Bay Shore High School, cont.

Key workouts:

* we run our championship races and dual meets at Sunken Meadow, which is a very demanding course, that can beat you up! We live on the south shore of Long Island, which is totally flat. Sunken meadow is located on the hilly north shore of L.I. We like to meet at Sunken meadow once a week in the summer, just getting some hill running in. This is very important, since most of our running is on flat terrain.

* in season, our key workout is 1000 meter repeats. We are on a 3 week cycle, and the 1000 meter repeats will end a cycle. We start at a very modest pace, ranging from 90 sec (400m) pace for the better runners, slower for some of the other runners. How they handle the 1000's will determine the pace for the next cycle.

* every Tuesday after a dual meet, we will do some hill repeats at Sunken Meadow. That is our only chance to get on hills, besides racing.

Mileage progression/workout progression:

* we start out the summer running 2-3 miles five days a week. Less for the newcomers (1-2 miles). We do that for two weeks, then go to 3-4 miles (2-3 for the newcomers or young runners). Then we add another day running 3-4 miles 6 days a week. Then we run two weeks of 4-5 miles (2-3 for the newcomers and young runners). Add the 7th day and run 4-6 miles for two weeks (newcomers and young runners can go 3-4 if they feel they are ready). We keep our mileage between 35-42 miles for most of the season. Very few of our runners will exceed 42 miles a week. We are a low mileage program. We want our athletes to continue progressing from year to year, both in performance and mileage. This will carry over to college. Our runners will be able to handle 45-48 miles the first year of college, and progress to over 50 the second year. So our mileage progresses from 10-15 miles per week to a max of 35-42 miles per week. Less for our younger runners and newcomers. (Note: we can run 7th and 8th graders in NY, if they meet the selective classification criteria set by the state). The newcomers and young runners will run 6 days a week, and build up to 25-28 miles per week. The more seasons they run, the more we add to the mileage.