Jay Johnson currently serves as the Middle Distance Coach for the University of Colorado, his alma mater, where he has coached for more than five years. In addition to his coaching responsibilities, Coach Jay directs the Boulder Running Camp, one of the premier high school running camps in the country, and develops training materials for athletes and coaches of all ages and levels.

Each week, Jay will be answering the best training questions we receive from you! If you have a question you want answered, email CoachJay@nike.com, and stay tuned to next week’s “Q&A with Coach Jay”!

*Coach Jay’s advice is provided as general training information. Use at your own risk. Always consult with your own heath care provider for questions relating to your specific training and nutrition.

Hi, my name is Semehar (female) and I’m a Senior in high school. I have been in XC for 5 years but I never really trained on my own. I have been training 6 days a week for track for a couple months now. I started with 30 miles a week and went up by 10% each week. I’m at 64 miles right now and there is one month before track starts. I haven’t been doing any workouts, just some tempo runs. My practices are always around an average HR of 160 & my pace has gradually changed from an 8min/mile to 7min/mile. Track starts a month from now and I’m stuck on what to do next. I know I need to do speed work, but I don’t know how to put that into my schedule. Like what workouts to do and how much. I would like to get an 800 around 2:20, a mile around 5:15, & 2 mile at around 11:20. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Great question, yet we’re going to go backwards a little bit so that you can go forwards. Your ascension from 30 mpw to 64 mpw is really impressive and you are no doubt ready to run fast this spring. However, I would recommend that you back down the volume to roughly 50 miles a week for a couple of weeks and add two key workouts. One workout is the long run. Try 8 miles the first week and try to negative split this run, running the second half faster than the first half (out and back courses are good for these types of runs even though they’re less exciting than a loop course). The second workout would be a threshold workout. Take your 5k time from the cross country season and add 3 minutes to that time, then calculate that pace per mile and try to run that pace for 4-5 miles. The key to this workout is to find a pace that is challenging, but is not a race, and also a pace that you can run for 4-5 miles. Initially, 3 minutes slower than your 5k will likely be too slow, yet you’re better off running your first couple of threshold runs too slow rather than running them too fast. Finally, adding some 100m or 150m strides at 800m pace is appropriate a couple times a week; 17.5 for 100m and 26.5 sec for 150m is about 2:20 800m pace; you can do these strides on your easy days, yet make one day a week really easy with no strides. I wish you the best this spring.

I’ve only been running consistently for a few months now so I’d still call myself a beginner. Lately I’ve been running anywhere from 10-20 miles a week (and I’m looking to increase that) and I’ve recently also started to mix in some weightlifting, but I’m not sure how to approach lower body strength training while running 6 days a week. I played baseball all through college, so I’m accustomed to using heavy weights for building strength and muscle mass. However, since I’ve been running, I’ve basically just thought of my runs as my lower body workout and I didn’t want to do lower body lifting too often, thinking that it would leave me sore and keep my speed and endurance down. What sort of exercises, weights, and reps could I focus on to not only strengthen my legs but also improve my running performance?

-Mark M., 24, Allentown, PA

Thanks for the question Mark. I think this is pretty straight forward yet before we get into specifics we need to differentiate between your neuromuscular system (nerves interacting with muscles and telling them what to do) and the cardiopulmonary system (your heart and lungs). Running will improve your cardiopulmonary system and strength training in a weight room, especially if the focus is power (rather than muscle hypertrophy, which is simply an enlargement of a given muscle), will improve your neuromuscular system. This is the classic “apples vs. oranges” dynamic. And while many elite distance runners have weekly ancillary workouts designed to increase power, the first step for someone like yourself is to find strength exercises that are functional relative to running, yet will still be challenging enough so that you feel like you’ve done a good workout when you leave the weight room.

Here’s an example. You’ve likely done a lot of back squat exercises, yet if you switch to an overhead squat and really focus on a “running stance”, with your feet perpendicular to the bar and hip width apart, you’ll have a new challenge ahead of you. This type of stance wouldn’t allow you to back squat very much weight, yet as a runner it’s great because it will challenge your glute/hamstring area to be more flexible while simultaneously engaging your core. Single leg squats are also great for runners as well as lateral lunges (we do both exercises 5-6 days a week as the very first activities in our warm-up). Also, any of the exercises you’ve seen with a physioball that challenge the glute/hamstring are great because they also force you to engage your core at the same time, and that is an important skill for a runner - the ability to engage the core will help you to run athletically and powerfully throughout a race. Best of luck!

Hope this finds you well. I was flipping through my well worn copy of Running With the Buffaloes and I remembered that inside.nikerunning.com had a Q & A going on with Jay Johnson. From the looks of it, I’ve broken through some mental and physical barriers lately and have been doing some really good training. I’ve had long runs of over 16 miles the past three weeks and I’ve increased my mileage to higher than ever before. Anyhow, I’m looking to run a fast 5000m sometime this spring. I’ve gotten to ask a few other athletes about their favorite workouts and I was wondering if you would share yours? I realize everyone is a little different and such, but I still find it interesting to hear people’s favorite workouts.

Thanks,
Dan Kittaka

Dan - I smiled reading your email, thinking “I was dying in 85-90% of workouts that I attempted as a collegiate athlete,” so maybe it’s more an issue of the most tolerable workouts? How about this, I’ll give you an example of a workout that I think was the most important one for me as a college athlete, and then I’ll give you an example of a workout that I assign middle distance but can easily be adapted for 5,000m runners.

Every time I had a great long run at CU I felt quite confident in my fitness; the only thing I’d like to see as a coach, that I failed to do as an athlete, is to treat each long run as a potential progression run. What do I mean? First, let’s define a progression run - it’s simply a run that gets faster and more intense the longer you run, so that your fastest running is at the end of the run. The reason I call it a potential progression run is that it gives you an “out” if you get half way through your run and feel tired; simply maintain that pace and finish the run. My problem was that most of my good long runs were closer to races and I rarely could have called them controlled, which is why the first thing I ask the athletes I work with after they’ve run a good long run is, “Was it controlled?” But the bottom line is that the ability to do a quality, controlled long run and a new 5K PR are tightly correlated.

Secondly, here is a workout I often employ with athletes the day following track workouts. Although my situation is different than yours (I work with 1,500m runners and I coach at 5,200 ft.) the premise of this workout still fits a 5k runner at sea-level. 2×4,000m at a pace that is 10-15 sec a mile slower than threshold, then put in 400m at 5,000m pace from 1,200m to 1,600m. Following the 400m at 5k pace you have 6 more laps to run at the 10-15 sec slower than threshold pace; you’re going to feel fairly fatigued at the 1,600m mark yet two laps later at 2,400m, you’ll feel a little better…and by 3,200m you should feel pretty good. The idea is that you introduce lactate into the system at 5k race pace, yet only for 400m, and then get back to a pace where you don’t produce lactate. Plus, I think this is a fun way to get another threshold workout in, yet it breaks it up into three parts - easy for three laps, one lap at 5k pace, then 6 laps getting back to normal. We usually jog 2 laps between the two 4k’s and we do everything from 2×2,400m to 3×4,000m, but the concept is always the same. One final thing - practice running with good posture, running powerfully on the laps following the 400m at 5k pace, as it’s a great way to teach your body to run correctly when fatigued. This is basically what running economy is. I hope these workouts are helpful and I’ll make sure to send Chris Lear this Q&A as well!