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Jay Johnson and the Colorado Buffalos
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Hammer
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:43 pm    Post subject: Jay Johnson and the Colorado Buffalos Reply with quote

I had the opportunity to hear Jay Johnson (Assistant Coach @ CU) talk at the New Mexico T&F Coaches Clinic this weekend. It was interesing to hear him discuss his (& Mark Wetmore's) philosophy on the 'Recipe' for developing distance runners.

He did not 'skate' by any of the questions and he also seemed somewhat apologetic at times. He does however think of Wetmore as a "coaching genius" and whole heartedly believes in what is going on in Boulder. He also talked about the fact that Wetmore is constantly changing his schedules (trying to improve.)

He is very scientifically based but you do get a hint of his "holistic hippie magic" when he discusses Fartlek workouts. He also had some interesting things to say about peaking twice in a season.

All in all it was very informative and I enjoyed talking to him.
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graeme
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds interesting. What did he say about peaking twice in a season?
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Dan
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Was he on the defensive for some reason, or was he just explaining their overall approach?

Dan
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Hammer
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Peaking twice: he talked about infusing some anaerobic workouts in the middle of the cross country season to affect blood ph to create a mini-peak for a mid season race. He used the Liberty Bell HS (CO) meet as an example. He talked about the importance of HS runners running a fast time to gain confidence and advised coaches to do this. I generally disagree with him but I did do this exact thing with one of my runners this year and it resulted in her running 18:09 for 3miles and winning the approval of her (hopefully future) college coach. It also increased the number of phone calls she was getting from college coaches. In the end though she leveled off earlier than planned.
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Hammer
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dan- In talking about the number of hard workouts a person/team should run in a 14 day microcycle he talked about how the Buffs may run 8 hard workouts but that he would never advise a HS coach to do the same. He seemed kind of defensive when he discussed the Darwinistic approach utilized by Wetmore and the Buffs. (Some people have called it a Meatgrinder approach.) But he also stated that if he had his own career to do over he would take it easy on some of the Aerobic days. He talked about trying to stay with Goucher and how he turned a recovery day into a hard day and how he went Anaerobic at the end of those runs. But he also closed with "you can't argue with the success" talking about the 2004 XC season, the # of runners at Worlds, and the international track success.
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Dan
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting stuff, thanks. I'll have to chew on the idea about anaerobic work introduced mid-season to sneak in an early peak. I can definitely see how that would help in the short-term, but like you highlighted, there would seem to be a large risk of the primary peak being lessened or missed altogether. I'm wondering if the success rate is dependent on off-season preparation? You'd need a very high base to pull it off, I would think, and that's something the CU program is known for.

8 hard workouts in a 2 week period? That's definitely a survival of the fittest approach! I can't imagine many people would be up to that challenge over the course of 4 years, and those that do probably don't last long beyond (see: Goucher).

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Paul
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 04, 2006 6:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hammer, nice to see you back!! Great work with your athletes down there. When does it start to heat up in NM?? I think I saw that it was 93 in Dallas Thursday??

What does Wetmore and Johnson like to do for their Fartlek workouts??
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Hammer
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Paul-We just started T&F here in Pecos. We can NEVER get going until after Basketball season (It is in the town charter.) The Temps. have not been over 68 but it has been pretty calm. Only one snow and that was less than an inch.

Johnson talked about a variety of Fartlek workouts and some workouts that some might call "aerobic power" workouts (Continious running with 1000s at race pace, 10k for men, and then "recovering" through a float zone) Johnson catagorized these workouts as Aerobic but stated that the end of the workout would "Bleed" into the Anaerobic Zone.

In my work I generally treat fartlek workouts the same. I usually implement them the day after our long day and I record distance traveled instead of time. We do a "Kenyan Fartlek" (2min hard/1min easy) next to the river on a trail and each kid has a goal distance for the workout (something "like two loops and half way to the big tree"). Race pace fartlek work is great for XC and 5k and above. We work on changing gears during the fartlek and finishing faster than we started.
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Paul
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, Hammer, that was good info. Very Happy
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