The Perfect Workout for This Time of Year

Published March 26, 2025

It’s the last week in March and it’s a great time of year to be a track coach!

There’s a very good chance you have athletes on your team who either didn’t train this winter or had a very inconsistent winter, or, as we talked about in a previous email, they might have been basketball players or swimmers for whom you have to be really cautious with the training in the first few weeks of the season.

It’s tempting to want to give these athletes the same aerobic workouts you do in the summer as you help them prepare for cross-country. So long runs or threshold runs or fatigued-legged runs.

But if you think about it, the risk of injury with a watered-down long run is very high. This athlete has spent little time on their feet this winter, so that’s not the type of workout we want to assign them.

Couple that with the fact that every time they’re racing, and especially if they’re running one race plus a leg on the 4x4 or even the 4x8, their body’s pretty beat up in the 24-48 hours following the meet.

The workout I like to use with athletes in this situation is the 30/90 fartlek.

30-90 Fartlek

The 30-90 fartlek is a workout that I first used at the end of summer training to transition into cross country race pace work.

It’s also a fantastic workout to utilize the rest of the season when you need a challenging aerobic workout, but don’t want the volume of a long run or even a threshold run.

Here’s why I love it…

Your athletes get an aerobic stimulus
They run much faster than they would during any of the other challenging aerobic workouts
They recover from the workout quickly and can handle a race pace workout 48 hours later
Kids love this workout! …so this last point trumps the other three bullet points… 😃

The one mistake coaches make is to use the workout 48 or 72 hours out from an important meet. Do this workout 48 hours after a meet (Saturday after a Thursday meet, for instance).

If you had a meet on Thursday, you can use the workout on Saturday.

If you had a meet on Saturday, you could come back with this workout on Monday.

If you have a meet on Friday, I’d have them run easy on Saturday and then take Sunday off. As I’ve said before, many of the best programs in the country only run six days a week, including perennial power American Fork - NXN runner up multiple times, and the nation record holders in the 4x1600m. Their time? 16:40…so an average of 4:10 per young man. Wow!

If you have a meet on Friday, have them run easy Saturday, then off on Sunday, then they’re ready to go for a workout that’s challenging on Monday.

What’s the Workout?

The workout is simply 30 seconds at 5k goal pace rhythm – don’t have them look at their GPS watch to see what pace they’re running – followed immediately by 90 seconds of easy running.

We call it a fartlek because we’re playing with speed, yet the 90 is easy, and not “steady” which is what we do in a normal fartlek workout.

Here’s the assignment I’d have for an athlete that can do 55-65-minute long runs (that are solid – finishing with strides in the last 20 minutes of the run). Note that this is one continuous run – 40 min total (with no break between the strides and the fartlek).

30-90 Fartlek - 40 Minute Version

• 7 min easy, 8 min with 4 x 20 sec strides (there is no break between the 7 min easy and the 8 min with strides)

• 20 min of 30 sec at a fun-fast pace, with 90 seconds easy to start, then slowly speeding this up to an easy pace if you feel good. Be very conservative to start this. Must finish saying you could have done this for 3 more sets, or 36 min total.

• 5 min cool.

Total workout time: 40 min.

All Five Challenging Aerobic Workouts

If you have time tonight and want to read about all five challenging aerobic workouts I use – Long Runs, Fartlek Runs, Progression Runs, Aerobic Repeats, and the 30-90 Fartlek – you can read this article.

If you don’t have time tonight, please save this email and come back to it later.

800m and 1600m Training

Here are three more articles that you might have missed…

Sub 2:00 and Sub 2:20 800m Training

800m Training: Pre-race Day

1600m Training: Making A Move with 500m To Go

And here’s one for your athletes…

Running A PR in Track: 12 Tips for a Breakthrough Performance

Let me know if you have any questions

“It’s A Must-Read”

“This is the book I wish I had when I was in high school. It’s a must-read.” - Chris Lear, author of Running with the Buffaloes.

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It’s an exciting time of year for you and your athletes. I wish you the best in you upcoming meets!

Let’s go!

Jay

PS — I had the pleasure of attending the Dublin Distance Fiesta on Saturday. It was unlike any high school meet I’ve been to. During the two-day meet, 4,000 athletes raced in distance events. They set world records for the most girls under 6:00 (371!) and boys under 5:00 (591!)

Chris Williams, the meet director, puts on an amazing meet. He's dealing with cancer, but was at the meet and I got to say hello.

With mostly California kids racing and me being from Colorado, I couldn’t pick out school uniforms.

But then I saw two boys warm up for the fast heat of the 1600m in red tops with yellow shorts, and I knew they were from Jesuit High School. Then I immediately thought of this must-watch 2-minute video.

Remember, this was in the 1990s, pre-super shoes, at the state meet.

And if you like that video, this one about the athlete is neat.