Inmates running the asylum

You know, I always welcome input from my athletes in terms of their training. It is vital to the success of the coach-athlete relationship. After all, THEY are the ones doing the running, and THEY know how their bodies are feeling and what they might need.

This does not mean that an athlete can run roughshod over a coach's instructions. But sound, reasoned input can be vital.

Today as we headed out to the Vassar track for workouts, freshman Matt Panebianco made the bold move of coming up with a workout for the middle-distance men. Today's protocol called for 400s for all groups -- you know how I love the multi-purpose value of quarter-mile repeats. In truth, I did not have 100 percent confidence in the 400-repeats workout I had concocted for the middle-distance group. So M-Diddy's idea was welcomed, if not a bit brash.

He pulled out a piece of loose-leaf paper with the following workout written on it:

15-20 minute warmup
4x400 (64-68) w/90 second rest
full recovery (400 jog)
2xnegative split 400 (35, 29) with 1:30-2:00 rest
full recovery (400 jog)
2x200 (28-27), w/1:00-2:00 rest
15-20 minute cooldown

Hmm. Intriguing. While the men went out on their warmup, I thought about this workout. I liked this workout! So we scrapped the quarters in favor of this. Curtis timed this group, but I monitored it closely. Here's how it went, with some adjustments by some gray-bearded guy who was watching ...

15-20-minute warmup
200-meter stride/200-meter jog
4x400 at prescribed paces, mostly 65s. I bumped the rest up to 200-meter jog/2 minutes
2xneg split 400s, which the boys really nailed! Several of them closed in 27. Nicely done. We increased the rest to full recovery after both
Replaced the 2x200 with 1x200 stride (31-32) and 1x200 fast (27 range)

The guys did a nice job with the workout. It was hard, with a fair amount of turnover. But the weather was good, warm and little wind. And these boys are not racing till Yale on Sunday. We'll do some light, extended strides on Friday and see what happens.

Again, it's not often I scrap a workout in favor of another one written by an athlete. But today, it worked out fine.

The rest of the distance boys that did either 2 sets of 6x400 or 2 sets of 8x400 did a nice job. Conor was a good boy and did not BLOW IT BY RUNNING TOO FAST LIKE LAST WEEK. Oh. Sorry. Yeah, I'm still a little annoying about that. Anyway, it went well today, and Conor did all 16 in the prescribed paces.