Hello, Distance Team!

In just four weeks, we’ll kick off the 2025 track season together on our first official day of practice. Spoiler alert: we’re starting with a real workout at CV pace on day one! Don’t worry, it’s designed to ease us into the season—not overwhelm you. That said, we want to be prepared for that first workout, right? To help you get ready, here’s a plan for January. You have a lot of options, and this is meant to give you some ownership over your own plan…there are many paths to success, but all these paths involve effort, so pick the options that will make you try your best.

I’m in Oregon now and plan to be back in California the weekend of January 25…so plan to see me for optional practices every day the week of January 27. Watch for notices from Coach Sciplin regarding when the offical practices begin, and make sure that you have all your clearance done and your physicals are current.

Mondays (January 6, 13, 20, 27): Option 1 is to join Coach Samantha’s House of Pain (oops, I mean House of Plyos, what a weird typographical error–BAD spellcheck!). Option 2 is to run 6 to 10 hill repeats at Linda Vista, Stevens Creek, or somewhere else. In either case, you should run 4 to 6 miles total today, including the plyo or hill workout. Afterwards, 10 minutes of core plus 2 minutes of plank, and roll out or stretch. I’d like you to incorporate some Figure 4 stretches into your Monday routine this month; you can do these together and talk to your friends about the great season coming up.

Tempo Tuesdays (January 7, 14, 21, 28): My goal for you on Tuesdays is to run 20-35 minutes at roughly your lactic threshold pace. This pace should feel comfortably fast, or fast but still comfortable. The workouts should not be soul-sucking–if you finish your run and have your hands on your knees gasping, or feel wrecked for a half hour afterwards, you ran harder than you need to for this time of year and for this type of workout. There are many ways to reach this goal. Some of you have sent me your threshold run plans, and it is OK to follow your individual plan. If you want to latch on to someone else, you can see what Anika is doing and do something like that. If you want some ideas from coach, here you go…

  • January 7: Let’s start with a track run this week. Four to seven x 1000 with 200m recoveries will be a good way to start the year. Make the 200m recoveries no longer than two minutes (90 seconds is a nice target). After your last rep, recover slowly for 250m, then run 150m HARD; jog 250m again, and run another HARD 150m. Let’s start working on our finish!
  • January 14: Run the Palm Tempo route, but at each mile marker, stop and take a 60-second walking/active recovery break. Don’t stand still; walk relatively briskly; this will keep your heart rate from dropping as fast as if you stand still and also encourages lactic acid and other by-products of hard running to circulate and be processed. This also allows you to regroup with partners; if you are 20 seconds in front of your buddy, you can take a 70 second recovery and they can have a 50 second break, and you can start together again. When you are done, recover to the track, and run 2×150 like last week.
  • January 21: Fartlek! After your warm-up, get on the road and run four to five surges lasting 3 to 5 minutes each with a 1- to 2-minute jog in between. Your effort should be slightly slower than your 5km race pace. Most runners find this at about 80 to 85 percent of full effort. Research tells us if you hit this right you will build a higher lactate threshold—the balance point between the production of lactic acid and your ability to keep lactic acid from building up. When you are done with this, run 4×30/30 to work on our race finish.
  • Januayr 28: I’ll be back!
  • Target paces: To give you an idea of paces…if you ran Crystal in 19 or better, a 6:10-30 pace should fall in the comfortably fast range for you. For a 20-22 minute run at Crystal, think 7:00-7:30; for 22-24, 7:30-8:00; for 25, think mid 8s. The figures here are not precise by design; I want you to use these figures as guidelines and to run by feel a bit. Don’t be afraid to push yourself, but don’t kill yourself either. Try different paces and see what feels comfortably-fast, or 80% race effort…it is a bit of a personal journey to find out what you can do to push yourself without beating yourself up.

Finish up your Tuesday with a some core and some stretching.

Wednesdays (January 8, 15, 22, 29): Recovery day! For most people, four to six easy miles will be the target. There is no speed, no push, and lots of conversation. BUT, but…don’t make this a walk, either. If you ran Crystal in 20 or better, I’m guessing an easy pace for you is probably under 8 minutes per mile. If you ran Crystal in 25 or so, your easy pace is probably mid-9s to 10 per mile.  Have an easy day and chat with your friends but don’t make this a zero. Let’s do some solid IT band rolling, shin-splint prevention, and some core,  focusing on our lateral (side plank with elbow to knee touch, starfish, side leg lifts, bananas) and lower abs (rockets, climb the rope, cake mixer). Let’s EVERYONE do shin splint prevention together, and teach anyone who doesn’t know how! No shin splints in 2025!

 

(January 9, 16, 23, 30):  You have options!

  1. Join Coach Samantha for plyos, and add on 2 to 5 miles before or after her session.
  2. If you did not run hills on Monday, you could do a set of hill repeats today.
  3. You could run 5 to 8 miles with a fartlek in the middle, one of these…
    1. After a warm-up, perform five to six surges of 2 minutes each, with a 1-minute jog between each hard effort. Each surge should feel like your cross-country race pace effort. This workout will be especially helpful for runners focusing on the 3200.
    2. After a warm-up, perform 10 to 12 pushes lasting 1 minute with a 1-minute jog between each push. The push effort should be slightly faster than a cross-country race pace effort. Most runners describe this as 90 to 95 percent of race effort. This is a good VO2Max (improving your body’s ability to utilize oxygen) and will help all runners.

Are you wondering what I would suggest? I’d say make sure you work with Coach Sam once or twice a week the first two weeks, and in then in week three you and your running friends pick one of the fartleks. You be you, but whatever you pick, put in your best effort! Don’t just cruise.

Afterwards, some hard, leg-based core–lots of lunges or squats or jumps with some ab exercises as breaks. If you did not do core today, you might do some stadium step bunny hops and single-legged hops (look at this guy! but don’t start where he is, start your hops on the stairs! Please don’t try something crazy at first and get hurt!).

Fridays (January 10, 17, 24, 31):  Another recovery day…same description as Wednesday, but maybe one mile less.

Saturdays (January 11, 18, 25, and February 1):  Long run day!

You might wonder—why Saturday? It’s because it’s still getting dark early, making a long run after school less safe. So, Saturday it is!

Try to include hills if you can. A great rotation could be:

  • Up and Over + Seven Springs one week
  • Horse + Garrods the next weekend
  • REI on the third weekend

You might even convince Sam’s mom to lead another Rancho run one Saturday 🙂 Or, plan a different adventure—Coach Flatow has plenty of ideas if you need inspiration.

And don’t forget, breakfast is always a great way to wrap up a long run!

Check with Coach Flatow if you have any questions, need clarification, think he might have made a mistake (!!!), or just want to touch base about distance-related things!