1) What was your own athletic experience before and during high school? Favorite memories? Proudest achievements?
I played mostly soccer growing up, with some baseball sprinkled in. Not much in the way of youth track or cross country back then in my area in Rocklin, CA. I played soccer for 13 years. Once I got to High School I couldn't make the soccer team and turned my focus to Track. I was a sprinter and was focused on the 100 and 200 meters. I didn't really discover distance running until I was around 20 years old and in Junior College at Sierra.
When I first started coaching High School, I was trying to adapt my own running as an adult elite Marathoner into these High Schoolers. Not with all the mileage (I went up to 140 mpw) but the schedule and the workouts. Took me a while to figure out that wasn't a good way to go about things. Mileage isn't the end all be all it was for me when I was running Marathons. Yes, I believe miles are important, but year-round (with breaks) consistency is even more important. I wish all High School runners understood that. Our top athletes knock out a huge chunk of their training in the offseason. This is where they hit their peak mileage; this is where the bigger workouts are. Once we get to the season, we are racing almost every week, so the training involves coming off one race and going into another.
3) You've coached at several Sacramento-area schools. What have you learned from each program that has influenced how you coach at St. Francis?
The three High Schools that I have coached at are all extremely different. When I started at Inderkum back in 2016 there wasn't much of a program and I was building numbers just to get kids to try distance running. When I came to St. Francis in 2022 they had been to several CIF XC State meets in a row. So a bit of apples to oranges. One thing I try to remind the higher level athletes is that it's allowed to be fun. We are going to work hard and have great results, but don't forget the fun part. We had a color run for the first time ever yesterday and then we went out and hit a set of challenging 200s on the dirt. We can have both. I don't want to make it sound like we are the "fun" program and don't challenge ourselves. These athletes work extremely hard at what they do.
4) When you took over St. Francis in 2022, what did you see in the program that you wanted to preserve, and what did you want to change? What do you think makes St. Francis different from other high-level girls' cross-country programs in Northern California? What does a successful season look like to you beyond winning a section championship? What are the biggest challenges of maintaining a championship-level program year after year?
The culture was the biggest thing I wanted to change about the program. Before I got there, they forgot how to have fun and they weren't together as a team. We work on being all one team quite a bit, it's never perfect and always a work in progress but it's pretty drama free for the most part and they have a good time. We have some transfers that have come in for the first time this season and one of the things that one pointed out to me is that they have never seen this many girls working hard together. The work level is pretty high from our top girls down to throughout the roster. There are a bunch of girls working on their results and looking for that improvement. I think in a lot of top programs you have a few girls working hard at the top but some of the others are sometimes forgotten or aren’t doing work. Our coaches take pride in the fact that we honestly care about everyone’s results.
Success beyond championships to me is that the girls had some PRs, they are happy and they want to come back and do it again. I also take a lot of pride in sending girls off to run in College. Their academic needs and athletic needs don't always match up for them to run in college but when they do, it's exciting to try and follow their college progress and get to talk to them about their experience when they come back.
I think the key to having a successful season year after year is partially due to having coaches that are willing to be engaged nearly year round. Without Coach Melanie, Coach Clint, and Coach Bruns we wouldn't be able to do all the things that we do from the Day Camp, to Summer practice, and to our traveling meet schedule. The coaches point in the right direction and with our culture the way that we have built it up now, the girls follow, show up and put in the work.
5) Who are the coaches that had a big impact on you as an athlete, as well as mentors for you as a coach? What's the best piece of coaching advice that you have ever received?
That's a tough one. I have had some coaches negatively impact me, and I won't name those, but because of some of those experiences it reminds me that I want to not make those mistakes and be a better coach then what I had. After college, I was self coached for many years but the first coach that really got me into distance running was the legendary Jim Hunt who was our coach at Sierra College in my first year as a distance runner. He had retired from coaching a couple of times but couldn't give it up because he loved it so much. That rubbed off on several of us, including my wife who is the Head Coach of Rio Americano HS and myself. Without Jim Hunt our lives would have turned out much differently. He shows us how to love the sport.
It's been over 30 years since I've actually had a coach so I can't think of a specific piece of coaching advice that I have been given but more of an emotion. Coaches that I have had along the way that show that glimpse of how to coach a team and how to love the process.
6) You've had success at schools with very different circumstances and program histories. What have you learned about building a cross-country program that you didn't understand when you first started coaching?
I've coached college, High School, middle school and we have our youth team for the last 18 years as well and I think the biggest thing I try to do with building a program is not try to be a dictator and if I am serious about it but also laid back and enjoy it, they will do. I try not to scare anyone off but we want all of them right away to know that we are going to work hard and running isn't for everyone and that's OK. But we want them there if they want to run and make that effort and the improvements will show from that.
7) Walk me through what an ideal week looks like for one of your varsity runners during the heart of the season. How does your training change as you get closer to the section meet and then the state meet? What do you emphasize most before a championship race? How do you teach athletes to race tactically rather than simply run by pace? How do you prepare athletes for the mental side of championship racing?
