson has coached collegiate, professional, and adult runners for two decades.

We have pulled some of Coach Johnson’s best insights from his course and distilled them into easily digestible bits that will help make your distance runners reach their competitive peak. 

What To Train - Introduction

What to Train - Introduction

Coach Johnson stresses that it isn’t good enough just to tell your runners to go run a random set of miles each day for practice. 

Rather, there must be structure (and purpose) to each training session. 

And the purpose should be to build up the runner’s anaerobic base (or, as Coach Johnson calls it, their engine). 

One example of this is what Coach Johnson called a “critical velocity run”. This essentially means is a timed run where the runner’s goal is to run at the same pace throughout.

To achieve this, the runner would need to be checking their pace at set intervals (say, every five minutes), and try to maintain that pace without losing any time throughout the session. 

Run Race Pace (or faster) 

Run Race Pace (or faster)

While an athlete building their engine and strengthening their aerobic endurance should be a crucial component to one’s distance training, the lungs aren’t the only part of the body that needs to build stamina. 

 A runner’s legs also must be trained up. And there’s no better way to get one’s legs acclimated to running at race pace than running at race pace. 

Of course, this will take time to build up, and runners should not try to run at a race pace at their race distance on day one of training. 

But Coach Johnson notes that doesn’t mean a 400 or 800m runner can’t run 50 meters at race pace in the first week of practice just to get that race-like feel, and increase the distance from there. 

Remember To Sleep

Remember to Sleep

Coach Johnson suggests that a distance runner (or any athlete, for that matter) should be getting at least 8 hours of sleep every night. To ensure this happens, he believes the best course of action is to work backward. 

First, a runner should figure out what they must wake up in the morning. From there, the athlete should figure out what’s (at least) eight hours before that wake-up time and plan to be in bed, trying to sleep, at that point. 

It might sound like a long shot that a coach can convince their athletes to go to sleep at 9 PM on a weeknight. But Coach Johnson claims that if any of those kids are willing and receptive to doing so, then those are almost certainly going to be your future champions and record-breakers. 

Thank you Coach Johnson for sharing clips from ‘Consistency Is Key: Training Principles for Distance Coaches’ course.

Never get out-coached, 

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