Transition Program

Magill Speed Runner Program

Reading time: 5 min

When I go to the book store with my wife and daughter, I swing by the endurance sports section. I peruse through the titles to see if anything new and exciting I didn’t know about is available. Last summer (July 2018), I noticed a book called Speed Runner by Pete Magill. The subtitle was “4 weeks to your fastest leg speed in any sport.” I cringed. Terms like “4 weeks” and “fastest leg speed” upset me. They wreak of the current “hack” culture out there on the internet. I almost didn’t by this book.

Luckily, I had heard the name of the author before, Pete Magill. I knew he was the real deal. Magill is a national championship coach and accomplished masters runner with multiple American and age-group records. I started flipping through.

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Transition Program

Reading time: 8 min

In the Running Base Building Program that I presented, the focus was on Base Runs and Fast but Not Hard drills. This combination develops general endurance, general speed and running skills while allowing time for your tissues to adapt to the demands of running.

From a Base Program, I don’t suggest you jump right into hard training. It is best to use a Transition Program for a few weeks to a few months. The Transition Program nudges your body toward more the demanding training that will come later.

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Coach Vigil’s Fulcrum

Reading time: 7 min

It has become clear to me that we must view a training program as a balance with the aerobic phase, the Fulcrum, and the anaerobic phase

Coach Joe Vigil

Coach Joe Vigil is a living legend. He is a scientist and coach whose unique combination of physiology and sports science with motivation and decades of experience have produced incredible results.

Here is a shortlist of his coaching accomplishments:

  • Coach of Meb Keflezighi, Deena Kastor and Brenda Martinez to name a few famous American runners.
  • 20 different medalists at the World Cross Country Championships
  • 19 NCAA and NAIA collegiate team championships
  • A perfect score at the NCAA Cross Country National Championships which means that the runners on his team finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th
  • A meet-winning percentage of 94.2 percent with over 3000 wins
  • Coach of the US Olympic Team, twice. And was named to the coaching staff of the World Cross Country Championships, the Pan American Games, and numerous other international coaching staffs

If you’d like to learn more about Coach Vigil, Spartan Life did an excellent profile on him which you can read HERE. If you’ve never heard the name Joe Vigil before today, make sure you read the profile!

The focus in this post is how Coach Vigil transitions his runners between the aerobic and anaerobic phases of a training program. In earlier posts, we learned about the methods used by Arthur Lydiard and Jack Daniels. Coach Vigil calls this phase the Fulcrum, and he describes the concept in his book Road to the Top.

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Jack Daniels’ Phase II

Reading time: 8 min

Sometimes picking up the pace in a race feels better than staying with the same pace; always try speeding up before you drop back from a tough pace

Coach Jack Daniels

In the mid-90s, editor-in-chief of Runner’s World magazine Amby Burfoot called coach Jack Daniels the “world’s best running coach.” Burfoot, an accomplished marathoner from the late-60s and early-70s, believed so strongly that he “plastered” the phrase on the cover of the magazine.

In 2009, Burfoot posted on the Runner World blog a point-by-point account of why he believes so strongly in Daniels‘ coaching abilities. If you are not familiar with Daniels, take a moment to read the post.

As I mentioned in the post on Fast but Not Hard drills, Daniels’ Running Formula was the first full-length running book I read when I first started. I implemented his program for several seasons. And I enjoyed it tremendously.

The way Daniels lays out the principles of training and simplifies the concepts down to specific pace ranges and workouts is impressive. If you’re interested in learning more about the nuts-and-bolts of running, Daniels’ Running Formula is a great place to start.

What we are going to focus on today is Phase II of Daniels training programs.

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Lydiard Hills

Reading time: 8 min

If you want to be a successful runner, you have to consider everything. It’s no good just thinking about endurance and not to develop fine speed.

Arthur Lydiard

New Zealand’s Arthur Lydiard is one of the outstanding running coaches of all time – possibly the greatest. He dramatically changed the sport of running in two significant ways: training and popularity.

First, Lydiard developed and spread the idea of a periodized running program. He started runners with aerobic running up to 100 miles per week – that many years of trial-and-error lead him to believe was the sweet spot for aerobic development. Then he would progressively transition runners toward more anaerobic training specific to their target event. He did this before the words aerobic and anaerobic were popular training lexicon.

His program was so successful that, incredibly, Lydiard sent three local athletes to the 1960 Rome Olympics: Peter Snell (800m), Murray Halberg (5000m) and Barry Magee (Marathon) and all three made in on the podium! Snell and Halberg won gold and Magee a bronze. Four years later at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Snell would win gold in the 800m and the 1500m – a feat that has not been repeated at the games!

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