Who/What/When

The coaching staff will come up with a who/what/when to determine what meets and events you will be participating in. Each athlete will have an individual meeting with the head coach and possibly the event coach to discuss the meets that were picked out. These meets will be picked out to prepare each athlete to compete their best at their final meet of the year whether that is conference, last chance or nationals. This is a very big part of our individualization at McPherson, and the athlete input is always taken into consideration. Competing unattached at a meet, road race or any other non school competition without permission from the head coach will result in immediate dismissal from the team. We set up your schedule for the purpose of having you compete to the best of your ability at the end of the season for your team. Compete outside of the McPherson Team schedule compromises this and will not be tolerated.

Mission Statement

To be successful and work hard each day toward team, and individual, goals that will ultimately lead us to our goal of competing to the best of our ability during each championship season.

Bulldog Blueprint Intro

From time to time I am going to post parts of our team handbook which we call the Bulldog Blueprint. In this book contains all things related to the team and building a successful program. They will all fall under the label bulldog blueprint. I hope you enjoy. This will give you a very inside look into the program and what we are all about.

INDIVIDUALIZATION:

All of you will be trained differently. For instance, if you ran 40 miles per week in high school, you will be train at 45-50 per week freshman year. If you trained at 60 miles per week, you will train at 65-70 miles per week freshman year. Ideally, you will go up about 10-15 % each year. For example, you may go 65 miles per week as a freshman, 73 miles per week as a sophomore, 80 miles per week as a junior, & 90 miles per week as a senior. This is all peak mileage weeks. I do not believe in a very big taper when training for distance or mid distance races. You may drop down from 70 miles to 50 miles for the championship meets, but nothing too drastic. Some of you may not taper at all. We will always address the two important variables in our training: Volume & Intensity. In order to develop and perform well during a championship season these variables are crucial in our training. Again, everything will be individualized to your specific running needs (Group & Team Training still a part of our training culture!).

- As a general rule, our training philosophy focuses on AEROBIC DEVELOPMENT and becoming a more HOLISTIC ATHLETE.
o Gradual increases in mileage, gradual increases in tempo on daily runs, and workouts that are at or below the lactate threshold. Being able to work increasingly close to your maximum oxygen consumption without suffering from high accumulations of lactic acid in the blood.