We do our biggest mileage in the offseason, we have some of our experienced Junior girls that peaked at 60 miles per week for a couple of weeks. But during the heart of the season we don't get anywhere in there. We have a very busy race season with 12 races over 12 weeks (one week with two races, one week with no races) so we aren't doing super high mileage or really challenging workouts. A race week one of our top athletes would be between 35 and 40 miles with a workout in there. If we have a Saturday race then it's something like this:
Monday Short bodyweight strength routine, 6-8 miles easy + 4x100 Strides, short HIIT session
Tuesday 6-8 miles easy with Speed Development (5x150 fast or something similar)
Wednesday Workout Day, 2 mile warmup, drills, 5x1K (first three tempo pace, last two hard), 2 mile cooldown
Thursday 6 miles Easy
Friday 4 miles + 4x100 Strides
Saturday 1.5 mile warmup, drills, race, 2 mile cooldown
Sunday Off
For big races we spend some time trying to remind them to take it all in, look around, enjoy what's happening. If you get into Woodbridge or State and have the blinders on and so focused on your race you are going to miss the fun parts. There are no big hype speeches on the day of big meets because they are already piling so much pressure on themselves. In the days leading up to a big race we will talk about certain points of the courses and remind them that it's not harder than anything they have done in training. For the mental side it's just finding ways to release the pressure. Usually I will try to point out something funny I have seen at the meet or talk about something else just to give them time to NOT think about that big moment for a brief second and just tell them to relax and hang out with their friends and talk before the meet. Little positive comments along the way can help anyone.
They already know that they have to win the little races around them so we don't really spend much time on tactics versus pace. Usually if they can hit their course PR then they are in a good place scoring for the team. But if we have a particular team that we know will be the biggest challenge then we will figure out what their uniform is so that gives them that extra motivation if one of them is around them.
8) When you look at a freshman, what tells you that she could eventually become a high-level varsity runner?
We get such a big range of Freshman girls that come into the program. Some have been running since they were seven and some are just starting when they join us. For some like Alyssa Gutierrez, she had already run 5:12 for 1600 as an 8th grader so you know she's going to do something special. But girls all develop at a different rate and their progress isn't linear like most boys are so it's not very predictable. We've had girls that had trouble finishing races their Freshman year end up being on our State XC teams Senior year. With our Freshman we are doing our best to develop them and not just push them to their limit and it seems to work out pretty well. I often remind myself that we have them for four years so write the training accordingly.
9) What do you wish more high school athletes understood about the college recruiting process? How do you help athletes decide whether they're ready for a demanding college running program? What are the biggest misconceptions high school runners have about running in college? What should a talented sophomore or junior be doing now if she wants to run competitively in college?
The recruiting process is pretty stressful for High School athletes because it's such an important decision for them. I wish they knew that they are allowed to reach out to coaches and communicate with them. College coaches want to hear from you and if they don't then that's OK and you won't end up there. It doesn't hurt to reach out. I think the fear of rejection stops some athletes from doing those emails.
I would love it if all my athletes ran in college but I know that's not always the case. Some get into colleges for their academics that they aren't quite at that level in their running. So many other factors come into play when choosing a college: academics, location, weather, campus, housing situation, someone told me they loved the food on their visit and that was a factor, and of course the team.
My daughter is now a college coach so I get the opportunity to hear about how the recruiting process works from her end. It gives me another perspective for athletes to take care of the little things and be prepared for that phone call with questions. Talk to the coach, not one word responses they want to hear from you, ask questions.
Anyone that wants to, can run in college. It's just a matter of matching academics to teams. Any Sophomores or Juniors that want to run in college should be reaching out to coaches. The easy way is to go to that team's website and fill out the athletic questionnaire. That puts you on their radar, that's how they know you are interested, that puts you on a list. Then you can write the email. As you get more PRs or big results, send those to the college coaches. Those college coaches will rank you on a list based on PRs, the phone calls, and what they learn about you. Don't be afraid to post all your good stuff about your running on Social Media. Follow the teams on Instagram that you are interested in and hopefully they will follow you back.
Thanks for the promo, lol. Yes I have two books and they are both available on Amazon, I self published both. It started with my first one Average to Elite which was kind of my story of my own running background. I felt like my story was a unique one and I enjoyed writing it. It took me about 10 years to finally put the final touches on it. I just wanted people that were interested to be able to read how I started as a distance runner in Junior College trying to break 23 minutes for 5K and eventually be able to run 2:22 in the Marathon and go on to the U.S. Olympic Trials. I have the exact training log I used in the book from my best year in 2002.
11) If you were hired tomorrow to build a competitive high school program from scratch, what would you do during the first two years?
This is one of those questions that is very tough to answer, but I would start with numbers. You have to have kids to coach. My first school had 14 kids on the team (boys and girls) the year before I started and we spread the word, went and talked to PE classes and we had 45 kids a couple of weeks into the season. The next thing we would do is run consistently. You don't get better and XC by playing games or going to the movies, you do it by running every day, six days per week and building that up. Then of course I would find help, no coach should be doing it alone. Find some assistants that are willing to help and share the passion for distance running. As coaches if you are willing to put in the time, you can build a good team. If you just show up at practice and wing it, your team won't see the same level of improvement and growth.
12) Anything else you would like to add?
As a coach of 32 years I find myself in a spot where I want to help other coaches. I have no secrets anymore and nothing I do is revolutionary, it's just consistency and time. I have coaches that reach out to me with questions sometimes and I like to help. If someone has questions about anything I have done or written, just reach out. Good luck and I'm looking forward to what should be hopefully a historic season for our program. Thank you.
