Gilmour Academy's Bart Merkel, 9:39.63 3200!

• warriordude072008

  Wow.. thats just one hell of a start already under 9:40, indoor and being two months before outdoor track season begins.. wowwwww. Im sure Nick Gliha will have a difficult time defending his title this year!
• cvctrackfan

  We have only been training three days a week. Bart also puts in a long run on Sunday around 8 to 10 miles. Our goal is to run in the 9:20's by the end of indoors and then we will see what happens outdoors. His leg speed is much better this year, he has run a 2:02 leg on the 4x800 already. Nick Gliha still has to be the favorite because he is the defending State Champion, and you always have to respect that.
• nworunner

  cvctrackfan wrote: We have only been training three days a week. Bart also puts in a long run on Sunday around 8 to 10 miles. Our goal is to run in the 9:20's by the end of indoors and then we will see what happens outdoors. His leg speed is much better this year, he has run a 2:02 leg on the 4x800 already. Nick Gliha still has to be the favorite because he is the defending State Champion, and you always have to respect that.

  Maybe I'm the only skeptic here but I find that incredibly hard to believe. So you're saying that he runs 8-10 as a long run, then probably about 6 or so for the other three days. That's only around 25-30 miles, if that.
• cvctrackfan

  I am training Bart the way I was trained....four sturdy workout days a week... and and by the way he ran 4:25.0 today in the full mile today....the other days are recovery....
• cvctrackfan

  Strongsville's Colby Alexander ran 4:14.3 in the mile and came back and went 1:59 in the 800 in the same meet...
• tyler_durden

  CVC,
  What kind of pace does he shoot for in that 8-10 mile long run? And what does a "sturdy" workout day entail, if you don't mind me asking?
• cvctrackfan

  I tell him to go easy on the long run which is around 8 minutes, but, he can run in the low 7's if he hammers it.....sturdy workout example would 4x200's in 31 seconds followed by 6x400's in 69 seconds with 2-3 miinutes rest... followed by 4x200's in 31 seconds 90 seconds rest... we run these workouts on the outside of one of the ice rinks.... 75 meter straightaway around a trash can and back... it's pretty cold in there also.....near the end of outddoors our goal for Bart and Bekka Simko would be to run a set of 200's with just 30 seconds rest.. they both just love that workout....
• tyler_durden

  Thanks for sharing, CVC. Always interesting to see how successful teams train. Good luck this season!
• cvctrackfan

  Your welcome....I always have doubts about if I am doing the right training for my runners, I have talked with several area coaches and their runners are doing a lot more miles then our runners both in cross and in track.... I have to get it into my thick skull.. that each athlete should actually have specific workouts.. which is something high school coaches just can' t or won't do....we tend to generalize our workouts runner to runner and even year to year... and we may not always be doing whats best for the runners......We also have to build strength in our runners, but remember that is only supplemental training and that nothing replaces just plain old hard work..
• cvctrackfan

  Nworunner does that give you a better insight into Bart's training....we are just not a big high mileage program....in track and field you can run fast without megamiles......in the late 1960's and early 1970's we ran times equal to or faster then current acheivments.. there are ways to inserts miles into training programs, through warm-ups cool downs, active rest intervals etc....I always thought in high school I never ran any mileage..but,our coach had us warm-up and cool down with a mile and we jogged in between our many intervals, we often had put, in a total of close to 6 miles during a workout....