Coach Jim Sackett (Cal Poly/Pomona) on running at the next (Collegiate level) - He talks about his 2003 Team and their Training

Jim Sackett (Cal Poly/Pomona) on a seasonal college training plan

(This past weekend at the CCAA Meet in Chico, Cal Poly/Pomona's Men's group impressed with their second place effort behind Chico State, with the young Bronco women's squad fourth in the competition - The NCAA Div II 23rd Ranked CP Pomona Men's group, led by second placer finisher Daniel Rojas and third placer soph Mark Batres, leap-frogged over #9 ranked in the nation UCSD (49-60) with Chico (ranked #4 in the nation) scoring 27. We asked Coach Jim Sackett (who was named CCAA Men's Coach of the Year in Chico) to talk a bit about training at the collegiate level over the length of a season, with a big thanks for his openness in discussing what he is doing this season with his troops. The 6k - 8k - 10k distances are a step up for the preps to consider as they think about running and racing at the collegiate level. The NCAA Div II Western Regional is scheduled for Prado Dam in Chino on November 8th, with the first race at 9:00 a.m. This is an open weekend for prep teams in the greater Los Angeles/Southern California area, and it would be a chance to see these and other teams battle for spots to attend the National Division II Championships in North Carolina two weeks later--top four men's teams and top three women's teams advance to the Nationals from the Region Meet - Link to Cal Poly/Pomona sports info release on conference meet and regional outlook).

Coach Sackett:

"With these teams still young, frosh and soph, or new to our program from community colleges we tried to take a look at the season as learning and growth. One of the most important aspects of a college program is trying to meld a group of people that come from all different types of running experience, a social and economic environment and blend them together. We start this the 2nd week of Sept. by going on a 4 day running camp at Lake Gregory. It is more melting pot then running. This same thing can apply to high school experiences.
Running wise this is taking a group of people that have a long history of Road Runner club and extensive high school training all the way down to the 20 miler per week person.

We do try and work a red shirt year in sometime during their collegiate career and this is easily done for cross country for most students take an extra quarter or year to complete a major. Being on the quarter system does present some problems of trying to gather these people up and get in a good training base. We start school Sept. 25th with most semester schools being in school a month. Without budgets to bring and keep the people here for early season meets they come to the race and then go back home and we believe they will train as we ask and do what we call home work in the summer time.

All of our August and Sept. training is what we call base training. 45 – 60 min runs at aerobic levels. We do no anaerobic training during this period. We build up the minutes as the weeks progress and by the time school starts we are at 60 – 75 minute aerobic level runs. We incorporate what we call steady state runs and 3 x 8 min. for the ladies and 3 x 10 min. for the men and will build the ladies to 3 x 10. These are tempo runs that happen every 10 days. The steady state runs are an out and back run for the ladies it is 2 miles out and 2 back early season and for the men it is 3 miles out and 3 back building to 4 out and 4 back and also are 10 to 14 days. This is to teach them where they are as an individual and not geared to anyone else. When the go out and come back and run within 20 seconds for each run they are being successful. Our ultimate goal is to run negative splits.

We don’t start any repetition work until the 2nd week of Oct. and that is once a week, this is hard for those people that are from repetition type programs. It is a long season and repetition generates sharpness and we want the sharpness in late season. Our nationals are the week before California State high school meet.

We pick and choose our meets, which I see many high school coaches starting to do. It has taken them a long time to get the administration to understand your are training a human body physiologically and not hit and tackle, thus the dual meets every week are slowly disappearing.

We use early season to determine our consistent top 5 and they go on a long range training program. The last race they ran prior to the conference was Sept. 27, prior to that they had 2 races. The conference was Oct. 25th , Regionals in 2 weeks and nationals in 4 weeks. We are now in our championship training phase which will include repetition work twice a week. We do these on Tuesday and Thursday and Wed. is a 60 min. pool run or 60 min. run at low aerobic. Monday and Friday are 60 – 75 min. aerobic runs at the middle aerobic level.

We try to play some fun training games. Example beat the cones ladies against the men. Men 75 seconds, ladies 90 seconds, with rest time equal to running time. They need to have 5 people in the group that finish between the cones that are 3 meters apart. We move the cones to different distances. We do 14 of these and for the 1st time in 3 years the ladies lost. Amazing how quickly they forget how tough the training is when you put the pizza on the line.

Now the big thing is to keep everyone healthy, away from colds and flu and with our crazy weather it is tough."

Thanks Doug

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