Give Your Athletes a Plan to Run Season-Best Times
Published April 23, 2025
This is an interesting time of year in the track season. For some athletes who are running at a JV conference championship, the season might be ending now. In the state of Colorado, where I am, we're solidly four weeks away from the state meet. Plus, a lot of serious athletes will run a postseason meet, so we're looking at five, six, or even seven weeks more in the season.
Regardless of where your athletes are, I think you have enough information on their strengths and weaknesses to give them a race plan before the next race.
Can High School Athletes Execute Race Plans?
As I say this, I can't help but laugh at the thought that one of my good friends, who has had multiple teams qualify for NXN, once told me that high school kids really struggle to execute a race plan.
This coach has coached more high school athletes than I have, so that's a very fair statement.
That being said, I know a lot of high school athletes that can execute a race plan.
One of the cool things about Consistency Is Key having been around for over five years now is that the "Fast, Faster, Fastest" chapter is the kids' favorite chapter.
If you don't know what we're talking about, it's pretty simple. I talked about it in this article where I talk about making a move in the 1600m with 500 meters to go. You go 200m fast, 200m faster, and then the last 100m is fastest.
And if that's too much for an athlete, you could have a younger athlete do fast, faster, fastest for 300 meters. So on the fourth lap, when they get on the back stretch and have 300m to go, they go fast on the back stretch, faster on the last curve, and fastest on the home stretch.
Back to the point of if athletes can execute a race plan. They absolutely can.
I get emails throughout the track season with excited coaches saying their athlete had read that chapter and was able to execute that race plan. So let's assume that athletes can execute a race plan.
What Plan Is Right for Your Athletes?
What I can't tell you tonight is what race plan they should be executing.
For kids in the 800m, it could be that they've simply got to latch on to runners ahead of them and hold on to that pace until the last hundred meters and speed up.
The flip side is I get emails often where athletes are running too big of a positive split. Let's say it's a boy who's trying to break two minutes, but he is out in 57 flat. It's probably not where you want to be right now – running 57 flat and coming back in 62.9. He's probably better off going out in 58.5 and trying to come back in 61 to run 1:59.5.
And for your 3200m runner, it could be as simple as they simply need to keep a calm mind on laps five, six, and seven while at the same time not letting the athletes in front of them pull away. It's so easy for athletes in the 3200m to fall asleep on those laps and get left behind.
Similarly, Coach Kelly Christensen of Niwot High School talks about the "third lap problem," and I think we can both agree that all 1600m runners struggle to not let the pace settle on that third lap.
The "Next Logical Step"
To be clear, I don't know what the plan you should have for each athlete is this week, but I think both you and the athlete have a good sense of what the "next logical step" is for them.
That was a term my college coach used, and I loved it. In a few weeks, we can talk about the next logical step for your program to have a fantastic cross-country season. But for now, let's just focus on the next logical step for each one of your serious athletes.
Two Important Links
Here are two links that are important in these final weeks:
- The first one is one you can share with your athletes – 12 Tips for a Breakthrough Performance in Track. There's no doubt you're going to agree with most of them, and feel free to copy and paste any of those into an email you might send the athletes.
- The second one is for you – The 800m Pre-Race Day. If you feel like your 800m athletes aren't ready for how fast the first 200m, 300m, 400m, and 500m of their 800m is, you should definitely try this. Trust me on the fact that this isn't too much volume the day before the race.
The other thing is, if you have an athlete running the 4x8 at the beginning of the meet and then coming back to run a second race – whether it's the 800m, the 1600m, or the 3200m – do this 800m pre-race day so their legs are moving at 800m pace. If they end up coming back in the 1600m or the 3200m, those opening laps of those races are going to feel nice and comfortable compared to how fast they ran the first 200m, 300m, and 400m of the 800m.
This is an exciting time of the year. I hope the weather gods are being good to you and your athletes in your area. We had a meet snowed out last weekend here in Colorado, but it looks like we're going to have really good weather the next couple weeks. Fingers crossed!
Let's go!
Jay
PS - If you're not familiar with the Fast, Faster, Fastest chapter from Consistency Is Key, just share your email below to get it for free.
Jay Johnson
